Topic: Bitcoin Maximalism Has Won (Read 509 times)

I think when money can't be made too much from bitcoin, they will definitely start to move to bitcoin as well. And the biggest deal is, the volume and marketcap of many altcoins are very low, obviously they can't get in with 10 billion dollars like they did to bitcoin, however if you buy 1 billion dollars worth of ethereum today, you are going to easily double that in 2 years, and nobody can do 50% return in wall street that easily, not with 1 billion dollars at least, only very few lucky ones, like one in 10 thousand people may do that and there is like 50k workers anyway.

So long story short alts will get attention for sure, the only problem right now is the fact that bitcoin made them huge sums of money, which means they are not going to start looking into alts just yet, they will probably move to alts only after bitcoin stops profiting them.

Yes, this is partially true, but I think that you will not argue that after all, institutional investors choose bitcoin when they choose to invest in a crypto. When they choose a crypto-related startup or some kind of crypto-based project, then most likely they are talking about altcoins.

ETH is still by far the king of all altcoins because it is definitely something profitable to hold when hypes happen, it is the second biggest coin so when bitcoin stops eth starts to grow. Think about it this way, if bitcoin is loved so much and everyone gets it, the moment they start to look for something else? They look at ETH and that is why nothing else can ever pass it.

It doesn't matter if the tech is better, it doesn't matter if there is a better feature or a code, it doesn't matter whatever other coins do better, you think bitcoin is the top coin because it has the best blockchain? Obviously bitcoin is one of the worst coins technically speaking, there are so many coins which are hundred times better than bitcoin, but bitcoin still leads them, because it has a larger community that trusts it, which is why you should focus on ETH being second, not ETH code.

They are not going to ignore altcoins institutions are no different to us investors, when they see there are profits to be made investing in altcoins and they see the potential and use case of these altcoins they are going to explore these altcoins and they are likely to invest here, it's hard to ignore altcoins like Ethereum Cardano Binance coin among others.

Whatever it is, it's still pegged to bitcoin, has no premine, is immutable, is not as centralized and is much safer compared to the alternative such as ethereum.
The only reason why the interest in RSK is not as much as ETH is because you can't pump and dump it like you pump and dump ETH so there isn't any profit to be made there, and also the hype of the ETH platform means you can easily create the shittest and most useless token and still dump it on idiots and make money whereas if you do that on RSK nobody would even hear about it let alone anyone buying that shittoken.

The competitive advantage  inherent in Bitcoin easily makes bitcoin more successful than other cryptocurrencies in many key
areas is its ability to limit new publishing. In particular, bitcoin supply cannot be manipulated, nor is there any more issuance.
This  is  in  contrast  to  other  cryptocurrencies  whose  supply  is  subject  to  change,  such  as  Ethereum (ETH)  and   XRP,
as well as all fiat currencies.

I disagree that institutions are not interested in altcoins. There is undoubtedly interest, but it is different from bitcoin. Bitcoin is considered by all market participants as an investment, first of all, and altcoins as a tool. And I can't say that the interest as a tool is bad - bitcoin started with this.

that implies an altcoin. it doesn't matter whether it's pegged. RBTC is a token on a different protocol with much weaker security guarantees. trying to claim that a merge-mined sidechain is "bitcoin" is insane.

it was actually paul sztorc (drivechains) who opened my eyes about this when he remarked that sidechains are altcoins---they are just interoperable with bitcoin too.


that prevents unintended inflation but it doesn't make RSK secure.

still true:

Rootstock is a merged-mine sidechain, so cryptographically not an altcoin but 1-to-1 swap with bitcoin since it locks coins on bitcoins mainchain. Nice shitcoinery FUD attempt though.

When institutions get enough btc cold stashed away and confident enough with their crypto skills they will definitely be temlted to experiment with some portion for Rootstock DeFi.

Yeah exactly. Institutions will be holding their Bitcoin to protect wealth, not messing around in DeFi with it.

But, they will also be picking up some ETH, and then they can use some of that for doing DeFi on the primary DeFi platform, rather than bothering with some sidechain on Bitcoin.

it technically uses an altcoin that is pegged to BTC---there is a difference.

no layer 2 protocol can ever provide the same security guarantees that bitcoin does. i think that's why interest in them has traditionally been lacking.


institutions want their bitcoins locked up in cold storage at fidelity, coinbase. how does that fit into that scenario?

