So Bitcoin is King.. why is it?!

[tib216]

I understand for the past years, Bitcoin has been the king of cryptos, but why is that so? I have been for several months now reading a lot about the whole crypto ecosystem, i even bought several bitcoins back in August (sold them all today, for 4x returns and am keeping all the money in the broker account, and maybe i'll buy BTC again just as soon as i manage to retrieve my belief in BTCs future viability -i am trying really hard).

Enough background, now on to the topic at hand. I am now all too familiar with the challenges BTC has in front of it, and i sincerely can't see a solution.

1. Slow transactions - If you pay a high enough fee (at the moment over $15), you'll get a 10 minutes confirmation for your transaction. So at the very least it takes 10 minutes for a transaction to pass through, which really isn't so much assuming one is willing to pay the high fee. If one doesn't want to pay over $1 (i mean why should we, since the original idea of cryptos was that they should be cheap, fast and anonymous!), then one will wait indefinitely, probably for days or even damn weeks!!!

2. High fees - Now over $15 for high priority on the blockchain. Imagine if the price were to multiply by 5x. The fees!! $100+ per transaction maybe? This is insane. Satoshi Nakamoto has/have probably unfortunately died (i mean he/they WOULD by now have come forward and said enough is enough, miner cartels are ruining the BTC system and these high fees are outrageous insanity) turning in his grave with the hell that is happening to the BTC's ecosystem.

3. Lack of solutions - The major solution everyone is currently clinging to is the Lightning Network. Really?? It is still theoretical. Will it ever be effectively implemented and integrated into BTC and its blockchain? We don't know. Will it be practical, and effectively reduce costs substantially? We don't know! When will it be ready? Sometime in 2018? With a measly small team of developers? 2018 maybe! If it ever becomes pratical. Right now it seems the WHOLE BTC ecosystem hopes that the LN will work and solve ALL of BTCs complex problems. This is a very big and risky assumption. If it doesn't, i sincerely don't see how the BTC is going to navigate ever higher demand and users. It will bottleneck even more and the result will not be pretty. Besides, the whole concept of creating off-chain direct channels between users doesn't seem very practical to me, but perhaps i am wrong.

4. Miner cartels? Have major miner groups taken over the BTC? I haven't studied it deeply enough to make this conclusion, but this is the feeling i am fetting, maybe i am very wrong. Why isn't a solution to this DAMN OBVIOUS BOTTLENECK PROBLEM being chased with the urgency that i think the BTC community should have? Maybe i am missing something, or many things, i am by no means an advanced and very knowledgeable member of the community. But is the theory that major miner groups hijacking the BTC ecosystem in order to keep their high fees absurd? Maybe it is, but at my current understanding it seems like a possibility.

5. Bitcoin considered solely as a store of value. Right now, the only use of BTC is functioning as a store of value. Let other cryptos serve the more mundane task of serving as cash! BTC is digital GOLD! So the argument goes. Is this enough for the BTC? This isn't what i thought BTC was supposed to be. It SHOULD serve as a srote of value as well as a means for making fast and costless daily transactions. You see i am not against a system that serves solely as a store of value but i WONDER if it will be enough, will BTC present enough utility for people once they realize they can't use it for small transactions, but instead they should see BTC solely as something akin to a long term investment, that isn't useful for small transactions? The way i see it the more utility a crypto currency presents to its users, the ore value it will have, and right now there are a dozen CRYPTOS will a lot more utility than the Bitcoin.

So i ask again what makes Bitcoin the King? Network effect? The fact that it has been time-tested longer than any other crypto? A supposed community that supports it (what support they give eludes me too, i don't see much support actually)? Right now i see the BTC as a bloated, outdated and overvalued ecosystem that may survive and continue to thrive just because it has the first mover advantage and biggest network, but i am not sure of it and would really appreciate if it actually kept the edge in it's design and technology too over other cryptos. Right now i don't see it at all.

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[jhdscript]

Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency using the blockchain. It s the "grandparent" of all crypto, altcoin included.

