bitcoin is gold....will always be......probably will have a prohibitive price to be used regularly, prohibitive transactions cost, prohibitive as a pair for altcoins, prohibitive as handling all network transactions in a fast pace.....bitcoin won't develop n scale easy n fast...but that's good....
Litecoin will emerge to fullfill this gap, n will we see others more n more, like bitshares n omni.....but market price n legacy/ sustainable growth I can only see for btc n ltc n maybe another one for microtrasactions with a good global reach.
bitcoin is gold People think that because BTC can function as a commodity.
But there is a problem with that concept.
BTC Utility
1. Crypto trading pairs
2. Crypto to Fiat Conversion
3. Payment system.
Gold has many more utility uses than BTC,
http://geology.com/minerals/gold/uses-of-gold.shtml1. Jewelry
2. Electronics
3. Financial Store of Value
4. Dentistry
5. Medical Uses
6. Gold Awards & Status Symbols
(Olympic Gold Metals) 7. Glassmaking
Gold has unique characteristics that make it better than almost all other metals.
So what happens when it's value fluctuates down, the other utility will use more of it and that will decrease supply and stabilize it value.
Where as if the Price of Gold goes higher , the industries use as little as possible, but they still have to use some as nothing else meets their requirements as well.
Now lets look at BTC Utility as a payment system,
To send $4 it costs me almost ~25 cents, and that is with the current BTC ~$600.
With LTC, I can send $4 and it cost less than 1 penny with LTC current price ~$4 per LTC,
LTC price could increase 20X up to $80 per LTC and it would still be cheaper to send as LTC than BTC.
Meaning BTC will not be able to hold on to a Payment System as a utility.
CoinBase adding LTC has put the Nail in the Coffin for BTC, by adding a LTC to Fiat Gateway.
So BTC will also lose its crypto to fiat gateway conversion utility.
Leaving it only with a Crypto Trading Utility to keep it Solvent.
With it recent spike in price near the halving, many crypto coins were actually completely pushed out of the BTC pairing as they could no longer meet the price of 1 satochi.
Leaving those coins to only have LTC & Doge for their main pairings.
If the BTC price stays over $300, it loses those coins as a support matrix for its prices, and all of those satochi .
And here is the Rub,
Gold is physical and does not need a network of PoW ASICS miners to keep it running.
The underlying flaw in BTC, it's PoW miners have to make a profit to continue mining , but with all of the lost utilities uses their will not be enough transaction volume to keep them solvent.
Just a matter of time, until this becomes reality and not conjecture.