RE: They say a picture is worth a thousand words...
Bitcoin is a gateway currency and this is only a speculative value. For example, compare Apple to Bitcoin? What is Apple offering? Real, physical products among everything else. What is Bitcoin offering? Gateway to the market exchanges and some darknet value. It's used only because people don't have better ways to put fiat into crypto. + the fees are already too high.
Steem has more to offer than Bitcoin. First, it is empowering decentralized social media. Second, it has a huge potential of becoming a major player in the social media world and it might ignite some first decentralized broadcasting media. Third, we could see Steem along with EOS, BTS and other, as a future way of payment because of speed and no fees of transactions. And the last, but most important, we could see Steemit becoming a great online community capable of influencing social trends, starting charities, great quality content and much more.
thats great and all, but bitcoin does so much more than just be a payment system for the dark-net(other alts are taking bitcoins place in the dark world) bitcoin is in a class of its own, just one example is if you need to buy other alts for your software well you have to buy bitcoin and exchange it on one of many exchanges available. and when you need to sell your alt coin, you have to convert it back to btc. so you see as the alt coin market goes through its winners and losers, bitcoin will simply eat up all the alt coins that fail eventually. thus adding more to btc market cap. plus its a storage of wealth on top of these things, so even more being added to btc market cap....plus moble casinos use btc now, there will be beter markets than ebay,,,, etc,,,,, it will keep growing to 1 million per bitcoin in our life time.
Bitworld you seem to know your stuff, so i got a question for you (I am not very knowledgeble about the crypto curriencies at the moment) . As you mention you have to use bitcoin to exchange for other currencies, this definetely is an awesome quality of Bitcoin that will always ensure high demand for it. My question is: is there anyway to buy any altcoins directly and not through exchanging Bitcoins? Further, if it is not possible today will it be possible soon you think? i am interested because if this status were to change i am sure that Bitcoins place as number one would change pretty fast.
That is correct, but if you go to coinbase you can use ltc, and eth for exchanging to fiat currency. There is also a exchange called coinexchange.io you can deposite lots of alts here and trade for btc, and many other new alts to be thrown into the crypto economy. But as far as bitcoin goes it will still be the safe investment compared to 95% of other coins for a long time, literally 98% of all things crypto, use btc. And will still have to use btc one way or another. Its also a means for storing your wealth. if you look at the global index, total $$$involved in a safe investment such as gold, well we are talking tens of trillions of dollars. so we are just at the starting point for mainstream adoption, we are past the early investors, now its time for the boom. bitcoin will hit at least 47k per coin when we hit 1 trillion in btc markt cap, and i see bitcoins capturing 5-20 trillion in our life time if not more. so btc will definitely hit 1 million per btc in 10-20 years from today.
With Coinbase you can use USD to buy LTC, BTC, and ETH directly yes. Though if we look around the total crypto space we are seeing more and more global exchanges that are opening up direct buying opportunities for fiat pairs. so one could skip bitcoin and go straight into Dash, or Z-Cash, or Ethereum classic if they choose. This is happening increasingly on the Chinese and Korean exchanges. Bitcoin is still the whale that's true, but it's dominance is being chipped away at in a steady way and will continue to do so until it finally scales and adopts segwit. If that whole thing gets solved in a satisfying way, which I'm sure it will, bitcoin will see it's nice stairstep. We will probably get an other surge into alt's at the same time.
@dandesign86 If you are going to invest in bitcoin right now just be SURE to read up about Segwit2x (google it or search here on steemit) and what the implications are and HOW and WHERE you should store your bitcoin (hint, not on an exchange like coinbase or poloniex. Electrum wallet seems to be a very good safe storage place)
Don't forget about Shapeshift for conversions too. http://shapeshift.io/
@jrcornel
which cave are they from?
only those who has never experienced using it in a physical store would say that
Not exactly; Coinbase now allows sales of ETH and LTC.
You're mostly right though!
cryptocurrencies, stocks, companies and even gold are worth what the people think they are worth. Other than people noone in the university needs these things or cares about their value ;))
Wait what ? are you crazy ?
It offers a personnal bank account and a way to exchange, and it's getting more wide than only the darknet. Take steam for example, you can pay game in BTC.
BTC is always critizise, but actually it's the crypto that is the most develop and scalable. You see ETH getting in trouble of scalability right now.
True that some crypto offer another value more than just "money". But don't forget that they all depend on BTC. I just hope that futur fork will lead to good :/
Well explained :)
by the way i see steemit like the way I see Facebook but better platform, so it will take Facebooks spot.
Yes, the social aspect of Steem through Steemit is what gives it mind-blowing value. Steemit is penetrating homes, social circles, information markets and entertainment markets. It has the potential to be everywhere!