if BTC's 'market share' goes sub 50% this year what effect will this have?

[Wind_FURY]

Here are my assumptions about the Ethereum (ETH) blockchain, compared to Bitcoin’s:
-sniped-

very good answer.

@European Central Bank
it won't have any significant effect on bitcoin. because as I said bitcoin's market "share" is more real than others and as long as things that are creating the demand for bitcoin stay around, there will always be the same realistic market "share" that is also growing irregardless of what other coins are doing.

With the slow development of Bitcoin is solving the scaling debate the merchants and businesses that deal in Bitcoin could start accepting altcoins like Litecoin and Ethereum. Do not forget that Bitcoin's advantage is because it was first. Others are now catching up.

but when other coins go up like this, obviously they attract a lot of attention from everyone who wants profit! so they go there and either succeed in trading and come out with more profit or fail and lose money. again no effect on bitcoin.

Any kind of attention is good enough.

[rickadone]

you keep repeating a wrong word! it is not market share it is market cap. and even if market cap of bitcoin was only 1% of the whole cryptocurrency market cap it wouldn't have mattered because market share of bitcoin is >95% all the other altcoins have no real usage, they just create "coins" for example the biggest one that is causing this decrease in share of bitcoin from market cap is ethereum which has 91 million coins and it has no max which means it will keep on creating millions and getting the market cap into a fake bubble.
this was probably said a million times all over this forum:
market cap = number of coins * price

Even if the alts create many more coins in quantity, it will have no great impact on the bitcoin. Bitcoin will remain the unique one. I guess ethereum being the second one with the relation of price still cannot beat the bitcoin price because of the supply difference of both of them. There are some people promoting the alt will say things without any proper research or they just manipulate the things to promote their currency.

[el kaka22]

OP if you think that would really happen then you should start observing Litecoin's price movements. There might come a time that Bitcoin's fall could be directy proportional to Litecoin's rise.

BS.

So many LTC fans here.

Guys just think abou a normall market.

A company with a 50% market dominance is still huge.
Goodluck traading your BTC for altcoins, I will gladly buy them from you.

ICO's are just pushing Ethereum and otherwise.

BTC is just getting a new role to play.
Not a monopoly anymore, but its a store of value for all the crypto's.
Ethereum will be the platform for almost all the crypto's
LTC will be a test dummy for BTC
ETC will be an alternative for ETH when things go wrong
XRP is the bankster coin
DASH, monero and ZCASH ar for anonymous transactions.

Its quite simple and clear to me.
BTC is still the best choice guys, calm down

Yes, I agree BTC is the best. Even the alts go for their consideration to the bitcoin, the only possible way that an alt can be a threat to the bitcoin is a guess right ? It’s impossible for now. It may happen if the bitcoin don’t want further progress and then leave a space for the alts. I am astonished that people talking of alts don’t remember that alts are also traded in the BTC in the end.

[d5000]

I think there won't be any effect if Bitcoin has less than 50% of the total cryptocurrency "market cap".

The more interesting scenario is if an altcoin like ETH or LTC manages to get 50% of Bitcoin's market cap. That would transform it into a serious contender. In this case, all depends on the user base it is able to "steal" from Bitcoin's ecosystem.

If, for example, ETH manages to establish an efficient payment system (apart from its smart contract platform) that's really used, e.g. for eCommerce, then the argument that "altcoins aren't used for anything" or "altcoins are only a bubble" wouldn't hold anymore, and Bitcoin really will begin to face competition. Same for a LTC with Lightning or even sidechains (the barrier for sidechains is actually less relevant in altcoins).

[york780]

I think there won't be any effect if Bitcoin has less than 50% of the total cryptocurrency "market cap".

The more interesting scenario is if an altcoin like ETH or LTC manages to get 50% of Bitcoin's market cap. That would transform it into a serious contender. In this case, all depends on the user base it is able to "steal" from Bitcoin's ecosystem.

