Bitcoin dominance is a metric of crypto failure, not success
Bitcoin dominance – the proportion of total crypto market cap occupied by bitcoin – has hit 50% again.
It’s the first time bitcoin dominance has been above 50% in 2018. The last time it was above 50% was December 2017. However, back at the beginning of 2017, BTC dominance was around 85%. It had rarely dipped below 80% in the whole history of crypto.
Bitcoin maximalists love to talk about BTC dominance. The thinking goes that bitcoin is best, and every use case for alts can and should move to bitcoin in one way or another. Thus ‘dominance’ is the best metric for the success of bitcoin: for bitcoin to succeed, everything else must fail.
This is a ridiculous viewpoint, for more than one reason.
- It’s classic zero-sum thinking. Crypto isn’t competing against crypto, it’s competing against fiat.
- Bitcoin can still be incredibly useful and important – and 100 times its current market cap – and still have less than 50% overall market share, or even 10%.
- As the number of altcoins increases, and the number of crypto tokens used by businesses for many and various purposes, the market cap of non-bitcoin crypto will inevitably increase. A million tiny but genuinely useful projects with $1 million valuation is a trillion dollars. None of these threaten bitcoin. Collectively, they don’t indicate bitcoin is less valuable either.
- These ‘alts’ include tokens like Tether, TrueUSD and other fiat-backed cryptos that add to market cap but don’t compete with bitcoin. As the ecosystem grows, so will the proportion of market cap occupied by stablecoins. That actually reflects demand for bitcoin, while reducing dominance.
- Blockchain applications and tokens do a lot of different things. A LOT. They’re not all money, or a store of value – digital gold – like bitcoin. They don’t compete for bitcoin’s #1 use case.
In the future, the best case scenario would be for bitcoin to be the largest crypto – by some significant multiple, whether that’s 10x or 100x – but to occupy far less than 50% of overall market cap.
TL;DR Dominance is a terrible metric of success. Ratio of #1:#2 crypto is a better one.
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I think about 95% of any cryptos value stem from having a chance at becoming the next global unit of account.
Hint; there can only be one.
@transisto your bot just starting flagging me for self-upvoting, i have my bot self upvote only when i'm at 99.99% so it's not wasted.
This is my last week report self upvote report, only 17.2%
I gave more than $80 of my monies running community server that can't pay back...been doing this for 80% of my time here in Steemit.
17.2% is merely $2.04 a month. And I give >$80, >82% all my upvots, >90% of my Steem Power Delegation. I lose money every month supporting Steemians.
I do not post - I do not earn consistently from the reward pool
I do not take, i only give, please stop your bot from flagging good Steemians
@lukestokes, @lukestokes.mhth, @almost-digital, @newsflash, @promobot, @transisto, @dana-varahi
This is the flag of my $0.04 cents....and I delegate >90% of my SP away to other Steemians, Projects, and Communities. If I wanted to abuse self upvote I would keep it all for myself, and selfupvote my post (which I don't make) and all my commments (which i don't).
Please start a whitelist and review your code.
I can't speak for @transisto but I would flag you and your self-upvotes if I didn't feel your content added value. I don't care if it is one vote per year. If it isn't deserved on the basis of the content adding value or evidencing of added value then the vote is undeserved. There is not such thing as 'wasted' vote power, because the vote power does not (and associated rewards do not) 'belong' to you, it is (they are) a community resource.
The sort of entitlement that you demonstrate in this comment (and also by putting it here in an offtopic thread just to bitch) makes me more likely to downvote you not less. But I won't do it unless I happen to see undeserved rewards (and I don't spend much time looking right now).
Whether a self-upvote is added value or not is or can be, theoretically at least, too subjective as opposed to being objective enough as value can be determined by subjective opinions based on non-shared principles, values, ideas. I say it is or can be more subjective and more 50 shades of grey, of gray, much more than we may know.
Everything about Steem content is subjective. None of the voting on Steem is objective in any real way. Even automated bot votes are done because the bot owner/developer subjectively believes that is a 'good' way to vote. This is all both by design and unavoidable. People downvoting in a manner that they, subjectively, feel is best is how things are supposed to work.
I'm actually not, personally, someone who is terribly hung up about self-voting. But when others do feel that way, that is their valid opinion, and it is perfectly okay that they act on it.
