If Bitcoin never existed, what would be dominating the crypto space today?

[Joy- maker]

Greetings everyone and happy easter,  this particular topic came across my mind a few days ago,  because it is hard to imagine a world without Bitcoin today.

Since the creation of Bitcoin by satoshi nakamoto it has entirely changed how we think about money,  trust,  and decentralization.  I would like us to step outside reality for a moment,  what if Bitcoin was never created?  Would something else have taken Bitcoin place?  Or are we still going to be stuck in a fully centralized financial system?

For me,  I would say that without Bitcoin the idea of digital money would still exist,  but it would most likely to be controlled,  either by the government or a central authority.

Governments around the world are already developing central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and in a world without Bitcoin thses system would dominate completely,  so instead of decentralized as we have now,  we would have more control,  less decentralize imo.

And another thing I can think of right now is a return to gold,  but in digital form if Bitcoin was never created.  where companies or institutions could have created tokens backed by physical gold reserves.  This May sound stable,  but there is a major problem,  you still need to trust the issuer.

I also believe that,  even if Bitcoin was never created big tech companies might have have stepped in to fill the gap, just imagine the world where money is issued by a socal media platform. a world where your account can be frozen,  because of policy violations,  a world where financial access depends on cooperate approval.

Before the creation of Bitcoin by Satoshi nakamoto digital cash system existed,  but they all failed for one reason,  they were decentralized they replied on a central authority,  but Bitcoin solved this problem,  by removing the need for trust.  And without Bitcoin i think we might still be searching for a way to achieve, fixed monetary supply,  trustless transactions,  and censorship,  which means the problem Bitcoin solved today might still be unsolved,  all thanks to Satoshi nakamoto.

And there is always a possibility of someone else,  not necessary santoshi nakamoto would have created something similar to the Bitcoin system later.

So assuming Bitcoin was never created the world is likely to have,  more centralized financial system,  with less privacy which might reduce financial choice,  so feel free to give your two cents on this discussion.

[(BTC)]

Probably e-coin, binarycoin, or something called netcoin. Satoshi wasn't some million IQ level guy. He took existing technology and had the mindset to work on it until it was near-perfect to release that solved a legitimate real world problem. See "satoshi's lesson":

When Satoshi was working on Bitcoin in 2007-2009, almost all of the core ideas of Bitcoin were well-known in the cryptography community. Satoshi made one major leap: combining all these pieces to prevent double spending through a PoW block chain. This was impressive, but the same flash of brilliance could've happened to anyone who was following this stuff.

Satoshi is not awesome because he was watching the crypto world and had a brilliant idea. He's awesome because upon having this idea, he carried it out. You know what I would've done if this idea had come to me? I probably would've mentioned it to a few people, maybe written some very basic code if I was feeling especially ambitious. You know what Satoshi did? He spent 2+ years contemplating every possible aspect of the system he could think of, and wrote code that worked brilliantly in the real world. Satoshi's code was good, but anyone who had read a good C++ book could've written similarly-good code. Anyone who had taken an intro crypto course or read a few books on the subject would understand Satoshi's usage of crypto primitives. The task of creating Bitcoin required a small flash of brilliance, moderate skill, and an unbelievably huge amount of dedication to thinking about, coding, and testing the system until it worked exactly as envisioned.

My point is, something just like bitcoin made by someone that had the same willpower, work ethic, morals, and enough sense to remain anonymous and depart when the time is right. If satoshi never existed, or never made it, who knows how long or when someone like him would come around. Be glad he did, and bitcoin did, in your lifetime. Hopefully it's made your life positive in some way or another.

