Ethereum Q&A: Altcoins and the Scaling Debate Video

Zcash and Ethereum as alternatives to Bitcoin. I'm very interested in both, I have used & run nodes for them, and experimented with the testnet. But not as "alternatives," rather as complements to Bitcoin that specialise. My argument has been that Bitcoin and Ethereum do not compete directly. Many of the characteristics that they have chosen to differentiate in make them unable to do what Bitcoin does. Bitcoin has been doing it longer, so there is network-effect as well. In the short term, they do compete indirectly for the attention of developers and speculative investors; as a technology, they do not compete any more than a lion competes with a shark. It is about choosing platforms that fit a particular niche or purpose. Are you doing complex smart contracts that require flexibility? Ethereum. Do you want robust store-of-value without consensus failures? Bitcoin. Zcash is making trade-offs for privacy and anonymity. Conservatism vs. an attitude of 'move fast, break things.' You don't reconcile them, you choose the thing that fits the niche and is adapted to that particular environment.

(3:49) Are Ethereum, Zcash, and other altcoins competing with Bitcoin because of the blocksize and scaling debate? Will Bitcoin apps and startups considering moving over high fees and the delay in implementing the Lightning Network? It is ridiculous that they are competing over this debate. Ethereum scales worse than Bitcoin, and Zcash scales worse than Ethereum. The fact that they haven't been hit with a major scalability issue yet is because they haven't actually scaled yet. Ethereum will do sharding? Bitcoin will do it too, and do it 10x more efficiently. The idea that you would take your application out of Bitcoin "because it isn't scaling" and move it over to Ethereum or Zcash, which have worse scalability issues, is a bad trade-off. Scaling is not easy and there are no easy answers. Money frequently drains out of bitcoin into altcoins during times of stress, but it doesn't last very long because they use the price increases to buy more bitcoin, and the entire market cap of the ecosystem grows overall. This allows us to test the limits of all the cryptocurrencies; they will all have governance problems that they will have to mature through to survive. The reason you're still dry is you haven't left the harbor yet.

Chapters
0:00 What is your opinion on Zcash and Ethereum as an alternative to Bitcoin?
1:13 The lion and the shark
3:50 Do you not think that Ethereum and Zcash and other altcoins are competing with Bitcoin at least in the short term and medium term because of the block size issue?
5:59 Scaling is not easy and there are no easy answers

This is part of a talk which took place at the Silicon Valley Bitcoin meetup on April 11th 2017 at the Plug and Play Tech Center (@PlugandPlayTC) in Sunnyvale, California: https://www.meetup.com/Silicon-Valley-Bitcoin-Users/events/233760417/

RELATED:
The Scaling Rites of Passage - https://youtu.be/rZi86_ovB3Y
Governance trade-offs in decentralised systems - https://youtu.be/dtwaW79Fj7c
Governance and the transaction fee market - https://youtu.be/gdknUUVOdHU
Why we should worry about optimization, not scaling - https://youtu.be/J3sEcuCc9fg
Do altcoins threaten to replace bitcoin? - https://youtu.be/w-V_5EWyU5c
How does Bitcoin differ from other altcoins? - https://youtu.be/37e01sJ3Tfk
The Lightning Network - https://youtu.be/vPnO9ExJ50A
Zcash in the cryptocurrency ecosystem - https://youtu.be/j8ILYfIm_G0

Andreas M. Antonopoulos is a technologist and serial entrepreneur who has become one of the most well-known and well-respected figures in bitcoin.

Follow on Twitter: @aantonop https://twitter.com/aantonop
Website: https://antonopoulos.com/

He is the author of two books: “Mastering Bitcoin,” published by O’Reilly Media and considered the best technical guide to bitcoin; “The Internet of Money,” a book about why bitcoin matters.

THE INTERNET OF MONEY, v1: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Internet-Money-collection-Andreas-Antonopoulos/dp/1537000454/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8

MASTERING BITCOIN: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mastering-Bitcoin-Unlocking-Digital-Cryptocurrencies/dp/1449374042

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