Don't Underestimate Bitcoin

I been hearing a lot of talk that Bitcoin will fail. I started seeing concern when Mike Hearn ( google developer that became a Bitcoin developer) announced he was done with Bitcoin and it would fail. He brought up good points on how its in a log jam with transactions that will ruin the transaction process. He also talked about how the miners had to much power over the Bitcoin ecosystem. We can look at any crypto currency today and to be honest they all have their strengths and weaknesses. The one thing Mike Hearn underestimates is that Bitcoin has a strong ecosystem.

If we look at Bitcoin today it has a 18 billion dollar market cap. The next one closest to Bitcoin is Ethereum at 4 billion. It has a huge lead over any other Crypto Currency. If we look on any Dark Market which was part of the point to making Bitcoin to get goods and services that we can't obtain with a paper currency, all of the merchants accept Bitcoin. A few accept Monero, but Bitcoin is the main stream coin that is used. If we ask a person to name a Crypto Currency, they will say Bitcoin. If ask about other Crypto Currencies they will probably be scratching their head not knowing what it is. So Bitcoin has the main stream exposure that these other Crypto Currencies don't have.

When something has main stream exposure that is the root to something being successful. What it does is bring more people not just into investing or using it to purchase products, but also talented computer programmers who want to be part of its community. With how technology is constantly improving at a rapid pace day by day, people will try to find ways to make it better. Right now Bitcoin could be forking to actually make it better. People are worried it will split into 2 coins. But the fork is made to make the system run smoother and faster so transaction times aren't so slow. This is actually a good thing and over the long run make Bitcoin better when it comes to the speed of things being done.

So I will explain each fork briefly. Segwit which will be a soft fork ( it is implemented without changing the existing software). This fork is represented by Bitcoin Core community. What they want to do is make the transactions smaller so it increases the speed in transactions. That means they wont change the block size( a group of transactions are put in a block but it takes time to make a block) of transactions which is 1 mb but just implement changes within the Bitcoin ecosystem that people already are comfortable with using

The next fork is Bitcoin Unlimited. This is a hard fork ( changing existing software). This is the vision of Roger Ver who is a person heavily invested into Bitcoin. He wants to increase the block size to 2mb so transactions can be done a lot faster and over time increase them to whatever is needed to make transactions run quickly. The problem with a hard fork is people will have to change the set up they have now. So everyone using Bitcoin will have to update their software. That wont rub everyone the right way. So this could cause a split in the community. We saw it with Ethereum and it did split the community some, but it seemed to work out great for both communities as both communities continue to grow in size. So we are seeing Bitcoins community trying to find solutions to its problems.

What people are not talking much about is RootStock. They are building smart contracts on top of the Bitcoin blockchain. This will be competition with Ethereum. Since Bitcoin has a bigger Ecosystem of course businesses will want to be apart of Bitcoins community. These smart contracts will be implemented as a sidechain( a seperate blockchain attached to the parent). Assets are sent to a special output address where they are locked from spending and then once a transaction is complete it is unlocked for spending on whichever chain its on. So Bitcoin will also have smart contracts in the future.

The key ingredient is Bitcoin is a main stream product. Anytime something has become very popular people will find ways to make it better if other competitors try to compete against it. They can either implement different kind of forks, side chains and who knows what other forms of new technology people will use to make Bitcoin even better. So don't underestimate Bitcoin. I believe it is just getting started on figuring out the best implementation to make it even better.

Pictures:
Bitcoin on fire- www.pymnts.com
Bitcoin price- Azop Stability
Bitcoin fork- Wall Street Technologist
Segwit- MoneyStroy
Bitcoin Unlimited- www.bitcoinunlimited.info
Rookstock- Bitcoin News
Bitcoin mainstream- Bitcoin Talk Radio