What will happen with Bitcoin if it never scales?

[deisik]

Bitcoin will likely stagnate

And eventually a new Bitcoin will be born which will have these issues fixed (as well as a lot of others like PoW), with the old dying off eventually. Personally, I'm more curious why no one hasn't yet implemented instant payments in an altcoin. I heard that Dash was doing something like that but folks here quickly dispersed my suspicions. Litecoin was going for that too, but Wu and company seem to have halted this process as well

Yes. That's what I've thought it would happen in the future, if Bitcoin doesn't overcome its issues. Another altcoin will take over for sure, addressing key issues that are essential towards mainstream adoption. When it becomes scalable and fungible enough, while taking in consideration its decentralization, it will become a huge success surpassing BTC's market cap, if it also adapts a limited supply.

There are many cryptocurrency which are having issues towards getting the approval of the miners for SegWit, but if a new coin comes released with SegWit into its code, then it would become much easier for the scalable solution to become accepted there, as it would have a small hashrate at start. Thus, the bigger the hashrate a cruptocurrency's network has, the difficult it would be to gain the necessary consensus for SegWit to become active. I think that is why Bitcoin and other alts haven’t gotten any luck so far.

Still, Litecoin is closer towards SegWit activation, and it will be very beneficial to the cryptocurrency if it becomes a reality. Just my opinion. 

I don't think that this will help Litecoin much

It has been around for ages, and people already got used to it being a second grade cryptocurrency. When (and if) SegWit gets activated in Litecoin, people would rather think of it as a testing ground for Bitcoin, not as its own endeavor toward its own Bitcoin-free future. Apart from that, Segwit itself can only be considered as an interim solution. A Bitcoin killer coin should look more toward instant, ping-time payments and with low costs at that

[mining1]

What do you think that might happen with Bitcoin if no scalable solution becomes accepted?

I said this more than once. If bitcoin doesn't manage to scale this year, and ethereum will keep developing and getting adoption from institutions and corporations as it curently does, there's 50-75% it will replace btc by the year's end. Mark my words.

[salemon]

What do you think that might happen with Bitcoin if no scalable solution becomes accepted?

I said this more than once. If bitcoin doesn't manage to scale this year, and ethereum will keep developing and getting adoption from institutions and corporations as it curently does, there's 50-75% it will replace btc by the year's end. Mark my words.

And what awaits then the mass owner of Bitcoin coins, if they all expect a Rainbow future for their capital. This does not affect the price of Bitcoin in the coming years?

[dothebeats]

What do you think that might happen with Bitcoin if no scalable solution becomes accepted?

I said this more than once. If bitcoin doesn't manage to scale this year, and ethereum will keep developing and getting adoption from institutions and corporations as it curently does, there's 50-75% it will replace btc by the year's end. Mark my words.

And what awaits then the mass owner of Bitcoin coins, if they all expect a Rainbow future for their capital. This does not affect the price of Bitcoin in the coming years?

It would of course, at a large scale. If bitcoin would never scale, some other coins might take the spot who already has the lead in terms of adoption and development e.g. LTC or ETH. However, what coin would replace bitcoin that I have no clue about since I'm still wary about ETH rise and LTC seemed to be too far off the charts.

[hardtime]

This is going to be a tough issue if it never does scale as I would think that another currency would take the rains, maybe ETH? You never really know on something like this, but the one thing that I do know is that people on the BTC network are sick and tired of paying such high fees and are probably close to just simply cashing out and just using another method of payment all the time rather then keeping their bitcoin like they're doing now and paying like $1.30 for one transaction.

I do hope it scales though, as I see that as the only chance for Bitcoin to be able to be seen as a currency that is going to be able to hold some sort of foothold when it comes to the masses accepting and using it as a whole. If it doesn't people are just going to find something that will suit their needed, like anything else in the world this is how it works.

[classicsucks]

If you read Core's road map they want it to be able to scale both on chain and off when necessary. They just want it done slowly and safely as possible.