[hatshepsut93]

1. Slow transactions - If you pay a high enough fee (at the moment over $15), you'll get a 10 minutes confirmation for your transaction. So at the very least it takes 10 minutes for a transaction to pass through, which really isn't so much assuming one is willing to pay the high fee. If one doesn't want to pay over $1 (i mean why should we, since the original idea of cryptos was that they should be cheap, fast and anonymous!), then one will wait indefinitely, probably for days or even damn weeks!!!.

10 minutes is a good compromise between speed and safety - lower times cause higher orphan rates, higher orphan rates mean more mining centralization.

High fees - Now over $15 for high priority on the blockchain.

Turns out decentralization and financial freedom costs a lot of money today. You can have cheap transactions or trustless transactions, but not both. Many developers are working hard on scalable decentralized solutions for Bitcoin, but it's not as simple as raising blocksize.

Lack of solutions - The major solution everyone is currently clinging to is the Lightning Network. Really?? It is still theoretical.

LN is not theoretical, it's on testnet and anyone can try it.

Miner cartels? Have major miner groups taken over the BTC? I haven't studied it deeply enough to make this conclusion, but this is the feeling i am fetting, maybe i am very wrong.

Miners are kept in check by the network of fully validating nodes - miners can't do whatever they want, because the network would reject invalid blocks.

Bitcoin considered solely as a store of value. Right now, the only use of BTC is functioning as a store of value. Let other cryptos serve the more mundane task of serving as cash! BTC is digital GOLD!

Bitcoin is the most decentralized coin, which is the most important thing for any crypto, but most altcoins are implementing new features or solving scaling at expense of decentralization. If decentralization is not important for you, just stick with banks, they have pretty low fees.

[darkangel11]

Enough background, now on to the topic at hand. I am now all too familiar with the challenges BTC has in front of it, and i sincerely can't see a solution.

Then you're short sighted. The solutions aren't hard to come by. They are hard to push through, as everything has to be supported by the majority, and if we get to a 55-45 situation it won't be good for the coin.

1. Slow transactions - If you pay a high enough fee (at the moment over $15), you'll get a 10 minutes confirmation for your transaction. So at the very least it takes 10 minutes for a transaction to pass through, which really isn't so much assuming one is willing to pay the high fee. If one doesn't want to pay over $1 (i mean why should we, since the original idea of cryptos was that they should be cheap, fast and anonymous!), then one will wait indefinitely, probably for days or even damn weeks!!!

Not really. If last block was mined at 5:50 and you're sending the transaction at 5:58, chances are you will only have to wait 1-3 minutes for a confirmation. 10 min is the maximum provided that your fee was high enough. It's a decent transaction time, especially that most banks need days to handle the same thing.

2. High fees - Now over $15 for high priority on the blockchain. Imagine if the price were to multiply by 5x. The fees!! $100+ per transaction maybe? This is insane. Satoshi Nakamoto has/have probably unfortunately died (i mean he/they WOULD by now have come forward and said enough is enough, miner cartels are ruining the BTC system and these high fees are outrageous insanity) turning in his grave with the hell that is happening to the BTC's ecosystem.

The fees keep growing because people keep paying more and more to get faster confirmations. It's free market, if you keep bidding to be on top you potentially can reach a point where your fee will be always higher than the amount of money you're sending. And who would there be to blame? The coin, the miners, or you?
IMO you're wasting time speculating about Satoshi. He may or he may not be dead, like the cat

3. Lack of solutions - The major solution everyone is currently clinging to is the Lightning Network. Really?? It is still theoretical.

We don't know a lot of things. Will quantum computing affect BTC? Will the regulators try to block it? What about net neutrality? There's too many unknowns.
Should we abandon the project because there can be no lightning network? I think we shouldn't because every project has a certain degree of risk in it and I like my chances here.

4. Miner cartels?

You're speculating too much and worrying yourself with things that you can't control. People who have money have power. It's like that in the real world and in the Internet. cryptocurrencies are no different. If someone dumps 1 billion in crypto we will all feel it, just like you will feel when a rich guy bribes a group of thugs to give you a beating. Life isn't fair.

