Bitcoin Forum

Let's just face the facts, shall we (even BTC fans/bagholders)

BTC transfers are nerve wreckingly slow.
BTC transfers are disgustingly expensive.
BTC is at the mercy of chinese gigamines.
BTC experiences sudden enormous swings that appear out of the blue.

And every time BTC does "its thang", the altcoins move with it, since BTC is the most widely used base currency at crypto exchanges. This causes unnecessary stress for people who own coins that actually work as a means of payment or have some other intrinsic value.

BTC is a big old lazy animal, its only virtues are being the first and, consecuently, having no 1 market cap now. But that is changing. Just look at the BTC dominance number on Coinmarketcap. Used to be over 60% not too long ago, now it's 34%. And when BTC loses its no 1 status, what follows then? Likely a collapse, that could bring the whole crypto market down. We need to untie well functioning coins from this dinosaur so it wouldn't bring the whole crypto market down when it decides to die.

And what currency should crypto exchanges use as a base currency?Ether,tether,BCH?
I know about all the disadvantages and issues regarding bitcoin,but can you mention a better altcoin that will replace btc?It looks like all the bitcoin core supporters are waiting for a new fork or LN activation.We need a solution that will speed up transactions and lower the transaction costs.It doesn`t matter if it`s centralized or no.

Yes you may say the truth but bitcoin is the Founding father of all coin today. I mean when the LN is activated we no longer facing an expensive fee or slow transaction. that is the main problem right. it has really fixed supply and already known to society

Ether has its issues too, for example it's defenceless against crypto kittens. Then again Ethereum has more intrinsic value and thus better immunity against total meltdown.

I actually really like the way you posed this post. I may not agree with it, but it was clear and concise -- something this forum needs more of.

While it's true that BTC transfers are rough at the moment, the lightning network will likely solve most of these issues. Even if it does, and as you stated, bitcoin goes to the bottom, there are many coins ready to take its place. Ethereum has been in the green for the past few weeks while all the other coins have dropped. Essentially, I think we're going to start to see altcoins that IMPROVE on each other rather than just create more and more ICO's and ideas. At that rate, there will be a strong coin to take bitcoin's place.

Hello player514 I wonder when this lightning network will be implemented? I also agree with OP about this issues of bitcoin. But I don't totally agree that bitcoin will collapse. Right now, its not practical to use BTC for transactions although there are coins that can do it the coins in the market also has flaws no coins is perfect I guess.

Many exchanges don't actually have a "base currency". They just have sets of trading pairs - e.g. USD/BTC, BTC/LTC, ETH/LTC, etc.

Sure, they usually have a lot more trading pairs where BTC is the base paired against some other altcoin. But there are also plenty with ETH base, or LTC base. So as BTC becomes more and more unwieldy for transactions I expect to see more of these ETH and LTC-based trading pairs gaining increased volume.

Last time we have eth transaction nightmare Btc is like dollar for fiat world.Dollar is garbage,it is backked by 4.5 trilions of usa debt,but still it is currency reserve
I think biggest problem for us are exchanges
Thay are making milions a day but thay dont have working support,no money to hire people
I think thay dont want to hire becouse thay dont want to share his dirty secrets

I need to bump this.

It's absolutely heart breaking to see how bitcoin takes nearly ALL cryptos with it whenever it decides to crash. Even worse, altcoins drop more, because people exchange them for bitcoin in order to be able to sell quickly if market hits certain level. The fact that great tech frontier projects like ethereum or cardano lose third of their market cap instantly because some official somewhere said something about bitcoin, is utterly disgusting.

One of the most frequent criticisms towards bitcoin is that it has no intrinsic value - this is a the main argument that nay-sayers keep bringing up when calling crypto a bubble or a scam that will end up in zero. Now, this argument doesn't hold true for ethereum or cardano, yet there's a great chance that if bitcoin would indeed crash to oblivion, it would take all other cryptocurrencies with it.

Seriously I hope this can be changed and will change soon.

