Topic: Is Bitcoin so valuable just because it was first? - page 6. (Read 1432 times)

yes i believe so it was first and is the most talked about crypto coin, if you ask a person not into crypto they will most likley have heard about bitcoin , if you ask them about eth they have no idea what you are talking about, so that has to push the price alot compare to the rest of the market, if it will always be the most valuble is another question becuse as you say the fees for small transactions are abit on the expensive side.

You don't have to own 1 bitcoin to own bitcoin and I did not say there's enough of full bitcoins for everyone but enough bitcoins. You literally say that you are using dollars to pay even if all you have is 50 cents because dollar is the name of the currency.

 There is enough satoshis for everyone and this is the important part. Even if one day half of all bitcoins is lost there will be enough for everyone. The value that is now held by 1 BTC will one day be equal to 0.01 BTC or less.

No he literally had profit in mind as a mechanism for adoption but I think now it was a flawed design relying on bubble after bubble for adoption. It brings people to crypto for the wrong reasons of monetary profit and not for freedom from governments and central banks.

Grin probably qualifies for this ridiculous notion of an immaculate conception. It has an anonymous founder that also stepped away. It had a fair launch is decentralized and has many of the same conditions as Bitcoin's founding. This notion that Bitcoin is somehow perfect in its conception and that it is the only crypto that will survive is extremely and laughably false.

Interesting points, as for my belief on mass adoption: "I have no idea." However, whether it happens or not I still enjoy learning about and using cryptocurrency as a hobby. I think all of us here on BT have at least some faith in mass adoption though, we are all in this together!

It's crazy all of the stories about lost keys, it's like that one guy who was the owner of an exchange (I lost the article) who had a heart attack and no one knew the password to his wallet. Unfortunate, but with full sovereignty comes the inventible risk of losing your money: this is very easily preventable though.

Do you have any ideas on what mass adoption would even look like? I guess when you are able to tap a guy on the shoulder in a crowd and send him some Bitcoin? Or when even Joe's Coffee Shop accepts Bitcoin, idk it's kind of crazy to think about since it's all so limited now?

That is arguable. There are enough satoshis for everyone to have a taste, but even now not everyone who wants a bitcoin can get one even if they have the fiat to pay for it.

Imagine if every millionaire in the world wanted just one bitcoin. What do you think that would do to the price? There are roughly 36 million people in the entire world that are millionaires. There will only ever be 21 million bitcoin, and estimates that at least 4 million of those are gone forever already due to lost keys.

If you want btc, the time to get it is before mass adoption. If you think mass adoption will never happen then maybe you are right, but I think it will.

https://www.quora.com/How-many-people-have-at-least-one-bitcoin

It could be a similar story to the development of cars.. In the beginning there was only Ford and then came other manufacturers but Ford was dominating for many years. There were better and cheaper cars and other manufacturers found something other people wanted and Ford couldn't give them.

The difference is that there was not enough cars for everyone and more people wanted them with every year. There is already enough bitcoins for everyone.

Bitcoin being first can never be down played so yet it is part of the reasons bitcoin is respected but this is not the whole reason as to that. Bitcoin had a wonderful team all this making it very credible

The fact BTC is the first coin is important, because more people trust
And not only the fact of first coin, BTC is the most supported coin (devs, wallets, blockchain etc), and we have one more: BTC is the the coin of all exchanges, the pair number 1, all coins have their value in BTC
So, it's not just because it was first

but reliable means you can relly on it all times but btc isnt reliable at all times because sometimes its value is down

yes its because its the oldest or the first one to come out but even other coins thats next to btc such as eth , are also been tested and proven to be a good coin ,

i dont what is pow but i heard that pow is also available on other crypto coins   . other coins do also have a less expensive fees but bitcoin isnt especially if its value is pumping

It is the best not just because it is the first.
It didn't just take the quality of being valuable, instead it earned it. Take a long look at every altcoins which are been developed now, it is aimed for profit purpose. Satoshi by far is the only developer who probably didn't have profit in mind when drafting out Bitcoin code; I am presuming he didn't even know that it will be this popular. Looking around, only few developers are on this path too.

In the future, I do hope there will be a coin strong enough to compete with Bitcoin.

Perhaps for the decentralization but for the cryptocurrency, I'm not sure if we can say Bitcoin is the first (since cryptocurrency = currency using cryptography). There are hascash, bitgold, bmoney and a dozen of others, maybe the older was started 20 or 30 years ago. As for BTC success (if it's what you wanted to say) yes I agree it's the first one.

