The world is now filled with cryptocurrency fans, and it would be great, but we're cannibalizing our movement. It's Bitcoin against BitSharesX against Ethereum against Ripple... we've created a situation where we're unwilling to have the others succeed, because it threatens our investments.
Our infighting is unnecessary.
I invested in the Ethereum ICO. Shortly after making my investment, I stumbled on a proposal on bitcointalk. I'm glad that my money has gone towards rewarding Vitalik Buterin and all the rest of the development team for their efforts, but I feel I have to take a public stand now, and say I hope Æthereum succeeds, and Ethereum does not, even though I own a greater proportion of ether than bitcoins.
For those who don't have the patience to read the Æthereum proposal, basically it's all the same code, but a different blockchain. This different blockchain will contain a snapshot of all bitcoin address balances at a certain time, and a mechanism with which bitcoin holders can use their private (bitcoin) keys to retrieve a proportional amount of ether. So bitcoin holders can upgrade to a (possibly) superior technology and keep their original investment safe.
All new cryptocurrencies need this ability. If you see any new ICO that does not give bitcoin holders an automatic stake, you should consider it a scam. Maybe the developers have some quixotic scheme for a more equitable initial distribution of coins, but I'm going to make the judgement that's unlikely to pan out in any form for any coin.
Let me make it clear that I do support developers and initial investors reaping a reward. But I think that can be safely capped at 10-20% initial stake, with bitcoin holders getting the rest.
Cryptocurrency investors should only need to invest once in the idea of cryptocurrency, in archetypal bitcoin, and be able to reap the rewards no matter how the technology changes. It's not the blockchain that matters, it's the balances that matters; it's the weight of emotion: hope, and yes, greed, symbolized in electronic numbers that matters.
Bitcoin sooner or later will be replaced, and we need to have an orderly exit. We can't just hack anything on top of a bitcoin blockchain in perpetuity and expect security and scalability.
We need to stop doing things like BitShares PTS. We already have a blockchain indicating interest in cryptocurrency, and it's called bitcoin.
I really, really hope this post or something similar said in a better way gets popular and permeates the entire cryptocurrency world.
