
Bitcoin 2.0 explained - hansy
http://voices.yahoo.com/bitcoin-20-explained-colored-coins-vs-mastercoin-vs-12475857.html
======
diminoten
The "Bitcoin 2.0" phrase is a reference to the "web 2.0" phrase, not to a new
protocol version of Bitcoin.

May have been obvious to some, I dunno, but it's worth noting that Bitcoin can
do all of these things _today_ , with zero changes to implementation or
design.

~~~
meowface
They should have titled it "Cryptocurrency 2.0" instead, I think.

~~~
pjbrunet
Or "Building on the Bitcoin Blockchain" ;-)

I agree, they tricked me too!

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pjbrunet
Last I heard, Mastercoin is just a specification. It's too early to pretend
it's going to work. I heard an interview w/ the author and it sounds like lots
of talk and big dreams w/ no real technology to back it up. When asked how
long it will take to release a working prototype, I think he said two weeks if
he gets enough donations to quit his job. OK suuuure. You can find the
interview on YouTube. It's almost comical.

As far as "Colored Coins" looks like the same scenario--just an idea for a
protocol? Their video is vague, doesn't really explain anything. Bitcoins
backed by car titles? Let me guess, a decentralized vault full of luxury cars
nobody can drive? LOL. [http://coloredcoins.org/about/our-
team/](http://coloredcoins.org/about/our-team/)

~~~
gojomo
Mastercoin appears to have a working market, transaction explorer, and
reportable capitalization (at coinmarketcap.com), so it seems your information
out of date. (Mastercoin might be doomed for any number of reasons, but it
seems to be past the point where it can be casually dismissed with hand-wavey
'sounds like all talk'/'comical' impressions.)

~~~
pjbrunet
But none of that is new. A market for what? You mean an altcoin exchange?
There's already websites where you can buy your own white-label exchange.

Mastercoin was supposed to be an application platform/protocol layer on top of
the Bitcoin blockchain. Just one of the applications was supposed to be online
gambling. Sounds like a red flag to me.

Anyone can create their own vanity altcoin--that part is not surprising to me.
To build an application layer on top of the Bitcoin blockchain, in your spare
time? Yes, sounds comical to me unless you're some Bill Gates superstar.

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gfodor
decentralization is not a benefit in a vacuum, it comes at a cost.

to be taken seriously bitcoiners need to have a thesis as to why the benefits
of decentralization in each of these applications outweigh the cost.

~~~
kerkeslager
I don't think this is really how things are going to work. In an ideal world,
people would come up with a strong thesis that features of Bitcoin outweighs
the cost, and only _then_ would people take Bitcoin seriously. But the reality
is that nobody really understands Bitcoin's role in the world economy well
enough to evaluate such a thesis. There are tons of theses about how Bitcoin
might be used. The only way to evaluate these theses is to implement them and
see if they work.

So basically, we can't wait to see if the benefits outweigh the costs to start
taking Bitcoin seriously. Bitcoin has to be taken seriously _before_ we can
weigh the benefits against the costs. There's just no way to evaluate whether
decentralization is more beneficial than costly except to take the risk and
try it.

In that sense, Bitcoin isn't really that different from any other new
financial idea. Either you invest in a thesis or you don't, and if you invest,
then either you make money or you lose money. You can make educated guesses on
which theses are correct, but ultimately you can only prove or disprove a new
financial idea by taking it seriously enough to try it.

People are already taking Bitcoiners seriously to the tune of billions of
dollars, so I think we'll see results from this experiment. Whether the
results of the experiment will be positive or negative, I don't know.

~~~
gfodor
My point wasn't about bitcoin but about people posting their thoughts on
bitcoin. If someone is going to try to get people rallied behind decentralized
X, a good place to start is to offer practical reasons why that would be a
better scenario than the status quo. Tell me why in the future I would want to
take my retirement account out of my bank and deposit it into the
decentralized ether. If I screw up that process, I lose my retirement account.
Introduce a third party to help me with the process and you're on the road
back to centralization. The same types of arguments can be made for other
"this is serious business" use case for bitcoin.

Can the blockchain replace Twitter? Yeah maybe. But to compare overturning
Twitter to overturning the NYSE shows a lack of proportionality and
understanding of why things are the way they are in finance.

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GigabyteCoin
I must say that was a fairly well written article. The author really seemed to
know his stuff. I never could fully wrap my head around protoshares from other
writeups I had read, but this all made perfect sense. Even to my groggy
morning mind.

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Thiz
I like the idea behind protoshares and DACs.

Wall Street is next to be disrupted.

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darkbot
I'm selling 50 Colored Coins for $2,500 each. They're backed up by the gold I
have securely stashed in my potato cellar.

~~~
valarauca1
If your interested this is roughly how much I'd charge for the Brooklyn
Bridge, maybe if you throw in some of those potatoes.

