Revolution of the Digital Economy: Bitcoin, Ethereum and Others...

[olumyd]

I truly believe cryptocurrencies and blockchain as emerging economic instruments and technologies are far beyond what speculations alone can handle or dictate, there's more to this innovation, and clearly, after nearly a decade we are still yet to recover from the huge rift caused by bitcoin; and now, more disruptive subsequent technologies that follow are even more daunting.


But with Bitcoin and Ethereum showing two distinct timelines in how to handle decentralised assets, which one would you consider as having more valuable penetrating economic potential with respect to mainstream adoption?


Share your views. And don't forget to vote on the poll above.

[BitcoinNewbie15]

I truly believe cryptocurrencies and blockchain as emerging economic instruments and technologies are far beyond what speculations alone can handle or dictate, there's more to this innovation, and clearly, after nearly a decade we are still yet to recover from the huge rift caused by bitcoin; and now, more disruptive subsequent technologies that follow are even more daunting.


But with Bitcoin and Ethereum showing two distinct timelines in how to handle decentralised assets, which one would you consider as having more valuable penetrating economic potential with respect to mainstream adoption?


Share your views.

This is an interesting question. I almost want to say ethereum, because of its smaller user base (and in turn market cap) and the potential enterprise applications.  With that being said, cryptocurrency is far too complex for the everyday user though, and ethereum is even more complex than Bitcoin. Many, many new average joes bought Bitcoin during 2017, and they really don't know how to send it, use it, download wallets, etc. they just speculatively hold it on exchanges, completely unaware of what they actually bought. There needs to be some UI improvements, and user-friendly wallets before these coins truly experience mainstream adoption.

In my point of view, Ethereum is more as a utility token/network, and Bitcoin is a digital asset/digital gold.

[vickybitcoin]

I truly believe cryptocurrencies and blockchain as emerging economic instruments and technologies are far beyond what speculations alone can handle or dictate, there's more to this innovation, and clearly, after nearly a decade we are still yet to recover from the huge rift caused by bitcoin; and now, more disruptive subsequent technologies that follow are even more daunting.


But with Bitcoin and Ethereum showing two distinct timelines in how to handle decentralised assets, which one would you consider as having more valuable penetrating economic potential with respect to mainstream adoption?


Share your views.

Both are actually helping the economy of those countries that are open to it. Actually cryptocurrency has help alot in the world's financial market no matter how others sees it as a fraud or thinks of it negatively.  bitcoin has made a lot of self made millionares in a matter of year.

[r32godzilla]

With no doubt,bitcoin only could succeed in being used in mainstream and Ethereum is far behind in this aspect.It only provides a platform for tokens issued and it has not gained trust as bitcoin has got nor it is accepted as payment anywhere.

[richardsNY]

With no doubt,bitcoin only could succeed in being used in mainstream and Ethereum is far behind in this aspect.It only provides a platform for tokens issued and it has not gained trust as bitcoin has got nor it is accepted as payment anywhere.

Bitcoin will definitely be the last standing up in case there happens to be a massive wipe out in the future, but you have to understand that not everyone looks at the crypto market like that. The majority of the retail investors are not investing, but purely gambling their savings in the hope they strike a jackpot as in finding the next Bitcoin or Ethereum. These people don't care about what Bitcoin stands for technically, they don't care what Ethereum stands for technically -- it's just the profit potential they care about. These people heavily contribute to the ICO hype being what it is today, and these people will also pay the price once the ICO bubble pops. I don't often like to use the term bubble, but when it comes to ICO's there is no other word describing it better.

[Tankdestroyer]

Bitcoin IMO still has the upper hand in the economic potential because it is accepted as payment in a wider scope than ETH. I only see ETH standing on par with Bitcoin if some big companies builds a smart contract to aid them in their respective businesses (because that would help boost economic potential of ETH). Bitcoin can be mainstream in terms of paying others but IMO ETH can be mainstream in terms of running smart contract and both can coexist side by side.

[exstasie]

Bitcoin is king. Bitcoin will remain king.

