Topic: Why Bitcoin and not any Altcoin? - page 6. (Read 1088 times)

This question is very similar to "Why the S&P500 or index funds and not micro-cap stocks?"

Simply because the huge majority of people are really not capable of picking the right altcoins with the right timing. Most people are simply better off buying the 'safest' asset with the best r/r(BTC, in this case), and just make money elsewhere(instead of trying to get rich off altcoins).

Bitcoin was designed, where there was no such thing as "cryptocurrency". There were only fiat currencies. In 2009, people didn't even know, what "altcoin" means. And because of that, the design assumed, that it is the only coin, made of bits, and there is no competitor, besides fiat, and centralized banking services.

Which means, that if you want to create a successful altcoin, you have to assume, that Bitcoin is already there. And then, you have to compete with it. You have to provide something, which can be done only on your chain, and nowhere else, and what cannot be copy-pasted into Bitcoin, because it would be considered "out of scope for the payment system".

In general, if you want to make an altcoin, then it should not be focused on producing any new coins at all. If you do so, then you repeat something, which is built into Bitcoin, and you have to compete on the same field, which is difficult, and most altcoins die, when they try it (another reason not to do that, is because then you abuse 21 million coins limit, by creating more of them, out of thin air).

A good example is NameCoin: imagine how better it could be, if it could only produce new domain names, without producing any new coins at all, and if all NameCoin transactions would be Bitcoin-denominated, so that you would have 1:1 peg with Bitcoin, and use them for all of your purchases. Also imagine, how good NameCoin could be, if there would be a market of vanity miners, which would mine you some Bitcoin addresses of any type you want, and would receive some domain names (or some Bitcoins, not NameCoins) as a reward.

The only reason why a lot of altcoins switched from double SHA-256 into something else, is because they still don't know, how to implement Merged Mining correctly. In general, what they should do, is to always keep track of the heaviest chain of 80-byte block headers, no matter, if they are valid or not. Then, based on that, they should calculate the global double SHA-256 difficulty. And then, they should allocate any actions, like producing some new coins, in a way, which would be related into that.

For example: if Bitcoin can reward someone with 4 BTC, for difficulty X, and your altcoin has 1/1000000 of the total double SHA-256 power, then your altcoin should reward your miners with an equivalent of 400 satoshis, and not for example 50 ALTs. In the best case, it would be related to your own product, like "a new domain name", and not "just some dummy number, worth 400 sats".

Bitcoin's community is certainly an edge of bitcoin over altcoins. Not all coins can easily build a strong community like bitcoin, and if ever there is, most probably it could be only be less temporary since altcoins have bigger chances to lose its value easily and end up as shitcoins, that's why a lot are hesitant trusting altcoins over bitcoin. Also, having bitcoin's position as the king of crypto, that alone proves that bitcoin has greater advantages than altcoins, something that other investors are still blind with it.

I do not agree with you on this point, the fact that bitcoin has a better market cap, doesn't mean it's better than others. Bitcoin has blocks every 10 minutes while Dogecoin has blocks each minute, which one is better for you? And ETH has better technology with a robust blockchain that includes smart contracts, from the point of view of technology ETH is better than Bitcoin.

Bitcoin keeps having a better Market Cap because it was the original crypto coin, but in the future, that will change.

You have to work for success; it's not guaranteed. Many altcoins lack substance, and adding staking to a proof-of-work consensus can seem nonsensical. To avoid creating a rug-pull sham coin, focus on building a solid project with capable leaders, securing exchange listings, and acquiring at least 100k to kickstart. Strong leadership is crucial for maintaining repositories and providing updates. Launching an Ethereum token, or any token, demands liquidity and faith in its potential. The crypto market cap could hit 100 trillion if not for the prevalence of rug pulls and scams.

What's your project? Thanks for sharing. I appreciate some altcoin initiatives I've mentioned earlier. They hold potential but depend heavily on vision and execution. I personally prefer mining SHA256 over involvement or investment in ERC20 but have no issue using ERC20 to support SHA256 or facilitate cross-chain swaps

Bitcoin is the original decentralized currency which originated every other altcoins you see around. Altcoins are copies of Bitcoin created with the sole purpose of making profit through speculation. Bitcoin was created with an ideal in mind by Satoshi Nakamoto, while altcoins copied Bitcoin with the purpose of generating profit for crypto developers who saw in Bitcoin an opportunity for a living.

