RE: Bitcoin Dives! Why I Remain Bullish + Tron Rant
The difficulty to realize consensus is the result of being decentralized. I've finished an article now that addresses this and it will result in Bitcoin struggling for the next 2 decades or so likely, but keep in mind that Bitcoin really isn't going to be superior to what exists out there already today. Do you know how many millions of hours Visa, Mastercard, Paypal, Square, and all the banks have put into the existing infrastructure today? Do you know how many more millions of hours they will put in if they feel even REMOTELY threatened? They crush all cryptocurrencies in terms of capital, resources and influence. The ONLY real advantage that cryptocurrencies have is that they are:
- Decentralized
- Censorship Resistant
- Fair (open to everyone to participate)
- Transparent
- Trustless
- In some cases, private
You get the point. For the record, open-source development is generally going to be slower due to disagreements over how to proceed. The vision of Bitcoin is that it isn't any single person's vision. I also discuss in my upcoming article that Proof of Work is undoubtedly a problem, but Proof of Stake isn't perfect either. You can combine the two and there are obviously many other consensus algorithms, but here is one area where I think Bitcoin might be screwed as a change to existing consensus algorithm would destroy over a billion dollars worth of mining equipment so... That would DEFINITELY require a user activated fork. User activated forks is Bitcoin's defense against miner dominance.
There is no guarantee that Bitcoin regains its dominance, but altcoins have so many issues right now that it is very likely. Many of them don't have products, some don't even have prototypes and a lot of them are copies of Bitcoin's code with some modifications. These copies of Bitcoin will face issues as well if they ever hit scale and obviously Bitcoin could make these changes too given it's the same code with different inputs. Will it happen? That's a worthwhile question, but it's too soon yet to be certain. I think we are taking a "wait and see" approach.
"The vision of Bitcoin is that it isn't any single person's vision" - that is the real problem with Bitcoin, which is why we have so many forks. Open-source development can be sometimes faster given there is a strong, and intelligent leadership that encourages innovation and cares about users. Forks do happen in open-source software development, but not that many. Linux is innovative and fast moving, it has been only growing in popularity and there is only a single popular fork - Android.