Bitcoin, a Revolution.
By now most people have heard of Bitcoin, either through media outlets or through friends. It seems two major sides have formed concerning where they stand towards this cryptocurrency. One being of a rebellion towards the present banking system, claiming how Bitcoin will take over. The other advocating the banking system itself and calling it a fraud. Perhaps there is an even bigger third group. The one that heard about it, but has no real clue of what it actually is.
Now there is a fourth group, but they currently still are in the minority as of now when it comes to the crypto world. A group that acknowledges what Bitcoin has started, appreciates it, but don't see it holding out for much longer, because its underlaying technology is outdated and outperformed by its competitors. Bitcoin has the brand and the fame, and stands symbol for something revolutionizing, a means to pay without mediaries. But what most don't seem to realize, is that it could never accomplish this task once it were to be implemented on a greater scale. Simply because the technology behind it wouldn't allow it.
3 Reasons why Bitcoin won't hold up
We can already see it happening, transaction fees are going through the roof. It can take hours, even days, before being sent over. And one expects this to be implemented as a means to pay for goods and services? Imagine being at a store trying to buy something and saying, ''hold on a moment, need an hour for my Bitcoin to be transferred''. Yeah, not gonna happen... We already see businesses taking Bitcoin of their list of ways to buy with, it being for this reason. And what one has to understand is that it's still currently a very small minority using Bitcoin. Meaning that if the whole world where to start using it, things be at least 100 times worse. Even with so many hardforks it won't be able to change its underlying technology.
Bitcoin has a limit of 7 tps (transactions per second), and perhaps it may be doubled with some tweaks here and there (with hardforks in place), but 14 tps is far from what is required to be effective. Look at VISA with 2000 tps, with a daily peak rate of 4000, just barely being able to handle the load... See the major difference?
The second reason is coming forth by the same problem, low transactions per second. They are causing a waiting list. Whoever pays more will have the priority, which as of now is causing fees of (already) over $10! Still wanna buy that cd you wanted with Bitcoin? Now you'll pay double the price!
Now the third reason is also entwined with the other two, but is causing for an even bigger dilemma; Mining. Taken aside the centralization it has caused by build-up mining facilities... The energy waste, it's just getting out of hand. Currently as shown by digiconomist.net, the estimation is that 0.18% of the total world energy is being used. This might still seem somewhat low, but keep in mind that currently Bitcoin is still being used on a very low scale when compared to a global use. Imagine half of the world's electricy being used to mine Bitcoin, go global warming!
Even more so, this whole mining thing, it's unnecessary. Because there are already alternatives which don't require it at all. One of these being DPOS (delegate proof of stake), in which witnesses are being voted by the stakeholders to run the nodes handling the transactions. In which my next point comes, the alternative(s), in this case Bitshares.
Bitshares
There is a lot of crypto coins out there, some of them special in its own right, a lot of them simple copies of Bitcoin. But to compare the huge differences possible, based on the 3 points I just addressed, you can see the differences for yourself when compared to one of the biggest scalable blockchains currently out there. I might be a little bias here, but that is simply because I see its huge potential. To point out, Bitshares is actually not being labeled as a crypto coin, it's a decentralized exchange and a smartcoin factory, two things I won't be explaining today... Anyways, it just as Bitcoin can be used to transfer money from one place to another.
- Transactions per second: Bitcoin 7 tps, Bitshares 100.000+ tps
- Fees: Bitcoin $10+, Bitshares a few cents, with Bitcoin only rising and Bitshares having the ability to scale its fees based on the witnesses votes, so that when the price of Bitshares goes up the fees can remain the same.
- Mining: Bitcoin using 0.18% of the world's energy, which is to rise majorly when used on a global scale. Bitshares using only the nodes hosted, being practicly close to zero energy usage, and even with global use would still remain this way.
So after seeing these numbers, and the problems that Bitcoin is facing. Do you still think it is able to keep up being the #1 market cap, and in doing so, being the biggest crypto currency when it comes to the blockchain industry?
