Bitcoin Forum

Most Bitcoin newbie ask this question:
Why is BITCOIN more expensive than other cryptocurrency?

Bitcoin was the first in the market, that's why you are starting to see a lot of fortune 500 companies starting to support Bitcoin.
Sure, once in a while, they'll throw money around on the table to support other cryptocurrency coins.

Also because of trade volume, it's big userbase, it's accepted by more merchants than any coin, has proven it's worth for many years, and has an active dev team.

because, we trust.
because, we are a astonishing power of calculation.

because, it's a verified core software and miners work.
becuase, main site and leadger viewer exist.

the real question..

why are altcoins so cheap, worthless and dont hold value for long

at the core of it all is that people believe in it being a legitimate crypto.. money goes where the people think it has value. bitcoin is building a lot of infrastructure, so it would be pretty hard for it to be replaced by another crypto.. barring maybe a total collapse of BTC really.

Yes Bitcoin was obviously the first and it got the most exposure, so its the highest
But my question is, Is there any other coin that can reach or pass bitcoin's marketcap?
Some young coin, they have a few years to ripe like bitcoin.
Can we see so much grow in other coins to?

Of course it is possible, just like how gmail surpassed hotmail a few years ago.
I think Bitcoin becoming #2 is quite unlikely, but the crypto-economy will be distributed with more power to some altcoins in the future; there's no reason that only Bitcoin should succeed.

i'm thinking it can only happen if bitcoin suffered a catastrophic collapse.. otherwise, there's way too much infrastructure and support that comes with bitcoin. i don't think there's a way for another coin to catch up to bitcoin while it is the main cryptocurrency.

Because: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe's_law

And once that gets going, the incentive for every new entrant, on average, is strongest to join the already-largest network...which only strengthens said network even more.

What are the incencitives to join Bitcoin rather than other coins? It's indeed a safer investment, and it's accepted in more places. However, the "niche" aspect of other cryptos (each has a unique community that can be more attractive to some than Bitcoin's more disparate community), and the fact that there are more profit potentials, seems to be better incencitives for new users.

Yes for working people that are new to bitcoin, its hard for them to get in.
If they hear they cant mine it anymore, and the price to buy it is to high for them.
How and why should they get interested, maybe a few look further to altcoins.
But most of them will get on with their lifes.

4500 physical shops accept bitcoin and many websites as well

hundreds of thousands of users use bitcoin

in other words bitcoin has much more support, and there's the value.

Why is facebook worth billions and myspace worthless? Same reason.

That proves my point: Myspace used to be worth way more than Facebook, this shows that the "first mover" advantage is not absolute.

Bitcoin is much more secure than any alt because of billions of dollars of mining hardware and hundreds of active developers.

Tree chains and/or sidechain technology can leverage the strengths of bitcoin and feature sets of alts and further solidify Bitcoins future.

Even if you prefer other alts over bitcoin the survival of your coin is interlinked with the fate of bitcoin because if the first, most widespread, most secure, and most accepted crypto-currency fails than that puts into doubt the viability of every other cryptocurrency whether it be for justified reasons or not. Some cryptocurrency users realize this and some do not but it is a very important principle and one reason why we should stand behind bitcoin and help it evolve if needed while staying true to the foundational principles.

Bitcoin isn't a company but a protocol that is embedded in physical Point of Sale devices, Mining hardware , and where thousands of companies have spent resources to integrate Bitcoin into their business model. Comparing Bitcoin to a private company isn't appropriate and a better analogy would be comparing Bitcoin to IPv4 (why have we taken 26 years to switchover to IPv6 and only 3% there?) or HTML (Why is this still foundational to the Internet and other scripting languages scaffold-ed upon it?)

I don't think I've ever seen or heard anyone ask that question. 

That's a good point, but still I think it's inexact, because it would be very impractical to simultaneously use different web protocol, while it's really easy to set up more than one wallet and/or trade between different currencies. Cryptocurrencies are not really in competion like the different protocols used to be, which means that fluctuation in the crypto-marketshare of Bitcoin and other alts can vary greatly in the future and there's no reason one will stay high on top.

Also, the infrastructures built around Bitcoin are easily cross-compatible with other currencies.

