Is Bitcoin so valuable just because it was first?

[Aero Blue]

I have thought about this a lot, especially more recently as I question why I'm using Bitcoin. Since cryptocurrency began, there have been so many new and improved versions of the "Bitcoin blockchain", one of the most notable probably being Ethereum.

It's always painful to use Bitcoin in comparison with sometimes up to $5 transaction fees for sending even $10, not to mention the amount of time transactions take. It kind of feels like Bitcoin is a sinking ship in some ways, because of the increasing problems that occur with a blockchain system. However, this doesn't seem to faze many, as the price keeps rising again and hitting new records.

My ultimate question is: "Is Bitcoin so valuable just because it was first?" As technology progresses it's inevitable that new and better ways of doing things will be discovered. But is it really about just being first in today's world? What are your guy's thoughts on this? Do you think there will be a breaking point aka, amount of inconveniences people will put up with before moving on?

[siruiiuris]

Bitcoin has a lot of value added properties. This features can not explain with technical features and advantages. Think about world wide brands. There are a lot of brand which are not good as the others but more valuable and has more reputation. Such as Apple Macbooks, this is not just a computer, this is a business computer and people who are using macbook do not need any hardware requirements.

This is not just a e-money so we can not describe it with technical features. Actually, this is the name of e-money, and this is an ideology and a revolt to today's money system. We must describe Bitcoin as like as a money brand.

[kryptqnick]

It's a hard question. I thought about it myself for a while. I am not good at technical stuff, but it also occurred to me that many coins are indeed better than Bitcoin. Simply because they took the best it had and had an opportunity to fix what was wrong with it or simply offer some improvements. However, it seems to me that the problem with transaction fees and speed is ultimately the problem of blockchain itself. The only thing you can do is make it somewhat better, increase the capacity, so to speak. But the main problem lies deep within: whatever you do, the more transactions there are, the more time and money it takes to confirm them. And you know what? We actually even have cryptos that don't have this disadvantage. They are built on DAG, not Blockchain. DAG has a different principle of working, and with it the more transactions there are, the faster they get confirmed. The problem with DAG, though, is that it's very hard to ensure proper and not too centralized work of the coin before it gets a big and active community. Plus it's buggy, or so it seems.
But why Bitcoin is still #1? Some even make this point, that it's clearly not the best, and time will come when cryptos will be our future, but Bitcoin will be left behind, like with the .com boom.
I think that since Bitcoin was the first successful crypto, it also became the most famous one and the most innovative one in comparison with fiat, so this popularity and respect of innovation pushed it forward and might even push it forever.

[RBull]

Some altcoins are better than bitcoin for specific purposes. Bitcoin has the trust of the people and a very solid system.
Any altcoin that wants to compete with bitcoin has to offer something new, otherwise is just a bitcoin clone...

[joelsamuya]

The first mover advantage can be huge but with this feature alone I don't think Bitcoin can be able to survive as it is now...with its value continually rising and always coming back even if it had been proclaimed to be dead over and over again. I am not so sure but I think there seems to have a certain magic with Bitcoin that much better cryptocurrency can not rival. In any marketplace not just in cryptocurrency there will always be better products but their acceptance is not that good compared to products that have already established a strong foothold and captured market. Being first can be a big advantage but it is not always enough, of course. Now, the same can be said of Bitcoin's competitors: being better may not be always enough. Ultimately, everything boils down to acceptance and that sense of trust that it can be more valuable down the road.

[LeGaulois]

it's inevitable that new and better ways of doing things will be discovered

You're referring to altcoins. Of course, new coins will emerge while others will be forgotten. It comes back to endless debates about what's the best between BTC vs XXX
But don't forget Bitcoin can also evolve and remain competitive. There's a lot more to improve, Segwit didn't come the day 1. There are also multiple things like MimbleWimble, Schnorr which will help BTC

But is it really about just being first in today's world?

No, it's about the most robust and the most useful


I like to compare Bitcoin with Debian. Debian is the mother of most GNU/Linux OS today (Unbuntu, Zorin, Lubuntu,...). It creates different OS, for a different population, different needs, different communities, etc but in the end, Debian is still the queen, proof: devs keep to fork it

[fiulpro]

Hey

Not always this implies that the one who comes first is the best too , let's take an example :- Motorola was the first company to launch mobile back in 1973 , Apple was inturn founded in 1976 .
Now people usually compared Motorola to a trusted and stable company and the fact is they still do in many parts .
Apple on the other hand is inturn an amazing company , apart from their unnaturally high prices , their mobile phones are quite durable. Where as One plus was founded in 2013 and many people still think that it's a better option as compared to apple.

The fact is , the one who comes first always will have a trust of the people, they have room to improve , they can actually stay the best company out there on periodic upgradations but that doesn't naturally mean that they will be the best .
It's people's choice to invest in them.

