Will Bitcoin be surpassed in value by an alternate cryptocurrency and when?

[surfer43]

Will Bitcoin be surpassed in value by an alt coin and when? The first coin is not necessarily the best in the future. Do you think zerocoin stands a chance?

[piramida]

Look at every alt currency rate against bitcoin, a yearly graph, and come to a conclusion: http://www.cryptocoincharts.info/. Short answer - no, they all are going to 0 eventually. End of story. Zerocoin stands a chance to become zero first, good name.

In reality, cloning an algo does not give you any advantage, because the value of bitcoin is not in the code or idea - these cost zero as early days of bitcoin show - but in the network, infrastructure, businesses, developers, and so on.

So every pump-and-dump in altcoins that seemingly excites lots of noobs is just that - speculative movement to get some short-term gain before returning back, to the slow decline to zero. Unless a coin with serious backing - like a billion dollar infrastructure - appears, you should bet on bitcoin.

[olloman]

you bought a lot of zerocoins, didn't you?

[KFR]

For me, that's kind of the point of supporting alt coins.

If, for example, in the unlikely event that SHA-256 becomes compromised I for one am quite glad that there will be blockchains around based on an alternative hashing algorithm e.g. Litecoin.

I see the vast majority of alt coins as pump-and-dump nonsense feeding on the scraps that Bitcoin drops from its table.  But just a few of them are worth keeping a close eye on.

After all, none of us here knows the future.

[piramida]

If, for example, in the unlikely event that SHA-256 becomes compromised I for one am quite glad that there will be blockchains around based on an alternative hashing algorithm e.g. Litecoin.

Thing is, in such an unlikely event, bitcoin would change to SHA-512 or whatever would be cool then, overnight. Altcoins could serve some purpose I guess, as experimenting grounds with various chain logic parameters, or lighter coins for some lighter purposes, but I think it's a pretty solid statement that none of them would match BTC in value without some very serious investment / backing first. Any good advances in altcoins could be easily ported to bitcoin, with it's brand name recognition and infrastructure, so just "being better" in something minor won't do it.

[bootlace]

There are some new cryptocurrencies under development that, if they achieve half of what they promise, will give BTC a serious run for its money. These are not your average altcoin however that are slight tweaks of Bitcoin.

[gentlemand]

I can't foresee any of the current crop gaining serious traction, though I'm sure there'll always be enthusiast niches for them and uses we don't even know of yet.

If Bitcoin does become as mainstream as it seems to be slowly becoming the alternatives that do a better job might never gain the attention they deserve.

Once you're past a certain point of awareness the actual merits of something become less relevant. You could find much better alternatives to almost every market leader in every single area of our lives. More often that not the average user is going to go with the best known choice.

[piramida]

Once you're past a certain point of awareness the actual merits of something become less relevant. You could find much better alternatives to almost every market leader in every single area of our lives. More often that not the average user is going to go with the best known choice.

Market leaders, given they have much headstart and alot more capital to play with, can hire the best and copy any feature of the lesser competitors - but better. Only when all competition is crushed, can they go on to continue ignoring customer demands So in that sense, competition of course matters, and altcoins are needed. But investing in them is a dire mistake.

[Mirsad]

If, for example, in the unlikely event that SHA-256 becomes compromised I for one am quite glad that there will be blockchains around based on an alternative hashing algorithm e.g. Litecoin.

Thing is, in such an unlikely event, bitcoin would change to SHA-512 or whatever would be cool then, overnight.

All ASIC Miners would be expensive garbage and the network would be inexistent.
You can't switch SHA256 Hardware to SHA512.

GPU Miners just need a code update, but this is not going to work for single purpose ASICs.

[Johnny Bitcoinseed]

Bitcoin has the critical mass going for it, with many merchants accepting bitcoin for example as well as other companies creating easier methods of buying and selling.

This critical mass is important.  For most on the cutting edge of development, they can only really concentrate effectively on one coin so as not to dilute their efforts.  For the near future at least, it appears that Bitcoin is it.

[tdenisenko]

For me, altcoins and bitcoin will become closer and closer in value everyday.
Because altcoins do the exact same thing as BTC does, and more people realize that they can purchase more alt coins with the same amount of fiat to use at their company/organization.

So all coins will be approximately same in value in the future.

Although, all businesses can't accept 20 altcoins so it's more likely to there will be 2-3 major crypto-currencies and others are to be eliminated.

[MargaretsDream]

For me, altcoins and bitcoin will become closer and closer in value everyday.
Because altcoins do the exact same thing as BTC does, and more people realize that they can purchase more alt coins with the same amount of fiat to use at their company/organization.

So all coins will be approximately same in value in the future.

Although, all businesses can't accept 20 altcoins so it's more likely to there will be 2-3 major crypto-currencies and others are to be eliminated.

