I've come full circle, BTC is the only worthwhile cryptocurrency

[pooya87]

Bitcoin is absolutely a store of value and designed as such with a emission schedule imitating that of gold.  The base layer has throughput limitations that preclude it from being a 'currency' useful for general/micro transactions.

first of all you have to keep in mind that being a currency doesn't mean it can not be a store of value. in fact "money" has been considered a store of value for ages. and bitcoin is a store of value because it is a currency.
secondly limitations that the "base layer" has doesn't change anything about the fact that bitcoin is a currency. bitcoin is not just the base layer, it is a network. right now you can use it for micro transactions and in the future as the adoption grows and second layer matures you can use that for a better result.

in the end bitcoin is still a toddler and can even be considered experimental even after a decade. we are still struggling to find that balance between keeping it decentralized while maximizing the capacity and the goal from day one that Satoshi released the paper has been to create a "currency" that is why the title of the paper says "electronic cash system" not an "electronic invest and HODL system".

[jootn2kx]

After 4+ years in the space and countless hours of research, it is becoming increasingly apparent that BTC is the only worthwhile project.  Also by the thread title, you can probably tell its not my first rodeo.

Some of my strongest reasoning is specified below, it is by no means comprehensive.  While I may have typed the below with conviction, I am openminded to other views (my wallet compels me so) - please put forth your opposing views.

• PoW is the only true Byzantine Fault Tolerant consensus mechanism.  PoS is not BFT at this point in time and I do not see how it gets there.  At the end of the day, under PoS and the many other consensus mechanisms, one needs to trust a third party to relay them the correct data and that is assuming that one can be certain that the delegated node holds the majority of the voting power – this is not trustless and re-introduces third parties.  With PoW, I can verify the hashes and the longest chain is the correct one.

• Bitcoin as a base layer focuses on censorship resistance, immutability, security and decentralisation.  Second layer solutions (scalability/escrow) can be built on top.  Claims by other ‘cryptocurrencies’ to be ‘better than bitcoin’ are ignoring trade-offs involving BTC’s key features.  Any appreciable increase in throughput will reduce security, decentralisation, immutability and censorship resistance.

• There cannot be a ‘next Bitcoin’ and the paradox of replacing a store-of-value (SoV) applies.  Any successful replacement of BTC will forever undermine the credibility of any successor.  We are instead made to forever question the replacement of a SOV.  How is an investor to know it won’t happen again?.  Any other attempt at digital money ‘fails by succeeding’, it fails the eco-system by replacing Bitcoin and ultimately fails itself.  By way of example, Gold is the precious metal SOV of choice, most governments/institutions warehouse little or no silver.  If silver supplants gold as a SOV, then I’m all out of precious metals because one cannot trust silver will maintain its SOV dominance.

• Medium of exchange(MoE) aside, I can’t think of another legitimate use case for ‘decentralisation’.  At a stretch illegal marketplaces may benefit from decentralisation given the risk of censorship or seizure of assets.  All these other uses cases like smart cities, record keeping, supply chain, fundraising etc are far better managed through centralised databases where it is not unacceptable for the user/operator to bear some of the risks cumbersome decentralised platforms seek to eliminate.
  

• If (and it’s a big if) smart-contract enabled platforms finds widespread commercial use, the ‘utility’ basis for value for many of these smart-contract enabled platforms acts as a ceiling to price.  An increase in fees to use the network will result in competitor chains becoming more attractive.

• For smart-contract enabled platforms, infrastructure limitations decrease the ability of users to run fully validating nodes (compared to a cryptocurrency targeting a MoE use only).

At this point, I mostly agree. In the future, who knows? Things might still change, more coins might decouple from BTC, and some projects might even overshadow it. I'm not saying that it will happen, but it might happen, so yeah, we'll see.

[alyssa85]

All your points are valid and I'm happy to see that there are users who understand the fundamentals of cryptocurrency instead of parroting the narratives created by altcoins' marketing teams.

