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Comment by nullc | Hacker News Reader

Your clone of Bitcoin wouldn't be a 'clone' any more than a lead bar is a 'clone' of gold.

You might call it bitcoin all you want, but no actualy bitcoin software would be fooled. (You might trick some people, but fraud has existed long before computers).

It's a lot less expensive to reliably distinguish a fraudulent bitcoin from a fraudulent goal bar.

So even if you hold the position that there is no perfect scarcity because fraud is possible-- the cost, difficulty, and success rate of that fraud matters greatly.

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My clone of bitcoin would have exactly the same properties as bitcoin. Your lead bar doesn't have any of the useful properties of gold (ductability, beauty, conductivity, etc).

Except that your bitcoin won't have exactly the same properties as bitcoin, mainly the miners which do provide network security.

Except for the massive number of miners securing the existing Bitcoin network and creating the security that is the inherent value of said network.

For most applications (including Gold's most popular-by-value applications, -- jewelry and sitting in vaults) you can substitute it with other materials with equivalent (or better!) physical properties.

If you want an element that acts like gold (doesn’t oxidize, high electrical conductivity, high thermal conductivity, malleable, etc.), you need gold. You can’t replace it with lead and get the same results.

If you want a string of bits that acts like bitcoin, you can replace it with Xcoin, for many values of X. You can even create your own coin which does whatever you need. You may not be able to replicate the network, which may provide some amount of scarcity, but it’s not the same as gold.

> doesn’t oxidize, high electrical conductivity, high thermal conductivity, malleable, etc.

So-- silver? Sure silver oxidizes a bit, but the oxide is conductive too and silver itself is more conductive than gold! :)

If you and 1 other person use the cloned Bitcoin, that's a network. How many other participants do you need before new Bitcoin is comparable in every tangible way to old Bitcoin?

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