Why is everybody betting on bitcoin for payments when there are faster and more stable alternatives in the crypto space?
I’m thinking that this is more about a proof of concept to get into the space.
I’m thinking that this is more about a proof of concept to get into the space.
2. If everyone (read: the vocal but high profile minority) is talking about it, even though we don't understand it, there must be something to it. Everyone (read: the vocal but high profile minority) cannot be wrong.
3. There is no career downside of betting on this and it fails, since everyone else was betting on it.
4. There is a career downside to not betting on it and it is successful.
That sounds like the JS community.
Ethereum is the only sensible alternative to Bitcoin but Ethereum has major scalability issues and much less infrastructure compared to Bitcoin to alleviate those issues.
Proof of Stake is coming which helps a lot with overall effort expended, if not directly tx/s.
What does Bitcoin have that Ethereum doesn't for scaling transaction rate?
That said Ethereum would be a reasonable alternative, but in terms of stability and performance, Bitcoin is far ahead of Ethereum currently. Maybe Ethereum 2.0 with sharding and staking solves those scalability issues and at that time it will be the best choice, but right now there are too many unknowns.
USDC also uses Algorand, Solana and Stellar:
"By Moore's Law, we can expect hardware speed to be 10 times faster in 5 years and 100 times faster in 10. Even if Bitcoin grows at crazy adoption rates, I think computer speeds will stay ahead of the number of transactions."[1]
But solutions to that problem exist. I pay small amounts regularly with my bitcoin wallet (the Wallet of Satoshi), it costs mere cents and transactions confirm in seconds. It's far superior to anything visa has to offer, because it's fraud and counterfeit proof, privacy friendly, globally universal and cheap.
Yet in spite of this, “speculative store of value” remains the only real world use case of cryptocurrency, full stop. No cryptocurrency has risen above speculative store of value absolutely without exception.
N.B. “digital gold” is merely a euphemism for speculative store of value.
“Digital gold” is the Cadillac of all cryptocurrency narratives from a pure practical proven standpoint, much to the chagrin of investors loudly beating the “utility coin” drum to shamelessly drum up demand for other people to invest in their supposed utility-having coin unironically as a speculative store of value.
This is also why all Bitcoin-to-altcoin competition is zero sum, and always will be — because no one uses cryptocurrency, they just virtue signal with it to jockey for position in the sheer Keynesian beauty contest that is cryptocurrency valuation [1].
Every core developer of Bitcoin could drop dead simultaneously, and Bitcoin’s “digital gold” narrative would remain intact. All you need is what Bitcoin is today if your only goal is the safest safe haven asset.
It was wise of the Bitcoin developers to double down on the digital gold narrative due to the inherent realities of the cryptocurrency space which continue to prove themselves out as Bitcoin has risen from $300 to over $50,000 USD. Bitcoin is digital gold, and every altcoin is low-key trying to become that by calling attention to their "utility" which virtually no one has ever made any “use” of.
Which is why Bitcoin remains the #1 coin by market cap, and virtually every other cryptocurrency is down c. 70% from their all-time highs (BTC-denominated ofc, because no other metric counts).
Contrary to popular belief, alternative free-floating “stablecoins” aren’t actually stable: every major example of one has imploded at least once in times of high market volatility. This makes them speculative.
Unstable “stablecoins” are speculative stores of value no different from any other cryptocurrency, but with a twist: the real world usage to virtue signaling ratio equally rounds down to zero, but the profit mechanism is different. You bet on unstable stablecoins by purchasing cooperative pseudo-equities whose value is propped up by all the drum beating that goes on for the closely linked unstable stablecoin itself.
(All the examples of unstable “stablecoins” I’m familiar with have shipped such tertiary pseudo-equity coins as investor bait, which IMO explains virtually all of the buzz they seem to have — again no different from any other cryptocurrency.)
Why is ipv4 still being used? C'mon guys you're smarter than this.