I think that there are 2 kinds of altcoins that currently have some uses and as the result hold some value. The first type is privacy coins - Bitcoin's privacy is pretty bad, and the most common solution to it - mixers, requires some trust. If Bitcoin will solve privacy, privacycoins will become obsolete.

The second kind is coins with relatively good security and adoption. They can be used as a plan B when Bitcoin's fees temporarily skyrocket. They can be used for small transactions or for moving value between services to save on fees. But again, when Bitcoin will solve scalability, these coins will become useless too.

Will bitcoin ever solve scalability? It's now nearly two years since the fee and mempool problems of 2017 and still the mempool gets full even with much reduced transactions.

If bitcoin can't solve scalability, either cryptocurrency as a whole dies a death, or another scalable alt will take it's place.

[alani123]

Having attended a blockchain conference lately, I find it amazing how many developers, investors and institutional figureheads appear to be interested in the tech, while having little to no knowledge how bitcoin came to be, or even what the double spending problem was. Oracle, Microsoft and IBM are trying to sell the idea of permissioned, privately hosted, centralized and non-POW blockchains. It's as if they want the blockchain without the block and the chain...

In terms of cryptocurrencies, bitcoin really is the one and only viable one in my opinion. Even Ethereum's founder has come to redefine what he means by the term "full node"... The only one keeping standards high is BTC.

[Wind_FURY]

OP, it's part of the journey. I'm confident that most of the newbies will go through the same process to learn. The hard way.

Newbies, listen to the trolls. We'll be HODLING Bitcoins to sell to you later at 6 digits.

[100action]

All your points are valid and I'm happy to see that there are users who understand the fundamentals of cryptocurrency instead of parroting the narratives created by altcoins' marketing teams.

I think that there are 2 kinds of altcoins that currently have some uses and as the result hold some value. The first type is privacy coins - Bitcoin's privacy is pretty bad, and the most common solution to it - mixers, requires some trust. If Bitcoin will solve privacy, privacycoins will become obsolete.

The second kind is coins with relatively good security and adoption. They can be used as a plan B when Bitcoin's fees temporarily skyrocket. They can be used for small transactions or for moving value between services to save on fees. But again, when Bitcoin will solve scalability, these coins will become useless too.

Will bitcoin ever solve scalability? It's now nearly two years since the fee and mempool problems of 2017 and still the mempool gets full even with much reduced transactions.

If bitcoin can't solve scalability, either cryptocurrency as a whole dies a death, or another scalable alt will take it's place.

Bitcoin can survive as an SOV alone with the currentl transaction limitations.

Gold as the precious metal dominant SOV would have very little transactions across a day, and I am certain the amount of transactions in gold per day can easily be matched and surpassed with current Bitcoin infrastructure.

A 2nd layer scaling solution like the lightning network is just a cherry on top.

[carlisle1]

OP, it's part of the journey. I'm confident that most of the newbies will go through the same process to learn. The hard way.

though our time now are very different from what is before,when we don't have basis of how much Bitcoin price could ever reach,not like for the newbies now that they can even check the history to use as reference on how they can trust this market.

Newbies, listen to the trolls.

we cannot blame them because they are more concern about the money and not the technology.

We'll be HODLING Bitcoins to sell to you later at 6 digits.

in these we will surely be on one side,because i manage to hold in dip and i am sure can keep holding till 6 digits come.

[aarons6]

ive sort of came full circle the other way.
i feel that bitcoin has to be replaced with something for it to be a worthwhile currency.

i feel that too many are currently in circulation and being held by too few and it inhibits its use as a money currency and it promotes holding for profits. which is not what bitcoin is about.. its about being a semi anonymous payment method that is immune to charge backs.

im all for the whole be your own bank and being decentralized.. but its not going to work. ordinary people will never adopt it.

its too easy to steal and be scammed, its too easy to lose your key or password and its too complicated.


if a bank like chase made a coin, and it was backed by banks so you could go online and transfer some to a wallet and use it to buy things online, and also the government didnt try to hose you on taxes.. then i could see that being adopted as a currency. but then i think the banks like things the way they are.

until then, hold until you are rich.. :/

[DooMAD]

im all for the whole be your own bank and being decentralized.. but its not going to work. ordinary people will never adopt it.

its too easy to steal and be scammed, its too easy to lose your key or password and its too complicated.

