Bitcoin Forum

Every cryptocurrency is based on Bitcoin's blockchain technology these days. No matter which shiny new features a coin has, its design is similar to Bitcoin in every way. There's a reason why other cryptocurrencies besides Bitcoin are called "altcoins" to this date. While it's true that the pioneer cryptocurrency has some limitations, its functionalities can be expanded thanks to its open source design. This means that Bitcoin can do everything the other coins do today, if developers are willing to integrate new features into the network. With sidechains, and the Lightning Network, there might be no need for altcoins at all. Bitcoin would become an "All-in-One" blockchain network capable of doing everything other cryptocurrencies do today.

What do you think? Will Bitcoin render other altcoins "obsolete" in the long term? Do you think it's a good thing to make Bitcoin an "All-in-One" blockchain network in the future? If not, why? Your input will be greatly appreciated. Thank you :)

To truly make altcoins obsolete , then Bitcoin would have to be better than the altcoins in all functions.

Alts                                            Vs          Bitcoin
Smart Contracts                                       Nope
Energy Efficient                                        Nope
High Onchain Transaction Capacity            Artificially limited Onchain Transaction Capacity
Lower Transaction Fees                            High Transaction fees due to limited onchain capacity
Affordable                                               Not Affordable


LN can do nothing to help Bitcoin make alts obsolete,
because the rub is, an Altcoin name Litecoins activated segwit before bitcoin did.
And anything Bitcoin can do on LN, Litecoin can also do , except much faster and at lower cost since they have plenty of onchain transaction capacity.
* If BTC artificial blocksize limit is not removed,
LN offchain will fail as theft of LN locked funds become easy if onchain congestion occurs.*

The real question is why anyone uses bitcoin over the alts, and the only answer for that is many have formed a false religion
around a technically inferior coin , only because it was the 1st, no other real reason.
As the crypto sphere adds new players , you will find this false worship of bitcoin beginning to fail,
as logic and reason , eventually sink in, even with the most die-hard bitcoiner cultist, whose chants hodl and fud.

I think as an investor and not as a cryptocurrency developer. And I always look at bitcoin as a kind of index for all industries. When he is "bad" it will be bad for almost everyone else. I think this will continue for a long time, at least until this world of cryptocurrency expands to new platforms that are completely independent of the original bitcoin. Until that time, no matter how everything went, everyone will still look at bitcoin as a standard and avant-garde.

No. It won't. Maybe some of them, those with not many features.

I think that people forget that there is a huge difference in numbers between the number of transactions on bitcoin network and most other altcoins; when those coins will reach to the amount of use Bitcoin has, they may face problems they didn't think of.

Now, Ethereum clearly differs as number of transactions, but that's because of the huge number of tokens. Can Bitcoin handle that now? No. So for now smart contracts are out of discussion.
Monero has pretty small number of transactions, but it has become the standard for anonymous coins. Would Bitcoin go on that path? I highly doubt it.

Indeed, there are plenty of coins (or forks) that only changed the algo, or the block size, or simply have bigger advertising. Those are already known as irrelevant or speculation-only (shit)coins. Yes, those may become obsolete at some point. But the coins/platforms that have come with something indeed new and relevant will most probably have their niche and won't become "obsolete" or replaced.

I get that the forks like Litecoin, Dogecoin and Bitcoin Cash obviously copy Bitcoin, but these aren't the only ones in existence. The Ethereum developers seem to have a serious dedication into their unique project. Basically, the cryptocurrencies with potential are the ones that don't copy it like Monero, Cardano, Zcash, Stellar etc. All of these have a serious development, they aren't a bunch of lines changed from Bitcoin Core's source code.

Recently, I have read about the Avalanche and Ren Protocol network alliance that their goal is to offer users fast transactions and low fees. Thanks to this alliance Ren Protocol will offer users to use the network with BTC and other coins.
Maybe this is one of the solutions we are looking for, the Ren protocol team talks about the beginning of the cross-chain era and offering interoperability for DeFi.