RootStock can do everything ETH can do ... except uses bitcoins natively.

Which do you think Institutions will use to do DeFi when they are loaded up with Bitcoin?

I'm not saying no other coins will succeed. I'm saying institutions don't care about coins that are entirely expendable. Maybe in the future there will be other coins beyond BTC and ETH that aren't expendable, but there aren't right now. If at some point other coins achieve a primary status in the crypto world then institutions would be interested in them, but right now nothing outside of BTC and ETH have that status, and until that changes institutions will only be interested in BTC and ETH. Meaning that institutions aren't interested in altcoins. If let's say a couple other coins this decade achieve this primary status, I would say they aren't really altcoins anymore.

You're right there are other use cases besides digital gold and smart contracts. Though smart contracts cover most use cases, there are still others. There's decentralized storage, there's a daily spender (though that will just end up being government/central bank issued stablecoins when fiat upgrades to crypto), there's privacy coins, there's something like LINK that provides Oracles, something like DOT that provides bridges between chains, I could possibly see some sort of public crypto tied to some sort of social uses, and more. But like I said, RIGHT NOW there are two main use cases for crypto and BTC and ETH have them covered. Likely at some point specific coins will become dominant and primary in some of these or other new use cases, at which point they will no longer be "altcoins" and institutions may take notice of them.

The reason I am thinking like a conservative institution is because I am talking about what conservative institutions are interested in! They aren't and won't ever be interested in anything that can be considered an altcoin. They will only ever be interested in something besides BTC and ETH if that something rises out of altcoin status and becomes something useful, highly used, highly valuable, with network effects that will only build, and a penchant for rising in value. Also because institutions have so much money they won't be interested in even altcoins that dominate their niche if that niche is small. Any crypto won't interest institutions to any real degree until its a $100B type market cap. Anything smaller than that they can't even build a decent position without controlling the market.

I guess maybe it depends what you mean by altcoin though. Some may still consider an altcoin anything that isn't Bitcoin. I consider an altcoin any coin that isn't a market driver. Right now everything other than BTC and ETH are altcoins. Maybe 5 years from now there's one or two more dominant cryptos, but right now nothing is on the horizon for achieving such a status that would interest institutions.

Don't disagree completely, but I think it does depend on how much they're investing and from where. Thinking about my country, for example, where a five-fold increase in returns is unheard of, which is what $100k price tag would mean. I know how some pension funds work, for example, and there are two targets. A time target, and a returns target. Whichever hits first, shareholders typically vote to liquidate, at least a portion anyway for a big dividend payout. That said, even 100% gains is unheard of so maybe we see even $40k and $50k this happening. Not to the point it'll crash the market, and perhaps newer funds will set up at that point anyway!

I'm aware also what qualified for "institutional investment" is wildly different in different countries. $100k is a huge amount for private funds in a majority part of the world, the new wealthy, or whatever we want to call them.

This is very true, the reason why we have a big pump, institutions are coming in one of the early adopter is PayPal we all know when a huge online company and probably one of the leader just come in to be part of the community, many small and mid range institutions online and offline will start to coming in, so we now have this huge pump.

I don't see institutions liquidating at $100k. They are getting in long term. $100k would be a short term play. So far the price projections I've mostly seen coming out of institutions are in the several hundred thousand dollars. If they were like putting 50% of their money into Bitcoin then sure they'd liquidate quickly after like 2x or 3x, but (other than Microstrategy) they are putting a fraction of a percent in (so far) or at most usually 2-3%. That is not a position they are going to be trying to liquidate quickly to diversify, those are the kinds of positions they will continue to build once their previous positions are already massively in profit and they feel comfortable taking a larger position knowing their overall position is now safe.

As you point out, retail FOMO hasn't even started really. I'm sure there's a little bit going on but compared to past bull runs its nothing yet. I kinda feel like retail FOMO will be less now. Because most people have known about Bitcoin for 3 years now, and most people have the view that it always crashes (as wrong as that view is!). Whereas in previous bull markets people were hearing about Bitcoin for the first time, in the middle of massive bull run, so they FOMO in. The situation is different now. Instead of FOMOing in I think most of the retail market is just assuming its gonna crash any day now, but over time as it doesn't they'll wade in little by little at higher prices once the realize the price isn't crashing.

