[2017-10-08] Former Goldman Sachs VP Believes Bitcoin is the Next Internet

[Terraformer]

Matthew Goetz, former vice president at the famous financial institution Goldman Sachs believes that investing in Bitcoin is like investing in the Internet in the late 90’s.

Betting Big On Bitcoin

The decentralized cryptocurrency had a very good run this year. Even after receiving bad publicity from the comments of the JP Morgan CEO and the recent report that China ordered Bitcoin exchanges to close down. Bitcoin is up by 450% this year and is currently stabilizing at the $4350 area.  Former Goldman Sachs VP, Matthew Goetz, believes that investing in the digital currency is like investing in the Internet in the late 90’s. Many experts and analysts strongly believe that Bitcoin might not stay as the number one cryptocurrency for very long.

The Next Big Cryptocurrency

After leaving Goldman Sachs, Matthew Goetz started a hedge fund called BlockTower Capital that specializes in cryptocurrencies. In a recent article by Business Insider, Goetz stated that in the future another cryptocurrency will take over the first place from Bitcoin. He further quoted:

    "There is some chance that something an order of magnitude better than bitcoin, technologically, could come along."

Goetz also added:

    "It’s something like Facebook. If someone creates a new Facebook that has slightly better features, say 10% better. That’s great, but network effects are strong. So, that new thing isn’t going to kill Facebook."

Matthew Goetz believes that Bitcoin is just a software and so it can easily be replaced by a way better and more advanced version in the future. Similar to how Facebook managed to overtake MySpace as the number social media website, another cryptocurrency with more features will be able to overtake Bitcoin’s position in the future. Goetz said that the cryptocurrency market is still very risky just like the Internet was in 1992.

https://bitcoinist.com/ico-event-london-will-gather-renowned-investors-founders-blockchain-startups/

[Spaffin]

Recently, many digital currencies have been created in which developers are investing new software ideas. If you consider that bitcoin is just software, then it is likely that someday a new digital coin will beat bitcoin and it will lose its leadership. Now bitcoin has some vulnerabilities, such as a long time of transactions, and if they are not eliminated, sooner or later any new technologically more advanced coin will bypass it.

[btc_angela]

Recently, many digital currencies have been created in which developers are investing new software ideas. If you consider that bitcoin is just software, then it is likely that someday a new digital coin will beat bitcoin and it will lose its leadership. Now bitcoin has some vulnerabilities, such as a long time of transactions, and if they are not eliminated, sooner or later any new technologically more advanced coin will bypass it.

What technology are you talking about? BCH, Bitcoin Gold, Altcoins? Sorry but I tend to disagree. Ethereum did try once, but the flippening did not happened. And I think that nothing beats the original. There are a lot of altcoins that has super fast transaction confirmation, but I doubt that bitcoin enthusiast will just shift into it because its fast and defeats bitcoin in terms of confirmation time. Bitcoin has already established itself and it will be very hard to overtook it in the next coming years.

[Karartma1]

Headline is confusing: either you say me that Bitcoin is gonna take over the financial world as we know it and you are happy to invest in it or you say me (which looks like the point of view here) that you Golddamn's friends have something in pipeline to replace Bitcoin soon.
What is interesting to notice is that something moves behind the scenes. And I will hold.

[jrobi4life]

    "There is some chance that something an order of magnitude better than bitcoin, technologically, could come along."

At this point I think this is more of a human psychological question than a technological one.  There are already other coins vastly superior to Bitcoin in pretty much every way.  The question is how long can brand loyalty, name recognition and being first to market carry you in the crypto space?  Dash for example has governance and a budget for advertising built in.  If a company like Dash, that's already on a faster trajectory, were to make a Superbowl commercial or launch a massive advertising campaign where you had large groups of people who heard of and got familiar with it before they were familiar with Bitcoin, I think it could definitely change the landscape of crypto.  Either way I think we'll see astronomical prices for Bitcoin in the next few years but that doesn't mean it will even still be in the lead.

[Bolt Brownie]

Recently, many digital currencies have been created in which developers are investing new software ideas. If you consider that bitcoin is just software, then it is likely that someday a new digital coin will beat bitcoin and it will lose its leadership. Now bitcoin has some vulnerabilities, such as a long time of transactions, and if they are not eliminated, sooner or later any new technologically more advanced coin will bypass it.

Well I can't say it's impossible for bitcoin to lose it's place as the number one crypto coin. Of course it could happen, but it's highly unlikely. Crypto in general is in it's early days, but bitcoin is the one with the biggest community and a good team of developers behind it. It also has tremendous potencial, and all those problems you mention (long time transactions, and you could also add high fees) already have a solution in sight because of the SegWit activation. It's called the lightning network and when that gets operational, those problems will be solved.

Also, just look to coinmarketcap. Bitcoin dominance is normally at 49%, so that means that all the investors are at bitcoin right now, and I don't think they will just suddenly move to another coin. Coins will co-exist, and some coins will probably have different purposes, but it will be quite hard for any of them to overcome bitcoin. To be honest I think that they shouldn't even try to compete with it. They should offer solutions to different problems, and try to get their own market share and not to become the next bitcoin, because we already have one.

[richardsNY]

While people are getting to **somewhat** understand that Bitcoin's potential is massive, and can force through major economical changes, I am happy that I have noticed Bitcoin's potential years ago already. I however have to point out that while Bitcoin's awareness is increasing on a daily basis, the skepticism amongst these people is still there. On the other hand, I am already happy that people aren't looking at Bitcoin as being the currency of the underworld as much as they were used to do -- it took years to achieve this. I think it has to do with Bitcoin being legalized/regulated by various countries.

[hatshepsut93]

It's very hard to create something better than Bitcoin, since you would have to compete with hundreds of very talented and experienced developers who have been working on it for many years. Bitcoin has many restrictions on protocol level like block size and block time, and many young developers think that they create a better coin by removing them and they are wrong - those restrictions are there for a very good reason, they make Bitcoin work flawlessly so no one would ever lose their funds due to some attack or bug. It's possible that someone would at one day create an overall better cryptocurrency protocol, but it's also possible that it would be Bitcoin developers who would do this as an update to Bitcoin - SegWit and Lightning Network are a good examples of this scenario.