~~~
darkbot
Naww.. I need a little bit of cash in my pocket right now.

But I have this 1 Colored Coin backed by the Eiffel Tower in Paris, Europe.
Throw in that sack of potatoes and it's a done deal!

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nroose
I just love this: Education/Experience Some College at Virginia Commonwealth
University, 4 Years Experience as a Full-Time Freelance Writer, 4-Star Author
at TextBroker, 10,000+ Articles and Blog Posts on the Internet

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tsurantino
The author alluded to some non-currency related applications of Bitcoin, i.e.,
a decentralized eBay.

Given the way Bitcoin and variants have been used so far, it's always been so
exchange of some monetary value (i.e., shares, assets, funds, currencies,
etc.). I'm having a really hard time picturing how Bitcoin can be applied in a
non-monetary context.

Could someone explain?

~~~
aestra
Someone came up with the idea of using the bitcoin network as a notary
service.

[http://www.pcworld.com/article/2039705/could-the-bitcoin-
net...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/2039705/could-the-bitcoin-network-be-
used-as-an-ultrasecure-notary-service.html)

------
doctoboggan
I am working on a browser that uses colored coins for domain name resolution
and BitTorrent Sync for content distribution, you can find it here:
[https://github.com/jminardi/syncnet](https://github.com/jminardi/syncnet)

~~~
fsiefken
smart idea, i have two questions: * why not use namecoin for dns resulution
instead of colored coins? * i thought bittorrent sync wasn't open source

A decade ago there was talk of decentralized web sites through p2p
technologies. IBM was working on such a web server. There is of course
FreeNet, but it needs a gateway to access pages from the internet.

~~~
doctoboggan
> why not use namecoin for dns resulution instead of colored coins?

Colored Coins seems more interesting to me, no other reason than that. It
wouldn't be hard to swap in namecoin though.

> i thought bittorrent sync wasn't open source

You are correct, it isn't However they present a very basic API that I believe
some open source clone could replicate. As soon as that happens I plan on
dropping it in as a replacement. But for now BitTorrent Sync works well
enough.

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leishulang
So bitcoin is the new quant?

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maaku
Uh, yes? You've been living under a rock?

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lez
there is a project called ethereum that is about to be announced. New
codebase.

[http://ethereum.org/ethereum.html](http://ethereum.org/ethereum.html)

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notprathap
very biased. why are we talking about victory for humanity when digital
currencies is very much a first world phenomenon?

~~~
nostromo
I actually think Bitcoin could help poorer people more than it can the rich.

For example, if you've ever been a poor college student, you know that banking
fees can be very onerous. (Buy a $2 coffee with too little in your account;
boom $40 overdraft.)

But you're forced to use a bank because it's really hard to get by in the
world without one. (It's hard to receive money and impossible to spend it
online or send it to a friend without the risk of carrying around cash.)
Bitcoin could solve those problems for the poor.

~~~
lmm
Bitcoin carries all the risk of cash and more; a bitcoin mugger would be able
to get your life's savings rather than just what you have in your wallet.

Regulations against predatory lending will be much harder to enforce with
bitcoin, which will hurt the poor.

Many people compare bitcoin to gold. Look at who trades/pays/saves in gold
today. It's not the poor.

~~~
DennisP
Actually, I read a book a while back by someone who was in Argentina when it
crashed. He said people were using small lengths of gold chain as currency.

Regarding bitcoin muggers, that would be quite difficult if you take
elementary security measures. Your life savings don't go in your phone wallet,
they go in a paper wallet that you keep in a safe deposit box.

Enforcing lending regulations is easy: don't follow the regulations, don't
expect any help from the state if the borrower decides not to pay you back.

~~~
lmm
> Actually, I read a book a while back by someone who was in Argentina when it
> crashed. He said people were using small lengths of gold chain as currency.

Well sure, when you don't have access to a reliable consumer banking system
everyone, including the poor, falls back on gold (or cigarettes or the like).
Do you have evidence that the crash hit the rich harder than it hit the poor?
Because my expectation would be just the opposite.

> Your life savings don't go in your phone wallet, they go in a paper wallet
> that you keep in a safe deposit box.

Well, I guess you can make it as safe as cash by giving it all the
inconvenience of cash. I doubt people are going to switch to a payment
mechanism that's less convenient than today's credit cards though.

> Enforcing lending regulations is easy: don't follow the regulations, don't
> expect any help from the state if the borrower decides not to pay you back.

Which just means those lenders adopt, uh, extra-legal measures.

Being able to track the movement of money, reverse fraudulent transactions,
freeze accounts and so on is a major weapon against organized crime. Bitcoin
makes it easier to run such crime, and it's the poor who will suffer the most
as a result.

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orkoden
So this is basically trying to fix the problem that bit coin just does not
scale very well. Instead of using Colored Coins, I could just as well use
dogecoin.

btw, are there nice shibe that could help me get started with some doge?
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