The primary function of these coins is monetary value.  Bitcoin has the largest value.

Bitcoin, despite being the largest, still had a 50% drop over the past month. What chance do the others have when bitcoin can drop by that much? They may have additional functions, but a primary currency shouldn't be tied to additional functions. Bitcoin also remains the coin with best security -- the long proof of work chains from the last twelve years and with every new 5? minute block creates security. Other coins can't compete with this feature (bug?), the one that provides security. Security is the most necessary element for a currency over what these may offer, or even 100% stability in conversion values.

Other blockchains could quickly replace bitcoin if bitcoin were to be compromised by some unforeseeable circumstance. They are a part of the decentralized network. They won't overtake bitcoin without some cataclysmic problem, which is increasingly unlikely with each year.

I disagree with the statement which is why my answer to your question is no.
First we have to distinguish between altcoins and shitcoins. When you see coins that are very similar to bitcoin and have copied bitcoin with all its shortcomings you know that they are "shitcoins" not "altcoins" (aka alternative cryptocurrencies). They are already obsolete because they are useless even though their prices may be high or have a market cap that is closest to bitcoin's.

A real alternative cryptocurrency with real innovations and improvements will never be obsolete. If the developers stop caring about making themselves millionaires in shortest time and start innovating the same way Satoshi did, we will see a cryptocurrency that could actually compete with bitcoin.
But I don't think this is going to happen for at least another decade.

Because alternate cryptocurrencies have copied source code from Bitcoin and edit it for the interests of the teams create those altcoins.

Bitcoin has biggest network, biggest communities, biggest adoption and best developers. I can not find any exchange, merchant, etc. that accept cryptocurrency but does not accept Bitcoin.

Bitcoin Core developers have worked hard to keep updates the blockchain. Bitcoin is different than altcoins because of its decentralization. Any updates for Bitcoin need to have consensus and it can not be completed in 1 second like altcoins.

Are you saying that all altcoin blockchains are similar to the Bitcoin blockchain?
What about the differences between PoW and PoS?Proof-of-stake is not the same as Proof-of-work.
Ethereum isn't similar to Bitcoin and it will never be.
Most of the shitcoins are already obsolete,but sooner or later,someone will create an altcoin,that is good enough to compete with Bitcoin.It's always good to have competition on the market.If Bitcoin Core was a total monopoly,then the Bitcoin Core Devs wouldn't be motivated to improve the Bitcoin blockchain and make Bitcoin better.

The only other coin that has the community and, dare i say, utility apart from Bitcoin is Ethereum.

The strength of Ethereum is that it is widely used and owned like Bitcoin and currently uses PoW, which makes it truly decentralized. Products built on top of Ethereum like DeFi have started supporting transaction and values in tens of billions per day. These aren't use-cases and industries that can simply be ported over to LN when the time comes.

Even if LN and Bitcoin's SC ability becomes sufficient, the industry won't just switch over.

Now, the catch is that this value is still tiny compared to the true off-chain transaction value. There is still huge scope to bring traditional institutions onboard. Bitcoin's decentralization and security (hashrate) ensures that any real institution with real experts making money decisions, quickly grasp that locking value into a centralized PoS coin (or some version of it claiming 10000 TPS), isn't the monetary solution they are looking for.

The space for actual, decentralized smart-contracts is thus, wide open. More so with Ethereum plans to move to PoS. Unfortunately, there isn't much momentum in Bitcoin development in the direction of targeting these use-cases. We are still waiting for that transition to smooth LN transactions for almost 3 years now.

So, quite simply, the most agile PoW coin will come out on tops. For much of the past decade and from what history suggests, it'll continue to be Bitcoin.