That's why improvements are always in the pipeline.  As was said above, Bitcoin is still effectively in Beta.  All the stuff that makes it easier to use for ordinary people to use is still to come.

If you can't explain how an Automated Clearing House works on a technical level, then surely credit card payments are too complicated and no one will ever use them.  Except that people do use them and have probably never even heard of Automated Clearing Houses, let alone be able to explain how they work.  Given sufficient time, Bitcoin can reach that level as well.  Play the long game and see the potential.

[Dart18]

This is one of the post that should be merited. Push it to the roof. 

Sold all my altcoins for bitcoin and is now already in profit if I will still be calculating the increase in my altcoins against bitcoin.
I dont think there is really one altcoin now that could soar in value. Some of them may have taken it to the next level but not how bitcoin did it.
Ethereum is my next. I still believe with that technology. Although it had been a long wait, my faith with it is still strong. But not as strong as how it is with BTC.

[target]

If you are interested to the applications of blockchain technology under ETH, you probably wouldn't ignore some dapps which BTC doesn't have like the smart contracts. Technology is binding us all here so it doesn't have to create division when we explore decentralization, consensus, programmable blockchain and flexibility. All these are on altcoin projects which are smart contract base like ETH. We may see them not so decentralized but these I guess all for experimentation, probably for shitcoins as well as you may think but these are still interesting for innovation.

[buwaytress]

All out of them plus points or I'd give some to you, but yeah, welcome to the club. I made up my mind fairly quickly, but to be fair, I splashed and mucked about in 2016 with a fair share of different crypto (I would call them assets if I were a bit more classy I suppose), and even the communities at the time in those alts respected and acknowledged Bitcoin for what it was. None -- to me, anyway -- ever saw themselves as a replacement for Bitcoin, merely a co-existing alternative.

On the other hand, sad to also see others even longer in the game than me, give up on Bitcoin. But Bitcoin isn't being about tribalistic (even if it seems to on social media) so we all get to have our say, our time on the wagon, and we're all no less nor more than each other.

Cheers, Bitcoiner.

[Kprawn]

The thing is most other Alt coins are simply a knockoff of the original concept and they are making empty promises of specific use cases and then

nothing actually happens. Ethereum started out with a mission to become the best Smart contract enabled Crypto and then Bitcoin had the scaling

war, then it suddenly changed the mission and pretended to be a better currency than Bitcoin. Ripple on the other hand wanted to be a centralized

Bank coin and it failed miserably with that goal. Bitcoin just built on it's original goal and mission as stipulated in Satoshi's whitepaper and it became

popular with both merchants and traders. 

[coinfinger]

For me it has always been Bitcoin, I don't care what people have to say, even if they try to give me reasons and say that altcoins are better I still won't agree. Yep, I have seen several of those reasons that makes people say that altcoins are better, maybe because of being faster and cheaper and whatsoever, all those things still won't change my mind. The fact that Bitcoin is the first is enough for me to just stick to investing my money in bitcoin. But, I do invest a bit in altcoins and that's just the top altcoins.

The way I see it, the next bull run might only be for Bitcoin. Altcoins might just crash (and they are already crashing and losing value), some have just been stable and not showing any signs of going up this year. Some altcoins I just use them because of transaction, just like for signature campaigns, but I after I receive them I still exchange.

[carter34]

Alts have their purpose, primary of which is to extract the most value out of whatever bitcoin you put into it, as, let's face it, most altcoins are paired with bitcoin on exchanges and almost nothing else.

They are the penny stocks of the crypto world.

As one post in 2016 or 2017 says, if an investor went in on the top 10 alts by marketcap with no regard to doing any other due diligence, he'd have made a lot more money than if he put the same fiat amount all in, in bitcoin. If he put it in bitcoin only, he'd make 8 to 9 times. If he "diversified" to the top 10 after bitcoin during that time, he'd make 100 to 200 times.

