the advantage of bitcoin has never been the "first mover" thing at all. in fact bitcoin is not even the first of its kind! the advantage has always been that bitcoin is working as it should because it is designed with those purposes (decentralization, being a currency, being permissionless,...) in mind.
meanwhile the competition which you think is competition has mostly been created with money making purposes in mind which is why there has never been any serious competition apart from pumpers that come close and then fall down to oblivion.
Very fair points, and it's definitely what I've/we've seen over the last year alone in massive amounts- companies with clear monetary interests over all else. Bitcoin has held its dominance since inception. I suppose it's easy to market something as,
The Next Bitcoin! Thanks for sharing.
For bitcoin to become "antiquated", another cryptocurrency needs to come up with better fundamentals. The fundamentals of Bitcoin are:
1. A solid, constantly evolving codebase and team.
2. Proof of Work.
It can be argued that over time, Proof of Work has created mining centralization. The biggest mining equipment manufacturers, miners as well as cheap providers of Hydroelectricity are in China. Even then, the economic incentive for honest mining is too high for miners to go against their self-interest. In a way, any system can be gamed. What is clear from evidence is that PoW is the one which is hardest/ costliest to game, especially when established with a network effect of Bitcoin's scale. Can someone come up with a better consensus mechanism? Or is there a better one? Hard to say for future but looking at how Nano and IOTA have devolved, it can be said safely that PoW is not getting trumped anytime soon.
The other most important thing is the entities behind the codebase. It is often argued that the reference implementation is too guarded and rights are concentrated within an elite circle. But then, every other alternate cryptocurrency will have a team behind it. Can those teams be trusted more than the group behind Bitcoin who have established their reputation through timely interventions and commitments over the past 10 years? In my opinion, any other cryptocurrency will find it hard, nearly impossible to create such a trusted team and open-source codebase. (Something with which individuals and institutions can trust their fiat billions).
As long as these factors remain, there is hardly any chance for another cryptocurrency to take away the crown of being the most dependent and usable digital currency. In terms of alternate blockchain uses, well that is a completely different market. Those areas are still open waiting for their own crown-bearers.
This is an excellent answer, and explains in convincing detail how the "antiquated" idea in terms of Bitcoin becoming "obsolete" is extremely minimal in probability, with all of the fundamentals it has created and has built upon. I suppose it's extremely unnecessary for any particular person/company to even attempt to compete with Bitcoin, unless it's for monetary incentives. If not, well, why not just contribute to Bitcoin?
I don't think it will be easy for bitcoin to lose its advantage over any other cryptocurrency. For you to overtake bitcoin in terms of dominance, you need not only improve on technicalities and specifications but also convince people that your coin is far superior and better than bitcoin in all aspects. It's a hard task, considering that this involves a great deal of conditioning the minds of the masses, and we all know that not everyone can easily be swayed by random blabbering by devs and their peers. It is possible to defeat bitcoin in terms of dominance, though in what manner is probably a question that none of us can answer in the mean time.
It seems as though that the ONLY plausible reason for separate companies or person(s) to try and
convince the masses that a separate technology/cryptocurrency is better is for their own economic/wealth benefit- and will require a mass amount of marketing. Which is another reason why Bitcoin could remain dominant, as there's not a CEO to hype it up- it's all been an effort of communities much like this, with its own true (and continuing) network effect.