I agree that in the market there are many exceptionally amazing coins , but Bitcoins have stability , trust , security which is unmarked so is Bitcoin's popularity.

[Lucius]

The fact is that Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency, but it is also fact that it is first decentralized cryptocurrency. Today we can only speculate what happened to Satoshi Nakamoto, but many assume that he deliberately went into the shadows so nobody can say that Bitcoin is just some ponzi with purpose to fill his and few other people pockets.

I think he succeeded in that, and that the people recognized Bitcoin as something that is belong to anyone. Ethereum is project of one man, and he is pulls all the important moves, there is no decentralization there. It is same story with almost any altcoin, they all copy Bitcoin in some way - and despite all they do, copy is always copy and people always prefer the original.

With the technical point of view Bitcoin is probably not perfect, but we are witness to its constant development, and I am sure 10 years from now some problem we have today will only be a far past.

[Erickan]

I'm like you always wondering what makes bitcoin valuable and better known than all the other projects on CMC. Because if you talk about the application or bitcoin technology category, it cannot be compared with later projects such as Ethereum, EOS, ADA ... But now I think I have answered this question.  I think that bitcoin is always more valuable than altcoin for the following reasons:

1. Finite: finite supply of only 21m BTC is a strong point, altcoin seems to be inflated because of too much or infinite supply.

2. Pioneer: everyone knows bitcoin is the first and most famous peer-to-peer payment protocol created by Shatoshi in 2008.

3. Security: The bitcoin network is very safe and has never been attacked  success once, while the altcoin network seems very vulnerable to 51% attack.

4. Stability: bitcoin is always more stable than altcoin when the market is volatile, the recovery of bitcoin is always higher than altcoin. Moreover, bitcoin, now considered a very safe place to store assets like digital gold.

[gentlemand]

The nature of its launch is an immaculate conception can never be repeated. There was no such thing as miner. Anyone could do it with any machinery. It was open to all. The fact that no one knew about it is kind of unfortunate but it couldn't have been any other way.

Contrast that with the insta frenzy or loathsome scamminess of most coin launches.

The first means the longest lived. It's the most developed, the most thoroughly explored, the most battered, the most used, it's endured the most attempts to hijack it and they all failed.

All of that adds up to trust and too few people can be bothered to take that into account. It's the only thing that backs a coin's value and desirability. All of it's intangible code. What you're investing in is the giant web of trust and consensus created around it.

You can't buy trust. You can't create it. You can't fake it. The only way to gain it is by earning it. I can't see how anything else will ever be able to earn the same amount of trust.

It's pointless comparing it to companies or Facebook/Myspace. They're nothing other than disposable services that people will drop as soon as something better comes along. There's zero downside getting a better phone or hopping to another social network.

If millions of people are involved in something like BTC all of them are heavily incentivised to stay within it and work to improve it.

[bitcampaign]

Of course, it's clear that we all know Bitcoin is the first of course to have grown a lot of their users in a few years, so what do you think about other altcoins while they just grew yesterday

Transaction costs are very expensive, which makes me think that bitcoin is like digital gold for me, so don't make unnecessary transactions, sometimes people do bitcoin transactions for things that are not necessary, so make sure to do a bitcoin transaction for something that is needed

[dothebeats]

I don't think so, unless you'll get the answer directly from the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) of users of bitcoin. Aside from having the first mover's advantage, I'm pretty sure that there are other factors that come with it as well, and you can include the trust and reputation it has garnered over the years even though the likes of litecoin, ethereum, monero, among other remarkable cryptocoins have surfaced. Add to that fact the mining industry which is worth millions of dollars, and it's one way of deeming the value of bitcoin, too. But then again, value is perceived by people individually, until such time that a collective price is achieved by these individual perceptions of value, and then we're here.

[Daniel91]

We have many examples in IT industry that if someone was first in something, like Microsoft in computers, Apple in I phone etc. that afterwards it was difficult to remove them from the top.
People get used to their products and habits are most difficult to change.
Bitcoin is also man entry point for the crypto world and well known because of media reports.

[1Referee]

Some altcoins are better than bitcoin for specific purposes. Bitcoin has the trust of the people and a very solid system.
Any altcoin that wants to compete with bitcoin has to offer something new, otherwise is just a bitcoin clone...

Altcoins are better than Bitcoin only in the way that they go up more short term speaking, which allows people to use them as leveraged bet to increase their Bitcoin holdings. I have yet to find an altcoin that is actually being used for something other than speculation and gambling related dapps. It's mostly just a shitshow overall. Big promises but none of these promises are being followed up by a working product as originally intended.

Bitcoin has an incredibly strong network effect, the brand awareness behind it, the security, the progress in terms of second layers such as Lightning, etc. Altcoins have already lost the battle in terms of fast and cheap transactions. Lightning keeps growing and keeps enjoying more merchant adoption on a daily basis.

