DooMAD
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Leave no FUD unchallenged
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January 02, 2018, 12:25:44 PM |
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If we consider all the world's gold is worth something like $8 trillion dollars and the total broad money supply is something like $90 trillion dollars, if Bitcoin really is ascribing itself the role of "digital gold", it wouldn't be unreasonable to see it under 10% of the total crypto market cap. I honestly wouldn't see that as a problem. If people are wrong about how useful and successful Lightning is going to be, altcoins are absolutely going to fulfill the primary role of broad money in the cryptospace and Bitcoin will just be a settlement layer for the elites and the extremely wealthy (along with anyone else lucky enough to be on board when it was still cheap, i.e. us). So the stakes are pretty high. The developers have rather painted themselves into a corner on this one. Lightning has to work.
My thoughts are that if people are right about Lightning, but people mostly use Lightning for it's best application (in my opinion) of Atomic Cross Chain Transactions, altcoins might still fulfill a reasonably large role as broad money and continue to have a larger share of market capitalisation. The ability to switch to other blockchains that also support Lightning without relying on centralised exchanges means that if fees are high for storing transactions in Bitcoin's blockchain, you just make 1 transaction to move to another chain and then spend your funds with as many transactions there as you need, faster and with lower fees, but still have the security of being recorded on a decentralised blockchain. Similar to previously floated concepts of "sidechains" or "treechains".
Whatever happens, it's likely that Bitcoin will still be the most valuable coin and the primary blockchain that effectively secures all the others (what tends to be referred to as layer 0) as the backbone, so at least it will have vast purchasing power at the time you exchange it for whatever your preferred altcoin is so you can actually spend it without being hammered by fees. You can also tailor the level of desired security with the value of your transaction. Larger sums go on more secure and decentralised chains, smaller sums on the less secure and potentially more centralised ones. There could even be specialty chains for certain markets, like a blockchain just for property deeds and ownership in a certain jurisdiction for example. The possibilities are endless if we can get Atomic Cross Chain Transactions functional.
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