However, I think bitcoiners drastically underestimate the staying power of altcoins like ETH. A lot of them see things in black-and-white terms, as if BTC must be "the last one standing." I think altcoins are rather much more complementary to Bitcoin than that.

There isn't only one way to use decentralization in search of monetary sovereignty (and beyond, as new use cases emerge). There may be a best way and I think BTC will continue to follow that path, slowly but surely.

[olumyd]

With no doubt,bitcoin only could succeed in being used in mainstream and Ethereum is far behind in this aspect.It only provides a platform for tokens issued and it has not gained trust as bitcoin has got nor it is accepted as payment anywhere.

Bitcoin will definitely be the last standing up in case there happens to be a massive wipe out in the future, but you have to understand that not everyone looks at the crypto market like that. The majority of the retail investors are not investing, but purely gambling their savings in the hope they strike a jackpot as in finding the next Bitcoin or Ethereum. These people don't care about what Bitcoin stands for technically, they don't care what Ethereum stands for technically -- it's just the profit potential they care about. These people heavily contribute to the ICO hype being what it is today, and these people will also pay the price once the ICO bubble pops. I don't often like to use the term bubble, but when it comes to ICO's there is no other word describing it better.

Your opinion about retail investors sounds a lot like a decentralised huge gambling slot machine. And it really is alarming and appalling to see people ignore knowledge-base and dive right into speculative profit pool. I suppose that could be the ultimate obstacle to mainstream applications of next generation blockchains. Most people will still be looking for the 'next' bitcoin or ethereum and at the same time ignore the wholesome opportunities DLTs present.

[pooya87]

Bitcoin is king. Bitcoin will remain king.

However, I think bitcoiners drastically underestimate the staying power of altcoins like ETH. A lot of them see things in black-and-white terms, as if BTC must be "the last one standing." I think altcoins are rather much more complementary to Bitcoin than that.

There isn't only one way to use decentralization in search of monetary sovereignty (and beyond, as new use cases emerge). There may be a best way and I think BTC will continue to follow that path, slowly but surely.

the thing is we have bitcoin then we have altcoins. ETH is not unique at all but bitcoin is. in fact there are a lot of better platforms than ETH for smart contracts out there but since ETH has a huge supply (hence a huge market cap) and a lot of advertisement it is known more than others.

as for decentralization, ETH is not decentralized in any sense. and the worst part is that in a year or two there will only be one or two servers that run its full node and they will be deciding the fate of it. its blockchain size surpassed 1 TB last month.

[shulio]

None of the altcoins has the real market adoptation yet. They have potential but none has daily active usage. So Bitcoin still has the lead for me.

[exstasie]

Bitcoin is king. Bitcoin will remain king.

However, I think bitcoiners drastically underestimate the staying power of altcoins like ETH. A lot of them see things in black-and-white terms, as if BTC must be "the last one standing." I think altcoins are rather much more complementary to Bitcoin than that.

There isn't only one way to use decentralization in search of monetary sovereignty (and beyond, as new use cases emerge). There may be a best way and I think BTC will continue to follow that path, slowly but surely.

the thing is we have bitcoin then we have altcoins. ETH is not unique at all but bitcoin is. in fact there are a lot of better platforms than ETH for smart contracts out there but since ETH has a huge supply (hence a huge market cap) and a lot of advertisement it is known more than others.

That's why I think it has staying power. In time, that momentum might dwindle; we'll see. But the perception of wide usage/acceptance is really powerful in a market where speculative faith in future usage is so important. ETH is definitely more well-known than any other altcoin. The first mover advantage is strong in spite of better alternatives.

as for decentralization, ETH is not decentralized in any sense. and the worst part is that in a year or two there will only be one or two servers that run its full node and they will be deciding the fate of it. its blockchain size surpassed 1 TB last month.

Sharding, tree chains or some other similar distributed storage mechanism will be required for ETH to be even remotely scalable.

I would disagree with the "not decentralized in any sense" part. Ethereum still uses proof-of-work to achieve distributed consensus, much like Bitcoin does. Its mining power might be more centralized, although given Bitmain's position and possible proxies, I'm not so sure. The Core developers like Vitalik do have more influence over the network than Bitcoin Core developers, but I would point out this is an out-of-band or out-of-protocol issue that doesn't squarely apply to the degree of decentralization of the protocol itself. It only applies to consensus forks, which still require the participation of a majority of miners (and users in the case of a hard fork).