As for world governments, I guess they and anyone working for/with them didn't see the use in creating a cryptographic currency. They were perfectly content (and still seem to be) riding the inflationary, war-fueling, class-seperating, chaos-inducing, and stupid waves of printing money backed by air: https://wtfhappenedin1971.com/

“I don’t believe we shall ever have a good money again before we take the thing out of the hands of government, that is, we can’t take it violently out of the hands of government, all we can do is by some sly roundabout way introduce something that they can’t stop.” – F.A. Hayek 1984

[joniboini]

I agree that we'll probably see similar stuff with another name. Not sure if I'd jump directly to government-controlled digital money since those exist way back, afaik. At least I have the impression of using some apps to store my funds before Bitcoin interacts with my life. It's not suitable for removing third-party reliance for double-spending, so I bet someone will create one since the demand will always exist. I'm not a fan of imagining how things would be anyway, so that's that.

[d5000]

Perhaps a proof of stake cryptocurrency could have been conceived and implemented before Bitcoin, although I agree with @(BTC) that it's likely somebody connected the existing concepts at about the same time, probably before 2015.

The technical base of current Proof of Stake systems is the paper Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance which was published in 1999.

Another system that was in development already some years before Bitcoin was Ripple. The original concept was much more decentralized than the current XRP. It probably however had technical flaws, so the people behind it recurred to a quite centralized ledger system. The Wikipedia article is actually wrong, it was not started in 2011 but was developed from about 2005 on. There was a wiki article about the intended protocol already in 2006. I admit that I originally was more interested in Ripple than in Bitcoin, but things changed

[bitbollo]

Without bitcoin you can have "digital payment" like the standard point of your grocery. Here the point.
With bitcoin there is another concept that would be not only crypto. Even the inception of the project has been unique and the basic for the success of the project.
What would be dominating if bitcoin never existed?
That's a really hard question to answer because this would imagine a new completely concept. Something really new and complex like...bitcoin itself
Making it easy, liberty reserve, egold other projects where well knonw, scamming, bugging, failing. In general these were far away from bitcoin.
It's not just marketing or whatever new terminology... definitely the "crypto" space would be have dominated by some large tech conglomerate (!).

[X-ray]

I'm sure you have seen all those digital wallets created by big tech companies. Those will fill the gap surely if bitcoin didn't exist. It's good that we actually have bitcoin otherwise everybody will have no choice but to stick with the centralized financial tools.

I can't imagine myself dealing with paypal and its super restrictive rules just for remittance. The entire digital finance will be a big curse upon humanity if bitcoin didn't exist.

[BlackHatCoiner]

I can imagine a Universe where someone in the position of Satoshi would have done a poorer job than Satoshi, and create an incomplete cryptocurrency. I still don't think that would be catastrophic. As more cryptocurrency ideas were implemented, the market would gradually move to the next most complete one.

But thank God Satoshi implemented cryptocurrency with fixed supply, proof-of-work, softfork compatibility and optional privacy-- all at once.

[Bastketsrus]

I can imagine a Universe where someone in the position of Satoshi would have done a poorer job than Satoshi, and create an incomplete cryptocurrency. I still don't think that would be catastrophic. As more cryptocurrency ideas were implemented, the market would gradually move to the next most complete one.

But thank God Satoshi implemented cryptocurrency with fixed supply, proof-of-work, softfork compatibility and optional privacy-- all at once.

Yeah, true. Even if it wasn’t perfect at first, crypto would’ve evolved, but Satoshi Nakamoto really nailed the fundamentals from the start, and that’s why Bitcoin is still on top.

[cryptoaddictchie]

So assuming Bitcoin was never created the world is likely to have,  more centralized financial system,  with less privacy which might reduce financial choice,  so feel free to give your two cents on this discussion.

I think thats a big what if indeed. I cant imagine that theres no entity that would raise a decentralized approach if bitcoin nwver been created. In my opinion, there will be still coin that will come out since sooner someone will understand and learn what also Satoshi Envisions. But its a good thing that his the one started it cause we dont know what will be the end result. Maybe some would be greedy or who knows favor a centralized one unlike Satoshi did.