Huh? This is what you are calling a roadmap?  https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-December/011865.html

Blockstream/Core made it clear that they didn't want Bitcoin to scale, thereby forcing people onto the Lightning Network. Since the Lightning Network doesn't really exist yet (and there are many unanswered questions about its security and viability), the markets responded by moving volume over to altcoins. Bitcoin dominance has been cliff-diving in 2017, today it's 56%: http://coinmarketcap.com/charts/#btc-percentage

Bitcoin has a lot of inertia due to name recognition, services, and hype, but eventually it will slow down as it becomes less useful. With the mempool reaching new all-time highs as we speak, we should be seeing a lot of unhappy bitcoin users in the next week. Some of them will flee to alts, and others will leave the space entirely.

[dinofelis]

If you read Core's road map they want it to be able to scale both on chain and off when necessary. They just want it done slowly and safely as possible.

Huh? This is what you are calling a roadmap?  https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-December/011865.html

Blockstream/Core made it clear that they didn't want Bitcoin to scale, thereby forcing people onto the Lightning Network. Since the Lightning Network doesn't really exist yet (and there are many unanswered questions about its security and viability), the markets responded by moving volume over to altcoins. Bitcoin dominance has been cliff-diving in 2017, today it's 56%: http://coinmarketcap.com/charts/#btc-percentage

Bitcoin has a lot of inertia due to name recognition, services, and hype, but eventually it will slow down as it becomes less useful. With the mempool reaching new all-time highs as we speak, we should be seeing a lot of unhappy bitcoin users in the next week. Some of them will flee to alts, and others will leave the space entirely.

I agree with your analysis, and I would even add something to it.  The "fight" has cleared up an issue and broken a taboo:

1) the issue that "bitcoin as the world currency, to buy coffee, and to buy sky scrapers", has some fundamental problems to it, and things are not as simple as it seems, that bitcoin is subject to power structures just as well as any other financial system, and the technical challenges to turn bitcoin in a world-monetary system without being under the control of some Chinese dudes, or some other banking cartel, are far from resolved.  In as much as this was thought to be an "engineers' fight", it turns out that, well, bitcoin as a world currency will not come without another form of obscure power over people's money.

2) all the discussions about the BU hard fork or the segwit soft fork, or the hard fork to another mining algorithm to piss off bitmain have shown that an alt coin is not so very different from bitcoin, after all, and that those "shit coins" are often technically superior, and only differ from bitcoin by a brand name.  Thinking of alt coins anything different than shit coin was taboo for a true bitcoin believer, but now that the filosophical discussion arose whether one shouldn't actually turn bitcoin into an altcoin to save us from the "other side" killed somehow the belief in a fundamental difference between an alt coin and bitcoin.  This belief was necessary to refrain from taking alt coins seriously.

[qiwoman2]

I also believe other platforms, like ETH, WAVES, STRATIS etc will take over where Bitcoin has left off and other alts like LTC will take the merchant market share. Bitcoin will be remembered as the first large scale digital currency and may still have some value, but won't be used for small day to day transactions if they don't get their act together re the scaling problem.

[FasTroy]

What do you think that might happen with Bitcoin if no scalable solution becomes accepted?

I said this more than once. If bitcoin doesn't manage to scale this year, and ethereum will keep developing and getting adoption from institutions and corporations as it curently does, there's 50-75% it will replace btc by the year's end. Mark my words.

Maybe you're right, But i don't see that bitcoin does not manage to scale this year, I will predict that bitcoin price will increase to 2000$ before the end of this years, So in a couple of years there is no crypto can take this place, Even if the ethereum will keep developing as you said.

[deisik]

If you read Core's road map they want it to be able to scale both on chain and off when necessary. They just want it done slowly and safely as possible.

