Do You Think Bitcoin is Different from the Rest? Do You Agree with Jimmy Song?
An hour ago I read an article on Medium written by Jimmy Song titled: Why Bitcoin is different. It's an interesting article and Song makes some interesting points. Definitely worth 5 minutes of your time.
Song is basically making the case for Bitcoin, as has been done many times. Bitcoin is the true one, the only. Only time will tell, but so far it has been proven to be true.
"To really understand the value proposition of Bitcoin, it helps to look at a bit of history. It’s tempting to think that the newest ICO or altcoin is the one that will finally “improve” Bitcoin and fix all of its problems and that Bitcoin will be relegated to the dustbin of history due to its lack of some “feature”. Indeed, nearly every altcoin, ICO or hardfork thinks that they’re being innovative in some fundamental way. What’s missed is that the biggest innovation has already happened."
"The biggest innovation has already happened"...which is sort of true right?
Image source
Network effect
"Because Bitcoin has the largest network and gains from the network effect, other coins essentially are playing a giant game of catch-up."
Which is definitely an important point and I personally think the importance of adoption rate is very much underestimated.
And what about this one:
"Something that’s been around has proven its relative security. Bitcoin, in a sense, has the world’s richest bug bounty to reveal any security flaws. As a result, Bitcoin has proven its security with the only thing that can really test it: time. Every other coin is much younger and/or has proven to be less secure."
It withstood the test of time so far...
Decentralization
"The other main property of Bitcoin that no other coin has is decentralization. By decentralized, I mean that Bitcoin does not have a single point of failure or choke point. Every other coin has a founder or a company that created their coin and they have the most influence over the coin. A hard fork (a backwards incompatible change) that’s forced on the user, for example, is an indication that the coin is pretty centralized."
Here Song makes it clear that he is not talking about distribution of the coin, but a single point of failure. An important point, because in the space decentralisation is almost always purely associated with the coin distribution, but it is so much more.
Song concludes with:
"As hopeful investors, it’s tempting to believe that we’ve found an altcoin or ICO that will improve on Bitcoin and thus make us early adopters in the revolution. Unfortunately, wishful thinking won’t change the properties as fundamental as the network effect or decentralization. Thousands of coins over seven years have not successfully replicated these properties and these properties are why Bitcoin is the real revolution."
So basically Jimmy is a big fan of Bitcoin (if you didn't know that) and sort of a Bitcoin maximalist :-P
Do you a agree with what he is saying?
I am very curious about your thoughts. Leave them in the comments!
---> 👍🏼 Follow me for regular updates on my cryptocurrency portfolio, crypto related articles and inspiring articles about personal time & life management.
---> 👍🏼 Resteems and upvotes are appreciated ;-)
Disclaimer: I am not a financial advisor, trader or developer. I am just a blockchain & cryptocurrencies enthusiast. Make sure you do your own research, draw your own conclusions and do not invest any money that you cannot afford to lose.
Yes, it is very different in the way it was conceived in to the world. It is the only true decentralized currency that has ever existed. It doesn't have a dev team a CEO or an owner. It is owned only by the holders!
Besides the Satoshi 'pre-mine' it is indeed quite decentralized in terms of distribution :-)
I do, kind of. Bitcoin is special because there's no main party, person or company behind it. You know I am very into altcoins but very few of my holdings can offer the security of being able to store billions of dollars on it and have it be completely safe. If I stored that much on NEO, it would simply not be as safe due to the risk of the NEO council doing something. Same with most others really. It's either centralized through developers, miners or a company. Bitcoin is the one true 'wildcard': the untouchable unfathomable, uncontrollable and undeniable.
In the end, the more I researched crypto the more I realized all of this can be done with a regular database 99% of the time. There are two revolutions in my eyes. The first is (tradeable) tokenization which is what most altcoins do (but do not necessarily warrant a high price), and the second and most important is decentralization which is why you can put your value into it. And Bitcoin is the one when it comes to decentralization and security.
Yeah I tend to agree with that. Personally I've always held a relatively big position in BTC and I still think that is a good decision :-)
Well said!
Partly agree with Song. It has for sure the first miver advantage and will be still for the coming year the most famous coin.
It can be compared with gold. Gold also always has been scarce. It was back in the days the most valuable thing in the world!
But it got replaced by fiat money. I do expect that some coin will overtake BTC just like fiat money overtook gold!
Newer coins will have in my opinion a much better use case and will be created for the use case specific!
So is BTC different! Hell yes!
Will it be replaced as king, Yes and No. it will always be the godfather of all coins and the most famous one. Yes, other coins will have much faster mass adoption!
Nicely said @fullcoverbetting!
For now. I think in time that will change. I was going to check BTC's share of the whole space. Its 38% at present. That is going down. The lowest it has previously been is 36.1%
That might be the case. Relative dominance might go down.
I would say I appreciate it for its blazing of the trail, and for the torch it carries as the rest of the world learns about and embraces crypto. I don't get too attached to any one coin and BTC is the same. Other coins seem to be faster/better/cheaper as far as transactions themselves are concerned and there are many (LTC/ETH/BCH/ETC) that are as accepted as BTC and it is annoying that many exchanges only couple lesser fcoins with BTC.
That said, I also believe in its trajectory of value and will always have BTC as a large part of my core investment crypto portfolio.
I think bitcoin will always have a large market value, even if some coins have in some things more improved technic
Bitcoin is the Kleenex and Ketchup of cryptos. Coupled with the Lightning Network, it will remain on top in my view.
I think I have to agree ;-)
To the question in your title, my Magic 8-Ball says:
Hi! I'm a bot, and this answer was posted automatically. Check this post out for more information.
To listen to the audio version of this article click on the play image.
Brought to you by @tts. If you find it useful please consider upvote this reply.