In reality bitcoin is the only coin that really matters because of the way that it is set up. It solves the byzantine general's problem and networking effects have been being built upon it since the genesis block... There are nine networking effects that are outlined by Trace Mayer, and you can easily look them up in order to better attempt to understand the importance of bitcoin and it's paradigm shifting contribution to securing value in a way that is outside of centralized authorities that has never been available before it, and might not even have been possible until the internet had reached a certain level of maturity in recent years.
bitcoins dominance and inspiration of 2009-2011 WAS based on the above..
so from 2009-2011 yes bitcoins blockchain vs price. bitcoin was winning based on blockchan features, because the price was low compared to other currencies/mediums of exchange in the world, and the features bitcoin offered were far more valuable than its price
but..
2011-2013
then came altcoins that also used thee same solution. thus other coins utility of a decentralised network meant bitcoin no longer had a unique feature that any other currencies couldnt offer.
bitcoins dominance then became price and merchant utility. merchants didnt use litecoin as their "we accept.." paymnt method. but while other coins were offering faster confirmation average times or more data per block or more/less coin reward per block.. bitcoin started losing the utility race.
2013-2015
with less unique codebases of differing node clients, and the war against other 'generals' had started to rip(REKT) apart the byzantiines solution, thus losing bitcoins uniquenase, features and benfits further
2015-2018
and now the reliance on one source of new rule/upgrade path (core roadmap/mandatory upgrades) the whole utility of consensus(bysantines solution) has nearly disapeared completely due to this whole drama of the last 2 years.
and now merchant service tools are now opening their gates to other coins. so bitcoin is now losing the merchant adoption race too.
soo.. now it seems bitcoins only promoted 'feature' is first to market (which didnt play well for myspace or napstre)
leaving people to now only prompt the price as the reason to try inticing new people
now with all that said.
market cap and price are both illusions.
if i called 1000 apples shares as a 'cookingapple' (large apple) then the price per unit would be bigger.
if i made an altcoin of 5 trillion coins and sold 1 coin for $5 the market cap would be $5trillion.
think of it this way. look passed the ilusion of the basket terms of measure.
many people say that bitcoin is $6500 per unit and gold is only $1800 per unit(btc vs oz)...
but what if i told you bitcoin was only $0.0065 a unit and gold was $38k a unit. (bits vs KG)
so with people starting to measure bitcoin as ubtc(bits(100sat)) the price per unit will drop from ~$6500 per unit(BTC) to ~$0.0065 per unit(bits)
thus in future bitcoin will show as a under penny per unit price and other altcoins will hav a higher price per unit. and alts will have a higher market cap.
p.s i love bitcoin. but im a realist not an ass kisser. its far better to reveal the issues and hope the community wake up and then help sort the issue, rather than kiss ass, hide the problem and let it continue/get worse.
..
summary.
watch trace mayors SEVEN network effects video.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D3n6lLeuPQAthen ask in 2018 do all these 7 network effects still apply to bitcoin uniquely
in my view the only one remaining is point 4 (mining hashrate). which the cost of mining upholds the price support (the low of a year) where people refuse to sell below their cost of obtaining bitcoin
I am totally lost in this one, I need to go make some research so that I may be able to have something to say, but in any case, I'm glad I even convinced myself to asked the question baceuse I almost considered it as irrelevant to bring it up here, but I managed to convince myself to ask the question and here are several detailed explanations that would move me to make more research to understand Bitcoin more and it's associated technologies. Thanks for sharing