Why the mess with clones and using 2-3  crypto-currencies when one is enought. You can trade your altcoins to Bitcoin right before spending

[gentlemand]

Market leaders, given they have much headstart and alot more capital to play with, can hire the best and copy any feature of the lesser competitors - but better. Only when all competition is crushed, can they go on to continue ignoring customer demands So in that sense, competition of course matters, and altcoins are needed. But investing in them is a dire mistake.

Absolutely. But it's pretty depressing to witness how little research people put into making their choices. More often than not they'll plump for the best known choice.

Though Bitcoin is still at the outer edges of dim awareness for most people, if at all, it's the only one that'll ring any bells.

The essence of a brand is creating trust and fulfilling expectations. You settle for that one because you know what you're going to get.

In a way Bitcoin will always have more of that because it came out of nowhere and grew from zero. Everything that has come afterwards is playing catch up.

For something as important as a new type of money to gain a foothold it needs trust. For trust you need history, adoption and utility. Bitcoin's history is more than a little tainted, but it's also been taking the knocks from minute one and it's still thriving. That counts for a lot.

[DeathAndTaxes]

For me, altcoins and bitcoin will become closer and closer in value everyday.
Because altcoins do the exact same thing as BTC does, and more people realize that they can purchase more alt coins with the same amount of fiat to use at their company/organization.

So all coins will be approximately same in value in the future.

Although, all businesses can't accept 20 altcoins so it's more likely to there will be 2-3 major crypto-currencies and others are to be eliminated.

Why the mess with clones and using 2-3  crypto-currencies when one is enought. You can trade your altcoins to Bitcoin right before spending

Because he owns 2 or 3 alternatives and obviously those will be the winners. 

[MatTheCat]

Bitcoin has the critical mass going for it, with many merchants accepting bitcoin for example as well as other companies creating easier methods of buying and selling.

This critical mass is important.  For most on the cutting edge of development, they can only really concentrate effectively on one coin so as not to dilute their efforts.  For the near future at least, it appears that Bitcoin is it.

I would tend to go along with this. Bitcoin is way out in front, so far in front of the rest that it would be hard to imagine any of the rest catching it now. However, I am also acutely aware that practically none of the big internet based companies that were around during the tech bubble, are market leaders these days or even still around. Without knowing a great deal about the technology I don't suppose it would be beyond the realms of possibility that there turns out to be some design flaw in Bitcoin that eventually renders it untenable over the long term. Perhaps the computational power required to keep the Bitcoin universe functioning will become to great or perhaps someone will crack the algorithm and start forging coins. Who knows, but history tells us that New Invention mk1, never lasts the duration and improvements are always required for a concept or technology to succeed.

Who knows, perhaps one of the pump n dump coins will be in a good position to take Bitcoin's place should anything bring it down for whatever reason, or more likely is, that the Google or Facebook of crypto-currency is not yet with us.

[tdenisenko]

For me, altcoins and bitcoin will become closer and closer in value everyday.
Because altcoins do the exact same thing as BTC does, and more people realize that they can purchase more alt coins with the same amount of fiat to use at their company/organization.

So all coins will be approximately same in value in the future.

Although, all businesses can't accept 20 altcoins so it's more likely to there will be 2-3 major crypto-currencies and others are to be eliminated.

Why the mess with clones and using 2-3  crypto-currencies when one is enought. You can trade your altcoins to Bitcoin right before spending

Because he owns 2 or 3 alternatives and obviously those will be the winners.  

History repeats itself, once the world was accepting gold for every commodity but there was/is also silver and other currencies.
That's what will happen, you can assume Bitcoin as gold and Litecoin as silver for example.

[lucas.sev]

I would tend to go along with this. Bitcoin is way out in front, so far in front of the rest that it would be hard to imagine any of the rest catching it now. However, I am also acutely aware that practically none of the big internet based companies that were around during the tech bubble, are market leaders these days or even still around. Without knowing a great deal about the technology I don't suppose it would be beyond the realms of possibility that there turns out to be some design flaw in Bitcoin that eventually renders it untenable over the long term. Perhaps the computational power required to keep the Bitcoin universe functioning will become to great or perhaps someone will crack the algorithm and start forging coins. Who knows, but history tells us that New Invention mk1, never lasts the duration and improvements are always required for a concept or technology to succeed.

internet lasts

[hacknoid]

If, for example, in the unlikely event that SHA-256 becomes compromised I for one am quite glad that there will be blockchains around based on an alternative hashing algorithm e.g. Litecoin.

Thing is, in such an unlikely event, bitcoin would change to SHA-512 or whatever would be cool then, overnight. Altcoins could serve some purpose I guess, as experimenting grounds with various chain logic parameters, or lighter coins for some lighter purposes, but I think it's a pretty solid statement that none of them would match BTC in value without some very serious investment / backing first. Any good advances in altcoins could be easily ported to bitcoin, with it's brand name recognition and infrastructure, so just "being better" in something minor won't do it.

