Bitcoin Forum

The entire cryptocurrency market capitalization is a toddler when compared to the global markets like the stock market and the commodity market. considering where Bitcoin started, the whole ecosystem have come a long way since the past decade.

Bitcoin has been the dominant cryptocurrency for long now, I think that could change in the future. For the market to grow large and compete with global market, its becoming clear that other cryptocurrencies might rise to compete with the Bitcoin's marketcap. Top players from the traditional market need to get involved in cryptocurrency and issue decentralized products, the space need a lot of attention at this time. Such close competition could be setting the stage for a multi trillion crypto market.

But then, what is uncertain is regulation, can cryptocurrency grow into a multi-trilion market without the proper regulations?

Not as a mainstream economy for sure. Moreover to my surprise global markets look pretty stable now. The whole aura of huge market crashes and big depression is almost gone. People are thinking that recession's over. Talking about bitcoin Adoption would be possible only if we start to use bitcoin as a currency. But I don't see it's inherent problems getting resolved. The scalability and high fees issue still remains the problem. LN is just a dream we are taking from past 3 years. There is no reason why I think cryptocurrency market go mainstream in the next phase at all. Once while bitcoin was trying to fetch more capitalization in global space now is fighting in terms of capitalization in crypto space itslef.

As long as all of the government is not accept bitcoin, we won't see bitcoin will change the world economy, and all of the global markets will be like what we see now. It needs interfering with the government to improve the economy or the market, and the decentralized system can not run without centralized, which will control the process. Maybe that is what will happen. But if the government doesn't have a choice to survive, I think the government will accept crypto and use crypto as what they usually use. I am sure there will be regulations from the government which can control the cryptocurrency and the market.

I don't see any clarity on this. How could the other cryptos that can be par with bitcoin in terms of market cap? there's no coin that be equal with its market cap.

And looking to that day, it's highly not going to happen.

But the question arises, 'Are other cryptocurrencies decentralized enough'?

For cryptocurrencies, the strength of network defines the level of decentralization. Bitcoin Network is backed by thousands of volunteers contributing their hash power to make this network hard to hack. But can this be said for other cryptocurrencies? Maybe same could be said for Ethereum Network too but every other network is certainly prone to centralization. In such circumstances, it is very much possible that parties holding major stake in any cryptocurrency's network would exert extra control/manipulation on currency supply if the price of currency increased dramatically as we seen in the case of XRP. I don't see big future (in trillions) ahead for crypto market except for Bitcoin.

A significant change in the economic system requires a significant revolution. If there is no revolution, there will be no shift from centralization to decentralization. There are always conflicts between the old and the new, from these people to those people. I'm not a prophet who can see what will happen in the future, but I can ensure you that the world which based on the decentralized system will be much more different from our current world. The society we live, the government we depend on, the countries, lots of things will cease to exist in order to make huge development like that

In my opinion, the Fiat is still doing a great job up to now and there is no need to change at the moment. The cryptocurrency, on the other hand, is still young and there are many errors and disadvantages, but I believe we can solve many things in the next few decades. Still looking forward to the world where cryptocurrency is used and accepted by most of the people

Decentralization is desirable. But I guess it cannot become the be-all and end-all of an economy. To a certain degree, there has to be some kind of a regulating authority in terms of a nation's economy. You simply cannot decentralize everything.

There is already competition happening inside the crypto market. There were already times when Bitcoin was lesser than 50% in the entire crypto market cap. But then the competition is not going to be close because the simple fact remains that Bitcoin is never attached to a single individual unlike the rest.

Would Ethereum still be Ethereum if Vitalik totally abandons it? Would Litecoin continue as it is if Charlie Lee decides to leave it all behind?

We all sees things differently when it comes to seeing crypto being decentralized. There may be projects we can consider being decentralize when it comes to its consensys but when it comes to its market and being listed to regulated CEX the whole reference will change in a way because we are not free at all for funds can even be frozen by authorities. Some of us will not be in this kind of market and they'd excluded XMR already.

There is never a "phase" in economy, stuff happen at the same time during the same period and one of them becomes bigger and bigger over time. You think when coins were first invented (first coins ever made) people stopped barter right away? Of course not, they were still doing that at the same time for centuries (and even small tribes that still have it today). Or when credit cards were a thing, people stopped using cash all together? Cash is still being used today.

