Conversation

Andy Matuschak
@andy_matuschak
Earnestly/naively curious: what are the best first-principles arguments for why Bitcoin should not end up fully superseded by Ethereum? (Please don’t make me regret asking this! This is a truth-seeking q; I have no dog in this fight)
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Eli Dourado
@elidourado
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Replying to @BrantlyMillegan
They have completely given up. The narrative now is “hodl,” as if you could ever change the world by sitting on your hands and literally doing nothing.
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Balaji Srinivasan
@balajis
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@elidourado
’s arguments for ETH are good. But it just serves a different purpose than BTC. Ethereum is programmable finance. Bitcoin is digital gold. Even EIP-1559 won’t change that because it signals that Ethereum *has* a mutable monetary policy.
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Balaji Srinivasan
@balajis
It’s like when people used to say that Twitter was just one feature of Facebook, the status update. Products that appear superficially similar early on develop shared cultures and use-cases and differentiate over time. So too for coins.
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Balaji Srinivasan
@balajis
Immutability (BTC) and financial innovation (ETH) are both incredibly valuable, but by their very nature can’t be the same thing. A constantly changing and improving platform (Ethereum) is culturally different from a finished, reliable, immutable coin (Bitcoin).
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Eli Dourado
@elidourado
If Ethereum isn’t reliable, then it’s idiotic to put the future of finance on it, no? So in the end, Ethereum is reliable and in the worst case scenario you can put an immutable-supply token on it. Also, Bitcoin will have to break 21M or make major protocol changes in the end.
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Eli Dourado
@elidourado
Because without the block subsidy it will not be secure enough to ensure a hash rate that can support large transactions without risk of a double spend.
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Jon Lister
@jlist21
It is intellectually dishonest to not consider more stability in price, hash rate, and transaction fees over a long enough time horizon. BTC is self rebalancing which means hash rate and transaction fees will trend towards an equilibrium. BTC will be as secure as it needs.
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