Years from now we will see Bitcoin as an antique, a collectors item. Cause what it started was revolutionizing , and we are thankful for that. But for its practical use, it will be done for.
Glad to meet Bitshare Hodlers ! I agree that bitshares has a lot more to offer than simply transfering money. Especially in combination with steem there are a lot of new and unique applications. One point that is repeatedly misinterpreted is the influence of transaction time to value. The real money available is (money supply) * (velocity of circulation). Long transaction times in conjunction with large transaction fees are defining an upper bound for the money available, limiting its supply and enhancing its demand !
BTC won't survive for 10 more years. But it will be replaced by alternatives where trust is high.
There are legacy issues with bitshares that cause trust to be a major concern.
Trust is like virginity. Once it's gone, you'll never get it back. The legacy trust issues with bitshares make it unlikely that bitshares will be the replacement for BTC.
I am not sure of what legacy issues you're speaking, could you elaborate? Bitshares is highly outweighing a lot of its competitors when it comes to software, and has a solid community behind it. Besides that its utility capabilities don't require it to be a replacement for Bitcoin in order to be succesful.
coincheckup.com
Xapo CEO Foresees A Single Blockchain To Move All Value, ‘Most Likely’ Bitcoin’s
During a Facebook Live interview between Xapo CEO and Paypal board member Wences Casares and PayPal CEO Dan Schulman on Jan. 12, Casares explained his vision of a single “robust” Blockchain to move value globally, saying Bitcoin (BTC)’s Blockchain would likely play this role.
He also predicted that BTC could become an apolitical standard of value.
Casares, who grew up in Patagonia, Argentina, explained during the interview that he had seen his family lose everything three times during his childhood due to banking failures and hyperinflation. He, like many tech pundits, compares the creation of Blockchain technology to the creation of the Internet in terms of its innovative potential.
Earlier this year, Casares had predicted that the price of Bitcoin would eventually reach $1 mln. During the Jan. 12 interview, Casares repeated the same prediction, but in a modified form, calling Bitcoin and crypto in general an “interesting experiment” and predicting BTC’s $1 mln price if that experiment should succeed:
“I also think that there is a higher than 50% chance that this experiment succeeds...If that happens the world is going to look very very different... I happen to believe that if it succeeds that one bitcoin is going to be worth one million dollars.”
He also said he thinks there is an “at least a 20 percent chance that this experiment fails”.
Casares’s optimistic views on the digital currency, however, are bigger than price gains:
“I can imagine a world in which bitcoin becomes a global standard of value — it’s the first global and non-political standard of value — coupled with the first global and non-political standard of settlement [...] It would be the biggest leap forward in the democratization of money we’ve ever seen.”
According to Casares, the future of crypto lies in the cooperation around a singular, robust Blockchain, and in his opinion Bitcoin’s is the most likely to be the Blockchain of choice:
“There is a huge incentive to have one very, very robust blockchain. At least for any process that, in the end, will be moving value of any kind [...] There may be other use cases that do not entail value that may merit a different blockchain, but in terms of value, it’s most likely, in my opinion, that we’re going to have one. And right now, the most likely one seems to be the Bitcoin blockchain.”
Casares’s focus on Bitcoin underlines the importance of miners being able to successfully rely on transaction fees as incentives to replace block rewards, once the 21 mln Bitcoin mining cap is reached. 80 percent of bitcoins had already been mined on Jan. 13, leaving 4.2 mln coins left until the supply cap.
https://cointelegraph.com/news/xapo-ceo-foresees-a-single-blockchain-to-move-all-value-most-likely-bitcoins
The economics of the BTC blockchain are obviously broken, if you look at transaction fees and time to settle.
What exactly do you see happening that will change the gridlock that has happened to BTC?
I agree that there will be very few surviving blockchains. Perhaps only one.
I promise with certainty that the blockchain surviving 10 years from now WONT be BTC.
The early mover in a new industry, very very rarely has the insights, stamina, and dedication to be the long term survivor.
And BTC is looking very old, fragile, lethargic, and paralyzed in terms of development initiatives.