Let's just take ETH as an example, if you joined the ICO back in 2014, 1 BTC = 2000 ETH. ... Just remember to take your profits a few years later, but even if one did not, that ETH is still worth ... 40 times what BTC is worth today.

Like a lot of people, I looked at ETH, but did not participate. I looked at LTC, bought them at 20, sold them at 40 a week later, I think that was my best move then. I looked at EOS, ZCASH, DASH, I tried to join BAT but missed the deadline by 2 seconds or whatever it took to finish that one (crazy ico times) ... then I looked a bunch of smaller cap altcoins, and would have made some profits if we knew to cash them out in early 2018.

Of course, that's not fair and we don't have crystal balls, but we should have seen the so called crypto winter coming anyway.

Now, stablecoins are here, so it's either that or sell the alts to get BTC, eventually keep a large percentage in BTC, either to use or to just hodl.


If you're watching the regular stock market, I'd say altcoins are like the "Beyond Meats" ... you start at 70, pump up to 200, then it's now back to 70, and likely to go down, down, down.

This is a classical analogy and good example too.
I want to go down to your last paragraph briefly. It is better to convert shit coins to btc but the issue is, after you calculate the value, they still amount to nothing and can't come out from exchange because of fees  . I have learnt my lessons with pump and dump shit coins.

[Wind_FURY]

OP, it's part of the journey. I'm confident that most of the newbies will go through the same process to learn. The hard way.

though our time now are very different from what is before,when we don't have basis of how much Bitcoin price could ever reach,not like for the newbies now that they can even check the history to use as reference on how they can trust this market.

Newbies, listen to the trolls.

we cannot blame them because they are more concern about the money and not the technology.

We'll be HODLING Bitcoins to sell to you later at 6 digits.

in these we will surely be on one side,because i manage to hold in dip and i am sure can keep holding till 6 digits come.

Sorry, I almost forgot. Thanks for reminding me.



Never forget, HyperBitcoinization is coming. Let the trolls be trolls because they HODL, and will never HODL NONE.

[pjcaruci]

I perceive BTC as the only currency that you can really devote your time to.

[aarons6]

I perceive BTC as the only currency that you can really devote your time to.

but why?

bitcoin is not currency its property.. its really not much more than buying an expensive watch or whatever and hoping in a few years it will be worth more than it is now..

i used to think wow bitcoin is so great it has so much potential, but seriously everything you can do with bitcoin, you can do without it.

now, blockchain tech is great.. it has great potential.. it doesnt have to be currency, or have any monetary value at all for it to work.

[DooMAD]

now, blockchain tech is great.. it has great potential.. it doesnt have to be currency, or have any monetary value at all for it to work.

In what way?  Blockchains which don't have any incentive for a significant number of users to secure them are equivalent to centralised databases.  Databases arguably have potential, but it's rare for anyone to get excited about that.

[gentlemand]

• There cannot be a ‘next Bitcoin’ and the paradox of replacing a store-of-value (SoV) applies.  Any successful replacement of BTC will forever undermine the credibility of any successor.  We are instead made to forever question the replacement of a SOV.  How is an investor to know it won’t happen again?.  Any other attempt at digital money ‘fails by succeeding’, it fails the eco-system by replacing Bitcoin and ultimately fails itself.  By way of example, Gold is the precious metal SOV of choice, most governments/institutions warehouse little or no silver.  If silver supplants gold as a SOV, then I’m all out of precious metals because one cannot trust silver will maintain its SOV dominance.

This is the one that the most people seem to have the most difficulty with and I truly don't understand why it's so hard to wrap one's head around it.

Even now you still see that fucking Myspace/Facebook comparison when all it took to skip across was a couple of clicks and the only thing you had at stake where some whiny essays and a few duckface pics. I just don't see how people can fail to acknowledge the fundamental difference.

Having said that the tricky bit is if Bitcoin ever needed 'replacing' out of necessity, a concerted attempt to murder it or some unforeseen tech disaster, rather than some fantasy usurping. Even then the incentive is there to preserve and reboot that pile of data rather than any alternative.