This is not true and it's almost impossible to change code so much to implement everything that other altcoins have, and I think it is not needed at all.
What I would like to se changed and improved in Bitcoin code is working on better privacy and private transactions, but I don't see anything that suggest this is going to happen soon.
I am not counting some sidechains or second layer solutions and wallets with coinjoins and mixers.

Most altcoins are already obsolete, but Bitcoin is never meant to be all-in-one swiss knife solution to fix all the problems in the world.
Bitcoin is simple but complex in same time and that is why it wasn't hacked so far, so making more complex code changes increase possibility of bugs and makes it much less secure than it is now.
Everything that altcoins are doing, and that is not so much as some people, think can be implemented in Bitcoin via sidechains.

Long term? But look at the past 10 years. Altcoins have grown, prospered, and yes 99% die, but if you have 50,000 alts, that still means 50 survive and every cycle of Bitcoin prosperity like now sees 10,000 more alt projects come up. I don't think it'll ever be only Bitcoin. Already we see spaces filled with memecoins privacy coins and smart contract coins. Everyone can and will coexist.

I think it's safe to say that's much more complicated than that ^{[unfortunately]}.

I don't think realistically that's achievable by BTCitcoin, especially for those altcoins that survived that state, upon being introduced for the first time to the crypto-currency world.
^{- From thousands of existing or upcoming altcoins, there will always be some that'll have real use cases where BTCitcoin might not be a solution.}

Taproot ^{[to an extent]}.

Indeed.  Between the issues of finding consensus and problems surrounding compatibility with the underlying architecture, it is challenging to add new features to the base protocol.  This is why it's predominantly optimisations which are added there.

The real question becomes how many features are actually worth implementing.  Some of them may only have niche appeal.  If legitimate altcoins are filling all the existing niches in the market (and all the crapcoins merely have decorative baubles), there's likely very little advantage to adding lots of extra features.     

Altcoins promise to do a lot of things, but they don't actually do them. Ethereum is not used to write decentralized applications, it's used to issue scam tokens. Coins with free transactions and "fast" confirmation times are not used as payment method because of their weak security and unstable price. Filecoin, Namecoin and other unique projects - they also aren't used much in real life. IMO the biggest succesful altcoin use-case is privacy, as coins like Monero have popularity on par with Bitcoin, if not greater, on darknet markets.

Bitcoin doesn't need to adopt useless features, it should remain being focused on security.

If you try to become everything, it is most likely that you end up being nothing.

I'd rather have an asset that does one thing and does it better than anything else instead of having an asset that wants to be everything but can't really accomplish anything.

Is bitcoin the best at doing anything? Not sure. I can't say it is. So far the price has been going up and up and up and since people say that bitcoin is a SoV, as long as the price keeps climbing it is safe to say that bitcoin is good at rising against the dollar. But is it going to last forever? Hopefully yes.

Is bitcoin trying to be everything? No and that's a good thing.

I like your style.

I think I wrote it above, but bitcoin is primarily a way to exchange currency. It doesn't have to be fast, or allow small values. It has to be secure. It doesn't have to solve the other problems of the world, but it has to solve one major problem -- being a distributed and secure unit of wealth.

Many of the world's problems are based on wealth. Inflation is a source of the fuddery in politics by enabling money to be grifted to high profile benefactors to secure their position before the common person has access to the inflated values. These benefactors then influence laws to further benefit themselves. The common person has pays these hidden taxes. A distributed ledger provides a more even playing field. It isn't perfect, but it's a step forward.