In the end, altcoins don't even have to deliver a product. Them being a speculative object is more than enough for people to buy into them. A lot of shitcoins with zero actual utility are worth hundreds of millions of even billions in some cases. Speculation is their killer "application".

[Ibizugbe1]

I have thought of this too, but the bitcoin network is very secured and have massive support. I think the bitcoin network is much more stronger and more secure than the ethereum network. I understand we have some good other altcoins, but they have limited support. I don't write code though.

[BitHodler]

I agree that in the market there are many exceptionally amazing coins , but Bitcoins have stability , trust , security which is unmarked so is Bitcoin's popularity.

Many exceptionally amazing coins? I'm a bit more on the conservative/realistic side then-- I only consider Ethereum to be a worthwhile crypto. All other coins are blatant copies of Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Look at TRON and EOS for example, both networks are being flooded with fake transactions to make them seem vibrant and active, while in reality only a small number of people are using them. It really is embarrassing.

I like the growing DEFI app economy on Ethereum and strongly believe that this is something we should pay attention to. It's good to see that ICOs are no longer the main price driver of Ethereum.

[Aero Blue]

-snip-

I think that since Bitcoin was the first successful crypto, it also became the most famous one and the most innovative one in comparison with fiat, so this popularity and respect of innovation pushed it forward and might even push it forever.

Yea this is very true, I think a lot of it has to do with the time / innovation "ratio" or how much something is "ahead of its time". I guess a lot of Bitcoin's downsides are also a result of it's age, aka the blockchain issue you referenced. I do have a kind of pessimistic attitude towards the life of Bitcoin, but it's still pretty amazing this is all possible. It will be interesting to see how things continue in the future.

Some altcoins are better than bitcoin for specific purposes. Bitcoin has the trust of the people and a very solid system.
Any altcoin that wants to compete with bitcoin has to offer something new, otherwise is just a bitcoin clone...

Interesting, I do think it's a very valid point to make that most "altcoins" are pretty much Bitcoin with a "new" feature slapped onto it. Even now there are hundreds of tokens being made each day, trying to introduce something new. I guess the real question is whether there needs to be improvements at all? Like kryptqnick said, it does it's job very well and has withstood the test of time.

-snip-

Now, the same can be said of Bitcoin's competitors: being better may not be always enough. Ultimately, everything boils down to acceptance and that sense of trust that it can be more valuable down the road.

That's very true, it doesn't matter how good your product is, if you don't have the right market then you fail. And I guess I didn't consider that a lot of the things I consider "issues" or "annoyances" relating to Bitcoin, could be considered very differently by someone else. It's kind of like Facebook being the forefront of new social media, despite having numerous issues like privacy concerns and false information: it's still the biggest social media platform. I think Bitcoin's competitors fail in the aspect of "being different" as they all have the same goal: handing monetary transactions.

-snip-

But don't forget Bitcoin can also evolve and remain competitive. There's a lot more to improve, Segwit didn't come the day 1. There are also multiple things like MimbleWimble, Schnorr which will help BTC

I am not really up to speed on all the recent improvements to the blockchain, but it looks promising. As someone who is not really into the "technology" behind Bitcoin, I didn't even know a lot of this stuff was possible. I am excited to see what the community can come up with!

I didn't really expect this many responses but it is really making me think! I don't really want these reply posts to be a page long, so I will answer a few more later. My view is a bit more agnostic now, as a lot of you brought to my attention the reason Bitcoin is still so great, even in comparison with newer altcoins.

[proTECH77]

Capital yes because it was the first true cryptocurrency, also, uncompromised decentralized cryptocurrency, the true anonymous cryptocurrency. The birth of Bitcoin was amazing and was a first time freedom giver and transparency. I think many will come to the truth that, bitcoin is the true cryptocurrency.

[mindrust]

Bitcoin valuable because it is the most securest blockchain ever created.

The amount of hash power which secures the network is unmatched. It is nearly impossible to pull a %51 attack on bitcoin.

It is pretty easy to pull these attacks on minority chains&low hashrate coins like bcash, bsv, etc, btg (some of these has already been attacked btw)

If you are a cash rich individual who seeks ways to keep money out of the banking system, bitcoin is your choice.

It is not practical to buy coffee with bitcoin but bitcoin went beyond this. It is like a Swiss bank account in your pocket.

[bkbirge]

It's all about adoption. The first mover advantage is hard to overstate. I also do not think Ethereum is a competitor with Bitcoin, I think they can co-exist and serve different uses. Also, people don't always go for the latest and most high tech solutions, they go for ubiquitous and convenient. E.g. mp3's sound like ass but they are now the defacto standard for delivering audio even though CDs by every single measure sound much better. Convenience, adoption, availability. Bitcoin has it all and a large part of that is due to being the first.