Bitcoin is also fairly slow
it is the fastest thing you can hope for. when you send a transaction it takes about 3 seconds to propagate through the whole network and for the receiver to see it in his wallet.
the confirmation is what takes time and that time is 10 minutes on average for 1 and for making it un-spendable 1 is 99% irreversible because of the high difficulty and 3 is more suitable for bigger transaction sizes. meaning time is between 10 to 30 minutes.
in comparison i have never checked the propagation time and never seen any studies (the 3 seconds above was a research) so i can't say anything about that.
some altcoins have faster blocks even in seconds but because of number of orphans, lower difficulty and some other things everyone asks for much higher confirmation which means the total confirmation for an irreversible transaction is usually the same 30 or in some cases 1 hour.
Bitcoin also has a cap at 21MBTC.
this is only a positive thing!
Could it be that Bitcoin will become the equivalent of digital gold?
No. despite everyone wanting to see it that way, bitcoin was made with the purpose of being a digital currency and it is doing exactly that.
Everyone recognizes gold as very valuable but it's not used for everyday transactions.
gold used to be used as a currency for transactions. and now it is used as a backing for the fiat in many countries.
I've seen people describing LiteCoin and Etherium as digital "silver" if BTC is the digital gold.
they call litecoin the silver to bitcoin's gold never before anyone called ethereum as such.
ether is not even a currency to be compared with bitcoin. it is a platform for smart contracts that happens to have a token which is only supposed to be used for smart contracts nothing else. and it can not and is not designed to be used as a currency.
But silver isn't used in everyday transactions either.
nobody uses a precious metal for transaction (aka as a currency) you can make coins out of them like the old ages and use those coins as currency though.
Is there a cryptocurrency out there that has what it takes to become the "digital dollar"? A cryptocurrency suitable for everyday transactions...
What makes it/them suitable?
IMHO the concept is a bit awkward.
The Dollar (and any other Fiat currency out there) is constantly being diluted with freshly printed Fiat, and that is the exact opposite of what we want from a cryptocurrency.
But if a currency only has a fixed amount of units, it'll be in a perpetual deflationary state, that's not necessarily a positive thing either.
i don't quite get this part.
if you want a digital crtypocurrency which is decentralized,
has a large supply without an end (no cap), has a solid blockchain and network, is secure, fast and cheap then i guess off the top of my mind i can name Dogecoin.
i believe they removed the cap!
but the problem is always adoption. it doesn't matter what the coin is, as long as nobody uses it as a currency, it will remain useless.