So, do not think that blockchain and decentralization will become something huge right away, or could be next phase, it would be just part of it and it will continue like that forever until something better comes along. In any case, I would just say that decentralization is quite important but I am not sure people who are the centralization will let it be standard that easily.

Hmm not really. If you consider the entire world, I suppose only a minority of those actually want something like the concept of Bitcoin. Most would rather want something automated, something secure (secure in the sense that they don't need to guard it, but can leave it to others), something they basically can leave to others without worry so that they can do something else.

Still, this doesn't mean that it'd phase out all of a sudden one of these days, the idea of decentralization provided by Cryptocurrency is an amazing thing, one of which that can help us in various situations, but in the end, it can't really accommodate for every situation, not to mention the complete opposition (most likely) of centralized organizations. It'd probably be a part, but it doesn't really have the ability to eat up the entire economy, replacing centralization as its core.

Very doubtful... Our world is still ruled by centralized tought systems and the groups behind them won't let a decentralized force take control as the currently centralized domination model is very confortable for these groups.
Actually decentralization is already going away: nowadays you can't do many things on crypto sites without showing your personal data, sending your documents and your phone number to fulfill the regulators requirements. Decentralization is becoming a kind of utopya as I see.

One cannot soley rely on just cryptocurrencies and decentralized economy because at the end of the day it does need help from the centralized one to fully function. Therefore we can easily point out one thing that :
The growth of the economy will be dependent upon how the government handles and give freedom to the decentralized market.

In most of the cases the banks and the government are dead scared about giving cryptocurrencies freedom as this would mean , they are loosing their dominance, they are trying to hide the fact that they are banning cryptocurrencies soon by : Making their own digital currency , which is completely absurd.

I do think decentralized system can help the potential market to grow not just in the favour of the large business man but at the same time the person who makes those products and gets only 1/10th of the price. It could very easily eleminate the middle man and with the ability of Bitcoins to form smart contracts ( I do understand that it's not very good as compared to ETH ) it will be able to secure some transactions .

Government , the centralized economy is not equipped to handle bad situations and at the same time it does not give people freedom they deserve . This system can actually give the matters in the hands of people and most benefits will go to them with added privacy. But then again the governments won't let this happen.

Decentralization hasn't won anything yet but we see more bitcoin users are already willing to give up their KYC documents to every centralized exchange. I don't normally see these kinds of bitcoin users back in 2015.

This is why Defi comes up in the space now, it had improved a lot though it struggles hard since the time of DAO hacking, it slowly developed and somehow we might be seeing decentralization taking over in the next phase, there could be a light if we just go cotinue going to the tunnel.

Depends on what you mean by Proper Regulation. I think proper regulation should be decentralized regulation.  You regulate what needs to be regulated in decentralized manner. This will help prevent the centralization of decentralized systems and applications.
Centralized regulated encourages corruption, lack of transparency, secrecy, lawlessness, etc

Currently yes if we talk about those things up but if we just look up how useful it is specially that there is pandemic well maybe we can see that this will be a game changer in terms of profitability since by now major establishments together with stock is now at dump state and bitcoin is remaining giving a promising profit to it's users. for now the acceptance we want is not possible especially in big institutions since we cannot rely on it in terms of stability since the price is so volatile and might this is a major cause of bankruptcy if the accepting merchant doesn't know on how to handle a dumping situation.

Definitely! In case of centralized regulation, there can be a lot of cases where people will abuse the power that they are having and corruption as you said will also be there when people will easily have the work done that favours them or their business by paying a fee to the person that has the most power in that centralized system. But I can't think of a way through which decentralized regulation can take place. Maybe you can tax people based on what they own or make in a fiscal year and directly cut that percentage through a smart contract or through miners imposed tax where miners/mining pools will apply the tax on the wallet and once the owner pays the fees in terms of a transaction fee to the pool then the transaction will go through the pool and reach its destination.

