@nickeles you have strong arguments and Bitcoin today create many doubts and fears but as
@stan iterated Bitcoin is making progress and we'll see what's the result at end of the year. The market penetration of Bitcoin is very strong. I think like of light from the sun. We see light which is many years old and so do the shops in Japan, they see Bitcoin as a developed currency and use it whether it's now the cutting edge technology. All the contenders have many years to go to reach that level of Bitcoin whether how disruptive they may be from a technical perspective. That's my view.
Things that are #1 often get overconfident.
Bitcoin is #1 in market cap.
BitShares is #1 in global usage (peak transactions per day)
So we should both watch out!
That said, we are able to reach 100 times as many users as bitcoin has in the coming year. What will the world look like then?
I agree about how you mention bitcoin has a name in the space and a reputation. Thats why BTC-U will be able to take that name and upgrade its properties so it can for now be the most known coin and also act like the strongest coin. atm its not behaving as it should... $2 transaction fees on a $2 transaction, cmon for the #1 cryptocurrency market cap that is a bag of shit. the #1 market cap better be giving me the speed and frictionless movement that cryptocurrency can offer when done right. it's an outdated, slow and honestly in its current state a dumb coin and the only thing keeping it #1 is because it was first out the gate. There is no future scenario where the bitcoin you see today and the mining pools and bitcoin core who are the decentralized centralized power are holding control of the #1 marketcap coin. One thing you have to understand is the superior technology always wins because at some point it becomes as easy to understand as black and white.
thats my opinion.
i'm with you regarding the downsides of Bitcoin, please look why i donated to IOTA. But do we always see edge technologies in action immediately after publication? I think not because mass adoption needs a long time to get trust from the majority. I also think the first mover advantage is not to underestimate. Bitcoin devs must watching to evolve with new technologies and will adopt features. In the meantime they will live on the deep market penetration. Bitcoin is a brand that can be burned like Netscape with the rising of the internet. I agree that superior technologies will get market share but to disrupt everything they must do something significantly better and not just on paper or in laboratory but in the real world at the retailer, the bank, the user. What are the drivers? costs, speed, security, convenience and big companies with much influence which penetrate markets and have the power to replace existing ecosystems i think.
Because of that it's not possible for me to predict that Bitcoin-UNITED will be the better Bitcoin.
Your theory holds true in a traditional market, but we are moving to a new market and a new era of technology where the same rules dont apply. I believe we will see speeds of mass market adoption quicker then you think. Given the low barrier to entry and low switching costs from coin to coin its only a matter of marketing to change someone from a BTC to
BTC-U. Like the speed of light from the sun everything is moving at light speed ; )
Maybe, but as i wrote there is always a lazy brick & mortar world and that world changes always slowly. Branding, emotions attached to a coin are also important. Think of the Dogecoin, why people need Dogecoin?. Why not Bitcoin for charity? It is not always technology, has Microsoft the best technology with Office? With a debit card service like TenX for example you accept also fees >1% and have that great advantage to pay with almost every cryptocurrency. The fees are acceptable so long we have this strong growth in value and such convenient service if you think of the pain in the ass with all that Altcoin swapping and storing.
Bitcoin has proven to be the most stable cryptocurrency currently and that is very important for currencies especially for regular people or the majority who expect that 1 Bitcoin today is 1 Bitcoin tomorrow or even more but never less. If Bitcoin find solutions for their urgent problems than they are competitive again and still have the first mover advantage. And yes i think all the other great technologies get their market share with important niche applications which Bitcoin cannot serve. For me it's like Julian Hosp from TenX said we're sailing on a vast ocean with rising sea level and stormy waters from time to time. But it's always rising with Bitcoin and Altcoins together. Look at the a month before many people saw the sinking boat of Bitcoin because Ethereum was on par with regarding to market cap, currently BTC has a superior near 50% again and is not the cutting edge technology today.
We'll see how it turns out. Whatever happens i see a bright future for blockchain, tangle and upcoming technologies in the crypto space.
I see where you are coming from, but you cant even compare Ethereum's and Bitcoin's output added together with a fork and a half
are still 243x slower then Bitshares TPS. Very small amounts of the world economy uses this market. 115billion to date is the highest market cap we have had. Cant you see the goal is to migrate every single person on this planet over to this way of transport of value(money). This is a technology that can utilize every single person who has access to wifi on this planet to create a single cell economy.
The benefits of utilizing a larger amount of our population together in a open no border economy will increase the way of life of anyone who participates. each user generates value, the more users the more value.
Simply put bitcoin cant scale at the rate we need this technology to scale and the demand for blockchain based services will increase. The people will migrate naturally to what will support the healthiest economy, and the most people around the world. Everyone will benefit if we create a free economy on a single decentralized platform that we the users can all benefit off of each other. I stay optimistic the day EOS led by @dan is released and has potential to do unlimited TPS so there is chance at really creating a market that every single person on this planet has access to from where ever they live.
I'm very optimistic for the whole crypto space independent who'll take the lead because it's like looking into a crystal ball just (educated) guessing. Without a doubt from technical standpoint you're right and also how the community in steemit is developing are positives and that makes me feel optimistic. Bitcoin was the forerunner of progress and is still fighting for all the other assets and currencies because they solve problems for the others so they can learn from and improve their technologies even more. I think it's like a huge community with uncount disputes and discussions with the only goal to create progress.. 2 steps back 3 steps forward 2 steps .. and if had the chance to do a time-lapse ten years ahead i think we would see things unbelievable today!
Exciting times ahead steemit friends!