5. Bitcoin considered solely as a store of value. Right now, the only use of BTC is functioning as a store of value.

It's still a lot. Physical gold has survived wars and governments. Now we have it's virtual version that can't be falsified and is easy to carry and trade. Isn't it great?
Bitcoin is functioning as a payment system in Korea and Japan. I could even order food with it or pay the dentist nearby. It's fun to be using something nobody else does, it's a great talk at parties and a great speculative asset, just ask all those traders who made it their full-time job.

So i ask again what makes Bitcoin the King? Network effect? The fact that it has been time-tested longer than any other crypto? A supposed community that supports it (what support they give eludes me too, i don't see much support actually)? Right now i see the BTC as a bloated, outdated and overvalued ecosystem that may survive and continue to thrive just because it has the first mover advantage and biggest network, but i am not sure of it and would really appreciate if it actually kept the edge in it's design and technology too over other cryptos. Right now i don't see it at all.

Mostly the name, the established brand, as well as the community. Currently people are using it as a safe haven during unstable times. Read what's happening in Venezuela and Zimbabwe. A similar thing was happening in China before the ban. People are using it to do everything the governments are trying to stop them from. Moving money out of the country, hiding income, buying banned goods and services, gambling. It's a rebel coin and the rebel in me is supporting it in full.

[desmodiAN]

darkangel great response. i would add the fact about experienced (yet a bit slower) dev team core. they carried the baby a long way and are ready for shots like the lightning network.
this will be the next big leap.

[hopeAo]

I understand for the past years, Bitcoin has been the king of cryptos, but why is that so? I have been for several months now reading a lot about the whole crypto ecosystem, i even bought several bitcoins back in August (sold them all today, for 4x returns and am keeping all the money in the broker account, and maybe i'll buy BTC again just as soon as i manage to retrieve my belief in BTCs future viability -i am trying really hard).

Enough background, now on to the topic at hand. I am now all too familiar with the challenges BTC has in front of it, and i sincerely can't see a solution.

1. Slow transactions - If you pay a high enough fee (at the moment over $15), you'll get a 10 minutes confirmation for your transaction. So at the very least it takes 10 minutes for a transaction to pass through, which really isn't so much assuming one is willing to pay the high fee. If one doesn't want to pay over $1 (i mean why should we, since the original idea of cryptos was that they should be cheap, fast and anonymous!), then one will wait indefinitely, probably for days or even damn weeks!!!

2. High fees - Now over $15 for high priority on the blockchain. Imagine if the price were to multiply by 5x. The fees!! $100+ per transaction maybe? This is insane. Satoshi Nakamoto has/have probably unfortunately died (i mean he/they WOULD by now have come forward and said enough is enough, miner cartels are ruining the BTC system and these high fees are outrageous insanity) turning in his grave with the hell that is happening to the BTC's ecosystem.

3. Lack of solutions - The major solution everyone is currently clinging to is the Lightning Network. Really?? It is still theoretical. Will it ever be effectively implemented and integrated into BTC and its blockchain? We don't know. Will it be practical, and effectively reduce costs substantially? We don't know! When will it be ready? Sometime in 2018? With a measly small team of developers? 2018 maybe! If it ever becomes pratical. Right now it seems the WHOLE BTC ecosystem hopes that the LN will work and solve ALL of BTCs complex problems. This is a very big and risky assumption. If it doesn't, i sincerely don't see how the BTC is going to navigate ever higher demand and users. It will bottleneck even more and the result will not be pretty. Besides, the whole concept of creating off-chain direct channels between users doesn't seem very practical to me, but perhaps i am wrong.

4. Miner cartels? Have major miner groups taken over the BTC? I haven't studied it deeply enough to make this conclusion, but this is the feeling i am fetting, maybe i am very wrong. Why isn't a solution to this DAMN OBVIOUS BOTTLENECK PROBLEM being chased with the urgency that i think the BTC community should have? Maybe i am missing something, or many things, i am by no means an advanced and very knowledgeable member of the community. But is the theory that major miner groups hijacking the BTC ecosystem in order to keep their high fees absurd? Maybe it is, but at my current understanding it seems like a possibility.

