"Go Napster! Destroy to create!"
If you are around for more than 30 years, then the slogan above should sound very, very familiar. In 1999, a small company called Napster started a revolution. The service they provided: sharing MP3 files in a p2p network. The key word here is p2p, or peer to peer network.
Interestingly enough, Bitcoin, as a protocol, is based on the same technology: p2p.
Disruption
Now, let's take a short break here and set some things straight: p2p, as a technology, wasn't invented by Napster, nor by Bitcoin. It was lingering around since the 70s. Yes, the protocols were there since the late seventies. Even when Napster appeared, there were already p2p sharing networks, like IRC, for instance.
But Napster, just like Bitcoin, found a desirable usage of this technology, outside of the theoretical realm of mathematics. Napster paired it with something that people needed, namely music. Or, as they called it back then: free music.
Soon, Napster ran into problems with the traditional music industry. Challenged with intellectual property lawsuits, it had to file for bankruptcy. It was acquired by Roxio and then basically disappeared.
But even if it was a very short lived appearance, Napster left deep traces. It was, for many, a symbol of freedom. And many of the promises they want to fulfill were, later on, fulfilled by other technologies, or business players. If we would only think of the BitTorrent technology, which became popular as a result of Napster being visible and vocal, and we will still have a lot to. be grateful for.
Napster disrupted the music distribution in the same way Bitcoin is disrupting finances. Only Bitcoin does this at a larger scale and with an extra ingredient: decentralization. There's no real company behind Bitcoin and that's what makes it a very odd creature.
Forking Bitcoin Into Its Own Future
But just like Napster in its glory days, Bitcoin is starting to get challenged. Yes, it already had its share of small copy cats, in the form of a few hundreds colored coins, but none of them had the stamina to really take off.
Until now. Backed by powerful structures, Bitcoin Cash (and, more recently, Bitcoin Gold) are starting to bite important parts from the Bitcoin pie. Miners are seriously thinking to maximize their profits, so they're testing the new algorithms, throwing more and more hashing power into the new tokens. They invested huge amounts of money in their infrastructure and they have enormous running costs. Casual investors are looking for short term profit. Ignorants are happy when they get some "air dropped" cash. Money for nothing and the coins for free. It's all about profit, at the end of the day, right?
Well, maybe.
I don't know for sure but it's clear we're at a crossroad. A crossroad that may mean the Bitcoin that we know may step back. And new players may step in.
It is an attack from China, Bitmain, ViaBTC, Roger Ver, Jihan Wu and all the other names named in the quasi-consiprational Twitter posts which are polarizing the Bitcoin universe for more than a year now? Well, probably. But if a fight is fought for the benefits of the larger stake, then it becomes "legit". If Bitcoin Core can't serve the interest of their users, then it will naturally disappear.
On the other side, if the assault ran by the players mentioned above will prove to be just a hijacking attempt, an aggressive takeover of an unsuspecting and naive user base, with the final result of centralizing the token in the hands of a few, just like banks and governments are functioning now, then the future is bleak.
This is the biggest financial battle of all times. Just last weekend, in under 2 hours, $17 billions were made and lost. That's the yearly GDP of Bosnia and Hertzegovina.
The stake is huge and the outcome will be definitive.
Is It Over For Us, Bitcoin Early Adopters?
Well, in order to answer to that question, we should go back to Napster: Sean Parker, one of the founders of Napster (and also the first president of Facebook, and the one who, allegedly, rebranded it from TheFacebook to just Facebook) is doing quite well. According to a Forbes list in 2016, he is still worth $2.4 billion dollars.
That's just about 1% of the entire crypto market cap now.
Not bad. Not bad at all for someone who filed for bankruptcy.
photo source: Pixabay
I'm a serial entrepreneur, blogger and ultrarunner. You can find me mainly on my blog at Dragos Roua where I write about productivity, business, relationships and running. Here on Steemit you may stay updated by following me @dragosroua.
https://steemit.com/~witnesses
If you're new to Steemit, you may find these articles relevant (that's also part of my witness activity to support new members of the platform):
Any opinions on who the next bitcoin might be? :)
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Why not steem? 3 second blocks. No transaction fees....
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From a technical point yes, from a investor's point I think many are put off by steem's inflation. People like low max supply.