You have been reading a cointelegraph article. Bitcoin could be technically better off with a few future changes, it would be better off if segwit2x had gone through but that magically didn't happen for a reason last year, and immediately after the cancellation a dedicated attack by BCH followed.
This and what followed demonstrates there are focused interests at work that only use technicalities as arguments to motivate the sheeple in and out of certain coins, given that I won't waste time following tendentious arguments like 'it's lookingvery old, fragile, lethargic and paralyzed.
It's an oxymoron insofar as BCH, as a completely random example isn't much better, less secure and centralized like hell, and in the face of the fact that your argument about old coins not being future-resistant bodes badly for most of the ones existing today. All of them, in fact, even the entire ETH universe. But people like the exchange-centralized coins as they are so symbolic... nobody out there even KNOWS BTS.
The attackers of Bitcoin have managed to damage the brand and bottom the market, but little else as by now everybody accepts Bitcoin as a store of value, while transactions are obviously going the Ripple, Lumens and decentralized exchange way.
And the way of the institutions and states, who will soon all have coins of their own.
Nothing to gain here folks. Move on.
As to Bitshares, my only objection is that better platforms will be coming along that will make it obsolete, like steemit is becoming obsolete, or that its acceptance will just not be happening as institutions won't globally accept it and regulators cut it down.
Which is basically the same argument as the one about Bitcoin.
Not even Ripple is going to be used by the institutions in the long run, they're going to have their own system and the masses will follow and use them as they need to have someone making decisions for them.
Decentralized thinking is just not what a majority of the human herd is capable of or interested in.
You do realize that if Bitcoin were to be worth a million dollars (and therefore picked up globally), its fees could exceed 100's of dollars per transaction. The transaction time would take days, if not weeks to send over. And the energy consumed would at least be half of the worlds population. Pretty much all the points I addressed on this article why it can not happen...
Nobody I know is using Bitcoin for transactions.
We all own many coins and are switching between them, so there isn't any need to send actual Bitcoins anywhere at all except for hodling them inside a hardware wallet. ETH, LTC and Dash are the transactional coins.
The most superfluous coin on the market today is Bitcoin Cash - though many see it like an interesting short-term investment when it's pumping.
A lot like BTC, though not quite as it's totally lacking the nimbus and its propagators are unsavoury.
If you are having any issues with details and opinions mentioned in the cointelegaph article I posted, please take them up with the people who authored it.
You do realize I mainly posted it to relativize what I saw as concentrated FUD on this thread - it's however enlightening that the FUD isn't this time being spread by haters and Roger Ver minions but by folks who hope to be visionaries - I'm inclined to call that a positive development.
So true
Good points. But as a cautionary note, Bitcoin is still the Big 'B'. If it craters, Bitshares will be taken down with it.
If anyone buys BTS on the above points, you're buying for the long term. Better be prepared to HODL.
Even if, (and that's a big "if") Bitcoin where to stay on top, Bitshares has a lot more to offer besides sending transactions, things BTC won't be able to do. The biggest example of this is the DEX (decentralized exchange).
If Bitcoin where to fall in a manner where it goes down drastically, yes it might cause some panic and alts will go down. But just as well will the market cap that was previously in Bitcoin, be pumped into those alts in due time.
Not disagreeing with you, just noting that "in due time" will mean a long time. Best to buy with cash and HODL; that way, you can wait years if you have to (or want to.)
HODL'ing for years has always been my plan ;) Though I expect this year to be a major boost when it comes to Bitshares. A lot of businesses are currently working on intergrating into the Bitshares blockchain. I also believe this year to be the beginning stage of the shift where the utililty will be set on the first place.
Good for you: I really mean that. Don't think in terms of days or moths: think in terms of years.
Related:
https://steemit.com/blocktivity/@theguruasia/what-blocktivity-says-today-steem-hodl-the-top-and-bitshares-is-rising-tga-analysis-16-01-2018
That is the best post in Steemit.. now I vote for you.. nice? :)
Thanks bro :)
Good post
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