Why bitcoin maximalism could fail horribly.

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Currently sitting well above $8,400 with some good support at the $8,000 level and having outperformed every other top 300 (three hundred) cryptocurrencies, bitcoin have continued to show its superiority. Bullying every other coin out there and controlling over 65% of the cryptocurrency market capitalization with other coins performing relatively poor and managing a meager 33% of the over 230 billion dollars cryptocurrency capitalization, bitcoin seems to have secured its lion share of the cryptosphere.

It’s a good time to be alive and in the cryptosphere for bitcoin maximalists, the chart looks like more green candles are on the way, price is about the hit its four months all-time high, halving is just a couple of hours away, its moon time for the number one cryptocurrency. On the other hand, other cryptocurrencies have only made little positive price moves with many of them struggling to pull off the massive price drop from the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, and others giving in to some annoying volatility, the Shitcoin tag seems well deserved at this point and investors who believe in bitcoin only have made a boss move.
Bitcoin and others, bitcoin maximalists all over have struggled to replace the term ‘cryptocurrency’ with ‘bitcoin’ and not only reign superior but also write the term ‘shitcoin’ boldly to make other cryptocurrency and blockchain projects look inferior. Fortunately, they are yet to make complete success as regards this. Altcoins still make the news, the waves and the innovations, the shit coin reputation may remain but bitcoin will always remain one out of many other cryptocurrencies.

Blockchain technology and cryptocurrency are both relatively emerging concepts with only a little percentage of the global population having a knowledge of them and an even lesser population being actively involved. Global adoption becomes the most important target for the both concepts. Blockchain as a technology have gained more mainstream adoption, a couple of reputable firms have adopted the blockchain concepts and have utilized many blockchain solution in running their firms, this so far have yields good results for them. Cryptocurrencies on the other hand have made tangible success and is arguably more popular than blockchain itself, many people know about cryptocurrencies (especially the popular ones) but are yet to understand the technology behind them. To these people, cryptocurrencies are just a store of value. This is where Bitcoin wins.

Bitcoin is principally a store of value.

The perception of bitcoin as just a store of value gave birth to the much-heated comparisons between bitcoin and gold. However, the blockchain technology and cryptocurrencies are more useful than this. This where bitcoion maximalists and their fast moving ship may hit a very large rock.

Different altcoins solve global problems and with each new reputable altcoin project comes new solutions and/or an improvement on existing solutions to further drive global adoption. Bitcoin fanatism keeps the maximalists from realizing the fact that global adoption will only remain an illusion for blockchain technology and cryptocurrency especially if these cryptographic tokens are only seen as a store of value. This orientation places cryptocurrencies in the same position as gold. Gold still remains a term of luxury and a store of value despite being almost as old as man itself. With bitcoin maximalism growing and altcoins dying off as a result, this might be the case for cryptocurrencies too.

Despite some altcoin protects displaying some condemnable attitudes such as exit scam, market manipulation and propaganda, inferior/infeasible solutions and price volatility resulting from poor tokenomics, many other altcoin projects have developed advanced solutions fit for global adoption with workable prototypes which are already being used in small scale and being constantly improved for mainstream adoption.

Pascal coin invented the deletable blockchain technology to tackle the issue of scalability and enable continuous storage of data on the blockchain without a corresponding increase in blockchain size. Bitcoin blockchain’s size exceeds two hundred gigabyte (200GB) of stored data. With the ever growing amount of data generated on the blockchain, this might become difficult to handle in the near future. Bitcoin blockchain’s scalability has persisted and is a turn off for adoption. With pascal’s deletable blockchain technology, the blockchain nodes discards block after the height of 100 (the blockchain deletes preceding blocks and retains the latest 100 blocks) but retains the cryptographic security of the blockchain, hence, it only need to store the flow of transactions rather than the history. This comfortably solves scalability issues and paves way for memory-friendly blockchains fit for infinite data storage.

Cardano develops an advanced blockchain to power decentralized applications built for large-scale use. It hopes to develop a blockchain with the ability to power real world applications built for mainstream use and capable enough to handle the friction from being used by a large population. To achieve this, it is developing a flexible and scalable blockchain with support for smart contracts and allow users build solutions on its blockchain. Moving from the Byron to the Shelley era, cardano is advancing both its blockchain technology and its governance to a more decentralized and social friendly procedures.

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If there will be a world of decentralized incentivized video sharing and streaming network, then Theta network is nowhere far from securing a place in the world of video streaming on the internet. Theta network is building a robust infrastructure for decentralized video delivery and streaming services. Powered by the theta fuel, it hopes to incentivize users and tackle both technical and economic issues surrounding video sharing and streaming. It provides high quality video delivery and a decentralized ecosystem for both content creators and the users of the platform. Theta network’s silver TV and other video platforms which have utilized this technology have shown feasibility of this concept.

Using its Directed Acyclic Graph blockchain (DAG) and distributed ledger technology, IOTA is building a sustainable internet of things technology. Having made so much break-throughs and partnering which reputable firms, it has placed itself as a front runner in the internet of things industry, with much yet to come from this project, it boasts global utility.
The innovative solutions make blockchain technology more of a utility and cryptocurrencies utility tokens rather than just a store of value. Despite the pronounced irregularities surrounding altcoins, it is unarguable that they are closer to global utility than bitcoin whose blockchain haven’t advanced to tackle emerging issues. Bitcoin blockchain faces scalability and apart from being a store of value; it is almost the most irrelevant cryptocurrency.

Bitcoin maximalists capitalize on the market superiority and the impressive worth of bitcoins to push their maximalist views. Utility-wise, the numerous altcoins beat bitcoins to it. If we forfeit the goal of global adoption and become comfortable with seeing cryptocurrencies as a store of value, then bitcoin will always continue to reign supreme. However, if global adoption continues to the target, then bitcoin becoming less relevant is just a matter of when, not if.

While bitcoin blockchain’s trailblazing feats are commendable, maximalism of any cryptocurrency project remains an unhealthy practice. At the end of the day, technology wins. Each ‘shitcoin’ which solves a mainstream problem or invents a new way of doing things stands a chance of being the new world technology.

Further reads

Theta network
Pascal coin
IOTA
Cardano

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