Bitcoin vs. other coins
I don't think it's correct to be "Bitcoin Maximalist" in the sense that other blockchains will not be used, but that doesn't mean it's easy to know which ones are good investments.
Just because we expect blockchains will be used for things like justice, consensus, reputation, governance, prediction (whatever other things).. you don't know exactly what that looks like and which methods will win out.
I don't think there's any way to pick coins to buy and hold longterm and outperform Bitcoin. It may actually be impossible, like Bitcoin may outperform every single other blockchain that exists. (If you buy and hold for decades. I'm not talking about spikes and the opportunity to flip and market time and all that.)
It's not that extreme of a statement, because it's not that much different from "Bitcoin remains the #1 crypto".
If we fast forward to 50 years later and Bitcoin is still #1, then it seems like a really tiny window for something that exists now to have outperformed it. If it's not passing it, you have to thread the needle really thin to outperform it. Like how you'd reasonably guess and anticipate that something will do that is beyond me.
Even if it turned out that a few did thread this needle, it doesn't mean you would have picked those few. You'd have to have just gotten lucky, and are more likely to pick ones that won't outperform it.
diversification tho
I'm not gonna say I actually stick to my own advice here-- it does feel comforting and fun to have other coins. But I don't think it actually makes sense.
Unforeseen major flaws with Bitcoin would just crush everything. Even if there's a replacement, it would drop like a rock first too. It wouldn't be this smooth thing like you pass the baton and then the new one runs with it. So you may as well just be diversified into cash, and then sort it out after the big catastrophe.
Bitcoin sort of just is the sector. I don't think there's ever gonna be a day where you're like "well Bitcoin fell hard, but good thing I have that basket of other cryptos".
The basket seems basically the same category of risk and uncertainty as Bitcoin. So you might as well go with the best value rather than spread bets to things that you're less confident in.
what about teh Steemits??
Steem is a little different because it's built and we're using it, so the tokens literally have utility. So it's more like holding tokens for some governance model when we actually start living that way. Which is a different thing and of course in that case would be useful.
But still I wouldn't say buy and holding Steem tokens if you're not using them is a great idea. Even if it's good against the dollar, it would be better to hold Bitcoin. But if you're using them, then it's different. Then based on how you're using it, maybe it's better than holding Bitcoin. Even if not in terms of ROI, it's fun and you're meeting people and writing things etc.
So I think in general, investing in blockchains when you actually use them is a good rule of thumb.
Bitcoin is the only one you should passively buy and hold. The others can be good if you use them.
The fact that blockchains will do various different awesome things for us doesn't mean you should make a habit out of speculating on them in 2018 imo. You'll go broke before you guess right. Speculate on Bitcoin, and use and be involved in whichever other ones seem good.
BTC dominance
Note that BTC dominance going down (which I imagine could continue to happen) doesn't mean the other coins that currently exist have trended positively against it. Because new ones are constantly created.
So when BTC dominance goes down, a basket of other cryptos can just do worse. It just means more and more are created, not that the basket has gained ground.
You can go down the list on coinmarketcap and pick any coin, and you'll often notice a trend where it has its big spikes relative to BTC, but the next spike is lower, and a general trend of losing ground.
There could continue to be new waves of the latest greatest thing, like eventually banks and countries make their own coins. So BTC dominance may go way down, but not because any specific coin has gained ground. Just because there are new things.
disclaimer
I'm not trying to hate on other blockchains, I just want to help people make what I believe to be the better decision for themselves, is my only motivation here.
And of course: this is not financial advice, I'm not your mom, I'm just some guy and nothing I'm saying is guaranteed to be right, you take your own risks etc.
I definately take it as non financial advice lol.