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There are a few contenders. First one is obviously Ethereum, once it migrates to Casper. Another interesting competitor can be any member of the graphene family: Bitshares, Steem, Eos. And let's not forget about Monero, one of the most stable cryptocurrencies out there.
Time will tell.
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Thank you for giving me some insight. I thought you were going to keep your cards close to your chest :) I see you left litecoin and BCH of this list. Is it because of their similarity to bitcoin?
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Litecoin was always just a lab / testing playground for Bitcoin and used almost exclusively for that. BCH is way, way too young to emit any opinion, even an (un)educated guess.
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Did you throw a Dire Straits reference in there too? "Money for nothing and coins for free?". Nice.
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Butofcors ;)
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steem looks solid in that perspective
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Soooo... eventually it will screw with one currency too many and the governments will come down hard on it and then the Rothschilds will kill off everyone who is transacting it until it goes away? #conspiracy
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obviously, my dear Watson.
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Just as a lot of people did not understand the computer revolution, the internet ... I knew quite a lot, so I did not want to understand the bitcoin revolution. Now in my 12th clock I started using bitcoin (well, fractions) in small internet marketing attempts. I wanted to say I do not understand much. Your post helped me a little to "brighten"me. Thank you! Although I hate this, I have found that I have to say this: upvoted, resteem, followed and voted.
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he he, thank you :) And keep learning. I'm learning each and every day.
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Good advice. I like to learn but can't focus only on important things and I am enough old to want to perform in certain domains. I try to make my hobbies a lot more than hobbies...I only try. I know you learn but more than that, look what @alexvan says about you : " The first month where I was active, I got a lot of help from @dragosroua. The help came not only through very good tips and instructions but through a project he started. He has rewarded various users who have been writing posts for 30 days. That helped me the most because through these posts I got the habit to write". He started a similar project that will help me to be focused in a daily basis on Steemit. I feel I must thank you also for this.
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Much appreciated :)
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The scaling debate has highlighted that Bitcoin is a bit of dinosaur in the cryptocurrency world.
There is a very real probability of it being Napster'd (or Netscape'd, Myspace'd, etc.) - basically being unable to adapt or innovate fast enough and being replaced by better alternatives.
I still think the idea behind Bitcoin is great, and there are enough smart people working on solutions to make a success of it and turn the unwieldy ship around, but I am really not going to surprised if some other coins eat BTC's (& BCH's) lunch.
For example, just look at how ETH has more real world utility with smart contracts; XMR acts like true digital cash; or new players like IOTA solve things like low cost, fast transactions in completely differently way.
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The billion dollar question is: where will the money flow from it, if it will be Napster'd?
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The speculative money will just flow wherever traders believe they can get the most profit. That's what is all about for them. It is amateur investors the ones which have to be very very careful as things happen very very fast in this new fascinating industry.
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I recently expanded on similar sentiments here.
(Past payout)
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Thanks for this. Is refreshing to see that other people have similar views :) I'm not an ancap, but PoW seemed a bit flawed to me. I'm sure there are other ways, like PoS, DPoS or, why not, even PoB (Proof of Burn).
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I think Napster is also what brought around services like pandora, spotify, and netflix. I can probably never prove this, but I'm sure entrepreneurs noticed people using napster were unhappy with the way and cost of consuming media.
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@dragosroua I downloaded music from NAPSTER back in the day.........
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great analysis @dragosroua
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Upvoted!! Great post.
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Hello!
My name is Aleksandra.
I am a community manager of the TravelChain project.
I really liked your blog and I would to inform you about our new company.
Recently we launched a bounty campaign for our project. It is the first campaign by participating in which you will be able to get travel tokens and air tickets to any part of the world.
We would like to invite you to participate in the campaign of blogs and media.
In addition, I would like to talk to you about helping us with promotion of our blog.
Read the terms of participation by this link
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2364466
I look forward to hearing from you and have a nice day!
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Really great post that make us think in a different way!
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I think it's very likely that BitCoin will sooner or later be taken over by something that offers more to its users. Technologically speaking, there are much better solutions out there and as we've talked about before, technologically Steem and the rest of the graphene family could be viewed as a strong contender.
But what BTC has going for itself and what puts it in a very different league to most other cryptocurrencies is its huge adoption and stake. And the past has shown us that it's sometimes difficult to unseat a market leader if adoption and recognition are high enough, even with superior technology.
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