Huh? This is what you are calling a roadmap?  https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-December/011865.html

Blockstream/Core made it clear that they didn't want Bitcoin to scale, thereby forcing people onto the Lightning Network. Since the Lightning Network doesn't really exist yet (and there are many unanswered questions about its security and viability), the markets responded by moving volume over to altcoins. Bitcoin dominance has been cliff-diving in 2017, today it's 56%: http://coinmarketcap.com/charts/#btc-percentage

Bitcoin has a lot of inertia due to name recognition, services, and hype, but eventually it will slow down as it becomes less useful. With the mempool reaching new all-time highs as we speak, we should be seeing a lot of unhappy bitcoin users in the next week. Some of them will flee to alts, and others will leave the space entirely.

I agree with your analysis, and I would even add something to it.  The "fight" has cleared up an issue and broken a taboo:

1) the issue that "bitcoin as the world currency, to buy coffee, and to buy sky scrapers", has some fundamental problems to it, and things are not as simple as it seems, that bitcoin is subject to power structures just as well as any other financial system, and the technical challenges to turn bitcoin in a world-monetary system without being under the control of some Chinese dudes, or some other banking cartel, are far from resolved.  In as much as this was thought to be an "engineers' fight", it turns out that, well, bitcoin as a world currency will not come without another form of obscure power over people's money.

2) all the discussions about the BU hard fork or the segwit soft fork, or the hard fork to another mining algorithm to piss off bitmain have shown that an alt coin is not so very different from bitcoin, after all, and that those "shit coins" are often technically superior, and only differ from bitcoin by a brand name.  Thinking of alt coins anything different than shit coin was taboo for a true bitcoin believer, but now that the filosophical discussion arose whether one shouldn't actually turn bitcoin into an altcoin to save us from the "other side" killed somehow the belief in a fundamental difference between an alt coin and bitcoin.  This belief was necessary to refrain from taking alt coins seriously

Wtf, have you been conscripted into the shills team?

Regarding shit coins they are really shit coins, by any name. You may want to actually pay a visit to Yobit exchange and see for yourself how it looks (and feels) in practice. It kinda seems that you completely got lost in your ivory tower. Most altcoins are outright scams that were intended as scams right from the start. If it is a matter of difference between Bitcoin and the rest of the pack, why then the Chinese mining barons are opposing the SegWit activation in Litecoin so hard? Kiss goodbye to common sense and basic logic?

[Abiky]

It would of course, at a large scale. If bitcoin would never scale, some other coins might take the spot who already has the lead in terms of adoption and development e.g. LTC or ETH. However, what coin would replace bitcoin that I have no clue about since I'm still wary about ETH rise and LTC seemed to be too far off the charts.

Exactly. I mean, it's not that difficult to create a coin that would surpass Bitcoin in market cap and adoption. All its needs it's to implement SegWit at launch, establish a very limited supply with no premine or ICO, and have active development to be able to surpass Bitcoin. By having a deflationary model and everything else just like Bitcoin, it would quickly gain traction. Especially by having SegWit within the first day of launch, which will be a huge booster for the new coin.

Also, there could exist a possibility of an existent altcoin to take over Bitcoin too. In my own opinion, both Ethereum and Dash look like the ideal candidates to become the top cryptocurrency in market cap. Just sharing my thoughts. 

[dwieyani]

Scale or small is just in the map image so you can know the core path they want.

[fanita]

What are the scales?

[RoommateAgreement]

It would of course, at a large scale. If bitcoin would never scale, some other coins might take the spot who already has the lead in terms of adoption and development e.g. LTC or ETH. However, what coin would replace bitcoin that I have no clue about since I'm still wary about ETH rise and LTC seemed to be too far off the charts.

Exactly. I mean, it's not that difficult to create a coin that would surpass Bitcoin in market cap and adoption. All its needs it's to implement SegWit at launch, establish a very limited supply with no premine or ICO, and have active development to be able to surpass Bitcoin. By having a deflationary model and everything else just like Bitcoin, it would quickly gain traction. Especially by having SegWit within the first day of launch, which will be a huge booster for the new coin.