That’s very important to have a long therm plan in my opinion. Look what happened after dot com bubble. It took more than a decade to get to where it was in 1999. If you expect to become rich in the next year, it’s just disaster waiting to happen. I can bet you will eventually sell it too soon, but that’s what most people will do. How do you think prices are getting higher and higher in a bull market. Not only new investors are getting on board, but also people who sold too early for a small profit are getting back. Most of them will buy at the top and then loose everything. My plan is, when we get to 3fold I will sell just the amount I invested, if we get another upside run I will sell another small percentage of my portfolio, than another, than another... I never want to take all profits at once or buy at the top. My advice to short therm traders would be to give up. It not only takes on nerves and your health, but most of them will eventually loose. I was actually shopping for some bitcoin, EOS and BTS yesterday. I’m set now and unless we get another dip. I don’t think I have to make any case here about bitcoins dominance. If bitcoin goes most goes.
I also think that diversification is important. I mean crypto, property and physical precious metals. You mentioned Steem. I would add to it EOS as well.
BTW: if you have or hold your EOS in wallet, don’t forget to register your ether wallet with EOS by June 1st (I believe).
Also as I previously said, I cooked the meatballs with spaghetti thanks to you giving me an idea lol
Right, short-term trading is a game you should play if you're good/pro at short-term trading, but you shouldn't do it just because you feel like it. For some reason people seem tempted to day trade cryptos when they wouldn't do it with other things. I think maybe the swings make it look psychologically appealing. But just because there are swings it doesn't mean you'll automatically know what to do.
OMG!! Rao's!!! 😁 ya!!! How was it? lol. I think I haven't tried that flavor of theirs yet but should give it a roll.
Rao’s was really good! I was surprised how good it was. Very tasty 😋!
ya!!!!!!!!!!!!
I can understand why bitcoin maximalism exists. Bitcoin is like the iphone, it led to the birth of the smartphone and still continues to be the most aspirational smartphone there is. There are better phones with improved specs but people still want an iphone. This may be too simplistic an argument so let me elaborate.
Bitcoin to me is the same. It has first mover advantage and it is truly trustless. It is also scarce and offers two of the best use cases cryptocurrencies should offer - a medium of exchange over the internet & ability to store and control one's wealth without the need for a trusted counterparty. Problems such as high transaction fees and longer transaction times are being solved through segwit 2x and LN.
Other protocol blockchains like ethereum are only a way of printing money and then using the money to ideally build a dApp. Only time will tell whether decentralized apps are actually better than centralized apps. centralized applications are easier to manage, more cost effective and efficient. We haven't seen anything like amazon, facebook or google yet on a blockchain, probably because it may not be necessary. Again, I am happy to wait and see whether steemit truly overtakes reddit or something similar.
We don't need a lot of projects that are coming out. Blockchain doesn't really improve every problem mankind faces, as is the claim of most new projects on ethereum. so i get bitcoin maximalism. It has the potential to replace gold and there isn't any massive incremental value add being done by most other blockchain startups. I do think one or 2 more may exist and flourish because there will be a group of people, who would want to use decentralized apps. I don't think there will be 1600 tokens in the future, i would say may be 3 or at most 5.
You make a lot of good points in there.
Bitcoin has the first mover advantage, and in this case being the first is a critical thing. There isn't much room for improvement.
(Whatever other uses we have for blockchains will be niche relative to the default ledger. The default, the blockchain that will disrupt payments and banking, doesn't need any improvements or any fanciness that Bitcoin doesn't have.)
A lot of people who are into Ethereum I think mistakenly see it as "better" than Bitcoin, but really it's just different. They do different things, and the fanciness of Ethereum relative to Bitcoin is actually a drawback in ways too and something Bitcoin absolutely does not want.
There could be room for both to exist and do their thing, but it's silly the way they think not being convoluted like Ethereum is a flaw or shortcoming. If anything it's a good thing lol. We want the ledger to be secure, dApps can be built on top or on another chain.
And ya, a lot of the apps they're building on Ethereum aren't things you really need a blockchain for.
I feel like reputation and judgment/justice are some of the best fancier use cases. But it takes enough people to get the ball rolling. Here right now, there's way more hype about "blockchain" than there is projects that will actually work and be used.
cheers!
