2018 will certainly be an exciting year for Bitcoin, at least technology-wise; major advances have been made to the Lightning Network, the second layer which aims to scale bitcoin for the masses. The project is expected to be completed sometime next year, which would enable instant and nearly free transactions. Schnorr Signatures are also on the horizon, which would restructure signatures in bitcoin transactions to reduce transaction size and thus, fees.
This doesn’t mean that the Bitcoin community can relax and underestimate other coins, however. Even though Bitcoin is the top cryptocurrency right now, there’s nothing stopping other coins from taking its place. Other cryptocurrencies are proving themselves to be serious competitors to Bitcoin – Bitcoin Cash offers far cheaper transactions, while Ethereum is proving itself to be a very powerful smart contract platform. Ethereum will also be hard-forking sometime in 2018 to switch to a Proof-of-Stake system.
So… Moon or Not?
The only right answer to this question is “maybe”. Nobody knows what will happen – maybe the price will stabilize, maybe we will see another 14x rise, or maybe it could collapse. Even though we cannot predict the future, some so-called “experts” think they do; here’s a list of predictions for 2018.
Tomas Salles, FXStreet Analyst – $8,073 to $89,750
Nick Colas, DataStreet Research Co-Founder – $6,500 to $22,000
Dennis Gartman, The Gartman Letter Editor – Below $5,000
Dr. Julian Hosp, TenX Co-Founder – $5,000 to $60,000
What do you think about these predictions? Do you think they will be accurate given that in 2017 all predictions were blown out of the water? Let us know your thoughts below!
New things will surely come to Bitcoin as well. This year will be the year of bitcoin's flames, which may have disappointments or losses, but that will not dampen the Bitcoin followers. There will be new entrants to Bitcoin in 2018