I think the apparent alternative cryptocurrency is one that does NOT have a fixed supply and thus has stable inflation built into it, the puzzle of course is solving the problem of creating the math that can act in that way that can not be disrupted by an unexpected advance in computing power.
Or you know, when people simply recognize that BTC miners are the "governing body" of BTC rules and regulations, and realize that to solve this issue is as simple as changing the rules of BTC so that the rate of inflation is more sane.
But as long as BTCs are touted as a anarcho-capalistic wet-dream, no one will wish to see the truth. BTC Miners are the government. They can change the "law of BTC" extremely easily.
Can they? (This is an actual technical question...)
I was under the impression that they couldn't. But yeah, it's shocking that people idolize the core devs even though they set up a failing system. My best idea I think was to set up a cryptocurrency that is 1:1 with the dollar, therefore if you need to print more you do it by well... putting some $$ in the vault and dumping the equivalent amount of units into the ecosystem.
Bitcoiners seem to hate the idea of using the dollar for stabilization though. It's an affront to the power of imagination and the aforementioned "anarcho-capalistic wet-dream".
Incidentally, Ripple seems to be an implementation of what I'm interested in. Yet for SOME GODDAM REASON I DO NOT UNDERSTAND, their internal cryptocurrency (XRP) has some dumbass dispersement scheme too.
It's not exactly easy for miners to change the rules of Bitcoin because those rules are also verified by non-miners. The software would have to be updated.
Nobody has figured out a decentralized way to peg a cryptocurrency against some external price. You can't really measure the price that other people are paying in trades; you basically have to take their word for it, which means they would lie if it was in their interest.
Non-miners follow one rule and one rule only: Follow the longest blockchain.
That is it. Miners build the block chain. The most powerful computers working together build longer-blockchains (on the average). If a blockchain fork were to happen (again, like back in March: http://bitcoin.org/en/alert/2013-03-11-chain-fork), the miners can simply "vote" on which blockchain they want to keep.
Non-miners have no say in the matter. The BTC protocol says to trust the longest blockchain, and that is going to stay for the rest of BTC.
Thats why I consider the miners to be the governing body of BTC. If Miners wish to build blacklists and stop stolen BTC from going through the network, they can do so. If Miners wish to change the rules of BTC, they can do so (once more than 50% of miners agree... their blockchain will ultimately grow faster than the rest of the miners, which forces the network to conform to their rules).
I think non-miners also verify things like the coinbase transaction creating the right number of BTC (25). So if miners all decided to give themselves a raise, non-miners would treat those blocks as invalid. Crucially, the exchanges are non-mining full nodes.
