Why Bitcoin is here to stay

Bitcoin's popularity continues to grow and it reached new heights when it hit over USD19,000 in the middle of December last year. That was a 19-fold increase since that particular year started.

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However, there have been some reservations that cryptocurrencies might be a bubble – that could burst any time. If this happens to bitcoin, it would definitely cause havoc to the $700bn market. One major issue for Bitcoin is the uncertainty that surrounds its future. There's a debate as to if Bitcoin will be a success in the long run or if it will fizzle out.

Here are some reasons why we think Bitcoin has a future and still remains THE future :

Relative Advantage
This is the edge a product has over its predecessors. It is very important if the product aims to be a lasting force. One main advantage Bitcoin has over a lot of payment systems is its decentralized ledger. This means that one party doesn't possess control of the records of transactions. A decentralized ledger is more secure than a centralized one.

A second advantage that Bitcoin possesses in this category is its lower transaction costs. Due to the fact that Bitcoin is decentralized, there are no third-party payment costs – unlike with other payment systems.

Users of Bitcoin do not need to worry about inflation because Bitcoin has an issuance limit of 21 million coins. This cannot be said about traditional currencies.

Complexity
Even though the underlying Blockchain programming is very complex, users can understand the consumer end of the Bitcoin transactions. Almost everyone is conversant with either the internet, mobile banking or graphical user interfaces, so it really isn't as complex as we're led to believe.

Autonomous
Bitcoin is not the child of any public or private organization. In fact, it's actually not owned by anybody. It was created by Satoshi Nakamoto – and no one even knows if he's real. ‘He’ published a whitepaper several years ago describing the basics of Bitcoin and how it should work. With this, a fluorescent crypto market was born. In this market, numerous cryptocurrencies coexist – and some have similar versions of Bitcoin's technology. Due to the fact that it isn't backed by any governmental organization, it will represent a strong leverage against forces like institutional lobby control attempts or governmental censorship.

Functional
As much as banks hate crypto and its significance, blockchain-enabled technologies can highly improve the efficiency of financial transactions. To that effect, some banks are already researching and conducting trials on this technology. Even some governments use it too – most notably in Switzerland, where the Swiss government lets some residents pay taxes in Bitcoin. Also in Japan, firms are even paying some percentages of its salaries in crypto.

Adaptation
It's not news that bitcoin is a software. Like other software, Bitcoin has to adapt to its environment. It will also need to add new features because users will expect more functionality from it.

Segwit and Lighting Network are features that will improve the transactions' throughput. They will also enable lower fees as demand keeps increasing.

The dynamic nature of crypto's ecosystem ensures that cryptocurrencies will have to quickly adapt to match the demand. Bitcoin is the oldest and more experienced of the lot and it also has its stellar and knowledgeable developing team for support.

Conclusion
There's every indication that rather than being a flash in the pan, Bitcoin is here to stay. All the above factors strongly point to the sole fact that Bitcoin isn't going anywhere any time soon.