The worst thing that can happen to people who discover Bitcoin but lack knowledge is to get fooled into investing in shitcoins, thus missing out on their chance at financial freedom and being early to this new paradigm when Bitcoin continues to provide the world real value.
Exactly getting involved with shitcoins is the biggest mistake anyone can make in venturing into the crypto spaces, hence seeing themselves as early investors that will reap the fruit of a shitcoin.
While the real deal keeps appreciating and performing it's expected task and more which is offering financial freedom.
People who get involved with this shitcoins usually see themselves as to be in the position of hitting up a jackpot when this shitcoins raises believing that it was the same way Bitcoin started before it got to such a price and now they too have a chance of become rich with this shitcoins that are not in anyway to be compared to Bitcoin.
Knowledge as said by the wise men is the biggest weapon a man can get because it will provide you with a ground of success, just for have a good knowledge of what your getting involved with you will not fall for traps that glitters as gold.
I feel pity for anyone that has the believe of shitcoins and comparing to a
paradigm itself.
It’s not at all possible for Bitcoins to completely take over the fiat. The reason is very simple. Bitcoins are limited in numbers. Hence majority of the people consider it as a digital asset rather than any currency. Moreover due to the decentralised nature of the coin, it cannot be controlled, hence government will impose the traditional banking methods only. Moreover we are also in very early stage to think something like this. Let’s practically see things and let’s progress slowly.
It may not be possible for Bitcoin to completely take over the fiat for now but might be possible in future, if Bitcoin as a
paradigm could be possibly launched with such revolution that it has brought then it might be possible to be the one of the currencies in future but the fact is Bitcoin originally wasn't created to take over fiat or to be in competition with fiat but rather to provide financial freedom and free people from governmental central control or manipulation.
though some people might just consider Bitcoin a digital asset but Bitcoin is not just a digital asset, it could be a digital asset to anyone who feels it that way because of its limited number but there are lot of features it holds if properly examine that makes it not just a digital asset but a
paradigm shift. bitcoin is uncontrollable by any government and it's doesn't make it certain since it can't be controlled government will have to introduce traditional banking system rather the existing traditional banks will have to adopt Bitcoin and/or cryptocurrencies including shitcoins. in the case where they can't afford to adopt then such banks may die of or run out of business as earlier said by JayJuanGee.
In reference to bitcoin as a paradigm shifting technology, you (Churchillvv) are not wrong about anything that you seem to be saying, but it might be helpful to try to flesh out what you are saying a bit better, but surely you are on the right track.. and maybe talking about paradigm shifting cannot completely capture all of the special things about bitcoin, but it surely puts bitcoin in a category that is quite difficult to proclaim any of the shitcoins are fitting into a similar kind of category.
So for example ethereum and some of the other supposedly high market cap coins like to compare themselves to bitcoin as if they were similar to bitcoin (but different in some interesting ways.. blah blah blah) or they are better in better than bitcoin because of x, y or z reasons, and even though an overwhelming majority of them are distracting scams because they are frequently trying to print money and enrich the founders rather than really serving any meaningful purpose, and perhaps some of them do find some interesting and potentially meaningful purposes, such as Ethereum and some ofthe ethereum imitators abilities to empower people in the somewhat more user-friendly ways of writing, developing and promoting software that is largely just meant to enrich the founders rather than either providing some kind of service or being genuine in their claims of what they are going to do in the future.
These various shitcoins and projects can still out-perform bitcoin for various short periods of time, and could even have very extended periods of outperforming bitcoin and maybe some of what they might be doing would be to attempt to support status quo systems and to undermine bitcoin, while stating that they are doing other supposedly good-for-society types lf things, but they may well be just being used to attack the robustness of bitcoin.