This, exactly.  Does anyone really expect that if some catastrophic flaw were to ever be discovered with Bitcoin that the developers would not make every effort to change and work around it?  Same with all the "advances" that the altcoins implement; if anything is worthwhile, it would be integrated into Bitcoin itself.   There are too many people, especially with money invested, to let things dwindle away.  If it looked like Bitcoin was falling into oblivion in favor of an altcoin then changes would be mandated by the community.

[DeathAndTaxes]

Bitcoin has the critical mass going for it, with many merchants accepting bitcoin for example as well as other companies creating easier methods of buying and selling.

This critical mass is important.  For most on the cutting edge of development, they can only really concentrate effectively on one coin so as not to dilute their efforts.  For the near future at least, it appears that Bitcoin is it.

I would tend to go along with this. Bitcoin is way out in front, so far in front of the rest that it would be hard to imagine any of the rest catching it now. However, I am also acutely aware that practically none of the big internet based companies that were around during the tech bubble, are market leaders these days or even still around. Without knowing a great deal about the technology I don't suppose it would be beyond the realms of possibility that there turns out to be some design flaw in Bitcoin that eventually renders it untenable over the long term. Perhaps the computational power required to keep the Bitcoin universe functioning will become to great or perhaps someone will crack the algorithm and start forging coins. Who knows, but history tells us that New Invention mk1, never lasts the duration and improvements are always required for a concept or technology to succeed.

Who knows, perhaps one of the pump n dump coins will be in a good position to take Bitcoin's place should anything bring it down for whatever reason, or more likely is, that the Google or Facebook of crypto-currency is not yet with us.

Bitcoin is more like a protocol.  TCP/IP has a lot of issues but the network effect has kept it around despite theoretically superior alternatives.  If TCP/IP didn't exist today and you were building a new protocol from scratch you wouldn't make it as crappy as TCP/IP is however the network effect has killed off the potential of an alternative.  Does Bitcoin have a large enough network effect to hold back competitors?  It remains to be seen but IMHO a competitor would have to be VASTLY superior not some improvements around the edge to displace it otherwise Bitcoin issues and all will be like TCP/IP.  People will build around it to improve the rough edges.  To stretch the metaphor somewhat TCP is stateless, oh noes that means you can't handle state on the internet right?  No.  It just means people designed higher level protocols to record user state at both ends while the underlying protocol (TCP/IP) remains stateless.

Now someone reading this is likely thinking what about TCP/IP v6 (64 bit addressing).  Well that is a good point.  This is more an evolutionary change not a radical new protocol and the rollout of this evolutionary improvement has been glacially slow (timelines measured on a decade scale).  Why?  Is it because TCP/IP v6 will suck?  No.  It is just that the current protocol is "good enough".

Who knows, perhaps one of the pump n dump coins will be in a good position to take Bitcoin's place should anything bring it down for whatever reason,

Or not.  They are 99% carbon copies.   Anything that kills Bitcoin will likely kill them too.  For example the most likely cryptogrpahic break will be in ECDSA.  Hashing algorithms are generally pretty resistant to cryptoanlysis.  Hell Bitcoin could have used SHA-1 and despite some theoretical breaks, everything would still work fine today.  Public Key cryptography however is far more vulnerable both to Quantum Computing AND to good ole cryptoanalysis.  If ECDSA is broken tomorrow (or the particular curve used by Bitcoin is found to be flawed) that break would affect every single clone coin.  Every single one uses ECDSA.  Hell not only do they all use ECDSA they all use the EXACT SAME CURVE.

[I_bitcoin]

If, for example, in the unlikely event that SHA-256 becomes compromised I for one am quite glad that there will be blockchains around based on an alternative hashing algorithm e.g. Litecoin.

Thing is, in such an unlikely event, bitcoin would change to SHA-512 or whatever would be cool then, overnight. Altcoins could serve some purpose I guess, as experimenting grounds with various chain logic parameters, or lighter coins for some lighter purposes, but I think it's a pretty solid statement that none of them would match BTC in value without some very serious investment / backing first. Any good advances in altcoins could be easily ported to bitcoin, with it's brand name recognition and infrastructure, so just "being better" in something minor won't do it.

This, exactly.  Does anyone really expect that if some catastrophic flaw were to ever be discovered with Bitcoin that the developers would not make every effort to change and work around it?  Same with all the "advances" that the altcoins implement; if anything is worthwhile, it would be integrated into Bitcoin itself.   There are too many people, especially with money invested, to let things dwindle away.  If it looked like Bitcoin was falling into oblivion in favor of an altcoin then changes would be mandated by the community.

Let's ask ourselves a simple question.   Are there any "alternative" Internets?   The answer is no.   There are separate and bastioned networks that use IP but the Internet itself is one whole.   BTW, it has limitations on IP addresses sorta like we have limitations on bitcoins.   IPv6 is HUGE but the bits to the far left are still scarce in quantity .

Bitcoin is quite similar to the Internet.   The "global" ledger of record is likely to remain the same out of massive convenience.   Off shoots will develop but they are highly unlikely to replace.