Completely centralized planning never worked as shown by the former USSR and various other failed communist experiments. Unabashed capitalism gave us a lot of things but took our souls. People and families are resources on a continuous assembly line. Competition for survival results in a situation where the rich keep getting richer while the masses remain at the mercy of those at the top. So introducing decentralization to balance the worse aspect of capitalism, can surely lead to a more equitable setup. If Bitcoin becomes the mass currency for people to do their own business in a lawful way, who is to say that won't lead to better earning opportunities and chances for the common man.
Decentralization in the way economy is organized can definitely lead to greater and better wealth distribution. Yet, an idea can only be as good as those backing it. Unfortunately, the new, wealthy elite don't seem to care much, just like the old wealthy, elite.

Decentralization is not what we need, if we keep insisting that we need decentralization so that we can utilize our freedom then be ready for a chaotic society. Just take a look on twitter being a decentralized platform, hacker did easily manage to fool the twitter world in just a day, causing a lot of damage, just imagine that. People now are impulsive, they just follow the trend, being radical these days means so much.

I believe in DeFi, this might be our future finance system, it has tokenization and everything, just like transitioning into digital one, centralized, regulated and more convenient. But we may taste this after a while, there are still some preliminary testing on DeFi, having a big potential also contains a big risk.

Unfortunately, for regulations to kick in, most services need to give up the idea of decentralization. This is in the form of stricter KYC procedures and other stuff concerning AML and fraud. While decentralized services sound like something 'new' to people and are ready to use it, apparently governments and regulators do not like this idea as it essentially takes away some portion of the profit they might take on taxes and registrations. Personally I think cryptocurrencies can progress with or without decentralization, but since we started believing on the power of decentralization brought by bitcoin on its early days, most are still insisting that this is what will bring us up there, no compromises needed.

Only time will tell how the mixed decentralized and centralized technologies and services focusing on bitcoin and cryptocurrencies pan out. For now, regulations require services to give up the idea of a decentralized platform to operate legally within a certain country, and I don't think that's going to change any time in the future.

But decentralization doesn't have anything to do with twitter. That is a centralized social media platform. This argument just makes centralization looks worse, as a centralized platform was easily hacked. It means centralization doesn't guarantee safety.
I'm just being rational here reading the facts and I'm not totally against centralization, I think it has to exist in some proportion, but much smaller than it is today.

Well indeed, there's still differences from how people see whether as investment or a payment process.

That's the thing, volatility also a good way for illegal doers to manipulates and hide transactions from public.

For the time being, but who knows after this pandemic government see this system and start adopting.


Correct, the more small investment the better to grow this market, it will push the whales to pumped it up in such ways.

Decentralised means more expensive, because anything decentralised cost more then centralised. Money can afford to be expensive. It is worth the cost the decentralisation brings. Not everything can bare that cost.

That should be the first step, support and promotion should be our focus that could help us to achieve global adoption of bitcoin. If governments will treat bitcoin as a non-efficient currency, the we will not achieve the success of bitcoin. It is not easy at first but if we tell the world how advantageous this cryptocurrency is, maybe this will really help us to the next phase of economy. Maybe we will see the result if the government have a hard time to handle their economy, the only thing that we want is the proper regulation of cryptocurrency in the market and giving importance to it. World economy can be changed by this potentially decentralized coin in the future.

Decentralization is the future but it still a long way to go for sure, maybe the next generation people will choose decentralized assets over the traditional stocks and that time governments also may know how to regulate the crypto currencies.No one exected bitcoin to have some real value but today it is the most expensive currency in the world, expect the unexpected in future. :)

On the flip side, it may be fair to say global stock markets are in some ways, toddlers in comparison to crypto.

Brokers in the united states used to charge upwards of $7+ per trades on the purchase and selling of stocks. Buying and selling stocks often costed more than $15 total in commission fees alone. Crypto exchanges pioneered low commission costs on trades which have become the industry wide standard for stock brokers today.

Today we see many banks and financial networks adopting blockchains. Shifting towards a paradigm more closely resembling the trust-less design bitcoin is known for popularizing around the world.

You're 100% correct about crypto representing a tiny proportion of global market cap. It may be acknowledged that virtually all of the revolutionary and progressive ideas and technology currently advancing finance, merchant and banking industries were developed within the crypto sphere however.

