Make no mistake. The rats are scrambling off this BTC sinking ship. High Fees is an extinction event. Like all extinction events there is always a group of loutish and very vocal band of hard core deniers. Their arguments are hypocritical, and their reasoning always seem incomplete.
BTC dominance below 40%
Today BTC dominance dropped to 38.4%. Total Market Cap is still 600 billion. This means that value have flowed to other currencies this time to Ripple. Value flows to crypto through BTC because it is the main bridge with all fiat currencies.
This happened before when value flowed to Ethereum. That was stopped in its' track because Ethereum encountered several major problems. ( DAO, more hacks and scaling issues )
Will Ripple become the new No 1 crypto coin?
Possible but it will be temporary, until BCH takes over. This upsurge is a pump and FOMO event, timely as many investors are looking to exit BTC. The fact that bankers like it strengthens their believe that this could be a major crypto coin. Again do not be fooled. Ripple is nothing but a token. Issued by a central authority. 38 billion are in circulation and 62 billion is in reserve.
It is not a mineable coin ( POW or POS) It is just issued (printed) out of thin air. Its value is in saving banks and financial institutions billions in interbank transfer fees. For this system to work it needs a large market cap. It certainly has that now. Banking transfer systems like SWIFT will not be silent in the face of this development eating into their business model.
It will be an intermediary token for financial institutions to move value among themselves. In short Ripple is not an everyday currency to be used by common folks. I don't think there is even a wallet for it. I suspect that most are held on exchanges and by the banks.
High fees is an extinction event.
Anybody who has a sizeable BTC holding is certainly now worried that their "store of value" may be in jeopardy. As we can see most of this value is moving to Ripple. When they realise that Ripple cannot be a store of value, much of that value will look for a new home - Bitcoin Cash.
Bitcoin Cash is the real bitcoin. It always was. The fork was BTC which added Segwit. Bitcoin Cash is still the same Bitcoin that I knew and loved in 2013. More and more people are beginning to realise this, as they find that they can no longer use their bitcoin to transact. All businesses that use to accept bitcoin have stopped accepting it.
The only argument left is for it to be a "store of value" and that is gone too, now that value have moved to Ripple! of all things. I guess people still want to trust banks. But they have to realise that banks do not own Ripple, and Ripple does not represent shares in the banking system.
Bitcoin will still achieve valuation of 100,000 and even 1 million a coin.
However that is in reference to Bitcoin Cash. This will happen when BTC is booted off the bitcoin mining algorithm. For me this can't happen soon enough. Bring on the Chain Death Spiral.
What are miners are waiting for? They are in control of BTC's fate.