5 facts that suggest Bitcoin may be loosing its dominance and significance. @BlockRush
Is Bitcoin loosing its superiority and dominance over the crypto currency industry? These 5 facts that seem to suggest so.
Since its inception in 2009 till 2017, Bitcoin has enjoyed a fairly comfortable lead in the crypto currency space trumping other worthy rivals including Ripple and Ethereum. Despite achieving Gold parity as well as doubling in price, the year 2017 has not been a very good year for Bitcoin as it faced new worthy competitors while being plagued with development issues.
It was last year that lead Bitcoin developer Mike Hearn declared Bitcoin a failed project, sold all his Bitcoins and left the project. In the face of recent challenges facing Bitcoin, perhaps its time to reconsider Hearn's stand. Giving the exponential rate at which investors are investing into new crypto tokens while Bitcoin fails at what it was basically designed for, we ask, is time running out for Bitcoin?
Will Bitcoin soon loose its place as the number one crypto coins? Consider the following facts for yourself.
1. Slow adaption to change
The most disturbing thing about the Bitcoin ecosystem is how complacent they are, an attitude which has not only denied Bitcoin necessary updates but also made consensus impossible to achieve.
The attempt to increase the block size and decrease transaction time of Bitcoin Unlimited was treated as some joke while the SegWit2x proposal on scaling has been is enshrouded in mystery until now.
Perhaps the Bitcoin community is not that serious about improving the crypto-currency.
2. Lack of new momentum
Despite the growing hype around Bitcoins, the reality is that its loosing momentum and significance with the launch of every new crypto-currency and successful crypto token ICO. While the adoption of Bitcoin has been widespread, it has also been very slow.
The media's attention has shift from the Bitcoin industry and its boring classical struggle with itself to the captivating legends of new Blockchain projects as well as their fascinating ICO campaigns.
3. Failed at core?
Could Bitcoin be a failed project? If we are be to honest considering the current state of Bitcoin, then the answer is YES. Bitcoin has basically failed in everything it was originally designed for.
Bitcoin was design to allow for anonymous transactions, however almost all Bitcoin wallet providers demand some form of user verification. Bitcoin was designed to be fast however the Block size limit has slowed the network down, making it perhaps the slowest crypto currency network!
When it comes to decentralization, over 80% of Bitcoin users use third-party centralized wallets which defy the idea that Bitcoins should be a peer to peer financial system while centralizing control in the hands of the wallet providers simply defies the financial autonomy promised by Bitcoins.
The mining power is locked in China where the government gets to manipulate the price by imposing regulation on crypto currency. When it comes to security, hardly does a year go by without millions of dollars worth of Bitcoin being lost to hackers.
4. Better suited coins
Bitcoin's sole purpose of Bitcoin a financial assets has limited its potential value in the face of rising new alt coins which purport to have multiple uses. The year of 2017 has seen some high profile ICOs including:
- the Bancore network raised $150m in what became known as one of the largest ICOs ever.
- Then there is Polybious which succeeded in raising enough funds to achieve its goal of building the first Blockchain powered banking institution.
- There is also IOTA, a Blockchain network whose specialization applications for the Internet of Things the IoTs, within a day the IOTA tokens achieved a market cap of over $1.5bn
- Tezos which raised over $230m durings its ICO
- EOS which raised over $180 million in days of its year long ICO while left with 80% of its tokens more to go
- Kik Initiative, the company behind the 300 million user Kik social messaging platform have announced their intention to launch their own token
- Nimiq is a another ambitious project which hopes to actually decentralize the financial industry by turning all internet browsers into web wallets or nodes and effectively bring Blockchain to every single internet user.
- Several other crypto currencies which have raised considerable millions of dollars bringing the entire crypto token industry ICO investments to over a billion dollars
- when it come to alt coins, there is the reputable Dash, Zcash and several other springing up everyday
- and of course, there is Steem and Steem Backed Dollars, there is not questioning of the potency of Steem to become a major cryptocurrency
The peculiar thing about all these crypto coins is that not only do they eclipse the value of Bitcoin but they also present their own crypto coins which are worthy competitors to Bitcoins. While Bitcoin remains strictly a payment network, IOTA, Polybious, Kin and Bancore serve far more diverse industries and do what Bitcoin was never designed to do.
Almost every other crypto coin seems to be having a field day with the exception of Bitcoin, which has been struggling with regulations, upgrade and rising fees.
5. Lack of mainstream bank and government support
When banks, corporate giants and government want to get into crypto currency, they either launch their own tokens or go for Ethereum. The decision by corporate giants such as Microsoft to align themselves with Ethereum has also eclipsed the significance of Bitcoin.
Bitcoin forever?
While it is true that Bitcoin has several challenges facing it, we can be sure that Bitcoin would remain the #1 crypto currency for some time to due to the fact that it has a well established industry and has the backing of multi-million dollar companies. In the case of the worst possible scenario in the future which could see Bitcoin no longer a digital currency, Bitcoin's reputation as first decentralized money will earn it a top market among museums and collectors of historic artifacts.
Perhaps its time to wonder if Satoshi Nakamoto has himself diversified his investments in Bitcoin? Should Bitcoin investors begin to diversify their Bitcoin portfolios as well? In the face of such challenges and no united or official front for the Bitcoin industry to present their grievances, most Bitcoiners have turned to vote.Bitcoin.com to take their final stand.
Read our special report:
AlphaBay; straw that broke the Bitcoin camel's back @BlockRush
What do you think?
Let us know of your opinions by commenting below! Follow @BlockRush to receive updates one the Blockchain powered series as well as other intriguing #Blockchain reports.
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I don't think Bitcoin is going anywhere. Currently for new people joining the cryptocurrency scene it's the default coin they buy and as long as the hype around all cryptocurrencies keeps up Bitcoin will remain essentially the gold standard.
I read the special report @block! very interesting! What do you think about the ETH attack from yesterday?
Bitcoin can make it, if the dev team gets their shit together. But I suspect people are trying to make a scapegoat out of Bitcoin, trying to make it fail hard to scare people out of crypto. But guess what? There is no real alternative outside of crypto. The market only improves, because the problems cause more and more services to work with more cryptocurrencies. We have a stronger ecosystem because of all this shit. Bitcoin is dead, long live bitcoin!
In regard to point 1, slow adaptation to the environment... this is kind of the equivalent as the administrative and law stability in a country. Nobody is going to invest in a country where rules can change in the short term without being advertised properly, the same happens with bitcoin, if the rules driving its behaviour where changing constantly, the market would be extremely unstable. So, it is needed to find a middle point.