Its also the most expensive because people are needing to buy BTC to get hold of other alts like NXT, Darkcoin, etc.

I think there will be some tough competition for BTC in the not too distant future however.

NXT has the most advanced technology behind it, and if people want privacy, well theres a few options in altcoins...

IMHO, all these other *coins are a distraction.  Bitcoin still isn't widespread enough.  Even though there are thousands of merchants who accept Bitcoin, that is still a TINY, TINY percentage of merchants. The far majority of the population would say no to replacing their fiat currency with Bitcoin, at this time.  Instead of competing with Bitcoin and taking away any marketshare from Bitcoin, even if it is small marketshare, the resources spent on the other *coins should be spent on Bitcoin, as Bitcoin still needs help to become established.

IPv4 to IPv6 is mostly a software issue where computers can be upgraded and some switches/routers have their firmware upgraded. Why is it so difficult to switch when IPv6 is superior and in many cases a very needed upgrade?

The reason why is because while it is easier to upgrade user wallets(coin) or OS(IPv6) there are these additional problems :
1) IPv4 is still in many computers where users don't upgrade right away , ISP's and sites need to have a very long transitionary phase where they support both protocols.

Bitcoin has the greatest user adoption and in the most cell phones, computers, and most people are familiar with Bitcoin's companies /hot wallets. There would also need to be a very long transition because merchants aren't going to alienate clients.

2) IPv4 has tons of services and codebase dependent upon this protocol. IPv6 requires adding or modifying a lot of code not just in one company but across the whole economy. This is very expensive.

Bitcoin has thousands of developers writing apps, sites, and API's that interact with the bitcoin blockchain. Changing this is very expensive.

3) IPv4 is sometimes hardcoded in certain very expensive switches at datacenters and/or firmware coded switches that no longer have support from the companies to upgrade to IPv6.

Bitcoin has many companies coming out with Point of sale  and hardware wallets that either cannot be adapted to another alt or won't.

A individual company can come and go but Bitcoin isn't a website or company but a whole ecosystem of hundreds of thousands of companies that are integrated with it.



ASIC miners can only mine Bitcoin or very similar SHA256 alts. Most Cyrpto-currencies cannot be mined now or ever with the existing Billions of dollars in hardware.

Finally, Bitcoin is Open source and evolving and can swallow many alt features in the future directly or indirectly through sidechains/tree chains. Alts in general that aren't tied to Bitcoin like namecoin are in serious jeopardy in the near future because of this.

I believe there will always be hundreds of alts but besides a few of the 3-4 top ones most will radically shrink in proportional value to bitcoin as Bitcoin takes over and becomes more robust.

It is about infrastructure. Bitcoin has a strong infrastructure and thus more value. Thats why many bitcoin advocates/services support bitcoin only. They understand that adding more coins to the service dilutes the value. It is something many users expect as well since they have interest in bitcoin only.

Also other coins dont offer additional utility to the users so users prefer the most liquid coin. Pair that with the fact that procols have strong network effects, money has strong network effects, ecosystems have strong network effects (i.e. android ecosystem has so many devs building for it and making more users to adopt it making more devs to develop) merchants adoption has strong network effects (copies of paypal were not that successful because of that) .

Bitcoin combines all the above network effects together and people expect bitcoin to become even stronger and thus has higher value.

Myspace is not designed to be used as a currency though. Its users can migrate to another social networking site like Facebook without feeling an ounce of regret. Bitcoin users can't do that without incurring a potential financial loss. You see, Bitcoin's advantage is not that of "first mover," but rather being the core around which all currently existing cryptocurrencies revolve around.

Bitcoin is far superior to Nxt because their is 1000x more developers writing code for it and creating innovative solutions.
Darkcoin doesn't solve anything that BTC solved long ago with stealth and coinjoin.

I am mining monero with my small end CPU. And BTC is the only cryptocurrency I love. And I personally use BTC only. Monero is just for time pass.

NXT and Proof of Stake cannot be decentralized. If you base the longest chain on most stake chain past owners (who sold) can create parallel chain and reverse the entire chain. Even exchanges which had at some point in the past huge amount of coins can create a chain with big stake in it.

As for Darkcoin I dont see the point of it since bitcoin has darkwallet  and the infrastructure.