Yeah i think most people do not get what bitcoin achieved and why it truly is a great innovation. The whole banking system is based on trust and it eliminated the the requirement of trust. That statement has profound implications and i think a lot of people dont get it. I think most people think bitcoin is an innovation like fb or amazon.
Ethereum i agree, isnt better. Its different and is for different purpose altogether. May be there will be scope for someone to replace ethereum but i doubt i can say the same for bitcoin.
When you say justice/judgement.. do you mean smart contract solutions for civil cases or way beyond that? There could be simpler conditional outcomes that can be programmed but i dont know if you mean complicated criminal cases .. bribery/comflict of interest or even more?
Right, people on TV and stuff sometimes seem to think of it as "this thing".
I think that's how a lot of the whole "blockchain" thing develops. It's like they know something big is sweeping thru, but it's easier to present it as like this mysteriously wonderful technology rather than a disruption to the current way of banking.
I'm not sure. It could be that you don't need blockchain, courts can have their own internal database. But I think maybe you'd want a blockchain amongst the various courts, like so that nobody tampered with criminal records or juror records. Not sure.
I'm thinking more along the lines of countries not really being a thing anymore, and courts/judgment being totally decentralized and only as good as people deem them to be. So it seems like you need a 2 way street of people also judging and rating the courts.
I'm not sure. I think decentralized justice is probably peer-to-peer to a large extent. Like you see something bad happen, and you're able to issue a judgment, and it would affect the rating of the person who did the bad thing. (Commensurate to how good of a rater you're deemed to be in the algorithm.)
And then for more complicated or difficult to sort out what happened things, maybe there will be trials, where you have a hive of jurors who tune in and weigh the evidence.
Yeah, right now i think there will be limitations to the application of justice through blockchain. I do like the idea of tamper proof records on a distributed database, managed between different courts.
The other thing about boundary-less justice is very difficult to achieve. Every country has an independent judiciary and its diffiulcult to find commom groud between saudi arabian law and european law. And law by nature is subjective and is based on cultural biases. The ICJ for example is very european and is heavily influenced by what the west thinks is right. Its a way to exercise power over smaller economies.
Also peer to peer judgement through blockchain, it may be fast and efficient but if one can code unemotional justice on a blockchain then great. Justice has to be umemotional and based on proof. Social justice or media trials arent really fair to be honest.
You have a very valuable idea though. I am not a techie so i dont know how effectively can it be executed.
Ya, def not a right now thing. So that's why I feel like "this could be a way we use blockchains, but hard to speculate on specific projects quite yet".
Right, but so I think the more peer-to-peer you make it, the less these things can occur.
It's my belief that only harming somebody else should be a "crime", but regardless of what I think, I think the best and most rational and best for humanity way of looking at it is what would win out in p2p justice. A lot of the "laws" today are just excuses for those with the most power to get their way at the expense of someone else. When there's actually incentive towards being fair and consistent etc.. the best laws will emerge.
Ya, I think a rational incentive for jurors to decide accurately is super important.
(Right now there isn't that incentive. They usually don't even want to be there, and it doesn't matter to them how they perform.. often they probably are just persuaded by whichever jurors care the most.)
Neither am I.. we would need some sort of wizard to actually code it or tell us if it is possible 😛
Haha, so we both have to wait to see whethet this idea can see the light of day.
Regarding peer to peer justice, i think my view is different because i was born is an developing country as opposed to a developed. Abuse of justice by the powrful is a universal problem so p2p could be a way out.. democratize justice. However, in developing countries, specifically india, people are quite uneducated and do not fully understand the importance of what justice and freedom stand for and how empowering it is. Depeding on an issue, people seem to take the side of their religion, social class or region even if it means the death of actual justice. The developing world needs to be educated first and reach a level of decent income before they can be trusted with the responsibility of unequivocal justice. May be the developed is better prepared for it.
Interesting.
