Let’s explore an interesting look into how the interest in cryptocurrencies has grown much more compared to the interest in Bitcoin.
Bitcoin maximalists may argue that the average person is about 10 times more likely to know about Bitcoin than they are about cryptocurrency. However I would counter that argument with two important points:
- The relative growth in interest about cryptocurrency vs Bitcoin has been far greater over the past 6 months
- The interest in cryptocurrency over the past 3 months has remained much more stable than the interest in Bitcoin which has dropped sharply.
Both of these points are deductions I made from looking at this Google trends graph over the last 12 months comparing the interest in Bitcoin to the interest in cryptocurrency:
Judging by the graph one can deduce that although the interest in Bitcoin grew by a factor of about 5.25x (jump from 16 to 100), the interest in cryptocurrency grew by a factor of about 12x (from 0.5 to 6), hence more than double the growth rate of Bitcoin!
Furthermore, although the interest for both topics diminished after the huge bull market, the decrease in interest was more pronounced for Bitcoin which fell by about 60% (from 100 to 40) than it was for cryptocurrency which fell by only about 25% (from 6 to 4.5).
The graph below with the 5 year graphs relating to cryptocurrency and Bitcoin further illustrates the points above while also showing how the interest for cryptocurrency has experienced unprecedented growth when compared to Bitcoin.
The goal of this post is not to bash Bitcoin, far from it in fact. Bitcoin has been the brand name and driving force behind cryptocurrencies and has established a robust security foundation which is unparalleled. It serves as a brilliant store of value.
However to think that blockchain technology is limited to serving just the purpose of a great store of value would be myopic and foolish, despite it being the best tested and most established use of blockchain technology.
There is SO much that blockchain technology has the potential to achieve as we’ve seen recently with the ever growing number of new cryptocurrencies and projects being launched and Bitcoin is not suited to realising the potential of many of these projects, Ethereum being the best example so far of what we can achieve when not getting overly fixated on the limitations of Bitcoin.
Not only do I think it’s inevitable that Bitcoin’s dominance will fade over the coming years but I also would be very disappointed if it didn’t because if it stayed dominant, it would mean that the development of other use cases for blockchain technology would be embarrassingly slow and that would be unfortunate news for all people who believe in the enormous potential of this ground breaking technology.
What are your thoughts on the issues discussed?
Feel free to upvote and resteem this post if you like it and follow me if you want to read more about cryptocurrency interviews, news and opinion pieces.
See you at the top,
hooked2thechain
Image sources: www.startupmanagement.org and https://trends.google.com/trends/
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Yes, bitcoin was the invention of blockchain. Namecoin was the advent of cryptocurrency.
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Up voted and resteemed... great post!
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blockchain is a game changer! good post man, let's change the world!
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I agree with you. It is actually surprising that bitcoin is still the number one currency. I've been involved with the cryptocurrency world since late 2013 and early on I realized that Bitcoin is not the actual future, but all the other tech that came after.
Bitcoin is the "pull in tech" and the other currencies are what actually matter in the long run. Bitcoin is important, given that it was the first to popularize cryptocurrencies, but it won't be the one "to rule them all" :)
It might be that bitcoin will hold on for a long time still, but eventually we will see a decline when another currency rises enough. And I'm not betting on Ethereum either as many other are.
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@wealthy-easily
Wow since 2013, love interacting with people who have been in the game so long.
What do you think are the limitations on Ethereum, what are you betting on instead? I share a similar view and have invested in NEO, EOS and a couple others trying to do something similar to ETH.
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The limitations with Ethereum are that it does what others blockchains do nowadays. It doesn't offer anything unique anymore and I don't know if there are any development goals, other than minor updates. To be honest, haven't looked into it that much, but from what I gather it just doesn't seem like it should be the number one. I'm not saying it didn't bring anything new to the table back in the day it was introduced, but now it is kind of the same as bitcoin. As far as I see it.
I put my bets on Digibyte already back in 2014. Been holding since then and now my holdings are worth thousands. The reason was that I honestly didn't know what was going to be the next big thing but the development team seemed to be the most trustable I could find at the time, also passionate about developing the tech and not just making something and leaving it at that. They also helped Dogecoin when they were in trouble and offered to help others. Not saying Digibyte will be the next bitcoin, but it is undervalued for sure.
I'm not really into ICOs as they go against my investment strategies.
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I found a great read regarding the planned developments for Ethereum including N* of developers working on which developments:
https://medium.com/@FEhrsam/scaling-ethereum-to-billions-of-users-f37d9f487db1
I do my best not to get too caught up on any one coin since the space is evolving so damn rapidly and the next Ethereum could always be just around the corner.
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I want to broaden my horizon as well, therefore I started here on steemit. I see writing here as an investment for the future. And since I enjoy blogging, why not make a few bucks on the side, without annoying people with ads. However, in 2014 everything seemed like a mess. So I invested in people, not currencies. (Digibyte devs)
Btw, it isn't that I don't think that Ethereum can scale, I just don't think that the tech behind it is anything special anymore.
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Considering how fast so cyrpto projects are moving right now, nothing created is going to stay popular for long I reckon. Even if someone comes up with a great idea to do something (e.g. ETH with ICOs), someone else can come up with a better/faster/more secure way of doing the same thing.
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upvoted and yes blockchain looks like it will change the world keep steeming
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Thanks for the encouragement @nickwalshblog :)
Interesting to see you're a web developer, I'm not into tech but appreciate gaining knowledge about it. Followed you :)
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