Even the top altcoin, which is Ethereum, enjoys the current status it has because it allows another crypto developers to launch their own tokens on its network. It's everything about speculation and quick profit opportunities, while the most important features they offer, Bitcoin already offered before any of them imagined existing.

As I see, Bitcoin is here to stay. On the other hand, altcoins just want to take some advantage of Bitcoin's popularity aiming quick gains for its developers, whales and early investors in general. If you want to think only about gains and forget the ideals Bitcoin brought up, you can be assured it's still the best alternative, because BTC is much more reliable on long run, as we can see its history since the beginning.

Alts are centralized, premined or vested the unfair way, but most importantly risky. Both coins and tokens. Nearly all crypto projects embody huge smart contract security risks which you are not aware of since you are not a smart contract auditor. Regular people get rekt. History proves 99.9% of altcoins die. Just look at a historical chart of coinmarketcap top 10. Do you remember EOS, LUNA, NEO, ... ? They once had tens of billions of dollars in them.

Pro bitcoin? If crypto market moves up, bitcoin benefits from it in any case. If bitcoin moves up, there's way smaller chance that your precious alt will follow.

My most important pro-Bitcoin argument is its security.  Bitcoin had been proven to be the most secured cryptocurrency.  After suffering from a glitch way back in its early years, the Bitcoin network had never been compromised or hacked.


Scalability and transaction fee as you stated is one of the concern about Bitcoin but the Bitcoin developers are working on this one and in due time I believe and hope that this kind of thing won't be an issue anymore.

Transaction fees, i have always argued about this concerning bitcoin network and it transaction fees, many are thinking that this is getting out of hands and being the worst, but not yet, we are still far from the reach on that assumption, bitcoin transaction fee is far lesser than some other altcoins gas fee, also, many take this as an opportunity for the miners to exorbitated the network and its fee charges on the users, whereas in the real economic life, that is the same approach we give on any commodity or items in the market, the higher the demand the higher the cost, if the network get more congested, then expect the fee to be higher, there are times we also have lower transaction fees and many don't seem to observe or notice until it becomes high.

Have you really ponder despite ethereum been proof of work back then, a lot of people still considered it as not decentralized like the way Bitcoin was highly decentralized? That's because everything about bitcoin is trustless, you can verify everything by yourself and you will see that there is no single point of failure, then network works in way that transactions from the signature verifier to node then to miner and then back to node are independently done with any form of comprising but ethereum wanted optimization with too much point of failures and yet it was consuming much energy as a proof of work.

If there is anything I like about Bitcoin compare to altcoins is the fact that Bitcoin is just Bitcoin and over the years it has proven to be unique in all ways compare to altcoins, it get to decide if the market is going to move or not, there is no way Bitcoin will crash altcoins doesn't, it decide the faith of the market and that's why it's most owned by the institutional investors.

Utility, it is useful for a lot of things. BTC is also decentralized and permissionless, it is so hard to find an altcoin with utility, they are mostly trading tools and pump and dump coins.
A strong community is the product of a useful coin, thousands of coins have been created since BTC, if they were able to offer what BTC does and more, then demand for them would have surpassed that of BTC. But none has been able to do this.

I like how bitcoin is less volatile than altcoins.

What kind of advancement? Because many of the altcoins are using PoS or because many of them were ICOs? Or because many of them are centralized? Do not compare those coins to bitcoin. They are not comparable.

To be honest, Bitcoin enjoys first mover advantage. Because we have many altcoins available in the market which are technically more advanced than Bitcoin. But no altcoins was able to move out Bitcoin from the first position.

I believe the biggest strength of Bitcoin is its community. No other coins have such a strong community like Bitcoin. The community is global in nature. If some old coin is able to pull together a community bigger than Bitcoin, will surely over take Bitcoin. But for now, I do not see it happening!

What is your most important pro Bitcoin argument?
We know many Altcoins want to be better compared to Bitcoin but have failed so far
Please share here and also add a short comment why it is your most important Bitcoin argument.

My most important Bitcoin argument is PoW because PoW really ensures Bitcoin is safe and can't be attacked very easily, like it is possible for PoS, for example.