With the dawn of a new era in Bitcoin (the “China” era?), it may appear that this is the “final chance to get in on BTC” before it rises to some new astronomical value. I strongly disagree with this statement. Here’s why:
1) Very little has changed in Bitcoin from where it was 3 weeks ago.
To my knowledge, the only two things sparking the near doubling of BTC price are Baidu offering BTC as an accepted currency for a small part of their business (DDoS protection), and a BTC story appearing on Chinese television. This changes little from the “utility” standpoint of BTC- I cannot buy or sell goods quicker or more securely with BTC than I could 3 weeks ago.
However, you could argue that as a result of the recent publicity BTC has received, it will spark new innovations and more price support (buyers) for the coin, network, and community. I once again think this is incorrect. Here’s why:
2) Bitcoin’s code might be as good as gets.
The Bitcoin Foundation and all of the developers associated with the project have done an excellent job on making Bitcoin very technically secure and efficient. Even during a blockchain fork in March, the right people stepped up to fix it. Yet, problems still remain, and a number of alt coins are attempting to solve them. among them are:
The speed of block confirmations (Coins take 30 minutes to confirm- imagine waiting on line for 30 minutes? See below for one solution)
The length of the block chain
The centralization of mining hardware
The centralization of BTC owners (big corps, governments, rich people)
The first two problems are in the process of being solved by centralization, that is trusting other people to handle the problem for you. Payment processors and online wallets do a good job of providing conveniences for other people, but you have to trust them to solve problems for you. Other altcoins, like Mincoin and Peercoin, solved the problem with coding faster blocks (MNC) and developing other confirmation techniques (proof-of-stake in PPC).
The centralization of mining hardware and the big “whales” in BTC are alarming to me. The market is beholden to their whims- do they want to sell? Do they want to buy? Ideally, coins should be owned by a plurality of holders. For whatever reasons, BTC is increasingly going to the hands of a few, either through buying or mining.
Read more here: http://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/2013/10/24/will-bitcoin-cost-1000-someday-10000-opinion-voice/
What do you think?
