Very nice overview of interesting factors. I disagree however that the current low transaction fees and the smaller pool of unconfirmed tranasactions are a good sign. The fees shooting up in december created a big red flashing warning light that needs to be addressed. I don't think segwit will solve these problems, because if more people want to get into bitcoin and the network cannot accomodate that, it will fail again at some point. It's a fundamental flaw of how the btc system is maintained.
I checked out the lightning network proposals too and I dislike it completely, because it looks exactly the same as the current banking system. It concentrates power, and with that it creates options for abuse. If the lightning network is indeed implemented it will turn btc into a hybrid. I see no advantage of doing that.
In my view all these things are setting btc up for failure in the not so distant future. That makes me too uncertain about the future price of btc to invest in it.
I mostly agree with you. Overall all those signs taken together are not good currently. The unconfirmed transactions is going down partly because the rate of user growth was declining. Check my other articles where I indicated that there are indeed fundamental issues that persists. I did not intend this article to express an overall rosy outlook yet just was defining and explaining each metric on its own. The last paragraph is more indicative of the overall outlook as seen in the article.
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I think segwit will improve things as far as the use goes and the price of Bitcoin will continue to grow. But I certainly do agree that it is a limited fix and we will run into this issue again in the future unless a better solution is found. However, I do not see this as the "failure" of Bitcoin but rather a substantial limiting of it's maximum potential. Crypto is so strange as it is so extreme. If Bitcoin stabilizes at around $50K in four years is that a failure? I guess it is if your goal is 500K in that time frame. However it is a far cry from 5K which I would be shocked to see four years from now.
That being said, I see the market share of Bitcoin going down surely and steadily. Name recognition only will take you so far. As the market matures, so will the people investing in it. The key is to diversify in good projects. I think the Bitcoin maximalists are going to be very disappointed.
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Thanks for your very thoughtful reply! I think segwit is a bandaid. It covers the wound, but doesn't stop the bleeding, although it slowed it down a bit. Quite a few devs saw that too, and that's why bitcoin has forked a few times.
I think we'll see btc go down this year, not up. More people will get frustrated by the self imposed limitations. Other coins will pick up from that. I agree with your observations.
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You bring up a big issue for me, which is the forks. The forks make "Bitcoin" inflationary as opposed to deflationary. While I think the mainstream media usually gets things wrong, this is something they have pointed our that I agree with.
Also for many people crypto' s are a leap of faith. It does not instill confidence when there is basically a civil war going on in the crypto world. When Roger Ver and a few Asian exchanges and miners tried to make Bitcoin Cash the "real Bitcoin" I knew it was the beginning of the end. If Bitcoin Cash does achieve a higher market cap than BTC then it will not be the real Bitcoin, it will simply make all crypto's "alt coins" including BTC. While that may be a good thing in the long run, it will lead to a big delay in mainstream adoption of crypto's.
My fear is the last thing we need is for governments and the big banks to be given more time to coordinate their attack against crypto's.
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I'm not too worried about forks or the huge amount of ICOs we're seeing. To me it's part of the development and adoption process. Although many people seem to be motivated by greed (getting rich fast without doing much for it), in the end things will start to stabilize. That might take some years, who knows.
I think it shows the options cryptos give us, that just needs to sort itself out. Good ideas and good dev teams will survive and bad ones will fall the the sides. Only after that will the real adoption process begin.
Banks and governments already realized that they cannot stop the process. When it was just a few coins, like btc and ltc, they could have tried, but with so many alternatives popping up everywhere it simply means that if they attack one, people can move to another and then another coin.
Governments and banks may want to start their own cryptos, but since they're centralized institutions, they can never really bring the strength of something decentralized like proof of work blockchain...
We live in interesting times, let's see where this (organic) process goes...
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Interesting times indeed. I have no fear that blockchain will go on. It will thrive. I too have no problem with the ICO's or forks in general. I have a big problem with Bitcoin forks. To the mainstream Bitcoin IS crypto. We need the mainstream to have confidence in Bitcoin. It is "supposed" to be the rock of crypto. The "safe bet". The coin they can only make 21 million of.
There is no patent on blockchain per se. So what really gives Bitcoin value is the belief in it. It has great value because we believe it does. Those outside the crypto world need to see that confidence and conviction of those inside it.
The civil war in Bitcoin leads to skepticism not just about Bitcoin but crypto currencies in general.
The one thing we need ASAP is for there to be exchanges where you can buy many alt coins with fiat. I hope Bittrex will replace Tether with USD and make it available for all trading pairs. The sooner Alts can operate independently of BTC the better.
Good chatting with you.
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Yup, I see your point. Great chat indeed, following you now :-)
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Same. It's been quite informative following this thread.
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