Food for thought~

I think the regulation will have to come. And that regulation will come as a result of the government putting more interest in the crypto market. If the crypto is regulated, there would be more inflow of people into the crypto market. There will more trust. The crypto market can grow into a multi-trillion market only if a larger percentage of people in world (especially the Warren Buffets, Bill Gates, and the likes) are ready to trust the market. That trust will have to come with regulation.

If the government regulate cryptocurrency ,the decentralization will become centralize and that was the government wants to happen because as long as cryptocurrency is decentralize government doesn't have any control on it. Also banks will become useless if ever decentralization leads in the phase of economy which impossible to happen. I think Government will find a way on how to control cryptocurrency if ever they legalize it in every country.

Without proper regulations, it will be difficult for cryptocurrency to lead the next phase of the economy, because the government will never
accept cryptocurrency if it cannot be controlled. Then for the government and banks consider decentralization as a threat, the reality is indeed
very difficult make cryptocurrency a global currency. But do not despair with the future of cryptocurrency, though it is unlikely in my opinion
there is still a chance crypto leads the next phase of the economy. By increasing the demand and crypto users, if crypto users in the whole world
can reach 50% of the total population in the world. I am sure the government will change their mind.

   Crypto-currencies are regulated. About the government I think they will need us, more than we need them! They did
nothing in the past years, and if they did it's for their own benefit. And from there I took a question do we really need
politicians and governments?
   I think that decentralization can and will lead us to the next phase, not just in economy, in other segments as well.
And sooner that happens it's better, I think what's enough it's enough, these politicians must go.

Maybe yes, if all the countries in the world accepts Bitcoin and other digital currencies legally. For me, its really useful especially this time of crisis and we do not know yet, when all this strange things be over.
But, it can't give us a wider range of service because not all the people lives in a civilized places and have an access to internet and modern technology.
Wish everyone would know about it and learn as well for an easiest way of living.

You raised a valid point because no platform becomes a worldwide name by just one person running the show at some point a whole other participants needs to get their own share of the market. But when it comes to crypto, the marker didn't start from a country to go worldwide, it started from the worldwide before thinking of going local which makes it kind of difficult for bitcoin to be dislodged from that top platform.

On the regulation, except crypto would continue to operate in the shadow with the option of going mainstream, there is no way around it because with the various atrocities committed in the crypto world, it's either regulation or eventual natural death.

There was a moment in the past when Bitcoin's market share was 37.8% and Ethereum's share was 31.1%. Now Bitcoin stabilized at 60-65% dominance, major altcoins struggle to keep up with its price gains and lesser shitcoins are disappearing. With this trend, alts have no chance to dethrone Bitcoin. Some major fundamental breakthrough would be needed, but how can you be sure that Bitcoin won't be the coin to have it?

As for traditional market players, they are into crypto purely speculatively. Even if we are getting more insitutional investors, we are not getting any payment method adoption from larger companies.

I also agreed that crypto need a lot of attention for the market to grow large but not by altcoins dethrone Bitcoin which every crypto enthusiast knew it wont happen though and BTC dominant increase after bitcoin was unable to take down by the government, it literally gains additional attention by investors and it experienced an increase from 37.8% to 62.0%. However, BTC dominant or decentralization level wasnt hinder the market positive change but it the government attitude towards crypto that hindered adoption from large companies and if the government attitude changes now, in a single hour crypto market cap will reach a trillion USD.

It is unlikely that if an important business releases their own coin that this coin is going to be decentralized, and even if those were their intentions it is unlikely the governments around the world would allow it, just take a look at the project of Facebook releasing their own coin and how that turned out, as such bitcoin cannot be threatened and the longer the time it passes before a challenger appears the more difficult it becomes to surpass it as anyone that wants to get in this market most likely buys bitcoin and not any other coin.

Simple answer:  No.  To be accepted in the mainstream market, proper regulation should take place.  Even if the cryptomarket is booming, if the government find it unregulated, they will do their best to halt the growth and implement the regulation in it before allowing it to grow further.  Regulation is always a partner of government adoption  and implementation to its citizen.  So as much as we love the word decentralization,  the government will never allow it.

What are you basing this off of? What are you seeing that is showing that other cryptocurrencies are on their way to becoming as large or even better than bitcoin? I sure don't see it.  One other thing you need to realize is bitcoins blockchain is the only chain that has been truly tested at such high levels.  There is no proof or positivity that if another chain gets to a  20k type level, that it will be able to handle it. A lot of this feels like mostly conjecture here.