If, for example, ETH manages to establish an efficient payment system (apart from its smart contract platform) that's really used, e.g. for eCommerce, then the argument that "altcoins aren't used for anything" or "altcoins are only a bubble" wouldn't hold anymore, and Bitcoin really will begin to face competition. Same for a LTC with Lightning or even sidechains (the barrier for sidechains is actually less relevant in altcoins).

BTC's marketdominance will go to 30%

And still it will moon bigtime, it will scale and AFTER ALL THAT, it will go mainstream.

Alts will get 70% marketshare, but they will be a lot more scatered than now, ETH and LTC's marketdominance will also decrease BIGTIME.
Crypto is just in the second marketphase, maturing.

Early adoptors   : 2013-2016
Early majority   : 2017-......
Late  majority   :...............
Lagards           :  +/- 2030 ?

[alyssa85]

I wouldn't worry about it. Lots of alts are just speculative devices and it's perfectly possible that when several alts are being pumped at the same time, bitcoins share of crypto might be less than 50%.

The time to worry is if an alt's market share exceeds bitcoins - that is the only scenario where bitcoin is under threat.

[aso118]

If BTC's market share goes sub 50%, it would only increase the chances of a crash in the alt market. Alts are being pumped massively and there is no basis for these valuations. As Bitcoin's market share drops, it only increases my resolution to stay invested in BTC.

[Kiweikoo]

i believe it's very possible bitcoin's 'market share' will go near or below 50% at some point this year.

i'm not pumping alts. most of them are still worthless junk, but that doesn't seem to be stopping anyone. check out all the crazy figures ethereum related icos are pulling off.

personally i think the market share thing is a load of crap anyway, they shouldn't be treated as two sides of the same thing, but i'm wondering if you think this'll affect your own perception of bitcoin and that of others.

i think an absolutely unprecedented alt bubble is brewing that'll eventually implode horribly. it's filling with more hot air by the day. it won't be because of 'bitcoin is failing' fud. it'll be good old get rich quick greed.

i also think bitcoin will still perform very strongly this year but do you think the two markets will decouple completely or would there be some correlation?

I don’t agree that it will go below 50% or anywhere around 50%. The bitcoin price is not going to go down in the current year because many developments are made in this year. There is no chance for the bitcoin price to go down even if it go down it can’t go less than 15% not in this year at least.  Nor do I consider that the alt have any great impact on the price of BTC.

[Denker]

If BTC's market share goes sub 50%, it would only increase the chances of a crash in the alt market. Alts are being pumped massively and there is no basis for these valuations. As Bitcoin's market share drops, it only increases my resolution to stay invested in BTC.

Yeah the marketcap is a bad metric that's true. And alts can not be pumped forever. This will have to end at one point. And then hopefully a nice amount of that money gets put into Bitcoin.
I'm personally looking more on the trading volume! And Bitcoin still is dominant as hell and the king when you look at that. Just in this moment the volume of Bitcoin for the last 24 hours is over $1,3billion!!

[Mervyn_Pumpkinhead]

if BTC's 'market share' goes sub 50% this year what effect will this have?

Those will cry a little, who thought that buying BTC and then hodling (sitting on their ass while doing nothing) will be enough for getting rich. But life goes on..

[d5000]

Well, what that thread predicted actually happened: Bitcoin is below 50% in terms of "market cap" now (48,3% at this moment).

It had ... zero effect on the Bitcoin price. Bitcoin continues to climb from ATH to ATH.

And that's probably why: Japanese "investors" are inflating an artificial bubble, mostly inflating XRP and NEM.

According to an analyst cited by Cointelegraph (and the original here).

Newly entering Japanese investors are driving this great altcoin bubble and not-so-smart money is flowing into the space especially into some altcoins at a rather concerning rate.

Makes perfectly sense. That's a local bubble that has no effect on the more international Bitcoin market.

[pooya87]

i want to change my answer. it will have an effect in long term. because right now the altcoin market is getting bigger and bigger but into a bubble, and that is attracting a lot of people to invest in it, into the bubble.
and when that bursts and they finally lose a lot of money they take a good look around and see bitcoin still strong with little dips of correction and they will come back to bitcoin and dump any other altcoin they may still have and that will drive bitcoin price up, big time.