What does the future of bitcoin look like??

[thecryptillian]

So Bitcoin's market dominance in the cryptocurrency world is currently at the lowest level ever with 36.1% of the total value.

In my opinion, it's because the interest in alternative coins is rising rapidly for one, but you also have to consider how much of the bitcoin world is criminal. Seriously, for the first 5-8 years, the digital currency was mainly used as a means for criminals to launder money and sell illegal goods on the dark market. Think of all the massive hacks in the early days also, and all those darknet markets that disappeared with huge amounts of bitcoin.

Literally millions and millions of the 16 million coins out there would be owned by criminals. And now with bitcoin becoming more centralized and less anonymous, they are swiftly exiting the market and looking for alternative dark coins.

I also personally avoid using bitcoin all-together because of the extremely slow transaction speeds and high cost's associated with it.

The bitcoin mining business is dust, so that interest will die quickly.

I just don't see a very bright future for the god of cryptocurrency and it will surely be surpassed by one of its rivals soon enough.

I'm torn between predicting it to be Dash, or Ethereum, and I recon it could be about 2 years before that happens.   

Would love to know peoples thoughts on the future of bitcoin.

Where will bitcoin be in

2 weeks?
2 months?
2 years?

Will it be surpassed by another coin? If so, which one and when?

[sirkings0003]

So Bitcoin's market dominance in the cryptocurrency world is currently at the lowest level ever with 36.1% of the total value.

In my opinion, it's because the interest in alternative coins is rising rapidly for one, but you also have to consider how much of the bitcoin world is criminal. Seriously, for the first 5-8 years, the digital currency was mainly used as a means for criminals to launder money and sell illegal goods on the dark market. Think of all the massive hacks in the early days also, and all those darknet markets that disappeared with huge amounts of bitcoin.

Literally millions and millions of the 16 million coins out there would be owned by criminals. And now with bitcoin becoming more centralized and less anonymous, they are swiftly exiting the market and looking for alternative dark coins.

I also personally avoid using bitcoin all-together because of the extremely slow transaction speeds and high cost's associated with it.

The bitcoin mining business is dust, so that interest will die quickly.

I just don't see a very bright future for the god of cryptocurrency and it will surely be surpassed by one of its rivals soon enough.

I'm torn between predicting it to be Dash, or Ethereum, and I recon it could be about 2 years before that happens.   

Would love to know peoples thoughts on the future of bitcoin.

Where will bitcoin be in

2 weeks?
2 months?
2 years?

Will it be surpassed by another coin? If so, which one and when?

You made a valid point. In my opinion i want to say that the major reasons bitcoin has been on the fall in price value are because two reasons.
1) Because of high cost of transaction fee. So new investors are discouraged to invest in bitcoin, instead they invest in Aitcoin like ETH,etc.
2) The christmas and new year holiday forced for bitcoin holders to sell their bitcoins for fiat. This is to enable them shop for the holidays. With this, the price would come up a little by the middle of January. My opinion though.

[Caesar Cung]

So Bitcoin's market dominance in the cryptocurrency world is currently at the lowest level ever with 36.1% of the total value.

In my opinion, it's because the interest in alternative coins is rising rapidly for one, but you also have to consider how much of the bitcoin world is criminal. Seriously, for the first 5-8 years, the digital currency was mainly used as a means for criminals to launder money and sell illegal goods on the dark market. Think of all the massive hacks in the early days also, and all those darknet markets that disappeared with huge amounts of bitcoin.

Literally millions and millions of the 16 million coins out there would be owned by criminals. And now with bitcoin becoming more centralized and less anonymous, they are swiftly exiting the market and looking for alternative dark coins.

I also personally avoid using bitcoin all-together because of the extremely slow transaction speeds and high cost's associated with it.

The bitcoin mining business is dust, so that interest will die quickly.

I just don't see a very bright future for the god of cryptocurrency and it will surely be surpassed by one of its rivals soon enough.

I'm torn between predicting it to be Dash, or Ethereum, and I recon it could be about 2 years before that happens.   

Would love to know peoples thoughts on the future of bitcoin.

Where will bitcoin be in

2 weeks?
2 months?
2 years?

Will it be surpassed by another coin? If so, which one and when?

Bitcoin may be down for some time, but for cross-border payments not through third parties, only the crypto can do it and the lowest cost is the fastest, sometimes the crime is good in this case. and help all the world change.

[thecryptillian]

You made a valid point. In my opinion i want to say that the major reasons bitcoin has been on the fall in price value are because two reasons.
1) Because of high cost of transaction fee. So new investors are discouraged to invest in bitcoin, instead they invest in Aitcoin like ETH,etc.
2) The christmas and new year holiday forced for bitcoin holders to sell their bitcoins for fiat. This is to enable them shop for the holidays. With this, the price would come up a little by the middle of January. My opinion though.