[purple_sparkles]

I think we’ll never know, since bitcoin already exists. But as they say, a vacant place never stays empty, so it’s quite possible that some other alternative would have been created. It could very well have been a kind of digital product that would essentially become the same as bitcoin, just under a different name. Among the existing options, it’s unlikely that any of them would have become the first, since most cryptocurrencies were inspired by bitcoin in the first place.

[Ishicryptic]

If Bitcoin were not in existent I'm sure that by now or anytime in the near future some geniuses would created something similar because of technological advancements either better or not up to the standard of Bitcoin. I'm sure that when Satoshi created Bitcoin there were other great minds that had similar ideas but probably didn't know how to actualize it and Satoshi beat them to it. Maybe we can see other decentralized coins with limited supply in the future that can rival Bitcoin but Bitcoin will forever be the original. What I wonder sometimes is if Bitcoin will still be a store of value or become obsolete like in the next 50 years or thereabout.

[Agbe]

There were Ponzi schemes all over the internet as of 2010 to 2018. MMM was the mega Ponzi Scheme in the time when bitcoin was coming up or when I first heard of bitcoin so it would been different kinds, I was even afraid to join this forum at first. Bitcoin came to save us from them so if bitcoin was not existing, there would be no digital cryptocurrency because the idea of cryptocurrency came from bitcoin in this dispensation. Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency and others copied the idea from Satoshi Nakamoto. That is why others are call altcoins and not maincoins. But there would have been some kind of Ponzi Scheme investments in the world. All hail the king bitcoin in the cryptocurrency space.

[Smartprofit]

In 2009, I was very young. However, I had a very inquisitive mind, and I really wanted to get rich (which, by the way, I never achieved, but that's another story). 🙋

I decided I needed to spend more time with smart people. And ask each of them one question: "What new opportunities for making money do you see?" I posed these questions to several people and received their answers. One very wise entrepreneur paused for a moment and then said to me: "I think a new innovative technology will soon emerge at the intersection of finance and information technology."

At that moment, I didn't fully understand the true meaning of his words. And after some time, I stopped asking smart people such questions altogether. I was young, frivolous, and much more interested in beautiful women than in hypothetical new innovative technologies at the intersection of finance and information technology.

However, now I recall his words, and his description seems very similar to Bitcoin!  That's why I'm certain Bitcoin would have been created anyway (with or without Satoshi Nakamoto's help). The idea of ​​decentralized technological money was, figuratively speaking, "in the air."

[Lucius]

Greetings everyone and happy easter,  this particular topic came across my mind a few days ago,  because it is hard to imagine a world without Bitcoin today.
Since the creation of Bitcoin by satoshi nakamoto it has entirely changed how we think about money,  trust,  and decentralization.  I would like us to step outside reality for a moment,  what if Bitcoin was never created?  Would something else have taken Bitcoin place?  Or are we still going to be stuck in a fully centralized financial system?
~snip~

What would happen if Bitcoin didn't exist is a question to which there is no clear answer, we can only speculate. Perhaps today there would be no cryptocurrencies at all, or someone else would invent something similar to Bitcoin, but perhaps not as ingenious and unique as what exists today. We should take into account that before Bitcoin there were some ideas and that many people tried to do something similar, and that some projects were launched and failed, while others remained only in theory.

However, Satoshi's vision of a decentralized cryptocurrency has very few advocates today, certainly not people like Saylor who accumulate coins or ETFs that are just machines for possible profit. But even if only a small percentage of people use Bitcoin as a currency and it helps them in their daily lives, we cannot say that Bitcoin has failed.

[Marykeller]

If Bitcoin hadn't existed, we wouldn't have known what the leading slide in the crypto space today would be. It might be having a place where crypto is controlled by the government, a less anonymous and less decentralized way of trading in crypto, if there were to be one.