Also, there could exist a possibility of an existent altcoin to take over Bitcoin too. In my own opinion, both Ethereum and Dash look like the ideal candidates to become the top cryptocurrency in market cap. Just sharing my thoughts. 

if it was possible, it would have happened already!
nobody is stopping anybody from doing it and we all know code is open and you can just copy it and start a new coin with any specification.
the problem however is the adoption, nobody will give up bitcoin which has been around for a long time and trusted to go to a new thing.
and on top of that the developers these days are only looking for profit and their own pocket, they don't care about developing a good coin. so they never do it.

[deisik]

It would of course, at a large scale. If bitcoin would never scale, some other coins might take the spot who already has the lead in terms of adoption and development e.g. LTC or ETH. However, what coin would replace bitcoin that I have no clue about since I'm still wary about ETH rise and LTC seemed to be too far off the charts.

Exactly. I mean, it's not that difficult to create a coin that would surpass Bitcoin in market cap and adoption. All its needs it's to implement SegWit at launch, establish a very limited supply with no premine or ICO, and have active development to be able to surpass Bitcoin. By having a deflationary model and everything else just like Bitcoin, it would quickly gain traction. Especially by having SegWit within the first day of launch, which will be a huge booster for the new coin

If it is not difficult, what are you waiting for?

The problem is that just implementing SegWit in a brand new coin won't help you a lot, if at all. Simply because SegWit aims at solving the problem of scalability which is already there. But to run into that problem in the first place, you should already have wide adoption, otherwise SegWit will be of no help to you altogether. Further, SegWit itself is no more than an interim solution which somewhat fixes current issues (which a brand new coin wouldn't have anyway), but it doesn't allow infinite scalability in the way Lightning Network does. So more power to you implementing the latter from scratch if you think it is as easy

[freedomno1]

What do you think that might happen with Bitcoin if no scalable solution becomes accepted?

Will it remain as a store of value, while other altcoins take the lead for everyday transactions? Or will another cryptocurrency take its place as the top in marketcap?

I would like to know your thoughts about this, as the ongoing scaling debate will further limit Bitcoin from reaching new heights. As for me, I believe that the Bitcoin community would come up at a resolution somehow to put an end to this issue, and make the pioneer cryptocurrency great again. What do you think?  

Lean toward the second option it will remain a store of value but it may become dated and stagnate given long enough, that said the first mover ability is one that takes a while to be destroyed. It's similar to the facebook vs myspace which one retains usage in the long game is the utility.
We still have quite some time till that stage though but altcoins are already starting to see uses and conversions the main coin that people adopt first though remains Bitcoin and will likely remain so for some time yet.

[Rahar02]

What do you think that might happen with Bitcoin if no scalable solution becomes accepted?

Will it remain as a store of value, while other altcoins take the lead for everyday transactions? Or will another cryptocurrency take its place as the top in marketcap?

I would like to know your thoughts about this, as the ongoing scaling debate will further limit Bitcoin from reaching new heights. As for me, I believe that the Bitcoin community would come up at a resolution somehow to put an end to this issue, and make the pioneer cryptocurrency great again. What do you think? 

Bitcoin cannot reach what it meant to be, I think it could reach at least $10,000-$20,000 per bitcoin while others expected bitcoin could achieve $1 Million, we hope so. People may invest on another coin which has good devs team and easier to handle by layman such as some coins here which has potential to reach that point. But, we don't know what will happen with bitcoin whether it can or stuck in this condition.

[classicsucks]

If you read Core's road map they want it to be able to scale both on chain and off when necessary. They just want it done slowly and safely as possible.

Huh? This is what you are calling a roadmap?  https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-December/011865.html

Blockstream/Core made it clear that they didn't want Bitcoin to scale, thereby forcing people onto the Lightning Network. Since the Lightning Network doesn't really exist yet (and there are many unanswered questions about its security and viability), the markets responded by moving volume over to altcoins. Bitcoin dominance has been cliff-diving in 2017, today it's 56%: http://coinmarketcap.com/charts/#btc-percentage

Bitcoin has a lot of inertia due to name recognition, services, and hype, but eventually it will slow down as it becomes less useful. With the mempool reaching new all-time highs as we speak, we should be seeing a lot of unhappy bitcoin users in the next week. Some of them will flee to alts, and others will leave the space entirely.