Yeah I agree as to why the rapid decline before Christmas, and I also agree that the immediate future looks okay. There is way too much hype surrounding it and we are still at a point where a large portion of new investors have never even heard of Ethereum. It's all about Bitcoin in the press at the moment. So while the demand is still there it should be fine and probably rise like you say..

[kiboloves]

In the process of the rapid development of virtual currency, the role of bitcoin is huge. In the future, bitcoin may withdraw from the circulation of digital money at a high price. The market share and function of bitcoin will be undertaken by thousands of altcoin.

[LilW7821]

the future of bitcoin can see more excited and joyful once it reach to 20k$ then it will take totally command over the media for which the demands will be increase and also most important the investment will furthermore rise

[Ctn]

It could happen that bitcoin may be eaten by its rival. The bitcoin dominance has fallen by all dow to 38% in todays date. The crypto currencies are heading towards new revolution. Other coins are faster in transaction and lower in fees a total advantage over the bitcoin and thus the use of them might just increase a lot. The coins are well thought projects since long time, just the way bitcoin gotten its investors in long term these projects will get it too. Thus the dominance of the bitcoin will go even down and it may vanish one day. This will leave our bitcoin almost naked in very short period of time. So you see with this aftermath I'm definitely sure that many wrong things could happen.

But I'm sure about one thing, we can not predict it so fast. The new year has just started and there are many more thing yet to come and surprise us.

[Tux99]

Bitcoin future is hard to explain. There are still some homework to be done ny bitcoin developer if they want bitcoin become better in future.
Regarding surpass by other altcoin, i think the possibility is very small since no others can reach the marketcap as high as bitcoin.

[thecryptillian]

In the process of the rapid development of virtual currency, the role of bitcoin is huge. In the future, bitcoin may withdraw from the circulation of digital money at a high price. The market share and function of bitcoin will be undertaken by thousands of altcoin.

It certainly does look crucial in the early development phase of the digital currency revolution.

[HeRetiK]

So Bitcoin's market dominance in the cryptocurrency world is currently at the lowest level ever with 36.1% of the total value.

In my opinion, it's because the interest in alternative coins is rising rapidly for one, but you also have to consider how much of the bitcoin world is criminal. Seriously, for the first 5-8 years, the digital currency was mainly used as a means for criminals to launder money and sell illegal goods on the dark market. Think of all the massive hacks in the early days also, and all those darknet markets that disappeared with huge amounts of bitcoin.

Literally millions and millions of the 16 million coins out there would be owned by criminals. And now with bitcoin becoming more centralized and less anonymous, they are swiftly exiting the market and looking for alternative dark coins.

This would imply that privacy focused coins have significantly gained in market cap, which is not the case. Closest being Monero on 11th place, which, if I remember correctly, used to have a larger pie of the market cap in early 2017.

At the time of writing about 8% of market cap are being accounted for by Bitcoin hardforks. Ignoring those, BTC is not worse off than in June 2017. What actually seems to be happening is that more alts that were previously widely ignored are gaining traction. This seems to be mostly at the cost of ETH, which is down to 13% from its peak of 31%. In other words, while people previously focused their alt coin portfolio on ETH, they seem to invest more diversified right now.

I also personally avoid using bitcoin all-together because of the extremely slow transaction speeds and high cost's associated with it.

Fair enough.

The bitcoin mining business is dust, so that interest will die quickly.

What leads you to this conclusion? Bitcoin mining seems to be business as usual. Actually it seems to be more profitable than ever, given the recent growth in price and the option to mine BCH instead of BTC.

I just don't see a very bright future for the god of cryptocurrency and it will surely be surpassed by one of its rivals soon enough.

I'm torn between predicting it to be Dash, or Ethereum, and I recon it could be about 2 years before that happens.   

Would love to know peoples thoughts on the future of bitcoin.

Where will bitcoin be in

2 weeks?
2 months?
2 years?

Will it be surpassed by another coin? If so, which one and when?

In the long run I expect the coin that scales best in terms of transaction throughput, without having to rely on centralized entities, to be the most dominant one. In their current states all coins seem to be equally shitty in this regard. All things being equally shitty, BTC remains on top.

[eat7412]

Bitcoin's future is likely to grow and be legalized everywhere in the world and we can trade anything with Bitcoin, which is great because Bitcoin is an anonymous market and no one can control

[thecryptillian]

Bitcoin future is hard to explain. There are still some homework to be done ny bitcoin developer if they want bitcoin become better in future.
Regarding surpass by other altcoin, i think the possibility is very small since no others can reach the marketcap as high as bitcoin.

