To those of you grumbling about Bitcoin as digital gold, this was a popular idea even prior to Bitcoin (with bit gold). Szabo wrote the following in 2011pic.twitter.com/RjDZHX32uJ
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Because a monetary standard doesn’t require an inferior complement. Bimetallism was never stable. Bitcoin alone suffices (pretenders are welcome to try though)
Crucial to this is that with digital tech we can have multiple protocol layers instead of separate kinds of physical objects. Bitcoin the settlement & large payments layer is the "gold"; layer 2s or 3s used for retail are the "silver" and "copper", smaller but pegged to layer 1.
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I feel like I'm missing something: w/r/t altcoins, bimetallism as an analogy doesn't work, but a multi-layered system of Bitcoin-based "gold/silver/copper" protocols does? Asking about the semantics, not the economics
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a vertically layered system with pegs to the base layer implies there is a source of value at the base, and a series of components on top that serve to distribute and transfer that value adjusted to the requirements and formats needed for the different applications
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* and the source at the base provides guarantees of sound monetary policy and security for the systems on top, which can have higher performance, features and variations
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Much appreciated, I was missing that nuance!
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I only disagree w/ the single base layer idea as I think in metalism, gold is trustless, while blockchains are 'trust minimized'. This means they have some residual systemic risks. Ergo, I think there will be few (no more than 3 or 4) systems at the base:https://etherplan.com/2019/06/15/the-format-war-layering-and-systemic-risk-will-define-the-future-landscape-of-the-blockchain-industry/7820/ …
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I follow the logic, though to
@nic__carter's point about Bitcoin being sufficient (to handle the whole stack), I don't think that's mutually exclusive with eventually people generally congregating around a few base layers.
End of conversation
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At this stage in Bitcoin evolution this seems to be the hardest thing for people to understand. Perhaps this is because it is one of the novel bits, at least in the money realm. I think until we get a working payment layer with good UX we will be stuck in this intellectual rut.
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Reads like an attempt to impose a technical view (layer 2 / 3 vs altcoins) on what is at heart an economic problem that will pick its technical solution without deferring to any one of us.
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