Well I see where he is going with this. He is talking about decentralization and what bitcoin did until now, it sure opened a door for many others. Now it's a big question will we see some other coin getting close to btc and when will that happen, I see that as possibility, because as he said, the whole ecosystem have come a long way, and competition is getting harder every day! Now we can say that bitcoin will stay on top where it is for some time, but man nobody can't predict the future, and what can happen in certain situations, so at least we need to be opened for almost any possible scenario, even the one where some other coins are getting closer to btc market cap.

I am just seeing it is not necessary. Bitcoin ecosystem does not need any top players from traditional markets. Because, when centralized things are working with the decentralized things that will lead to diluting the basics of decentralization concepts. But, when bitcoin will be proving its potential, top players will be joining for their own reason but people will never need to depend on them for any of the product they are offering by incorporating bitcoin. It means we do not need any such product but bitcoin will grow like anything else without need of any top players' interruption.

You prefer or not, regulation by government will happen for sure. But, it will work in favor of making more people adopting bitcoin in long run but in short run, government will be enforcing people to do what they actually want.

For example, a government goes against bitcoin by regulation but they will introduce a government backed their own crypto then that will get more popular among people at first but later on people will start realizing the benefits of having bitcoin due to its decentralization characteristics. So, bitcoin will boom regardless of anything such.

I remember those times, many people back then were talking about how ethereum and bitcoin will switch positions for good and ethereum will leave bitcoin behind and never look back, and we know what happened, no altcoin can threaten bitcoin at the moment simply because it does not make sense, most coins are copies of bitcoin with just a few cosmetic changes, they are still using the core technology of bitcoin for themselves and as long as an altcoin that is completely innovative does not come forward the chances of altcoins surpassing bitcoin are zero.

The total market cap of the whole crypto market is nothing when compared to that of stock market or gold.
It seems that people have started investing in gold after seeing the recession faced by the stock market. Therefore, the rate of gold is skyrocketing at this moment.

If traditional and institutional investors decide to pour money into the crypto market seeing that it is on the rise even during an ongoing global pandemic, it would give a boost to the market like something that has never happened in the history of the whole crypto market. I think that crypto market is indeed capable of growing into a multi trillion-dollar market seeing the future potential.

Regualation is needed, we can't deny this fact. Regulation is related to mass adoption.

As long as the country still exists with the government, the most power will be under a centralized system. The decentralized system will only be implemented in some industries or parties, not for all. It may be only available in some countries.
Well, if it is about the technology using a decentralized system, it will also depend on what kind of technology sectors, if it is about the very important data, will it be decentralized? I think not.

It will depend on how the country accepts the cryptocurrency. They may be available to be a partnership in the case of legalizing crypto without any hard rules and regulations. But, there are also some countries that are not willing to fully legalize the crypto. So far, this may be the problem faced by the crypto world and technology.

About what kind of regulations we talk about here? Government regulations? Or we talk about how regulated are some cryptocurrencies? I think that cryptocurrencies are regulated if you mean about scams in the crypto than you need to regulate your knowledge and try to stay away from scams, and if you get scammed it's on you. I learned every time I made a mistake and lost some money, it's how I regulate myself and what I can do and what I can't do, I don't need others to tell me that.

Of course, crypto cannot be the mainstream economy of any country. Cryptocurrencies can be regulated and treated just like the other present assets such as gold, shares etc.Moreover, it doesn’t appear like the global markets are stable. The situation is still challenging. Crypto market appears as a safe space for investors and traders at the moment.

Also, Bitcoin adoption can be achieved in the terms of asset holdings by the people and not something that can be used as a currency because of its high volatility, low scalability and other such factors.

Right now the bitcoin is leading away into the world of cryptocurrency and this is the most popular coin among all the time and some of the people are now slowly recognize this kind of coin as the possible use into the real businesses. Even this mass adaptation happens still there is no chance that the government will allow this decentralized coin to conquer the market and adopt the use of this like this is their most priority like they are using this as a currency. They don't want other people can manipulate the market price we all know that there is a chance that the whales could possibly manipulate the market price even we are telling this as decentralized.