The Ongoing Narrative that Bitcoin is "Slow and Expensive" is Invalid
I see a persistent narrative that Bitcoin is both slow and expensive for transactions. This criticism is only possible because other coins came along and copied Bitcoin's original innovation with a hindsight that allowed them to circumvent certain issues.
Bitcoin is only slow and expensive compared to other cryptos, or compared to efficient Fiat microtransactions. However, this is not enough to call Bitcoin Slow and Expensive. I can still send huge amounts of money for 3 dollars and it arrives within the hour. That is not slow and expensive.
It's perfectly fine to want to improve the efficiency and speed of micro transactions, and the community is working on that from several different angles.
Its easy to criticize Bitcoin when other groups have had the privilege to say " Hey lets do what Bitcoin is doing, but make it faster/cheaper", but that doesn't make the criticism valid.
Bitcoin is incredibly efficient to send money, period. In the future it will likely be very efficient for microtransactions too ( Rootstock, LN, Atomic Swaps).
It's much easier to start a new project and change the code/setup from the beginning than to modify an existing project that's already used by millions of people. It's much easier to make quick changes to design than to thoroughly test and implement them. Bitcoin is the product of years of communal effort and there is extreme value implicit to that.
A Blockchain that is >2 years old simply does not have the same value as Bitcoin, even if it is faster/more efficient.
Just because other Blockchain's can send transactions faster/cheaper, is not enough of basis to call Bitcoin slow/expensive. It's simply not slow or expensive. A rising cost of Microtransactions I think is an acceptable payoff during the innovation process. The technology does not have to be perfect all at once, its being developed , its growing organically and naturally. It has an inherent value that is rendered unto it by the huge numbers of hours put into its development, that value CANNOT be erased from a simple technical advantage on a project that has existed for a few months.
Additionally, from a purely market based standpoint , the mainstream market as a whole is not going to embrace alternative cryptos in the same way as Bitcoin. For people to store their wealth on an emerging technology that is still fraught with risk and volatility is already a stretch for the mainstream investor. There is certainly no way they are going to choose an even less established project. The market consistently chooses to value Bitcoin higher than all other alts, despite the fact that many alts have had cheaper and faster transactions for years. People store their money in banks because they have a (relative) history of stability. People store their money in Bitcoin because it has a (relative) history of stability.
If we create various applications which improve the utility of Bitcoin, those applications are INFINITELY more valuable applied to the Bitcoin Blockchain, than if they were applied to another Blockchain.
Say I were to increase the transaction capacity of Dash by a factor of 10. Do you think the price would surge higher? Maybe a little bit.
But now say I was going to increase the transaction capacity of Bitcoin by a factor of 10x. It would increase in value tremendously more. This is because their is simply an INNATE value to the Bitcoin blockchain and any improvements or innovations are vastly more valuable applied to the Bitcoin Blockchain than to any other.
Bitcoin is not slow or expensive for transactions. Bitcoin is an emerging technology that performs its primarily goals excellently and is evolving in an organic way.
There is INHERENT value generated from:
the duration of operation of the network X the quality of the network X the transaction capacity/efficiency of the network X the social trust of the network = Overall Value
Saying that another coin should be valued higher based on ONLY ONE of these things is ridiculous.
Bitcoin has the highest overall value based on these factors:
It is the longest running Blockchain
It is the highest quality network ( people that say otherwise have a personal issue with Bitcoin devs, not a professional one)
It has currently been surpassed in transaction capacity/efficiency however this can change overtime and is only one factor
Bitcoin has the highest level of social trust out of all Blockchains
Lets stop cherry picking the weak points of a technology and constructing an argument based solely on the weak points. That is a biased evaluation , not an objective one.
That's why the market consistently gives Bitcoin more value.