[olumyd]

None of the altcoins has the real market adoptation yet. They have potential but none has daily active usage. So Bitcoin still has the lead for me.

I think the reason why most altcoins haven't gotten that much adoption in real life projections is because their platforms are still in the testing alpha or beta stages which are yet to be deployed for full scale operations. Apart from the trading and investment blockchain based projects, other projects tackling real-world problems in areas like logistics, food processing, decentralised Cloud storage and AI based systems, efficient energy/green-energy distribution projects, require a huge amount of time to scale before they can truly make waves. And this goes way beyond proof of concept alone.

[yndye]

None of the altcoins has the real market adoptation yet. They have potential but none has daily active usage. So Bitcoin still has the lead for me.

I think the reason why most altcoins haven't gotten that much adoption in real life projections is because their platforms are still in the testing alpha or beta stages which are yet to be deployed for full scale operations. Apart from the trading and investment blockchain based projects, other projects tackling real-world problems in areas like logistics, food processing, decentralised Cloud storage and AI based systems, efficient energy/green-energy distribution projects, require a huge amount of time to scale before they can truly make waves. And this goes way beyond proof of concept alone.

These projects are a big help for businesses or even for individuals to have more efficient and effective transactions compared to the technology that we are using nowadays which is centralized. We have yet to see how these projects and how would the altcoins change how the businesses would be able to solve the problems of their processes. It might take some time for these projects to penetrate the market and convince the businesses to adopt it but then we can see big companies already adopting blockchain technology so it would be the norm later on and then the altcoins would not compete with each other as each of them has different use cases.

[pooya87]

It only applies to consensus forks, which still require the participation of a majority of miners (and users in the case of a hard fork).

as for users, they will not have a voice when they do not run a full node or can not run one and pretty soon the issues will become more serious as the blockchain size goes way past 1 TB which it currently is. additionally the DAO hard fork proved even if the majority doesn't go with the hard fork the foundation behind ETH has enough power to push for the fork and keep it stronger while dumping on the other chains killing them (Poloniex even caught then red-handed manipulating ETC).
as for miners they won't care. they have never cared. they just want something to mined and earn money. if it is not ETH then they just point their mining rigs to something else.

[Samarkand]

...
However, I think bitcoiners drastically underestimate the staying power of altcoins like ETH. A lot of them see things in black-and-white terms, as if BTC must be "the last one standing." I think altcoins are rather much more complementary to Bitcoin than that.
...

I disagree with this viewpoint.

ETH has been around for years and yet we haven´t seen a DApp that solves
a real problem or has gained any meaningful traction. However, we have already
seen huge losses due to hacks or bugs in smart contracts.

Some people deride ETH as a get-rich-quick scheme of a few Wall Street bankers and while
I don´t think that this is actually true, the pre-sale of Ethereum does look
pretty shady:
https://medium.com/hasufl/ethereum-presale-dynamics-revisited-c1b70ac38448

I´d argue that store of value and international censorship-resistant payments may actually
be the only viable use cases for cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin is the best
in both categories.

[exstasie]

...
However, I think bitcoiners drastically underestimate the staying power of altcoins like ETH. A lot of them see things in black-and-white terms, as if BTC must be "the last one standing." I think altcoins are rather much more complementary to Bitcoin than that.
...

I disagree with this viewpoint.

ETH has been around for years and yet we haven´t seen a DApp that solves
a real problem or has gained any meaningful traction. However, we have already
seen huge losses due to hacks or bugs in smart contracts.

I never claimed that ETH is particularly useful, or isn't risky to use. I wasn't really talking about underlying fundamentals at all. I was talking about market psychology and the first (or early) mover advantage in the context of a highly speculative, nascent market.

Anyway, buggy smart contracts aren't actually the fault of the protocol but the choice of scripting language, etc. Many BTC have also been lost due to careless code. Blaming Ethereum for a shitty dapp is like blaming Bitcoin for an exchange hack.