Agreed looks like everyone is using alts to make more bitcoins thats why people switch from altcoin to altcoin .. to increase their bitcoin position.



http://blog.oleganza.com/post/54121516413/the-universe-wants-one-money

http://themisescircle.org/blog/2014/03/14/the-coming-demise-of-the-altcoins/

Most people don't do that, or else altcoins would already have no value...

No just many people didnt figure that out yet because there are too many newbies coming in. Since the pace of newbies slowed down the since December the alts lost a lot of value during that time. (The entire altcoin space lost 70% with respect to bitcoin, and thats a huge number) I studied the April bubble and the same happened. Also altcoins have value because since the bubble all the litecoin value (1.4 billion at the time) was going from altcoin to altcoin..

 The fact that litecoin bagholders didnt figure out yet that they are funding all sorts of altcoins since December doesnt mean much...

They will figure it out though.... Altcoins are good as long as there newbies coming in...

Litecoin and Peercoin have been growing since early 2012, are you saying that the only thing that made them have value is the inflow of newbies?

This one is pretty easy to answer. Every other coin is based on Bitcoin. Their value will always be relative to it, and so when it goes down in value the rest do as well to compensate for this.

What needs to happen is for some altcoins to break away from Bitcoin, but that will take a long time, if it happens at all.

Yes there were a lot of new people coming in the last 2 years... What do you expect. I owned both at some point made some profit and then I realized that. Also doesnt mean that I will not own some other coin make some money in the future... I just dont believe they for bagholding... Litecoin gained a lot of value because exchanges added it.

It seems to be happening with Dogecoin at the moment, since it went down this week while bitcoin was going up. This might be because because dogecoin buyers tend to be more independant from Bitcoin than the users of other cryptos.

With all the respect I disagree. As long as they are mainly traded in bitcoin and not fiat they cannot break away...

Indeed, but the fact that they have not followed Bitcoin's recent price movement makes me think they are headed in that direction :)
Also, there are a few exchanges where the Doge-USD orderbook is getting somewhat respectable, like vault of satoshi.

I'm going to agree that there is some separation at the moment, but it needs to progress much further before it's really viable. If, and it's a big if, DOGE happens to completely break away, it will be the first altcoin to do so. If this happens I'm curious as to how it'd affect the market...

That would be really interesting, since traders could have a hedge against BTC's drop in value, without resorting to fiat.

It would still be pretty risky either way, because while you could swap money from BTC to DOGE, either market could crash at any time. I would venture out to say that BTC is still always going to be the safest bet, regardless of DOGE's pricing at the time. I can't fathom going from BTC -> DOGE as a hedge.

adoption rates.

often times the first thing to the marketplace, that gets the most adoption is the one that does the best. at least until something replaces it.


why is amazon.com #1  and not walmart.com ?   why is youtube #1  and not dailymotion ?  its not just that they are good products and services, its that they got to the market first and thats what everyone uses.

Why is facebook #1  but other social media sites that have offered more than facebook flop...again, facebook got there first.

The first doesnt always win, but so long as they dont muck up heavily, they usually remain a powerhouse.

Also in a nutshell, the most merchants accept BTC out of any crypto, so therefore, the most people need it, and therefore the most people are willing to pay for it.

This is absolute BS.

Facebook was 2004, Myspace was over a year before that.
Walmart.com was 1995, Amazon was the same year

Don't make up things to prove a point when you aren't even using accurate examples. The only one you got correct was YouTube.

1000x more developers, Really?
I dont see there being much more that can be made to improve bitcoin, its as good as it can ever be, for it to be entirely successful, we need it as fast as Eftpos or Credit card, until that happens, we wont see it in use on the retail sector.

I see tons of innovative solutions in NXT, after months of careful consideration and research i decided to invest in it, not to say that bitcoin wont be around in the future, it certainly will, but have we dont fully even know the full potential of crypto currency as a whole.
Not many people even know about bitcoin, let alone other crypto currencies.

I think there is plenty of room for a handful of crypto currencies, but not the hundreds of crap coins we see today, i wish they would all go away, at least some have useful developers and fresh ideas.