I agree with your analysis, and I would even add something to it.  The "fight" has cleared up an issue and broken a taboo:

1) the issue that "bitcoin as the world currency, to buy coffee, and to buy sky scrapers", has some fundamental problems to it, and things are not as simple as it seems, that bitcoin is subject to power structures just as well as any other financial system, and the technical challenges to turn bitcoin in a world-monetary system without being under the control of some Chinese dudes, or some other banking cartel, are far from resolved.  In as much as this was thought to be an "engineers' fight", it turns out that, well, bitcoin as a world currency will not come without another form of obscure power over people's money.

2) all the discussions about the BU hard fork or the segwit soft fork, or the hard fork to another mining algorithm to piss off bitmain have shown that an alt coin is not so very different from bitcoin, after all, and that those "shit coins" are often technically superior, and only differ from bitcoin by a brand name.  Thinking of alt coins anything different than shit coin was taboo for a true bitcoin believer, but now that the filosophical discussion arose whether one shouldn't actually turn bitcoin into an altcoin to save us from the "other side" killed somehow the belief in a fundamental difference between an alt coin and bitcoin.  This belief was necessary to refrain from taking alt coins seriously.

Very good points. Changes come very quickly in technology, and even faster in the crypto space. Perhaps coins get more mired in power struggles as the financial interests in them diversify and become more at odds with each other? Maybe we'll just have to keep moving on to the next coin, as corporations continually try to take over whatever the currently hyped coin is? It's a crazy concept. Bitcoin dominance is essentially over - it's about to drop below 50% as we speak. It could well be a shitcoin in a year if no one takes the helm and scales the network logically and simply. 

The "engineer's fight" has been ironic, because the most technically skilled people (Core) are arguing for a technically deficient solution (Segwit). I suppose that they have no choice. Blockstream's $75 mil will pay their salaries for a few more years, long enough for them to transition to another coin's dev team...

[dinofelis]

If you read Core's road map they want it to be able to scale both on chain and off when necessary. They just want it done slowly and safely as possible.

Huh? This is what you are calling a roadmap?  https://lists.linuxfoundation.org/pipermail/bitcoin-dev/2015-December/011865.html

Blockstream/Core made it clear that they didn't want Bitcoin to scale, thereby forcing people onto the Lightning Network. Since the Lightning Network doesn't really exist yet (and there are many unanswered questions about its security and viability), the markets responded by moving volume over to altcoins. Bitcoin dominance has been cliff-diving in 2017, today it's 56%: http://coinmarketcap.com/charts/#btc-percentage

Bitcoin has a lot of inertia due to name recognition, services, and hype, but eventually it will slow down as it becomes less useful. With the mempool reaching new all-time highs as we speak, we should be seeing a lot of unhappy bitcoin users in the next week. Some of them will flee to alts, and others will leave the space entirely.

I agree with your analysis, and I would even add something to it.  The "fight" has cleared up an issue and broken a taboo:

1) the issue that "bitcoin as the world currency, to buy coffee, and to buy sky scrapers", has some fundamental problems to it, and things are not as simple as it seems, that bitcoin is subject to power structures just as well as any other financial system, and the technical challenges to turn bitcoin in a world-monetary system without being under the control of some Chinese dudes, or some other banking cartel, are far from resolved.  In as much as this was thought to be an "engineers' fight", it turns out that, well, bitcoin as a world currency will not come without another form of obscure power over people's money.

2) all the discussions about the BU hard fork or the segwit soft fork, or the hard fork to another mining algorithm to piss off bitmain have shown that an alt coin is not so very different from bitcoin, after all, and that those "shit coins" are often technically superior, and only differ from bitcoin by a brand name.  Thinking of alt coins anything different than shit coin was taboo for a true bitcoin believer, but now that the filosophical discussion arose whether one shouldn't actually turn bitcoin into an altcoin to save us from the "other side" killed somehow the belief in a fundamental difference between an alt coin and bitcoin.  This belief was necessary to refrain from taking alt coins seriously.