Bitcoin is valuable because it's reliable - it's much more tested than any other coins, it has more PoW, it has better and more developers, it has a good track record of not majorly screwing up, unlike other coins. Most importantly, PoW is proven to be secure and unlike alternatives, and smaller blocksize, which causes expensive transactions, is a guarantee that no one will take control of the network. Meanwhile, altcoins like EOS and XRP are just payment companies masquerading as cryptocurrency, because there's a small number of nodes controlled by big players - it's not a peer-to-peer network.

Bitcoin being the fast brought with it couple of advantages :-
- Well-known, the word "Bitcoin" has been thrown around for almost 10 years now, and it is still alive and one of the most valuable digital asset
- Network effect... most cryptocurrency adopters started with bitcoin and also attracts the most serious audience and holders
- When Bitcoin was launched it influenced a lot in terms of philosophy and economics of a digital asset, spawning new ideas and setting the tone for decentralization

In terms of value, money is very much a function of its network effect.
For a new cryptocurrency to pose a serious contender to Bitcoin, not only the alternative needs to be better but Bitcoin probably would need some defects
Simplicity of Bitcoin purpose also reduces the possibility of defects which makes it less popular than the alternatives

It's all about adoption. The first mover advantage is hard to overstate. I also do not think Ethereum is a competitor with Bitcoin, I think they can co-exist and serve different uses. Also, people don't always go for the latest and most high tech solutions, they go for ubiquitous and convenient. E.g. mp3's sound like ass but they are now the defacto standard for delivering audio even though CDs by every single measure sound much better. Convenience, adoption, availability. Bitcoin has it all and a large part of that is due to being the first.

Bitcoin valuable because it is the most securest blockchain ever created.

The amount of hash power which secures the network is unmatched. It is nearly impossible to pull a %51 attack on bitcoin.

It is pretty easy to pull these attacks on minority chains&low hashrate coins like bcash, bsv, etc, btg (some of these has already been attacked btw)

If you are a cash rich individual who seeks ways to keep money out of the banking system, bitcoin is your choice.

It is not practical to buy coffee with bitcoin but bitcoin went beyond this. It is like a Swiss bank account in your pocket.

Capital yes because it was the first true cryptocurrency, also, uncompromised decentralized cryptocurrency, the true anonymous cryptocurrency. The birth of Bitcoin was amazing and was a first time freedom giver and transparency. I think many will come to the truth that, bitcoin is the true cryptocurrency.

Yea this is very true, I think a lot of it has to do with the time / innovation "ratio" or how much something is "ahead of its time". I guess a lot of Bitcoin's downsides are also a result of it's age, aka the blockchain issue you referenced. I do have a kind of pessimistic attitude towards the life of Bitcoin, but it's still pretty amazing this is all possible. It will be interesting to see how things continue in the future.


Interesting, I do think it's a very valid point to make that most "altcoins" are pretty much Bitcoin with a "new" feature slapped onto it. Even now there are hundreds of tokens being made each day, trying to introduce something new. I guess the real question is whether there needs to be improvements at all? Like kryptqnick said, it does it's job very well and has withstood the test of time.


That's very true, it doesn't matter how good your product is, if you don't have the right market then you fail. And I guess I didn't consider that a lot of the things I consider "issues" or "annoyances" relating to Bitcoin, could be considered very differently by someone else. It's kind of like Facebook being the forefront of new social media, despite having numerous issues like privacy concerns and false information: it's still the biggest social media platform. I think Bitcoin's competitors fail in the aspect of "being different" as they all have the same goal: handing monetary transactions.


I am not really up to speed on all the recent improvements to the blockchain, but it looks promising. As someone who is not really into the "technology" behind Bitcoin, I didn't even know a lot of this stuff was possible. I am excited to see what the community can come up with!

I didn't really expect this many responses but it is really making me think! I don't really want these reply posts to be a page long, so I will answer a few more later. My view is a bit more agnostic now, as a lot of you brought to my attention the reason Bitcoin is still so great, even in comparison with newer altcoins.

Many exceptionally amazing coins? I'm a bit more on the conservative/realistic side then-- I only consider Ethereum to be a worthwhile crypto. All other coins are blatant copies of Bitcoin and Ethereum.

Look at TRON and EOS for example, both networks are being flooded with fake transactions to make them seem vibrant and active, while in reality only a small number of people are using them. It really is embarrassing.

I like the growing DEFI app economy on Ethereum and strongly believe that this is something we should pay attention to. It's good to see that ICOs are no longer the main price driver of Ethereum.

I have thought of this too, but the bitcoin network is very secured and have massive support. I think the bitcoin network is much more stronger and more secure than the ethereum network. I understand we have some good other altcoins, but they have limited support. I don't write code though.