BITCOIN is facing serious competition for other cryptocurrencies like Ripple and ethereum but one expert has warned that there can only be one winner.
Bitcoin was the original but that does not mean it will be the Airbnb of cryptocurrency, Peter Van Valkenburg, Coin Center's director of research has warned.
Speaking to CBS News, he said: “As far as differentiating how all these things differ. Well, bitcoin is the original, it was open-source software and a white paper that was released in 2008 and 2009 describing the technology.
“So it’s been around for a while, it’s battle-tested.
“The central ledger of transactions, so the thing that powers the whole network has never been hacked which is remarkable for a highly speculative new technology to have existed for this many years and not been hacked.
“So it’s conservative, which sounds ridiculous when you’re talking about cryptocurrencies, that it’s the conservative one but it is from a technological stand point, it’s very simple.”
But he said that new cryptocurrencies like ethereum have more functionalities which give bitcoin some stiff competition.
Mr Van Valkenburg said: “Now the newer ones like ethereum, they add more functionalities so maybe you can have more rich and interactive contracts.”
“It becomes programmatic and kind of fun we can write software code for how the funds should flow, according to rules.”
But he added that like with the dot com bubble of the 1990s, it is difficult to figure out which cryptocurrencies will flop.
Which one will be the winner, which one will be the Airbnb, or spaceX and not the Pets.com
Peter Van Valkenburg
He said: “The question with cryptocurrency is, there are projects getting funded that are probably garbage, there are projects getting funded where it’s a company that just happened to add the word blockchain to their name and their stock price skyrocketed.
“But there are also projects, peer to peer networks for doing amazing new things with this technology like bitcoin, ethereum and zcash that I think will last.
“But the question is, which one will it be, which one will be the winner, which one will be the Airbnb, or spaceX and not the Pets.com”
source: https://wepment.blogspot.com/2018/01/only-one-cryptocurrency-will-win.html