<story><title>Why Bitcoin is a significant breakthrough, but perhaps not as a currency</title><url>http://dpk.io/blockchain</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>rthomas6</author><text>I am convinced that many problems with Bitcoin would be solved if we could come up with a way to tie mining difficulty to the currency&amp;#x27;s demand instead of only to the mining computing power. Instead of ensuring a predictable generation rate, this could ensure a predictable &lt;i&gt;value&lt;/i&gt;. When demand wanes, the currency is harder to mine and becomes more scarce, and when demand surges, the currency becomes easier to mine and more available. This would stop some of the volatility in BTC prices. You could plan the rough change in value over time, and build it into the algorithm, perhaps making gains unlimited at first, then making it very deflationary for several years, and gradually easing gains to something like 0-2% deflation per year. A currency with a known long term future value is obviously very useful, and a stable value is also more useful.&lt;p&gt;I can&amp;#x27;t think of a decentralized way to measure demand, though, so maybe this is not possible.</text></comment>
<story><title>Why Bitcoin is a significant breakthrough, but perhaps not as a currency</title><url>http://dpk.io/blockchain</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>fragsworth</author><text>I think we almost all agree that cryptocurrency is a revolutionary thing. It&amp;#x27;s difficult to see &lt;i&gt;how&lt;/i&gt; revolutionary, because we are only beginning to understand what can be made possible by it.&lt;p&gt;I often see it compared to the advent of the early Internet in the 1980s, when nobody really knew how big it would get, just that it was &amp;quot;revolutionary&amp;quot; and would become huge.&lt;p&gt;This may be an overestimation caused in part by bitcoin stakeholders trying to promote the idea. But a very similar thing happened in the 90s when everyone was buying tech stocks.</text></comment>