Market Cap can change. But yes it's very hard to predict or explain.

[albert11]

So Bitcoin's market dominance in the cryptocurrency world is currently at the lowest level ever with 36.1% of the total value.

In my opinion, it's because the interest in alternative coins is rising rapidly for one, but you also have to consider how much of the bitcoin world is criminal. Seriously, for the first 5-8 years, the digital currency was mainly used as a means for criminals to launder money and sell illegal goods on the dark market. Think of all the massive hacks in the early days also, and all those darknet markets that disappeared with huge amounts of bitcoin.

Literally millions and millions of the 16 million coins out there would be owned by criminals. And now with bitcoin becoming more centralized and less anonymous, they are swiftly exiting the market and looking for alternative dark coins.

I also personally avoid using bitcoin all-together because of the extremely slow transaction speeds and high cost's associated with it.

The bitcoin mining business is dust, so that interest will die quickly.

I just don't see a very bright future for the god of cryptocurrency and it will surely be surpassed by one of its rivals soon enough.

I'm torn between predicting it to be Dash, or Ethereum, and I recon it could be about 2 years before that happens.   

Would love to know peoples thoughts on the future of bitcoin.

Where will bitcoin be in

2 weeks?
2 months?
2 years?

Will it be surpassed by another coin? If so, which one and when?

Good point though, I really get your trying to say. But when it comes to investments like bitcoin we can never really say about it. Bitcoin up til now just like other altcoins has still a lot of potential. Bitcoin after a few years would either continue to grow or lose its value because of some other altcoin. The development of digital currency is still early, and since bitcoin is the pioneer of cryptocurrencies, some other alt who want to get in will pattern their's to bitcoin. But still, everything still relies on what will happen to the market in the near future.

[thecryptillian]

This would imply that privacy focused coins have significantly gained in market cap, which is not the case. Closest being Monero on 11th place, which, if I remember correctly, used to have a larger pie of the market cap in early 2017.

It doesn't necessarily imply that, but I see your point.

At the time of writing about 8% of market cap are being accounted for by Bitcoin hardforks. Ignoring those, BTC is not worse off than in June 2017. What actually seems to be happening is that more alts that were previously widely ignored are gaining traction. This seems to be mostly at the cost of ETH, which is down to 13% from its peak of 31%. In other words, while people previously focused their alt coin portfolio on ETH, they seem to invest more diversified right now.

Excellent theory on the Ethereum. As for the hardforks, I don't tend to group them collectively when discussing market cap, but fine I guess.

What leads you to this conclusion? Bitcoin mining seems to be business as usual. Actually it seems to be more profitable than ever, given the recent growth in price and the option to mine BCH instead of BTC.

Facts led me to my conclusion.. It has become uneconomical for the average person to profit from mining. Any newcomer to digital currency would have a very, very hard time making a profit, and would look elsewhere.

In the long run I expect the coin that scales best in terms of transaction throughput, without having to rely on centralized entities, to be the most dominant one. In their current states all coins seem to be equally shitty in this regard. All things being equally shitty, BTC remains on top.

Considering I thought you were spot on with your theory on which coin will become the most dominant one, I'm gobsmacked that you would consider all of them equally shitty. Dash for example is clearly miles ahead of bitcoin in terms of user-friendly interface and is bound to have a greater appeal for everyday use.
Also, both Dash and Ethereum have basically instant transaction speeds, while you can wait a whole day for a bitcoin transfer.

[rphk]

I believe one reason bitcoin fall now may be due to the Christmas vacation and en cashed and spent . And another point is since transaction  fees are higher  and mining also not so easy ,people looking on the alt coin options. but i hope if bitcoin price  falls people may return back to the investment on bitcoins,so bitcoin will gain again ,so predictions is bitcoin will not be down.

[doch]

Bitcoin future is hard to explain. There are still some homework to be done ny bitcoin developer if they want bitcoin become better in future.
Regarding surpass by other altcoin, i think the possibility is very small since no others can reach the marketcap as high as bitcoin.

Yes that is right that it is hard to say anything about bitcoin in advance but still i think bitcoin will have a very bright future because bitcoin popularity is continuously increasing.

[HeRetiK]

At the time of writing about 8% of market cap are being accounted for by Bitcoin hardforks. Ignoring those, BTC is not worse off than in June 2017. What actually seems to be happening is that more alts that were previously widely ignored are gaining traction. This seems to be mostly at the cost of ETH, which is down to 13% from its peak of 31%. In other words, while people previously focused their alt coin portfolio on ETH, they seem to invest more diversified right now.