And I don't expect a big crash / bear market, precisely because I don't think retail will FOMO in, which is what caused previous crashes/bear markets. And also because institutions are getting in and will continue getting in for years, they have enough money to stop any crash in its tracks and the desire to do it because that means they can to increase their position on the cheap before others do. They aren't going to be selling at $100k, they will continue buying at $100k and beyond. Only a fraction of them will even have started to get a position in Bitcoin by the time it hits $100k. And $100k should happen pretty quickly, almost guaranteed to happen this year, there's just too much institutional demand for it not to pass $100k this year. I do, however, think institutions will scale back buying whenever they feel like it has gone up too fast and they are afraid of a bubble forming, and some of the more agile institutions will take some off the table at these points, looking to get back in lower. In that way I think we'll just see repeated shorter bull markets followed by decent months long corrections and that'll last for several years, rather than a single big bull market and then it taking 3 years to get back to that price.

Institutions alone can easily buy this thing up north of $500k pretty quickly if they wanted to, but its only the leading most forward thinking institutions buying now, and even they wouldn't keep buying if the price shoots up too fast. So I believe we're at the start of a super cycle that may last like 5 years of institutions gradually getting in to build up positions of usually a few percent, in combination with more crypto-specific hedge funds opening up, plus at some point during that time an ETF which will open up Bitcoin to a who other class of Wall St retail investors that won't directly buy into something as "confusing" as crypto, and also retail gradually coming in with little bouts of FOMO here and there. It'll be a multi-year bull market when you smooth it all out, but there will be months-long corrections here and there when institutions get wary of the price shooting up too quickly.

Sure, but that says nothing about future technological and market developments. You're thinking like a conservative institution: you won't concede that anything is viable until after it's made a move like ETH. That's fine but I don't know how realistic this "there are only 2 use cases for crypto" attitude is. The rise of Ethereum shows Bitcoin maximalists fundamentally misread the market thinking Bitcoin as decentralized money was the only possible use case with network effect. I don't think "there can only be 2" is much more viable of a theory.

I agree altcoins are expendable at this point. ETH was expendable at $0.40. That's all I'm saying.

Indeed, that's what I'm banking on that will carry Bitcoin slowly up, rather than rush to 6-figures... that institutions and even government pension funds -- either publicly or discretely -- are thinking of long-term holdings rather than even medium-multi-years. Gold, we know, has already been outstripping supply even in 2020 with banks buying them up, there's not much other similar type of thing they can buy in liey.

The exchange volumes NOT going overly crazy also suggests retail fomo isn't nearly going to be enough to cause a run. Maybe this is the last "parabola" cycle we're witnessing. Not holding my breath though. At $100k, even institutions will be liquidating to diversify.

The difference right now though is that it is going up fast because institutions are scooping up all available Bitcoin and the vast majority of them are holding long term. This makes a very different situation than past bull runs in which it was basically 100% retail investors jumping into something who would then panic sell on any drop. The situation is such that the floor is going up faster than previous bull markets because it is long term holders that are causing the ascent, rather than panicky retail investors trying to jump into some investment they just heard about and know nothing about. This is why instead of seeing solid corrections the past 3 months we've only seen a series of quick bear traps - because the floor is rising rapidly. Sure at some point a substantial correction will happen that may take a month or two to work through, but that won't happen until institutions get wary of how fast the price has gone up, so that is something I'd be looking out for if the price like doubles again in the next two or three months. But at $30k, when institutions are dying to get into Bitcoin, eating up tens of thousands of Bitcoin each week, a substantial correction isn't a worry right now. Retail investors of course still control enough of the market to cause a panicked correction, but any drop will just be bought up by big players until the price rise is so fast and high that they take a break to see if prices go lower. Like I said, that ain't gonna happen at $30k, supply and demand right now is very much in favor of near term significant upside, perhaps after a little bit of time consolidating at this level.

Good for you. But I actually want to continue counting on newbie posts or necro resurrected accounts to keep sentiment in check. Loving where we are headed but am wary that too fast too soon means a lower floor for when we eventually have to test and find it. And that is coming, of course. Stocks and economy overheating and in flawed valuation. of course that will have some impact later on.

So. Keep them newbie posts coming. Still want to be an early adopter (relatively speaking) for as long as possible!