Why we need Papa Bitcoin
Full disclosure I am an alt holder and I would love nothing more than to see "the flippening", but if we killed off bitcoin (that's saying it was even possible) the amount of market cap leaving the market would not trickle down into alts. It would turn into fiat and go back to the investors. Trickle down crypto-nomics simply doesn't work.
I can't find a list anywhere, but I wonder how many remaining ICO's are still in alpha? How many ICO's are still in closed beta? I think I read that somewhere around 90% of ICO's have already failed IN THE FIRST YEAR.
Bitcoin is the umbrella that allow these projects to exist. I know this is taboo to speak of, but a very small percent of whales is investing into crypto because they like the tech. I personally am a faith investor and refuse to spend a dime in a project that I don't think will bring global progress.
Even if all exchanges accepted fiat instead of bitcoin it would not change a thing. How many people invested into crypto are part time investors? The whole beauty of passive investing is you don’t need to know everything about what you’re investing in. So, speaking of passive investing this brings me to my last point.
I’m very happy that Coinbase decided to pursue an index fund, but the market isn’t diverse yet. You haven’t actually hedged yourself because ALL ALTCOINS ARE PRICED BY BITCOIN. If bitcoin goes down 10% then so will all the other investments in the portfolio. Example of how most index funds are mixed using arbitrary weights: 10% energy, 10% healthcare, 10% industry, etc. If healthcare takes a nose dive we can expect the energy sector to still bring stability. Litecoin & Ethereum are not substitute goods of bitcoin.
As more projects move towards adoption then will slowly move away from Papa Bitcoin. I have been a business owner for over 3 years, and I have personal knowledge of just how slow business owners move towards adoption though. Implementing crypto technology may save them money long term, but business owners are stubborn. If it means a big upfront cost to implement the crypto tech they simply will not upgrade until their systems crash. They are only worried about profit, and having a massive project underway to invest in future is not short term profitable. I read somewhere that OmiseGo is just the starting project for Ethereum scaling. Next will be Proof of Stake and then Geth-Sharding finally which isn’t expected until late 2019. That’s almost 2 years away!