Excellent theory on the Ethereum. As for the hardforks, I don't tend to group them collectively when discussing market cap, but fine I guess.

In general I see the Bitcoin hardforks as alts of their own as well. But for the sake of argument it is important to keep in mind that those coins appeared basically out of thin air. Insta-alts, so to speak, complementary miners, community and issued coins included.

What leads you to this conclusion? Bitcoin mining seems to be business as usual. Actually it seems to be more profitable than ever, given the recent growth in price and the option to mine BCH instead of BTC.

Facts led me to my conclusion.. It has become uneconomical for the average person to profit from mining. Any newcomer to digital currency would have a very, very hard time making a profit, and would look elsewhere.

Entering Bitcoin mining has become incredibly hard, that is true. I'm not sure about mining profitably being completely out of reach for the average person though, as electricity costs vary a lot even in rather close geographical areas (at least in Europe) and I don't know how hard or easy it currently is to get your hands on mining hardware for a reasonable price.

Either way.

Bitcoin mining as a business is undoubtedly alive and kicking, otherwise we'd see a plateau in hashrate. However it keeps growing, courtesy of ongoing miner production, research and development.

Bitcoin mining as a community effort... yep, that's mostly gone, unfortunately. I don't think that the loss of this part of the community has much effect on Bitcoin's growth however, as each wave of newcomers will likely be less tech oriented than the one before. Or put differently, each wave of newcomers will care more about cryptocurrencies as speculative asset / payment method / store of value than about the technicalities of mining.

In the long run I expect the coin that scales best in terms of transaction throughput, without having to rely on centralized entities, to be the most dominant one. In their current states all coins seem to be equally shitty in this regard. All things being equally shitty, BTC remains on top.

Considering I thought you were spot on with your theory on which coin will become the most dominant one, I'm gobsmacked that you would consider all of them equally shitty. Dash for example is clearly miles ahead of bitcoin in terms of user-friendly interface and is bound to have a greater appeal for everyday use.
Also, both Dash and Ethereum have basically instant transaction speeds, while you can wait a whole day for a bitcoin transfer.

Admittedly this statement was a bit of a hyperbole, but as far as scaling is concerned, none of the alts that I've looked at closely so far have convinced me of offering a viable alternative approach.

Dash I have yet to take a closer look at, but its masternode based consensus algorithm smells to me like an even worse version of PoS, which by itself already is an instant turn-off to me. Arguments for / against PoS aside, I know too little about Dash to give full judgement. Unless Dash approaches blockchains vastly differently from Bitcoin -- such as a blockchain-abandoning, DAG-based currencies like Iota and ByteBall, both of which have issues of their own right -- it will likely fail to convince me (not that this should matter to anyone else).

Ethereum comes to a halt whenever a major ICO takes place or crypto-kittens clog the network. And that's not even what I would call real world applications. Any network that gets smothered by vaporware and memes has a lot of work ahead. Granted, one can expect Ethereum's scalability to improve over the next few years. Arguing about future Ethereum improvements is moot, however, as then you'd have to apply the same standard to other alts and Bitcoin itself.

Remember, I'm talking only about scalability in regards to transaction throughput here, as I believe that this will be the most important factor in the long term. Other pros and cons of the respective cryptocurrencies are ignored, as these would be discussions of their own. Also note that I'm mostly ignoring centralized solutions such as Ripple and Iota, as at that point I would consider crypto to have officially failed.

[Rana590]

It is really heard to say crypto currency's future. Bitcoin is an exception crypto in the crypto world. It is the virtual currency that it has a lighting future. Price is so valuable and users of it are also in huge number. Bitcoin is the future of money. We can hope that Bitcoin will reach on better position in future.

[cybersofts]

Don't worry boys here is a good new for you;

Great News For Bitcoin! Lightening Network First Payment Was Successful!
https://www.coindesk.com/payment-provider-bitrefill-runs-successful-lightning-transaction-test/

Once the Lightening Network is fully implemented bitcoin will return to dominate the market as the one and only king of the cryptocurrencies

[louie69]

Don't worry boys here is a good new for you;

Great News For Bitcoin! Lightening Network First Payment Was Successful!
https://www.coindesk.com/payment-provider-bitrefill-runs-successful-lightning-transaction-test/

Once the Lightening Network is fully implemented bitcoin will return to dominated the market as the one and only king of the cryptocurrencies

The future of bitcoin is bright and has many advantages on top of the traditional of crypto currencies. Furthermore, future market price would still be going higher than the present value and will be definitely becoming stronger.