First a couple disclaimers: I'm not a financial advisor and this is not financial advice. I own bitcoin as my second largest crypto position behind Ethereum. I'm not a crypto expert however I am a software development expert with over 30 years experience and I've been watching the crypto space for a long time.
The good news about bitcoin is it's the OG crypto, the largest, and it started everything. It has incredible branding with a name and logo that everyone knows. It's a good store of value with an expectation of further price upside as supply cuts continue from halvenings. Recently it's getting traction in countries like El Salvador as an official currency. Businesses like MicroStrategy and Tesla have added bitcoin to their balance sheets as a reserve asset. I think it could easily hit 100k by early next year.
I'm not selling any of my bitcoin but I'm not buying more bitcoin either. Despite the above I'm generally neutral on bitcoin and here's why.
The bitcoin community and developers decided early on, at the cost of much angst and chain forks, to not make many changes to bitcoin but to focus on being a store of value rather than being a medium of exchange, a platform, or any of the other paths crypto is now taking. The result of that is other cryptos and the entire crypto space are moving forward in an ever expanding number of directions while bitcoin remains what it was a decade ago. (As an aside, why El Salvador chose bitcoin to be a currency when bitcoin has been public about not being designed to be a medium of exchange is a mystery me).
Crypto is bleeding edge technology and in my opinion it will change the world. However bitcoin decided not to participate in that future beyond being a static "digital gold." As a result other projects with more generalized and forward-looking goals are now bearing the fruit of their work and seeing their technologies expand in multiple directions. Ethereum for example has been a platform for an entire economy of new cryptos, recently created new markets with a boom in DeFi, NFTs, and is going green by changing its mining strategy to the newer and much more energy efficient staking. IMO everything exciting in crypto is now happening in smart contract platforms like Ethereum. The final proof of what has happened is nobody is even trying to be bitcoin anymore, all the new projects are trying to be the next Ethereum.
So for myself, I'm not excited about the future of a digital gold... gold doesn't do anything without a financial system and economy built to use it. Instead I'm excited about the future of the entirely new financial system being built on projects like Ethereum, with its own currency (ETH), stablecoins, and thousands of other cryptos working together in an complex and expanding ecosystem and economy. Bitcoin purposefully decided not to be part of that, so it's difficult to be interested in bitcoin today IMO. As bitcoin is no longer leading the crypto space, I don't see why it would hold the position as the largest crypto for much longer. But we'll have to see how things develop. However based on what projects actually ARE developing and have a culture to bring about a new future, and which have a culture to simply stand still, I don't have much hope for bitcoin as the crypto space marches forward.
A very insightful post, really thanks a lot MystryBox, I knew there is a reason I follow you.
MystryBox
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@liberatedstocktrader, thanks! I've held this view for a number of years but it's becoming less controversial today as the fruits from the efforts of the smart contract cryptos at long last have started to come out. It's quite easy to see the exciting things happening in crypto today and notice they don't have much to do with bitcoin.
If you want the opposing view, the best arguments are perhaps coming from Michael Saylor. Below is a link to a shortened version of a video where he sums up his thesis to Raoul Pal. Basically he argues bitcoin, by being "just property," will avoid the coming regulations that will target and torpedo the more powerful cryptos. However in my view this is just arguing that innovation will be successfully halted by government, and I don't think history shows that out. Innovation will win out in the end, even if backward-looking regulators try to regulate it away or outright ban it. We also haven't seen examples of countries banning smart contract cryptos but letting bitcoin continue unencumbered. The reality seems to be more of an all or nothing situation. So Saylor is trying to draw subtle lines between cryptos that governments haven't been.
youtu.be/RPI_RXHw-5Y
tristan5600
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basically your title should be "your opinion on Bitcoin"
because honestly that's all you have is your opinion here...
MystryBox
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@tristan5600, yes my opinion argued with actual facts to support my opinion.
tristan5600
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The not making changes part is false. look into the upcoming taproot update. also had an update in 2017.
MystryBox
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@tristan5600, yes I'm aware of taproot. I'm also aware it didn't pass several times previously because the community generally isn't interested in change or the things "shitcoins" are doing. It finally passed this time because even the blindest bitcoin maxi can see projects like Ethereum are running away with the crypto space while bitcoin stagnates. So they passed taproot, but it's too little too late IMO.
I was also at the bitcoin conference in Miami this year and I sat in on the couple talks on adding smart contracts to bitcoin. The speakers were basically talking to nearly empty rooms and constantly apologizing for talking about the subject. Basically nobody was interested. Anyone that is interested in such things (like me) already moved on to projects that are in that space.