I think what happens is the decentralized method will help people learn. When you're empowered as your judgment starts to matter, you may consider things and think about what's fair and right for the first time. And the ideas that are best and freest and peaceful should be the ones that win out. Things like "cut their hands off because they smoked weed" seem like they would need a central point of authority (and maybe the average person echoes the thoughts of that point of authority, ya.. but it's because they're in the habit of feeling like this is the order of the world), but those bad things are probably less likely to be what people believe and what wins out when it's decentralized decision making. Once it's accepted that this is how we create that order and justice, I think people quickly learn the fair and appropriate way of thinking about it.
Maybe the developed world can help lead. Both can probably learn things from each other.
The blockchains and the juror process could be global. Most trials could probably present all the evidence digitally. You just need an incentive for the jurors to rule correctly.
Different communities and regions will have their various different norms, but in terms of like "is it true that this person killed that person", it wouldn't really vary culture to culture, and any juror from anywhere could help weigh in on whether it was accurate. Big hive mind. Gonna be yuge, etc. No more variance of "okay let's trust these 12 random people who got called in".
Actually, I don't own any bitcoin at the moment but I'm inclined to reconsider my position. Or course, it's isn't based on your 'financial advice' lol
First off, as you said, I think bitcoin's major advantage is that it's the first on the crypto scene. Over here, when I want to talk about Steem, I first of all mention btc coz that's what everyone knows.
About btc dominance, well, I think you may be right, but nothing is ever set in stone. It think at some point some said Bitcoin cash would take over and then it was ethereum. But when you think of its limited supply and mass adoption, you can be sure it isn't going anywhere soon. It's like a brand everyone trusts. If bitcoin goes down, a lot of people might simply lose trust in other cryptos.
So will I stuck on btc. Maybe, but not yet. EOS fascinates me, at least the way Dan talks about it kindles my interest. And yes, I'm on Steemit so I have a sentimental value for Steem. Those arey two coins for now. And I'm sticking with them
Blessings
Rock on! I think going with what interests and inspires you will usually lead you to good places. I'd imagine there's some way to 'use' EOS, once it launches, so that would probably fall in the same basket of things as Steem for me, where using it is better than just speculating on the token.
Ya, people def most familiar with Bitcoin.
The first mover advantage can easily be overcome in most things. Like Facebook vs Myspace.. there's room for Facebook to just be a better managed company. Their layout may be better (people like seeing the blue and their design when they log on), lots of huge differences and reasons to favor one over the other.
The big thing about Bitcoin (as far as its core purpose of censor resistant transfer) is that there really isn't an "improvement". You can choose a different coin supply and release rate and things like that, but those differences are mostly cosmetic, it doesn't really change the experience or what you can do with the network.
And being a protocol, there isn't a risk of it being mismanaged.
So the network effect is really powerful relative to how much room there is for anything else to improve upon it.
I see it all clearly now.
I guess, in that case, bitcoin has some to stay.
ya, who knows of course! I'd hesitate to call anything a certainty, like Bitcoin came out of nowhere and most of us couldn't have conceived of the possibility before that, so then it's like.. dghjkfghri4ghrieghjk, re-evaluate
So I like to hold open the possibility that there could always be some other paradigm shift, but within the realm of what we know now, I don't really see a reason why the network would switch over and start growing on a different chain.
so like, we never know what the universe will throw at us, but I like Bitcoin more than its alts and competitors
I see it all clearly now.
I guess, in that case, bitcoin has some to stay.
I think that several coins will leave from BTC’s shadow. And then we will see their true value. I will agree that holding steem is good and fun only if you use it. I will also agree that it might remain the number 1 coin for decades. But this doesn’t mean that it has the best technology behind it. It is probably that this is happening because it was the first coin introduced to the world.
Time will tell...
I think that eventually what we all want is decentralization one way or another.
Have a great day my friend
Time will tell! I guess whether it needs any kind of improvement will be the question that gets answered.
