Hacker News Reader

Comment by grubles | Hacker News Reader

Your "nearly" identical is why they are completely different. Only bitcoins are valid on the Bitcoin network. Any clonecoin's token will be rejected since nodes on the Bitcoin network validate transactions and blocks that are mined.

Take any of the past 2 years' forks of Bitcoin (e.g. Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin Gold, Super Bitcoin, etc.) and try to submit a transaction to the actual legitimate Bitcoin network. It will fail.

One of Bitcoin's main technological achievements is solving this type of digital duplication problem. If anyone can just copy-and-paste new bitcoins into the system, it will fail.

View on HN

You wouldn't try to submit it to the "actual legitimate Bitcoin network" though. You'd bootstrap a whole new network instead. People might prefer a new blockchain that starts with a more even distribution, instead of enriching early adopters of BTC.

That said, blockchain may not work at all, as applied to digital currencies. The abilities to revoke and expropriate are tools, like prisons are. Their use, on occasion, is just. Society might not want to see those tools discarded.

There are already thousands of Bitcoin clones with their own blockchains and they are basically worthless.

Your whole new network wouldn't be Bitcoin then. Therefore there is no cloning. Bitcoin scarcity remains in tact.

Bitcoin's initial distribution was as preferable as it can really get. It was announced to a mailing list of people most likely to pay attention to it. Anyone with a computer could join the network and be rewarded with bitcoins. You didn't even need to have a fast computer. The software was free and open source. There isn't much you can improve upon without introducing trust or maligned identification schemes.

What about all those with no bitcoin?

I placed 20 $1 bills on the ground scattered right outside my house. They are out on the street, free and open air. Anyone can take them.

In actuality, there will be a small, small minority of the world that gets all the value.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com