Which is why I expect the most important factor to be transaction throughput, since people want cheap and fast transactions.
All the other major alt-coins are soaring past bitcoin in terms of cheap & fast transactions. Dash for example has the fancy interface and is close to instant transaction speed and Ethereum is super quick and cheap. These alt-coins are not weaker in security either.
It's easy to be cheap when transaction traffic is negligible. BCH has super cheap transactions for example. But that's not because their blocks are bigger, it's simply because barely anyone is using it when compared to BTC.
Take roads for example. Say you have multiple 4 lane highways, that for some reason go along the same route. But one is being used by pretty much everyone, because it was the first around. So naturally, traffic jams occur. Does this make the other 4 lane highways less susceptible to traffic congestions once everyone decides to use them instead?
A simplified argument of course, but I think you get my point.
All current alts that I'm aware of make either use of a centralized entity or rely on linear scaling. Linear scaling will not get us close to credit card levels of transaction throughput. The first successful approach at non-linear scaling that doesn't rely on a centralized entity, will take the cake in my book. Right now that appears to be Lightning Network.
The argument goes both ways:
AMD came before Intel.
Ebay came before Amazon.
Microsoft came before Apple. Wait. Nevermind. You get the point.
Well the argument doesn't go both ways, because my argument is that the king can be dethroned and I have put before you similar cases where the king (or pioneer of a new technology) has been dethroned.
For you to dispel my argument, you would have to prove that no market pioneer has been dethroned.
Sorry, I was under the impression you meant to say that
every market pioneer has been dethroned. That's what I meant to debunk. I didn't intend to argue that
no market pioneer has been dethroned, which is not true of course.
And for the record Intel actually came before AMD and Amazon actually came before Ebay.
Exactly
Market pioneers that still are at the top of their game.
Also, Apple are a bigger company than Microsoft, but Microsoft is still the dominant operating software.
Exactly! Market cap means nothing. Or market dominance means nothing, depending on how you see it.
All of these companies that you mention in your desperate attempt to win an argument have veered off into different markets and technologies, whereas I gave you examples of very when a creation was overtaken by a direct competitor. Like Facebook v Myspace and Yahoo v Google.
It's all irrelevant anyway because my point is that don't be fooled to think because BTC was the creator it will stand the test of time against competitors.
MySpace focused on music, before and after becoming a social network, so you could still argue about different markets.
Yahoo focused on... fuck if I knew, everything except search I suppose, which is why they lost to the focus and simplicity of Google. Yahoo veered off into different markets and drove the truck off the road long before Google became relevant.
Just nitpicking
Either way, as mentioned above, I misunderstood the argument you were trying to make. Can't disagree with you, now that I get it.
That's what worries me. Most people don't care about decentralization and trustlessness. Dismiss both principles and you can scale to your heart's content.
Not sure if a tokenized version of PayPal makes for a compelling value proposition to the average consumer though.
To some extend decentralization is just an ideal. But it's why I'm invested in crypto in the first place, otherwise I would have just continued lamenting PayPal.
I am in your corner here. Eventually I also hope to move towards a completely decentralised internet.
Technologically the internet
is decentralized, but that's all for nothing given that the governing bodies are not. Important to keep in mind when faced with cryptocurrencies. I still hope that the latter are part of the equation that will help us take back the internet though.