Something will decentralize banking and money.
Bitcoin is mostly the mathematical discovery of how to transfer in a p2p censor resistant way, as far as I understand it. So then a network congeals around that discovery.
Time will tell! I guess whether it needs any kind of improvement will be the question that gets answered.
Something will decentralize banking and money.
Bitcoin is mostly the mathematical discovery of how to transfer in a p2p censor resistant way, as far as I understand it. So then a network congeals around that discovery.
That is pretty true. "Just be rational".
You are right again. You just cannot know that - that is the risk, somehow, I guess. ;D
At least this whole outperforming btc thing seems to be impossible, right now. I do not think that a coin will outperform btc the next few years as well.
In regards to this whole paragraph; well, you should never put all your funds - the amount you want to invest - only into one coin. It is better to spread a little, not too much. The other coins you invest do not have to pass btc, everything is fine as long as you make profit with it. Simply no losses. ;D
Lmao, I love these texts. You always have to add it - just to be sure haha.
Ya, it's like people think being lower priced means it's necessarily better value, but you shouldn't assume it will gain ground. It has to congeal on one network, if it's going to be meaningful and a replacement to the banking system etc. So being lower priced doesn't mean it has to catch up, it can also fade off.
I could understand thinking there's a reason something will beat Bitcoin. Like "oh, the default ledger needs X feature which Bitcoin doesn't have". In that case then I can understand wanting that coin (or wanting to hedge your bets if you aren't sure you're right). But unless the idea is that you think this will become the default, I don't think you want to speculate on it trending positively against BTC.
Lol ya. I see other people do that, so better safe than sorry I guess, but it's pretty silly. (I don't underestimate what a skilled lawyer and a screwy justice system could accomplish lol)
Well said. Until we have adoption of greater than 10% there is probably not enough capital to move higher quality projects from the BTC correlation.
True, the correlation is overwhelming relative to actually measuring the specifics of each project.
It concerns me that in the dot com bubble, Amazon collapses by basically the same amount (I think). So I'm worried something like that is on the horizon somewhere for Bitcoin (and anything else that has real value), whenever the nonsense gets flushed out.
I guess a difference is Bitcoin is already "collapsing" every few years or so, so maybe it doesn't need to rhyme too well with what the dot coms did.
[blah, deleted .. Steem is being weird and I'm double posting sometimes]
OK... Its useful... What about eth? Will it be good to hold it??
What expert(full-measure) say?
And one thing I was curious about new tokens airdrop.... Is there any suggestions for me from @full-Measure??
full-measure says he isn't the expert!! :p
About ETH I'd say basically the same as anything else.. I'd rather bet on Bitcoin
ETH may be one of the most likely to last and still be around in 30 years, but it's already pretty high relative to Bitcoin. It's not suited well to be the default/reserve/payments ledger, so I don't consider any real chance that it becomes the #1. So for what its purpose and potential is relative to Bitcoin, and where the market caps are right now, it seems hard to prefer Ethereum.
I don't think it's a certainty that ETH will be the ubiquitous way to do smart contracts, and even if it is, I don't think it necessarily means the ETH tokens need to be valued too highly. And even the best case scenario still isn't as good as being the currency/default ledger.
If you sleep better at night when your crypto is diversified, understandable. But if it's one or the other I'd happily prefer Bitcoin.
Hi @full-measure i think in a near future i mean 2-3 years from now we will see another coin in the position number 1 because now we can see better technologies running in blockchain. Regards
We'll see!!
btc is the giant in coin market. no coin can effect the market so greatly as btc can do. if you follow the price wave. you can see that btc dominate other coin. it proves that btc is unique. but huge btc dominance will destroy the balance of market. so we should follow btc dominance
i think among all coin btc is the best. btc is unique in coin market. Bitcoin is one of the biggest opportunities since the invention of the internet itseif. but if btc dominance grow so high it will negatively affect coin market.
you sound similar to @steemibu351 😆