Be clear on this though: There is nothing objective going on here, ever. All upvotes and downvotes are subjective.
what he said
Agreed. I don't really care if people upvote themselves.
Hi. I'm in the process of reviewing the code, we're actually in the middle of an upgrade so this situation will change. You might be one of the few false positives but I'll need to confirm that.
In any case there will be no whitelist, however if there's a bug it will be fixed.
Note also while transisto is kind of "director" and I am the technical person(z), it is a community funded project.
thanks for reaching out and responding @personz
send me the discord link to your community
what can we do to help improve this, and have consideration or discussion started to open source (or at least be open for it to be reviewed by community devs so they can point out weaknesses, better filters, etc) so you can get input?
@idikuci, @holger90, @harpagon
you are free to tell me to fcuk off, i'm honestly not interested in a flag project, but i'm interested in preventing accidental abuse and leaving early steemians, investors, and newbiew with the mindset that it's the people of the blockchain against them
Interesting proposal, I'll think about it. Since you're not interested I guess your involvement ends here though.
The community is very loose knit, we don't sit around all day discussing it. People who delegate are people who agree with the project strongly and who can see by evidence what it does.
Maybe it could be opened up to general criticism. Again I'll think about it.
I don't care who dominates as long as I can make some money. Teh market has been bleading for over half a year now. Someone please stick their finger in the gunshot wound already.
But it can matter.
Absolutely! We don't care about prices too much at upwingo.com because you can easily make +30-330% every 10 seconds. You have to know direction of price, not the exact price value - it is enought to make a good money.
I don't think this bear market will be over within at least half a year. There is a high chance we first hit 5k bitcoin before going finally up.
Bitcoin is dominant because it was first. Its more valuable then others because its more valuable.
Does nothing techwise other cryptos dont do far better.
Short term its a safer bet since its far more stable then any other cryptocurrency.
I think its just a matter of time. The bigger the market gets the less influence bitcoin will have.
Bitcoin to other crypto is like a hemp and rock hammer vs a bosch pneumatic drill.
Small markets mean a lot of speculators and speculators dont seem to care even in the slightest about the tech.
And i honestly find the rhetoric:"its digital gold".
Pathetic.
Its basically bitcoin backers saying:"You cant use it for much, it has severely limited potential, but please buy it and hold it in your account, it will raise in price".
Bitcoin did its part but now it should be set aside like the steam engine. It has its place in history.
I really think if bitcoin does not fail eventually crypto doesnt have a long term future.
Maybe they figure out how to compete in tech with other crypto, and my comment is meaningles, but i highly doubt that.
That dilutes the market severely. Nothing wrong with smaller altcoins but small market is just a bad metric that can be manipulated. I would say the top 100-200 cryptos would better represent the market.
It might be old but that doesn't mean it not scaling. That a pretty ignorant statement. Maybe Bitcoin scaling is not as good as the newer ones or maybe it better. But it trying to scale too. It scaling methods if works can reach millions to billions of tps.
They not saying that forsay-the scaling method partially plays the role in that.
The base layer is SOV and other layers are method of transportation,
The steam engine is still used today just in different forms. It history but also not history. Steam engine evolved and stayed with us and bitcoin can do the same.
Solving the dinosaur problem in the banking world is why I thought Bitcoin is relevant... Eventually something has to give.
Bitcoin does not have to fail for other cryptos to rise above it.
Dig the Woody Cry GIF.
And thanks for the info.
It's actually a good bad indicator for crypto's purging of shitcoins. Personally I'm only involved with STEEM so it's the only eco-system I follow.
i totally agree with you here, and lets hope we see BTC keep on climbing because alt coins usually follow in the climb!
As for now the Bitcoin is the only alternative for most people entering the Cryptoworld. All experienced crypto investors recommed to stick to the Bitcoin before making some good research.
I agree, there are so many projects and platform out there that could really make a difference and help change the world around us and they don't compete with each other. It makes sense that ICON can do well and Bitcoin can do well, they are completely different with the same underlying tech. The tech behind everything is the important part.
Agreed, so many things.
People are just tired of ICO's and shit coins... bitcoin still feels like a safer bet in a storm of fake news and scams...that's why it's still dominating