That said, the crypto world we are seeing as digital gold will be centralized, and the idea of individuals becoming rich through it, will be minimal, and mostly scams. Hardly will it be for millions of people to trust the crypto space to be where they can be financially liberated without falling victim to scams

[Nathrixxx]

Having the understanding that Bitcoin is the main idea behind cryptocurrency and what caused it to exist after the first success we had, maybe by now there wouldn't have been anything called cryptocurrency without having Bitcoin first, this is my idea anyway because it was after the creation of Bitcoin that every other altcoin emerged, many are even interested in cryptocurrency all because of Bitcoin

[SilverCryptoBullet]

Since the creation of Bitcoin by satoshi nakamoto it has entirely changed how we think about money,  trust,  and decentralization.  I would like us to step outside reality for a moment,  what if Bitcoin was never created?  Would something else have taken Bitcoin place?  Or are we still going to be stuck in a fully centralized financial system?

Asking about what if like this is unrealistic and I don't think it is necessary.

Before Bitcoin, people created other projects and if Satoshi Nakamoto did not create Bitcoin project, there will be other people create other projects with other names. These projects can succeed like Bitcoin or fail like previous projects before Bitcoin or altcoin projects after Bitcoin. But with continuous developments, human society will figure out ways to build up a successful project even without Satoshi Nakamoto.

Bitcoin prehistory.

[lizarder]

And there is always a possibility of someone else,  not necessary santoshi nakamoto would have created something similar to the Bitcoin system later.

So assuming Bitcoin was never created the world is likely to have,  more centralized financial system,  with less privacy which might reduce financial choice,  so feel free to give your two cents on this discussion.

Something that never happened may be difficult to imagine, but what would happen if Bitcoin never existed? This is an interesting question because Bitcoin represents the perfection of the process towards financial freedom. If Bitcoin had never been created, we might have seen other coinbases created with centralized financial systems and less privacy, similar to the systems that existed before. No one knows for sure what would have happened if Bitcoin had never been created, or even if a similar system were built, there would still be significant differences.

Fortunately Bitcoin was created to give us access to financial freedom and this is how we can access greater privacy than the existing system. That's why we now see Bitcoin continue to grow and develop, resulting in wider adoption because this asset has unique advantages that we never experienced before.

[Marvelockg]

For me,  I would say that without Bitcoin the idea of digital money would still exist,  but it would most likely to be controlled,  either by the government or a central authority.

Believe this that the name Bitcoin is not really what makes bitcoin unique. What actually makes bitcoin unique is the fact that by it whole structure, it possess things that jointly makes what it currently represents at the moment.

If Santoshl didn't come up with bitcoin and another buddy tagged a system that runs the way bitcoin does as bitcoin, it's certain that it will gain as much acceptance as bitcoin has gotten at this point. But then, we have to give credit to Satoshi and bitcoin for being the Brian behind bitcoin
 Every other person can think of a thing as bitcoin and it wouldn't make any difference, it's only the one that's bold enough to bring his idea to life that's the real MVP and for that, Satoshi is the man.

[Myleschetty]

For me,  I would say that without Bitcoin the idea of digital money would still exist,  but it would most likely to be controlled,  either by the government or a central authority.

Yes, the only decentralized digital currency to be proposed, developed, and flourish was Bitcoin. It's a good thing that Satoshi combined the mistakes of earlier centralized/decentralized digital currencies before BTC such as egold in 1996 which was later shut downby US government in 2008, Hashcash by Adam Back in 1997, B-money which was introduced by Wei Dai in 1998 but never implemented, and Bit Gold which was never fully built by Nick Szabo in 1998 to create BTC.

Governments around the world are already developing central bank digital currencies (CBDCs) and in a world without Bitcoin thses system would dominate completely,  so instead of decentralized as we have now,  we would have more control,  less decentralize imo.

Digital currencies central banks will never flourish in a world without Bitcoin because the government continues to make the same mistakes by using 2% inflation, and no one ignore the root of an issue and find a solution to the issue. In opposition to any type of fiat currency, people will search for an alternative that's in a world without Bitcoin.