5. Bitcoin considered solely as a store of value. Right now, the only use of BTC is functioning as a store of value. Let other cryptos serve the more mundane task of serving as cash! BTC is digital GOLD! So the argument goes. Is this enough for the BTC? This isn't what i thought BTC was supposed to be. It SHOULD serve as a srote of value as well as a means for making fast and costless daily transactions. You see i am not against a system that serves solely as a store of value but i WONDER if it will be enough, will BTC present enough utility for people once they realize they can't use it for small transactions, but instead they should see BTC solely as something akin to a long term investment, that isn't useful for small transactions? The way i see it the more utility a crypto currency presents to its users, the ore value it will have, and right now there are a dozen CRYPTOS will a lot more utility than the Bitcoin.

So i ask again what makes Bitcoin the King? Network effect? The fact that it has been time-tested longer than any other crypto? A supposed community that supports it (what support they give eludes me too, i don't see much support actually)? Right now i see the BTC as a bloated, outdated and overvalued ecosystem that may survive and continue to thrive just because it has the first mover advantage and biggest network, but i am not sure of it and would really appreciate if it actually kept the edge in it's design and technology too over other cryptos. Right now i don't see it at all.

The main advantages of Bitcoin that makes Bitcoin king over other cryptocurrencies are the network effect and proven security which are nearly insurmountable advantages.

Bitcoin has a proven usage case as a store of value. It’s instructive that most coins try to carve out some differentiation based on much smaller use cases, such as prediction markets, buying things completely anonymously or adding a decentralized name server.

Bitcoin has a large lead as a store of value over other cryptocurrencies in having existed 8 years without failure. The security of Bitcoin has been proven far more than its much younger counterparts with usage by almost every metric exceeding that of cryptocurrencies.

Also, bitcoin has already lapped the field and has the ecosystem and the resources to compete with significant advantages. Bitcoin has two things going for it that help significantly in this respect. Stability and entrepreneurship. Both far exceed that of cryptocurrencies thus far and will make catching up very challenging.

In addition, Bitcoin is more accessible, with more exchanges, more merchants, more software and more hardware that support it. Bitcoin is far more liquid, with much larger volumes than every cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin has the largest developer ecosystem with more software and more implementations than any cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin has the most entrepreneurs creating companies around it with a lot of intellect, dedication and creativity going toward making it more useful.
When you compete with Bitcoin, not only are you competing with its much larger user base, development team and mining operation, but you’re also competing against the very large ecosystem of startups, open source projects and entrepreneurs.

Also, Bitcoin has already lapped the field and has the ecosystem and the resources to compete with significant advantages. Bitcoin has two things going for it that help significantly in this respect. Stability and entrepreneurship. Both far exceed that of cryptocurrencies thus far and will make catching up very challenging.

[ronypro]

Still the king in this market.
I know its only 44% marker dominance today but things will turn real quick in new year for sure.
just wait and watch.

[The_prodigy]

I understand for the past years, Bitcoin has been the king of cryptos, but why is that so? I have been for several months now reading a lot about the whole crypto ecosystem, i even bought several bitcoins back in August (sold them all today, for 4x returns and am keeping all the money in the broker account, and maybe i'll buy BTC again just as soon as i manage to retrieve my belief in BTCs future viability -i am trying really hard).

Enough background, now on to the topic at hand. I am now all too familiar with the challenges BTC has in front of it, and i sincerely can't see a solution.

1. Slow transactions - If you pay a high enough fee (at the moment over $15), you'll get a 10 minutes confirmation for your transaction. So at the very least it takes 10 minutes for a transaction to pass through, which really isn't so much assuming one is willing to pay the high fee. If one doesn't want to pay over $1 (i mean why should we, since the original idea of cryptos was that they should be cheap, fast and anonymous!), then one will wait indefinitely, probably for days or even damn weeks!!!