Its been established and it was the first of its kind. The first of anything gets the recognition even if its not technically the best. It will take a very long time for any other crypto to get close to Bitcoin

What if MySpace uses Bitcoin so bands can sell their music (competing with iTunes), and it fuels a huge comeback, since it will be the first "major" social network where people can use BTC? Facebook then sees people using Myspace in bigger numbers, and they also introduce BTC.  :)

Mostly agree......I think bitcoin will be fine for anonymity, although.......will be interesting to see darkcoin and litecoin duke it out??

Nxt is interesting but has the "nothing at stake" problem.....the nxt folks are making a mountain out of a molehill when it comes to bitcoin's energy consumption, which is not really an issue if actually write down some numbers.....and also, nxt is bad for cold storage since you have your wallet open to secure the network.

That would be an excellent idea for them. I always liked the site but hated the feature that would play music every time I visited someones page. I was a poor college kid at the time so it was invariably in the library that this would happen. 

I think because firstly bitcoin was the first digital crypto currency and the code Is smartly made that all alts these days couldn't compare with It. But basically first come first serve so that's what happened with bitcoin but there other factors of course like I said It's smartly made.

Bitcoin price initially was very low (like alts atm) in comparison to where it is today. Maybe some (a few) alts will also become a rocket like bitcoin. Also, if you look at the nature of things, it is always diverse, so I think diversity in crypto's not bad, but unity in diversity is advisable.

http://themisescircle.org/blog/2013/08/22/the-problem-with-altcoins/

The price of any good will reflect 2 things;
The scarcity of that good and its utility.

Cars, food, hookers, bitcoin. Scarcity and usefulness.

I point newbs towards this piece by Erik Voorheis.
http://evoorhees.blogspot.com/2012/04/bitcoin-libertarian-introduction.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect
[/TOPIC]

Seriously, this topic can now be closed. There is nothing more to say here.

That's well said. I hate to see the hate that can happen between owners of different coin; although of course a bit of competition is always nice as it makes one get incencitives to grow.

Let's never forget that all the coins are in the same team against fiat currencies ;)

This makes zero sense.

If you want to buy $10 worth of bitcoins, then you can buy $10 worth of bitcoins regardless of their price.

Redundancy is not highly valued compared to innovation.

Today you can buy 1920 bits for a dollar (last week you could get 2300 bits for each dollar).  So for $100 you can buy 192,000 bits, which is quite a lot, right?   :D

I believe it is a risk management issue. There are two things people will consider when deciding which crypto to buy:

1. For interim usage to make a purchase - in this case it does not matter which coin in used because it is converted from and to fiat right away. To send someone $100, it is unimportant whether you send DOGE or BTC or something else. What is important here? Acceptance. And BTC has the best acceptance, period.  :)

2. For speculation or store of value - in this case, altcoins are risiker but also have more potential. But for large volume investors, altcoins have an elevated risk. It is much more likely for altcoin XYZ to vanish than BTC. Often it is said, why should BTC be the winner, others are cheaper. But these people forget that such a cheap coin carries a much larger risk to go under. Miners stop mining it, people stop buying it, coin dies.  :-\

You could also ask, why are people not exchanging USD for Nigerian Naira (for example), it is so much cheaper. Maybe, but 1. and 2. apply to any foreign currency as well, so people tend to stick with the majors.  ;D

Far too many people think that altcoins are going to go up over the next 4 years. The issue here is that they are tied to Bitcoin. For the collective value of altcoins to go up by 50%, BTC has to go up by 50%. This is because there can't be more value in alts than there are in BTC, or we'd end up with another partial reserve system.

most average people who don't know much about bitcoin don't realize that though.  They hear $500 for a bitcoin , think they cant afford it, and look no further.


of course, that should change in the coming years/decades. wasn't that long ago the average person didn't know how to set up an email account either.

Bitcoin is like the gold in crytocurrency, and Litecoin is like a silver, and other cryptocurrencies are just minerals as of today.
I think Bitcoin is the first main cryptocurrency that has gone mainstream and that's been successful to able to reach at its current state today after 5 years. It has the most trade volume and attention from investors and users that it's definitely is more expensive that other cryptocurrencies.

BTC is old, hence it has more buyers and more markets than altcoins, and moreover the media also sometimes help in publicizing btc. these reasons make btc better than other cryptos.