Agreed. Very well described why it is not a good idea to take btc as base currency. I think most of the people is suffering from this problem but first time I see that is explained in a good way. We all know that btc was the initiator factor but that doesn't necessarily mean that should be taken base currency.

Bitcoin network is most stable for this moment, despite slow speed and cost of transactions.
This sutuation is temporary, lightning network is coming

Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency ever made, and suffered a lot before reaching this position. The reason why the transactions are extremely slow or insanely expensive is the load on the network. Before one or two years, when there wasn't a lot of people with the only motive of earning profits out of Bitcoin, the network was going really well, and no one was ever complaining about the fees or the transaction timings. And now when they all jumped in, hanged the network and created all these problems, they say "Bitcoin is the worst cryptocurrency", "It has very high fees.".
I simply don't understand why people don't think about the reasons why Bitcoin is like this.

A truck having the ability to lift 5000 KGs of good would probably not be able to go with the same speed if you load it with 15000 or even more. Now you are not supposed to blame the truck in that matter.

Agree, but still bitcoin is the first cryptocurrency come to town, almost everyone know about it even non crypto community. The idea of bitcoin it self make another cryptocurrency born. yet the high fee is based on his price, cause the fee is always around 50k to 200k sats from the begining the different is only bitcoin used to have low price.

I don't care about the shortcomings of BTC that you mentioned. I think they are what makes BTC hat it is today. Just maybe BTC would have eloped or become insignificant if they weren't ther. Jut saying though.

We have heard several of this reason and even more of than what you listed here but still the top is reserved for bitcoin and despite all the challenges you listed there none is not surmountable and with various option to adopt by users, its a thing of the past.

Now to adoption of a coin as a base currency, if you have an option you can say it but of all the coins we have only ETH can stand and to a large extent there it has been given its own recognition. Decisions like that are not taken based on impulse or in a hurry just because such coin is in the face of attention or has the right technology and the price is increasing not at all its based on how acceptable, how easy it can be converted to fiat, the test of time it has spent etc. Without that, I am sorry, you are stuck with btc.

Exactly, they want Bitcoin to be used more so the transaction history looks like there is a lot of people using it.

I agree with you. a few days ago we all knew that BTC suffered a blow and eventually fell. which makes me upset is the next coin other who also fell only one DASH coin that still survive while the other coins follow BTC. myself suffered losses and still hold all my assets there are some like ETC, ETH, waves and NXT I think all of these coins already have fair to money paper . but still influenced BTC as if the BTC is the parent for them.

Lots of exchanges are offering fiat pairs for ETH and LTC (see Kraken and the Korean exchanges).

And some exchanges are offering pairs against ETH, Monero and Doge.

Basically it's a "use it or lose it" situation - most exchanges will enable pairs with other alts as a base, but if people don't trade them they remove them. A few years ago litecoin used to be offered as a base currency but exchanges removed it because no-one was trading it.

Actually, the main issue is that Bitcoin is the face of cryptocurrency. People associate crypto with bitcoins. For one new investors in alt coin, there will be hundreds in bitcoin.

In the meantime there's no alternative coins to replace Bitcoin at the moment but on the other hand developers are trying their way to improve Bitcoin and also the transaction fees which is the Lightning Network will be responsible to answer this because people are so eager for a change and tired of this insane transaction fee.

The current US debt is 20 trillion, that's the real shitcoin...

http://www.usdebtclock.org/

This is actually a quite interesting point. But the fact is that nobody can DECIDE to switch from BTC to whatever else. Bitcoin is still the common point of reference - that's a fact, and you don't cancel facts at will. At one point it may happen, but probably not on someone's decision - just as a self organizing phenomenon.

As you said we need to stop using bitcoin as the basic currency because it make the bitcoin unusable as a currency due to traffic in blockchain traffic.But I don't know what is going to be the alternative maybe people will say ether.But it also has the same issues with high has if the traffic increases and it more worse than bitcoin network.So still no coin in the place to replace bitcoin from using the base currency.
But all exchanges may add option like fiat to crypto then it will reduce the stress on bitcoin ans the problem maybe solved.But from the implementation of lightning network the bitcoin will be usable with affordable fee.