2. High fees - Now over $15 for high priority on the blockchain. Imagine if the price were to multiply by 5x. The fees!! $100+ per transaction maybe? This is insane. Satoshi Nakamoto has/have probably unfortunately died (i mean he/they WOULD by now have come forward and said enough is enough, miner cartels are ruining the BTC system and these high fees are outrageous insanity) turning in his grave with the hell that is happening to the BTC's ecosystem.

3. Lack of solutions - The major solution everyone is currently clinging to is the Lightning Network. Really?? It is still theoretical. Will it ever be effectively implemented and integrated into BTC and its blockchain? We don't know. Will it be practical, and effectively reduce costs substantially? We don't know! When will it be ready? Sometime in 2018? With a measly small team of developers? 2018 maybe! If it ever becomes pratical. Right now it seems the WHOLE BTC ecosystem hopes that the LN will work and solve ALL of BTCs complex problems. This is a very big and risky assumption. If it doesn't, i sincerely don't see how the BTC is going to navigate ever higher demand and users. It will bottleneck even more and the result will not be pretty. Besides, the whole concept of creating off-chain direct channels between users doesn't seem very practical to me, but perhaps i am wrong.

4. Miner cartels? Have major miner groups taken over the BTC? I haven't studied it deeply enough to make this conclusion, but this is the feeling i am fetting, maybe i am very wrong. Why isn't a solution to this DAMN OBVIOUS BOTTLENECK PROBLEM being chased with the urgency that i think the BTC community should have? Maybe i am missing something, or many things, i am by no means an advanced and very knowledgeable member of the community. But is the theory that major miner groups hijacking the BTC ecosystem in order to keep their high fees absurd? Maybe it is, but at my current understanding it seems like a possibility.

5. Bitcoin considered solely as a store of value. Right now, the only use of BTC is functioning as a store of value. Let other cryptos serve the more mundane task of serving as cash! BTC is digital GOLD! So the argument goes. Is this enough for the BTC? This isn't what i thought BTC was supposed to be. It SHOULD serve as a srote of value as well as a means for making fast and costless daily transactions. You see i am not against a system that serves solely as a store of value but i WONDER if it will be enough, will BTC present enough utility for people once they realize they can't use it for small transactions, but instead they should see BTC solely as something akin to a long term investment, that isn't useful for small transactions? The way i see it the more utility a crypto currency presents to its users, the ore value it will have, and right now there are a dozen CRYPTOS will a lot more utility than the Bitcoin.

So i ask again what makes Bitcoin the King? Network effect? The fact that it has been time-tested longer than any other crypto? A supposed community that supports it (what support they give eludes me too, i don't see much support actually)? Right now i see the BTC as a bloated, outdated and overvalued ecosystem that may survive and continue to thrive just because it has the first mover advantage and biggest network, but i am not sure of it and would really appreciate if it actually kept the edge in it's design and technology too over other cryptos. Right now i don't see it at all.

Bitcoin is currently at the top of the cryptocurrency list because of how high its value right now. Cryptocurrencies all around the world is comparably pale to what bitcoin has to offer in terms of popularity and its financial value to the people using it

[Havven]

It was the first in the landscape, it's become representative of the entire crypto world (i.e. bitcoin = all of cryptocurrency in some people's minds), and people know its name.

[freightjoe]

So i ask again what makes Bitcoin the King? Network effect? The fact that it has been time-tested longer than any other crypto? A supposed community that supports it (what support they give eludes me too, i don't see much support actually)? Right now i see the BTC as a bloated, outdated and overvalued ecosystem that may survive and continue to thrive just because it has the first mover advantage and biggest network, but i am not sure of it and would really appreciate if it actually kept the edge in it's design and technology too over other cryptos. Right now i don't see it at all.

You are spot on - it is the network effect of combined greed and stupidity which is now the main engine driving Bitcoin. And this surely will not end well.

[bjbear123]

2. High fees - Now over $15 for high priority on the blockchain. Imagine if the price were to multiply by 5x. The fees!! $100+ per transaction maybe? This is insane. Satoshi Nakamoto has/have probably unfortunately died (i mean he/they WOULD by now have come forward and said enough is enough, miner cartels are ruining the BTC system and these high fees are outrageous insanity) turning in his grave with the hell that is happening to the BTC's ecosystem.