Bitcoin is the closest cryptocurrency to solving this problem. Altcoins don't have a chance, yet.

by including sidechains..
.. all it does is push people out of bitcoin to then play with those silly tokens on the sidechains and altnets

take banks pushing people to vault up gold in 1900's.. eventually the gold back peg of a bank note disapeared and banknotes were not worth the value printed on them

just watch out when networks like LN only endup working well if you vault up BTC into some companies 'watchtower' and they later want to reimburse you with altcoins should you ever want to actually unlock out of their channel. 'coz cheap fees'

the signs are already there. watchtowers, factory channels, high onchain fees, atomic swaps

deposit gold-> play with bank notes -> swap for nickel coins of digital 'balance on databases
lock BTC -> play with milisat HTLC's ->atomic swap for altcoin or exchange balance

true bitcoin maximalists like bitcoin. not other networks pretending to be
yes have sidechains for daily play/waste funds.
but dont expect bitcoin maximalists to lock-in their entire hoard

Then it potentially becomes a trade-off.  How much are you willing to compromise to support a feature that may not be compatible with the current implementation?  What are you willing to sacrifice in order to make a gain elsewhere?  The beauty of building something off-chain is that you don't need to compromise the base protocol. 

If you build something on top of Bitcoin, people can opt in if they choose to.  They can decide for themselves what compromises they are willing to make.  There's no requirement to convince everyone to make the same choice.  How do you always see this as some sort of sordid and undesirable course of action? 

There are pros and cons of using bitcoin compared to using altcoin and using fiat.

Free thought is encouraged - the presence of altcoins only confirm that. Now why they exist in the first place was because bitcoin had some downfalls in terms of people using them like fees increase with price, network congestion with craze in the mainstream market. Altcoins try to cover up the market in such situations and I feel that is a complementary process that helps decongest the bitcoin network with time.

It means that the altcoins are not all useless, but also note that most altcoins that have been developed have died out and only the top 100 altcoins in the market have been able to make any impact.

This ecosystem is comparable to a democratic system and not an autocratic one. People are free to use any crypto that they want but will have to bear consequences according to the pros and cons of that currency.

Also true maximalists don't support centralized platforms that "stake Bitcoin". Anthony Pompliano for example shills Blockfi like crazy and calls himself Bitcoin lover, but tells people it's okay to put their bitcoin into blockfi to earn more. You would never see a true maximalist shilling or even getting paid for any corporates.

thats just scamming
any service promising automated profits by simply depositing funds into them is a scam

Correct. And so I can't stand when all these so called laser eyes people who tell the world Bitcoin is they way and only Bitcoin, then go and also get paid to promote companies like Blockfi. Into the Block is a nice show but he also promotes and brings in so many influencers and big names that are also promoting a lot of well as you say, scams.

Well, developers are trying to make Bitcoin an "All-in-one" blockchain platform with sidechains and the Lightning Network. Bitcoin is capable of doing many things altcoins do right now. For instance, you can deploy and execute smart contracts with the security of the Bitcoin blockchain using RSK. People don't need to use a separate cryptocurrency like Ethereum to get access to this. All they need is their own BTC (in the form of RBTC) to interact with smart contracts on the RSK sidechain. The same way, people don't need to use altcoins which provide blazing-fast transactions and ultra-low fees since it's all possible with Bitcoin's Lightning Network. The more sidechains and off-layer solutions, the more Bitcoin's functionalities are expanded, putting altcoins in the dust.

One thing for sure is that there are many altcoins with no real use cases in the mainstream world. Bitcoin is what it's all about, as it's the one that moves the whole crypto market. Every single cryptocurrency depends on Bitcoin to succeed. After all, Bitcoin is the reserve cryptocurrency of the market. When people join crypto/Blockchain tech, the first cryptocurrency they come into is Bitcoin. Not Ethereum, Dogecoin, or any of the other altcoins on the market. Some altcoins have survived because they have vibrant communities supporting them every step of the way. Whenever they'll stand the test of time or fade into oblivion, it's yet to be determined. At least, Bitcoin will last forever thanks to its decentralized and censorship-resistant design. Just my thoughts ;D

That depends on how much you consider sidechains or layer 2 as bitcoin. Binance don't even use segwit yet. What makes you think that all these other platforms and businesses will adopt these? RSK? Is there even one exchange that uses it? Maybe bitfinex, cannot remember it now.

