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Comment by chrisco255 | Hacker News Reader

Have you ever seen or heard of anyone pay $1M or $100K for a .com address? Why do they do that when there's like 256 TLDs?

Why does anyone pay $20M to live in a box in Manhattan when they could buy a huge ranch in Montana and live like a king?

Some blockchains are more valuable than others. And their blockspace is limited, just like Manhattan real estate.

The reasons for this are numerous, but a big part of it comes down to security and liquidity. If you are going to create a digital agreement, you want a blockchain with a high degree of security and predictability. You also want composability with other applications so you can have access to an ecosystem and other financial services.

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the space of .com addresses are physically limited. the space in manhattan is physically limited.

creation of a new cryptocurrency does not have such limits. like everything else digital. it is the same difference between physical goods, and software. software costs zero to copy. physical goods are physically limited.

so, with the topic of this post's link - even if someone somewhere perfects the security scheme of a blockchain, in the end it all is futile - because it can be copied. If there is enormous pressure by some powerful entities to an on-chain fork, but it is not feasible because of all the built-in security of the blockchain system and protocol, they can still have enough influence to create a new coin, undermining the "limited" property of the first coin. It is a new brand of coin, operated, mined, minted by mostly different people. The coin has the same features, same security - but liquidity is directly stolen from other coins because we have finite amount of people. Through exchanges, you can exchange them. In the end, when you remove the "get rich quick" scheme, they are all the same, and can be issued infinitely, albeit on different "names". Don't get too hung up on names.

You can't tell me "the network is too valuable, it is impossible create additional coins" either because that is what has been happening from the beginning. All those coins, with slightly different features - in the end perhaps one will have it all, but what is the ultimate purpose? Given enough pressure, it can be copied, new "money" can still come into circulation to be used by people that accept it. It is not impossible, it is happening, has always happened since bitcoin. Each dogecoin minted today, affects the value of bitcoin tomorrow.

> Each dogecoin minted today, affects the value of bitcoin tomorrow.

Dude, same with Montenegro real estate affecting the value of your apartment in Manhattan.

> If bitcoin was the only possible cryptocurrency but the hype around cryptocurrencies was the same, a bitcoin would cost substantially more today.

Just like if the rest of the land didn't exist, your Manhattan apartment would cost substantially more today.

I responded to this above but again just for you: land is ALREADY physically limited. the whole /point/ of cryptocurrencies was to provide the same type of scarcity artificially for the digital realm. my point is, the fact that you can create additional coins and split the liquidity between the two means that the task has failed. my further claim is that the even the attempt is futile. academically interesting, practically (for this given purpose) futile.

There is still so much open space to build cities, but everyone seems to want to live in the existing ones.

...because the existing and established ones have something unique to offer and to copy that would be an enormous (and slow) undertaking (but it is being done, civilization has always been spreading to free areas, it is just slow) - but once you crack open an hassle free secure consensus system (software, not bound by limited physical reality) the old one does not have anything unique to offer for the group of people who are unhappy about who holds the power.

If there was an exact replica of Manhattan (or if it was trivial to create it) - and I mean really exact with all the affordances it provides - think of an empty copy of the world, Manhattan is in the same place, but mostly empty (just established), that you can switch to with a keypress (and could switch back and forth) - what would happen?

>...because the existing and established ones have something unique to offer and to copy that would be an enormous (and slow) undertaking

Exactly. That's also the case for cryptocurrencies. You can instantly fork a cryptocurrency or a blockchain, but you're essentially copying a blueprint. You can copy Manhattan's city layout as a blueprint or other written/drawn representation, but you still need actual builders and resources to copy the physical structures, just like you need miners, mining rigs, and users to build an alternative to Bitcoin that has any value.

Assuming the same PoW algorithm, you'd need your alternative to exist for as many years as Bitcoin does to achieve the same blockchain length, for example, with a lot of distributed miners to achieve similar security guarantees.

You can create a Hacker News clone pretty quickly. (For the sake of argument, let's say you could do it in a day by forking an open source repo.) It doesn't mean your clone instantly devalues Hacker News.

Maybe if you grow your clone's community over years and it generates a lot of interesting discussions, people will use both, and maybe if eventually the discussions become more frequent and have higher signal:noise than HN's, HN activity may gradually decline as people decide to use your site more than HN. But this is about community and network effects, which you can't copy overnight. You have to build them over time.

But here lies the problem: the new Manhatten would be a deserted place. No people, no open shops, no work, no open restaurants.

Sure, you can move there toghether with a few 100 other people, but it won't be Manhatten as you know it.

The value is in the social network.

You can go and copy Facebook tech, it's not that crazy hard. Will you be Facebook? No because none of your friends are on FacebookGold.

You forget that the value of crypto is not the technology, but the social network behind it. You can of course fork anything, but that doesn't mean because you have the same tech, you have the same value.

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