So, a paradigm-shifting technology, such as bitcoin, ended up radically transforming the ways in which we can both communicate information, and to be able to attach monetary value upon such information (whether it is transmitted or just held in storage), and even though several POW coins were attempting to replicate various aspects of bitcoin, they still would need to attract mining power to go over to them, so earlier in bitcoin's growth, it was likely more vulnerable to potential diversions of mining power and resources over to some other POW coin, and at the same time, bitcoin is not completely immuned to such attacks to split the network and to confuse incentives in regards to which is the "real bitcoin," or which of the forks will end up winning the sound money proposition - if there is a kind of assumption that it is difficult to maintain two, unless they might be very close to equal... which did not seem to be the case in the block-size wars of 2017 and even a variety of potentially competing forks that so far all ended up failing pretty spectacularly, even though it took a few years for a couple of the greater competitors of Bcash (BCH) and Bcash SV (BSV) to really show themselves as almost completely worthless, even though they still exist as kind of zombie coins that hope to someday recover like a phoenix from the ashes, and they are currently sold/marketed to the public as potential insurance against BTC's failure and sometimes get funding based on their ongoing claims of being "the real bitcoin." So, sure there can be several ways of potentially dividing ideas and perceptions of what bitcoin is and where its value lies, that may cause some folks to hedge or even to pursue shitcoins that are proof of stake or even forks of BTC (which could also happen again in the future).
In essence the various shitcoins have not shifted any paradigm in any way that is even close to as meaningful that bitcoin has brought to the world, and likely for any kind of new technology to displace any incumbent, it has to be around 10x or more better than any of its competitors, and bitcoin has a lot of use cases that currently show that it is likely more than 10x better than many existing technologies, whether we are referring to how value is transmitted (internationally or even locally), storage of value like gold, fiat money that robs from the people based on it not really being pegged to anything in any strict way, except for some of the whims that politicians or financial folks or status quo rich folks want to either preserve themselves in the system or to prevent great corrections that are healthy for the system, but then if the corruption of continuing to print the money exists, it gets more and more difficult to allow a real and meaningful correction to play out.
There are several other ways that bitcoin provides great empowerment to the system - and even a kind of parrallel system, and even though bitcoin is paradigm-shifting, it is not guaranteed to succeed, so in those kinds of regards it is likely better to stay invested in both systems, and surely if you really feel that you understand bitcoin, you might overly invest into the bitcoin system, but you don't necessarily want to overly invest into bitcoin in such a hard way that you are not able to survive if some things happen in which bitcoin has heavily, intensive and long correction periods and if you have not prepared yourself for a variety of situations, and a lot of the preparations are likely related to both you position size and making sure to have a decent amount of your bitcoin value in private locations that are completely in your control and/or shared custody with people who you trust not to screw you over..
..and you do not have to have all your private coins in one location, because even if you have given information to family members about how to get at your coins, you might choose to make some of those systems unable to breach absent your death and/or incapacitation.. which surely those kinds of protections are frequently easier said than done... but bitcoin systems are still building and evolving and likely any of us who are building our bitcoin stashes, we need to ongoingly spending some time to watch developments and make sure that our systems of private storage are sufficiently robust, and maybe even 10x to 100x more robust than seemingly necessary since sometimes the BTC price might shoot up by a lot all at once, and maybe someone who might have had 21 BTC on his/her phone (or some other hotwallet) in 2015 (which would have had a value of $5,250 - based on a then price per coin of $250),. but then by the end of 2017, those same 21 Bitcoins would have been worth close to $413k - based on a then price per coin of $19,666). And sure, that was a large and fast increase in value that could have had caused some of the HODLers holding their coins in places less secure than they should have had been, and also some of the coins might have also been held with 3rd parties which is not safe to have all your coins in such third party custody, even though you might decide to keep up to 30% or 40% of your coins with 3rd party custody.. and so each person has to decide those 3rd party custody matters, including how many people either got robbed of their coins or their coins were frozen for long periods of time, whether we are referring to MTGOX in 2014, or the various failures of several third parties in 2022 and perhaps continuing... including but not limited to Terra/Luna, Celsius, Voyager, BlockFi, 3AC, FTX, Gemini earn, Genesis, and Grayscale (BGTC).