
Originally Posted by
Dan Druff
Tell me what you think of this theory.
I'm wondering if altcoins are dragging down bitcoin, which in turn are dragging down the altcoins.
For a long time, bitcoin was considered cool.
Now many of its earliest proponents are abandoning it for this-or-that altcoin.
As it stands now, bitcoin is not so cool anymore, but altcoins are really cool. Bitcoin is more entering the domain of the public and the noobs.
However, most altcoins are being purchased with bitcoin, so they are unfortunately tied together. (I realize that fiat currency can increasingly be used to purchase more mainstream altcoins, but unless I'm incorrect, I believe that most of these altcoins are still being bought with bitcoin.)
So when bitcoin crashes, altcoins naturally go down, as well, as they are still very naturally tied together.
Yet at the same time, the alts themselves have eroded bitcoin's coolness factor, and thus they are slowly falling out of favor, and declining in value.
So unless one of the alts breaks our and stands well enough on its own, I wonder if this vicious cycle will drag down both bitcoin and altcoins.
Remember that public enthusiasm in bitcoin is what drove the price from $800 in January 2017 to $19k that same year. The reverse of that can put it right back where it was.
Agree with many of these points. However, an even bigger way of how the Alt-coins are hurting BTC imho is that Bitcoin supporters would constantly point out that there was a limit (21 million) in the amount of BTC that could be mined. We have collectively mined around 80% of those. Which, if BTC were the only game in town, would at least continue to help its reputation.
But look this chart which shows BTC's market share vis-a-vis other "fake made out of thin air currencies":
Bitcoin among all cryptocurrencies has decreased to all time lows, reaching 34.97 percent on Tuesday.
So, my friends, that become the Pandora's box for bitcoin. It's "specialness" vs. fiat, in that in cannot just be created out of thin air - while discretely true - is not true at all in the sense that there are SUBSTITUTES for BTC that can be created out of thin air. This is economics 101: If the price of something goes too high, and substitutes exist, the market will bring the price of the original high priced item down.
Even worse then, is that the product here is
Long Numbers only, not real products. There is no real utility to them except for sports bets and getting money out of Venezuela. And if Bitcoin's (or for that matter, the entire universe of Alt-coins') "specialness" in the eyes of "investors" cannot be maintained due to the open source nature the entrie world of alt-coins, that makes it possible for myself, you and Tito Jackson to invent our own coins...well...you can see how this all ends, and it doesn't take a genius.
Love the fact that Druff correctly surmised that BTC aren't that cool or "special" to most people anymore...he's saying that substitutes are now palatable to a huge degree, and that makes all crypto as open-ended as fiat. At least fiat's supply is somewhat controllable.