But to elaborate on the "complementary" angle....whether Bitcoin maximalists will admit it or not, altcoins (because they extract huge amounts of supply from the BTC/fiat markets) are a massive boon for Bitcoin price. I also think Bitcoin and altcoins have a symbiotic awareness/hype relationship where money flows back and forth between the markets in global rallies. Altcoins are also more important for development than people give them credit for. For example, I believe that altcoins successfully implementing Segwit had a tangible effect on market support to implement it in Bitcoin in spite of miner opposition. There are/will be many other such examples.

I´d argue that store of value and international censorship-resistant payments may actually
be the only viable use cases for cryptocurrencies and Bitcoin is the best
in both categories.

You might be right. But there's no point debating the assertion since you're just stating an opinion.

Anyway, I'm just playing devil's advocate here more than anything.

[Clemcout]

I truly believe cryptocurrencies and blockchain as emerging economic instruments and technologies are far beyond what speculations alone can handle or dictate, there's more to this innovation, and clearly, after nearly a decade we are still yet to recover from the huge rift caused by bitcoin; and now, more disruptive subsequent technologies that follow are even more daunting.


But with Bitcoin and Ethereum showing two distinct timelines in how to handle decentralised assets, which one would you consider as having more valuable penetrating economic potential with respect to mainstream adoption?


Share your views. And don't forget to vote on the poll above.

World is turning towards digital currency and blockchain plays vital role in this regard. When the world comes to know about this technology they will fully understand the importance of bitcoin, Ethereum and other Altcoin. From barter system we reached to digital currency and the future is that of online currency. Just take a little more time to hold the world.

[LeGaulois]

Bitcoin is king. Bitcoin will remain king.

However, I think bitcoiners drastically underestimate the staying power of altcoins like ETH. A lot of them see things in black-and-white terms, as if BTC must be "the last one standing." I think altcoins are rather much more complementary to Bitcoin than that.

There isn't only one way to use decentralization in search of monetary sovereignty (and beyond, as new use cases emerge). There may be a best way and I think BTC will continue to follow that path, slowly but surely.

Bitcoin has over 100,000 merchants accepting it, how many Etherum currently has. It's what matters, the adoption of the currency. Most of the Ethereum popularity is due to ICO/ERC20. Sure there are some altcoins complementary to Bitcoin, I am thinking about privacy coins like
Zencash, Monero, Cloakcoin and so on...; but how many are useless and don't bring something new.
I'm joining @RichardNY opinion about the hype on ICOs

[arpon11]

I believe bitcoin has a wider opportunities to represent the future of our financial system!  Ethereum has it own advantage but I think bitcoin is far better and I will wish bitcoin to remain the must adopted cryptocurrencies and dominant cryptocurrencies in Nigeria.

[pooya87]

Bitcoin is king. Bitcoin will remain king.

However, I think bitcoiners drastically underestimate the staying power of altcoins like ETH. A lot of them see things in black-and-white terms, as if BTC must be "the last one standing." I think altcoins are rather much more complementary to Bitcoin than that.

There isn't only one way to use decentralization in search of monetary sovereignty (and beyond, as new use cases emerge). There may be a best way and I think BTC will continue to follow that path, slowly but surely.

Bitcoin has over 100,000 merchants accepting it, how many Etherum currently has. It's what matters, the adoption of the currency. Most of the Ethereum popularity is due to ICO/ERC20. Sure there are some altcoins complementary to Bitcoin, I am thinking about privacy coins like
Zencash, Monero, Cloakcoin and so on...; but how many are useless and don't bring something new.
I'm joining @RichardNY opinion about the hype on ICOs

to be fair bitcoin is a currency (it is designed to be one) so it has merchant adoption. ethereum is NOT a currency, instead it is designed to be a token so it must not have any merchant adoption at all!
the usage of it is for smart contracts, now the question is which one of these thousands of smart contracts (ICOs) that have been created in the past couple of years have actually done something? the answer is 0. they all have been useless. they create some imaginary problem and then pretend to fix it.