There is blockchain trilemma b/w scalability, centralization and security. While BTC is highly secure and decentralized its disappointingly slow. There are many altcoins that solve this trilemma in terms of speed, so in the long run we will require altcoins when it comes to speedy blockchain.

Good point. It's yet the time where SegWit and the Lightning Network lack mainstream adoption. This could be related to altcoins' prominence on the crypto/Blockchain space. Why would people use something as complicated as the Lightning Network, when they can easily switch to another altcoin with on-chain scaling? The same thing can be said about smart contracts on the Bitcoin blockchain. Despite the dream of using Bitcoin for everything, altcoins are still relevant in the mainstream world. As long as the competition is healthy, Bitcoin's dominance will be somewhat-limited. More projects = more innovation in the crypto/Blockchain space. Sidechains and Layer-2 scaling expands Bitcoin's functionalities, but they'll never replace altcoins in their entirety. I'm fine with that as long as Bitcoin stays decentralized. Just my thoughts ;D

Bitcoin has the network with the most power, never hacked, and Bitcoin rules never changed, that's why it gives a sense of security.

As opposite:
Ethereum is a better coin, but it suffered a 51% attack once, and now it is controlled by whatever Vitalik Buterin wants to achieve (EIP 1559, Vitalik vs. Miners example). That is why Ethereum price is 15 times below BTC even when its technology is superior.

I don't think that the majority of users will ever need to know how complex the Lightning Network is under the hood. BlueWallet (https://bluewallet.io/) provides a good experience for users who don't want to bother with managing their own channels. Strike (https://strike.me/) has taken an even bolder approach and might actually be able to get ordinary people onboard. The user needs only to scan a Bitcoin or Lightning invoice and it will be automatically paid by Strike. The user doesn't even need to own any bitcoin; their credit card is charged instead.

You mean bitcoin "principles" never changed otherwise bitcoin (consensus) rules have changed multiple times. For example in early days we introduced P2SH scripts (a big change in rules), in 2017  SegWit and a couple of days ago Taproot.
That is also not the reason for bitcoin's security (not just a sense of it). Bitcoin is secure because its protocol is secure and without flaws, it is fully decentralized so it can not be controlled or maliciously altered, any attack vector in bitcoin is either impossible due to its choice of protocol (eg. ECDSA) or costs a lot that becomes practically impossible (eg. 51% attack).

Ethereum is also centralization, inflationary, has severely flawed protocol with a lot of attack vectors, has no real world utility, has a massive premine, is super expensive to use due to its serious scaling flaws and its blockchain lacks immutability.

I find this to be the most likely. Great response.

You should check out Taproot, Tapscript and Schnorr and update that "Nope".  Not to mention side chains, lightning etc.

As far as "Energy Efficient", anything can be efficient if you don't care about security.  Using energy is what keeps the network secure.  The alt-coins that promise otherwise are preying upon the naïveté of people who aren't following the security of them.

As far as "not affordable"?  Really?  You can buy any amount of bitcoin that you want so it is as affordable as you want it to be.

Login, facts, and reason seem to be missing from at least 3 of the points above.

I was viewed as someone who is closed-minded for saying that Bitcoin’s POW part has been ossified, and will never EVER be upgraded to change into another algorithm or another mechanism, but the moment I want to be open-minded and ask for everyone’s opinions on Drivechains I’m called someone who wants to start “drama”.

OP, research BIP-300/Drivechains. But I warn you, asking too much questions, and you will be branded negatively, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5344091.0

Now I know how it it is to be franky1. Sorry, franky1. I will try to be open-minded next time. Haha.

I love Bitcoin the most but I use altcoins too.In fact when I want to exchange Bitcoins fast and with lower fees I send them to an exchange,exchange with a coin with lower fees and then withdraw to my bank account or credit card.What I want to say is,we should not be fanatics of only one technology,we should mix them all if possible and in the end the result should be good for our own profitability.

