Yeah and MySpace will always be the king of social media, look at its growth numbers back in the day. What can stop it!? Bitcoin is a technical disaster right now, and I predict it will be eclipsed by another Crypto completely. Bitcoin is completely dependent on the network effect for growth, but its development team are too inept or self-serving to use onchain scaling like increased blocksize to improve scalability, so they're limiting the network effect, limiting growth. Newegg.ca just announced they'll stop accepting Bitcoin, Humble Bundle stopped accepting bitcoin, tons of retailers that used to accept it are now ditching it. Transaction times, costs, and backlog are absolutely horrendous and the Core development team is incredibly dysfunctional. They've been promising solutions for 4 years now and have produced absolutely nothing. Segwit is dead on arrival. I wonder how much analysts like this guy know about the technology. Not much, I imagine.
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I just saw your reply, after replying to the original post (my reply is somewhere below), but I think your points enhance the appeal of alternatives. Some of the reasons I expect others could gain ground are [apologies for excerpting from my original reply]:
"... And although it might be hard to predict which ones will be "tier 1" currencies, we can extrapolate a bit here and imagine that together with BTC we will see more of:
This last point probably applies most to those like DASH that are directed towards e-commerce.
But, @misfortunecookie, we should presume that BTC's devs will work to always improve it. That is a given, IMHO. Especially if they see more vendors signing on with other cryptos -- that will be a huge incentive for solving the issues you identified.
Great reply to a great post (kudos, @jrcornel)!
One or two cryptos will end up on the top of the heap in the end but, like @captaincanary says below, it may not have even been created yet. Core is incentivized to improve Bitcoin, you would think, but they seem paralyzed by its success. It's so big, like a house of cards they're terrified to breathe near.
They're also incentivized by their own avarice, because they dodge scaling solutions that would stand independent of them, and instead push things like Lightning Network - off-chain solutions that increase centralization and put more power into their hands. They crave not only the success of BTC, but cementing their own legacy and importance in the management of the ecosystem. So many very prominent members of the team have quit in frustration.
There is a lot of drama and a lot of suspicion. Other cryptos are sneaking up and will soon displace it. The 1mb blocksize that they knew was too small half a decade ago is still in place.
Litecoin, Monero, and others have dynamically scaling block sizes to prevent the technical mess that bitcoin is in right now from happening to them. Since money can so easily and quickly be moved around with crytpo (well, except bitcoin haha, but still comparatively fast to so many assets) it can slip and slide effortlessly from it and into a different currency overnight. That's what makes this market as a "store of value" so stressful.
BTC's only advantage right now is the age of the blockchain. That is what gives investors some confidence, it has stood the test of time so far. But is it actually a useful currency compared to other solutions right now? Not really, other than a store of value. That will limit its growth and eventually render it obsolete, I believe.
I hadn't heard that about retailers stopping accepting bitcoins? I have heard mostly the opposite actually... That would be interesting though, do you have some links?
If you follow the BTC subreddit you will see the truth about Bitcoin, I don't have any specific links on hand, but ask yourself why a retailer or a consumer would want to use this payment system:
Takes hours to days for a transaction to confirm
Backlog of transactions sits at around 250,000
Transactions are irreversible
Cost to conduct a transaction is hovering around ~$6.00 (are you going to buy a cup of coffee with BTC when it takes hours to pay and the payment costs more than the coffee itself?)
Currency is still extremely volatile
Why would anyone want to pay with or accept this currency? I would like to see which businesses are starting to take it now. It is a huge headache to use. Excepting cases where the suffering is worth it, because it's the only choice on the Darknet (but most Darknet markets are now accepting alt coins too). Bitcoin must adapt to survive and it has been sitting still for many years while other coins have evolved better privacy measures and/or faster networks.
I can't really argue with anything you put here... great points. They just need to be introduced to steem, 3 second free transactions?! Just what the doctor ordered...
We can only hope. Because of the social media element inherent to steemit, I expect the network effect to be massive if it crosses a certain threshold of users. It's infuriating trying to describe the benefits of steemit to people on Reddit and being called a corporate shill. Many are suspicious of the phone number requirement, but simultaneously moan about astroturfing and vote manipulation on reddit. Hypocrites.
Redditors love their censored echo-chambers and seem to loathe the idea of a decentralized censor-proof social media blockchain where you actually get paid for participating. What's not to like!?
You are spot on with your comments misfortunecookie. The reality is that the cryptocurrency that eventually ends up being widely adopted probably hasn't even been created yet
LOL