Very good points. Changes come very quickly in technology, and even faster in the crypto space. Perhaps coins get more mired in power struggles as the financial interests in them diversify and become more at odds with each other? Maybe we'll just have to keep moving on to the next coin, as corporations continually try to take over whatever the currently hyped coin is? It's a crazy concept. Bitcoin dominance is essentially over - it's about to drop below 50% as we speak. It could well be a shitcoin in a year if no one takes the helm and scales the network logically and simply.  

The "engineer's fight" has been ironic, because the most technically skilled people (Core) are arguing for a technically deficient solution (Segwit). I suppose that they have no choice. Blockstream's $75 mil will pay their salaries for a few more years, long enough for them to transition to another coin's dev team...

Well, I think that, because Core has some smart guys in there, they are *realizing* the problem that was pointed out to Satoshi way back, that his solution to make a world currency, fancy, smart and successful as it seemed, simply didn't cut it.  These are hard words and of course, coming from me, insignificant being as compared to God Satoshi, who am I to speak such blasphemy, but it was almost IMMEDIATELY pointed out to Satoshi that his system, where ALL users need to know in principle ALL transactions EVERYWHERE, and EVER, was going to have a scaling problem, and Satoshi uttered something like that a few big data centres could take care of that, essentially admitting that his solution could only work when centralized again.

In a certain way, Core has been working on a *totally different kind of payment system*, namely the LN.  But, *it is a totally different payment system*.  It simply isn't bitcoin.  Even if it is using bitcoin as an underlying system, it is a totally different way of transmitting payments, the concepts are totally different, and the trust relations and the power structures are totally different.   One could almost say that LN and bitcoin are about as different, in their concepts, as was Schaum's e-cash and bitcoin.  So all preciously gained confidence and trust of bitcoin is going out of the window with LN.  This doesn't mean that LN is bad, but it is SO DIFFERENT in its approach to transactions, that most alt coins look more like bitcoin as it is now, than the LN looks like bitcoin.

And, again, people have raised some fundamental issues of the LN idea.  Like people told Satoshi he had a problem with scaling and Satoshi replied with centralization as a solution (without calling it that way), people are telling the LN proponents it has scaling problems leading to centralization, and that is also brushed under the carpet.

And finally, all of this is in the idea that one day, bitcoin would scale "to VISA levels".  But the *economic model* of bitcoin and many alt coins doesn't look AT ALL like most fiat currency economic models.  Most of these systems have economic models that look like highly speculative assets, not like currencies.

So it might very well be that bitcoin, nor most altcoins, ever NEED these big volumes, because as speculative assets and not currencies, they don't need VISA level scaling, as "the masses" will never buy coffee (on chain or off chain) with speculative assets that aren't reliable units of account (= with relatively stable predictable values).

[deisik]

In a certain way, Core has been working on a *totally different kind of payment system*, namely the LN.  But, *it is a totally different payment system*.  It simply isn't bitcoin.  Even if it is using bitcoin as an underlying system, it is a totally different way of transmitting payments, the concepts are totally different, and the trust relations and the power structures are totally different.   One could almost say that LN and bitcoin are about as different, in their concepts, as was Schaum's e-cash and bitcoin.  So all preciously gained confidence and trust of bitcoin is going out of the window with LN.  This doesn't mean that LN is bad, but it is SO DIFFERENT in its approach to transactions, that most alt coins look more like bitcoin as it is now, than the LN looks like bitcoin

The emphasized part is where you go totally nuts (again)

Not that you are rational in the previous parts (preceding that), but they at least have some veil of rationality cast over them even if the latter is entirely superficial and thus any feeling thereof is purely fictional and misleading. But that's not my point. I don't think that LN is so different that it can't be used over the current Bitcoin blockchain. But since it can, then you can't possibly claim that all confidence and trust that Bitcoin acquired during these years goes down the drain or out the window (you choose which way you are wrong). Otherwise I could claim that any update would effectively make Bitcoin into an altcoin