I feel like I'm turning into a skeptic with my past two posts, but there is rhyme and reason to my logic. (and I like being controversial and starting drama)
Bitcoin is phenomenal, there is no denying it. It has laid the foundations for a revolutionary technology that has paved the way for a whole new asset class. The cryptocurrency market cap will go to the moon. I'm sure it will 10x or 20x in the years to come. What's more, for a few years at least, it will be led by bitcoin. But, in my opinion, bitcoin will die a slow, painful death, and be silently forgotten. This should remind you of something.
History is just patterns that constantly repeat themselves. Think MySpace to Facebook, or dial-up to broadband. Being successful long-term is a mix of perfect timing and perfect execution.
So, here is why I think Bitcoin will become obsolete.
1. It's using outdated tech
For anyone transferring any bitcoin in the past few months, it has become painfully obvious that the bitcoin blockchain can't handle the load. It doesn't have the scalability necessary. No one wants to wait hours for their transaction to complete, and no one wants to pay such ludicrously high fees for those transactions. This is only going to become worse as more people enter the space and begin pushing transaction into the blockchain. You might say, "well they can just improve the blockchain", and this is what Segwit2x was meant to do. That leads me to my next point.
2. The community is divided and leaderless
While Bitcoin was in its infancy, Satoshi Nakamoto was its fearless leader. Sure, it was decentralized, but Nakamoto led the way bravely. A figurehead, like Vitalik to Ethereum. But, those times have come and gone and the community is now divided upon the best course of action. Segwit2x prooved this when it was canceled. Now, every other protocol is pulling ahead, implementing scalable technology, and bitcoin is left with a squabbling community looking like the grandpa who thinks the newspaper is still the best way to get news.
3. It will lose a large part of its current functionality
Right now, Bitcoin has an incredibly valuable role in the crypto world. It serves as the gatekeeper to all the other altcoins. You want IOTA? Tough luck, go buy some Bitcoin first.
This won't last long.
Imagine this - you want to shop at your local grocery store, but first, you have to go to the bank to swap your USD to grocery tokens that are acceptable at the grocery store. This wouldn't be put up with for long in the community, would it?
That's essentially the stranglehold that bitcoin has on the altcoin market right now, but it won't last forever. Eventually, USD to altcoins will become widely spread, and at that point, Bitcoin has one use case left - a diversification tool a.k.a digital gold. Even gold has a second use case.
When it comes to tech, we have the early adoption curve to help us understand how a technology becomes adopted by society.
As of September 2017, just over 16 million bitcoin addresses existed, so we know well under 2.5% of the world population has adopted bitcoin. This will increase exponentially over the next few years. My prediction is that once we start getting into the first half of the early majority, Bitcoin will start to fade.
Of course, this is all purely speculation, and definitely not financial advise! I would love to hear your predicitons on the future of Bitcoin down below.
TLDR; bullish on Bitcoin for the next several years, but then watch out!
I would like to know what do you think about the upcoming hard forks?
Honestly, I'm far from being an expert, but to me, they seem like people try to make some quick money. I feel like by keeping the name bitcoin, you will always be overshadowed. In saying that, I don't know a whole lot about each one.