Im getting fed up with bitcoin, I payed $60 for a transaction and still not confirmed, I rebaoadcased it 2 times and have been waiting a week. https://blockchain.info/tx/70aabb0c39308fc74752fecf22b418211ac99239df2c4b8cc9d1a175cbdfdc84

[Mandoy]

If in the forex exchange the US dollar is the medium of exchange and the king of fiat currencies in the same manner bitcoin is the king of cryptocurrency. If you can observe that without a US dollar you cannot convert your fiat currency to other currencies and you cannot purchase goods abroad. Bitcoin is also like this, if you do not have bitcoins you cannot purchase or trade with other altcoins. But later there are also some coins aside from bitcoin has this kind of purchase power but still they cannot match bitcoin in terms of market.

[sozvdhua]

There is no altcoin boom without the advent of bitcoin, and there is no such thing as a blockchain. So bitcoin is king, and for the moment, it should not be challenged in a few years.

[Junard619]

We can say that the king is bitcoin, because. Remember when bcn was forked from monero , the price of monero has go to the moon , so i think if there is a hard fork of btc , also btc will go to the moon also the same thing has happen to eth when etc was forked from eth , we have see an increase in the price of the ethereum , so the hardfork and segwit are positive things for the future of bitcoin!

[fredo123]

Without btc alt coins would no longer exist, and all of  tokens when converted to real currency undergo to btc. This makes btc become popular and continually increase its value. There's no doubt btc is the most strongest digital currency ever made by mankind:)

[Pursuer]

confusions like this are caused by what I call "Altcoins sales pitch". if you check out the way most of these altcoins are being advertised, either officially on their website, white paper, ... or by  their supporters and bag holders who want to get a quick profit, you can see that they all use bitcoin scaling as their main difference and claim they have "solved it".

the thing about scaling is that you can not solve it. you just improve it step by step and it never gets solved.
the other thing about these altcoins is what I have seen so far is that they either improve the scaling by a little bit which doesn't really make any difference or they think they have improved it but in fact they have introduced a lot of new issues.

as someone pointed out above, having a decentralized trustless payment system is not an easy thing that you can just change what you think is the reason (eg block size) and think you have solved the issue.

[kikoy999]

because bitcoin is only the highest value in the whole crypto currency coin so the bitcoin is dominated by it, and the bitcoin first goes out and it's the common use of many people, they also love bitcoin because of its high price and fast Also, when it comes to price, they want bitcoins because they earn a lot of money based on trading.

[KenChanYu]

I think bitcoin is also called a  king because it is now the most highest coin in crypto world maybe people know about it already that is why many people today wanted to have more bitcoin for the near future because they believe  that bitcoin has really a great big capacity to continue rising in the near future.Bitcoin is really amazing than any other coin.

[CryptoBry]

Bitcoin is relatively a young guy and is not yet a teenager...still a child. Unfortunately, instead of Bitcoin having a play time with a lot of robust energy and enthusiasm it is right now hampered with many birth pains. Right now, we are seeing the many side-effects of a system where no single person can be called as the leader...this is what we want when we prefer decentralization. Decentralization is good but it is not a perfect system...throw in human nature of the people supposedly in charge with its development...what we see is too much of politics and self-vested interests flying here and there. I am still hoping that the problems Bitcoin is facing today can be solved even if slowly by next year. Those problems have to be solved otherwise this mess can be liken to someone shooting his own feet.

[shinjunobi09]

Bitcoin is king around here in the cryptocurrency because it has the highest value in terms of pricing among the other alternative coins, I think Altcoins are made not to surpass or eliminate bitcoin in the crypto world it is currently produced to support bitcoin in its quest of currency dominance. High transaction fee you say? well, I say at least it does not have any value added tax, or add hidden charges, it turns out financial freedom are made free I say. All I can say man try and relax try worrying about your investments and not at the things in which you could not control and just start believing and having faith on bitcoin.