Apart from network effect, what does bitcoin have going for it right now?

[dinofelis]

Facepalm to OP.
Let's analyze the current top cryptocurrencies after Bitcoin:
1) ETH: Scalability issues greater than those found in Bitcoin. Extremely centralized coin, with no immutability. Effectively a Fed 2.0 coin with the 'too big to fail' DAO situation.
2) Dash: Scalability issues. Fake privacy benefits. Extremely instamined coin; over 20% of existing supply aka a Scamcoin.
3) Monero: Scalability issues greater than those found in Bitcoin. Unprunable; no SPV wallets.

If anything is going to come close to Bitcoin, then it is ETH because the bankers will continue to shill for it because it is effectively centralized.
None of these coins are facing the 'block size debate' because almost nobody is using them for transactions.

Well, ETH and Monero have no block size limit.  That doesn't mean they can scale indefinitely - they can't because they are block chain coins.  But at least, the limit is just the technological resource usage, and hence, there is no inelastic offer of transaction space.  If technology (network, processing, storage) goes up by a factor of 10, then ETH and Monero can handle 10 times more transactions at the same cost.  That's about every 5-6 years according to Moore's law.  This means that there is no lucrative fee market.  Both ETH and Monero have tail emission, meaning that there will not be the battle for fees.

Moreover, ETH as well as Monero have regular hard forks, so they can much easier update to newer technology.  For instance, recently, monero switched to ring CT from the former cryptonote tech.  That is a more involved and deeper modification than Segwit activation.   

Both these coins will face scaling problems, and are not able to allow the earth to buy their morning coffee in the foreseeable future, but at least they will never hit the hard and frozen wall bitcoin set for itself.

DASH is a copy of bitcoin with integrated automatic tumblers.  However, DASH being "governed" (and most probably CENTRALLY governed), it can also adapt much easier if something must be changed, like block size.  This is even somewhat scary with DASH: in early history, the coin emission has been divided by 4 (there were going to be 84 million coins, and after the 2 million instamine, this has been lowered to 21 million coins, like bitcoin  ). 

So even though all these coins are block chain based coins that don't scale well, they are in much, much better shape to scale somewhat than bitcoin with its hard wall.

[gentlemand]

Network effect.  First mover.  Pristine origin.

The latter is rarely picked up on and it's extremely important. Everything that came after has the potential to be distorted by greed during its creation and indeed often has been. Sadly I'm not sure how many people actually care about that.

[Wind_FURY]

So I ask the serious question :   Apart from network effect, what does bitcoin have going for it right now?

* still the highest market cap
* still the highest trading volume
* the first mover advantage/most recognised cryptocurrency
* highest hash rate/most secure (debatable)
* highest merchant adoption
* still considered to be trustless and decentralised (ignoring geographical centralisation)
* still anonymous (if you try real hard)
* still faster and cheaper than most international bank transfers (but this could change soon)
* still proves to be effective as a long-term investment or store of value

That's all I can think of.

But if stalling continues, BTC could easily lose its "No 1" badge, causing serious damage to the entire cryptocurrencies market, which would then be seen as only good for short-mid term speculation.

Glad someone gets it. 

If you think Bitcoin can't fall from #1, get your head out of the sand! 

Yes, this is very true and the fall might be just around the corner. I may not like what Roger Ver said when he mentioned sending $100k worth of Dash for pennies in fees but I believe we must take that as a cue to start investing and hold other cryptocurrencies to be safe. Roger Ver is the BTC Jesus after all. He has a nose for what is in store for the future however some may disagree with him.

[Labumi]

Are you afraid of rejection of the ETF? . It will not give any effect in the bitcoin, indeed any transaction fees tall now, but it's also because of the growing number of transactions where each server or block will definitely be experiencing overload, but you don't need to worry because to be able to get confirmation you just simply use fee that has been recommended. I think after the rejection of the ETF, there is no effect to occur. The price of the bitcoin now stable and transactions also increasing
 

[Idrisu]

The community is close to civil war,  you can't implement even the slightest changes without months of debate,  bitcoin is extremely slow,  with ever increasing transaction costs.

I was debating with my Dad about it and he said it's now an investment vehicle only.   But the ETF has just been denied.  I think bitcoin now has a lost identity and other coins are going to be right up your asses within a year or two.

So I ask the serious question :   Apart from network effect, what does bitcoin have going for it right now?

with the way people panic during the last ETF approval or disapproval news on 10-3-2017 I think seeing bitcoin from the investment side is what it has going for it now. Many people are complaining about fee and network slowness, this make them  not to use bitcoin as online transfer and the slowness of the network affect their business negatively.