In terms of technology, Bitcoin will only have upgrades but they always fade because the source code is difficult to upgrade aggressively. Altcoins are built entirely new code but the problem is there are too many altcoins and they are not really decentralized like Bitcoin.
People are used to Bitcoin as a long-term and reliable investment. It is separate from blockchain, even those who are not knowledgeable about crypto and blockchain are still actively investing in Bitcoin.

I think there are a lot of things and issues that bitcoin and its developers can expand upon and fix, but a lot of the changes that will have a significant impact on the bitcoin and the transactions overall are major and are not really welcomed within the bitcoin community in itself because they want to stay as authentic to the original coin as much as possible even though it is not that optimized for as many people as it was excepted, like one of the issues is the high transaction fees and long confirmation time that gets worse and worse each time the bitcoin gains a bit of a popularity, and many of the coin that want to expand and solve issue that bitcoin has don't gain as much popularity as bitcoin does because they are always looked upon as a scuffed copy of it.

Bitcoin has a first mover advantage and 12 years of adoption history behind it... that's a tremendous leg up and can't be overcome. At least not anytime soon.

Facts and logical reasoning have never been a priority for that user, whichever pseudonym they happen to be operating under at any given moment.  I wouldn't expect things to change on that front any time soon, heh.  They're simply here to shill Proof-of-Stake.  One-track mind.  Little else matters to them, least of all integrity.

---

As it seems a fitting question for a topic about maximalism:  At what point are we simply re-inventing the wheel?  If the general idea behind Bitcoin was to empower people to handle their own money, going down that route, it sounds more as though we've effectively just added another middleman to the existing group of financial middlemen.  Unless I've misunderstood something, I get the impression there's no real benefit to the average customer beyond what they'd get using fiat alone?  Or do the benefits stack more on the side of the merchants who wish to receive payment in BTC?

i did exactly what you did because if the holder might be ok to be maximalist but for the traders i think it is too ineffective and can reduce the income than it should get.
because the option to buy not only bitcoin but accompanied by altcoins is highly recommended for traders, and actually this method can also be used for holders as well

The problem is that you can't expect everyone to take advantage of the potential financial independency. Simply put, people are lazy and seek the easy way of doing things. Most of them might never use a non-custodial wallet.


That depends on what you think that the average customer is more likely to value. For example, Bitcoin transactions are irreversible. Assuming that most merchants will use third-party payment processors, this probably won't be a problem if they have some refund policy like Visa or MasterCard. Otherwise, there are going to be a ton of complaints. Unless governments push CBDCs and negative interest rates, I don't think that ordinary people have any significant incentive to switch over.


That's a good remark. I see Strike as a necessary product for the transitional period where more and more merchants start accepting Bitcoin while users are slowly catching up.

That is good to know. The more wallets like the ones mentioned, the better it'll be for the Lightning Network's adoption in the mainstream world. Basically, Bitcoin has all it takes to become an "All-in-one" solution. It's only limited to developers' imagination. The Lightning Network will be used to process micropayments on the Bitcoin, while the RSK sidechain will be used for Bitcoin-based smart contracts. If only merchants, businesses, and companies made use of these technologies, Bitcoin would've reached a greater audience.

At least, there's diversity on the market. This is a good sign for Blockchain tech's long-term sustainability. The more projects there are, the stronger Bitcoin and Blockchain tech will become. I believe that altcoins will serve as testing grounds for Bitcoin. Developers can test new features on an alternative blockchain before they integrate them into the Bitcoin blockchain (if they wish to do so). Consider how Litecoin became one of the first (if not the first) cryptocurrencies to adopt SegWit. After it became a success on LTC, developers decided to activate it on Bitcoin for miners to signal their approval. It didn't take long before SegWit became fully activated on the BTC blockchain. With how far altcoins have gone, I don't think Bitcoin will become the sole cryptocurrency in the decentralized realm. Just my thoughts ;D