Bitcoin has a catchy name, it also has good meaning. "Bit" have a lot to do with computer programming, and electronics. "Coin" has the meaning of currency. When combine together you get the idea of digital currency or true electronic currency of the modern age; made for the civilized men, women, and children world wide. That's another reason Bitcoin's price will always be higher than other cryptocurrency.

The demand is higher. Over 60,000 merchants use Bitcoin. And it's not too scarce, but there's also not too much.

First mover advantage is real though.

Until something better comes along (such was the case in the above scenarios). I was just pointing out that the information he was using to justify his reasoning was completely incorrect.

its not about first mover at all.

its about utility.

show me 30,000+ businesses that accept dog or nxt.
show me atleast 2 dozen places to swap altcoins for fiat
show me a altcoin forum that has more posts and discussions then this forum

show me games that are not copy and paste jobs (EG dragons tales) that accept altcoins
show me proper large scale use of an altcoin.......

bitcoin is NOT expensive, its altcoins that are too chap and/or worthless

1)  Your username is an advertisement to your website.
2)  You create tons, and tons, and tons of new threads with silly questions or news articles everyone has already read, most likely so people see your business.
3)  You try to draw further attention to your threads by selecting a unique icon like a "thumbsup" so it stands out from the other threads.
3)  Naturally you also have a signature advertising your business.

You are here to get business.  

-B-

First mover advantage has a lot to do with it. Imagine if when the Cyprus crisis happened we had all the altcoins that we have today - no way Bitcoin would have shot up so much as quickly as it did.

But now it has by far the most money backing it in way of businesses, investors, developers, etc. so that's the reason it is still #1 !!

No. Bitcoin is still #1 because none of the others are bringing anything truly new to the table (at least in terms of what matters). Anonymity? ASIC-proof? Lower energy usage? None of these are relevant in the overall picture. They are just to entice miners into joining.

Simply because it's used by more than more than ten thousands merchhant if not hundreds thousands...
I guess maybe millions of humans overall..

Quite simple eh !!!

So what?

Darkcoin hasnt followed that path however, demand for a coin is the #1 reason for price increase, if no one is after a partucluar coin, it has no value.

I think it's pretty obvious why it's the most expensive. It's bigger in every way.

It's not bigger in terms of amount of coins compared to some. Bitcoin just has the brand though and that's a big plus.

because people pay more for it?

lol, well I guess it always comes down to supply and demmand  ;D.

People are ready to pay more, as they don't want to lose their money in some pump-and-dump shit-coin. Greedy people who invest in shit-coins, hoping to multiply their money by 100 times overnight will lose everything.  ;D

in the late 2013 rally altcoins made a few people quite rich  ;D
But nowadays you´re right that the hopes of increasing an investment by buying altcoins by  100 times are really delusional.

Altocoins believers want to achieve Bitcoin-like returns without producing Bitcoin-like innovations.

The only reason early Bitcoin miners got incredibly wealthy is because they were doing something that had never been done in the history of the species.

The anser is one:
Because BTC is the queen! It is better in every way then the others.
BR

It's more expensive because its in demmand and people are using and spending it.

majority of bitcoin owners are currently holding their bitcoins instead of spending them.
(just look at the amounts the biggest bitcoin address contain -> probably all in cold storage = the BTC won´t be spend in the near future)

The thing is that cryptocurrencies in general are very new and still in their infancy.

The way i look at it is that bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency, but that doesnt mean more technologically advanced coins wont come out, and indeed they are.

Bitcoin is quite inferior in lots of ways, especially speedwise.
In saying that, bitcoin still serves its purpose as a reserve currency, but dont expect it to be used in retail shops soon, no one can wait 10 mins to confirm a transaction.

I think the fact that bitcoin was the first in the market does not explain why it is more expensive than other cryptocurrency

Yes, it does.

http://themisescircle.org/blog/2013/08/22/the-problem-with-altcoins/

If you're going to reject the arguments because they don't result in a conclusion you like, that doesn't make them less valid.

Because the founder isn't spending his coins.

Because bitcoin was the first ,and it became a its own brand ,that makes it value to be bigger the the rest of the cryptocurency.Bitcoin is not only a currency/investment it also became a brand!

Bitcoin’s value is bigger then other cryptocurrencies because  is not as easy to mine as other crypto currencies.