Sometimes it’s hard to let go.
We’re running old software on new tech.
Trust Issues
Amanda Johnson, a host at DailyDecrypt and a writer for Dash: Detailed, explains that another major flaw in Bitcoin transactions aren’t fast enough. Johnson has pooled almost all of her reasons into a coin called “Dash,” (formerly known as Darkcoin) and with good reason. Dash is going to be a MAJOR competitor to Bitcoin in the future because it solves Bitcoin’s trust problem.
Dash has a function known as “instant send,” where any broadcast can be locked within 1 second or less, and doesn’t require more than 1 confirmation from the receiving end. What this means is that the party at the receiving end of a transaction immediately has trust in the sending party because the quick transaction time eliminates the threat of “double spend,” accidentally buying the same thing twice.
Additionally, Dash’s “Private Send” option allows users to (in a way) launder their money. Because the blockchain harbors an environment where all transactions are traced, it could become awkward to pay for certain things. Medication that you want to keep private, for example, could be revealed to anyone who bothers to look for it on the Blockchain.
So far, the only coin that has surpassed this problem is Dash. Under “Private Send,” users can send any coins with a “questionable” transaction history into a pool, where it is mixed with other Dash coins, making those coins untraceable to the original source. Each coin would still contain a history, but none of the prior transactions would be linked to another person using that coin. After this process is done, users receive the same amount of coins they put in, and are free to spend them on whatever they like.
Bitcoin’s Transaction Limit
This Reddit user explains it perfectly.
Bitcoin has a hard limit in its protocol that does not allow more than 1 MB of transaction data in each block. Since a block is generated on average once every 10 minutes, that means that on average the transaction data limit is 1.67 kilobytes per second, or about three transactions per second.Ethereum does not have a hard limit on the size of its blocks. Miners decide the limit collectively, and can nudge it up gradually by creating-bigger-than-average sized blocks.
Like the author suggests, new kinds of cryptocurrency are set to outpace Bitcoin. The entire cryptocurrency environment has been dominated by Bitcoin in it’s early stages, but has the potential to lose the game in the long term due to new players in the game. These new players are other cryptocurrencies, like Ethereum, Dash, or Steem (I can’t NOT mention Steem), have the infrastructure that can maintain their relevance by adapting to paradigm shifts within the market.
Mixed Messages
Something that many people overlook when analyzing the ability of a cryptocurrency to sustain itself within the marketplace isn’t the functionality of the coin itself, but rather the team of developers working behind it. As more and more problems attributed to Bitcoin are being revealed, more stress is being put on the Bitcoin’s developers to solve them.
The only thing determining whether Bitcoin will sink or swim in the future is whether or not the teams behind Bitcoin can solve these problems in a timely manner. And it doesn’t look like anything will be done anytime soon.
Knowing where these faults lie within the Bitcoin infrastructure, two camps have emerged, presenting different ways to solve them. Many developers suggest that the fix is simply increasing the block cap size. Other developers suggest something known as Segregated Witness, or “SegWit” for short, where transaction times could be sped up by making blocks on the blockchain smaller by removing signature data from each transaction.
So What Now?
Let’s face it. The very 1st generation of technology is NEVER used in the long term, rather as a building block for others to make better tech. Although Bitcoin’s value is increasing at an incredible rate and it scheduled to be valued at $500,000 by 2030, it would be best to invest in whatever coin provides the most practical applications in the real world.
Hopefully sometime soon, we’ll see a massive integration of different kinds of cryptocurrencies into our everyday lives, replacing our credit and debit cards, as well as all intermediaries in the market.
I know there are other major competitors in the market right now. Ethereum is another worth noting, but because it’s focus is purely on smart contracts (which I’ll talk about in the future) Ethereum does not have the instant SEND and CONFIRM features that Dash does.
But that doesn’t mean that other coins won’t adopt the same policies. I really hope they do. By having more coins operating at the same level, the competition to be the best coin will be fierce, forcing a VERY fast paced evolution of cryptocurrencies.
I know it’s hard to let go. Before I learned about all of this, I would ignorantly argue for Bitcoin without a doubt in my mind. But after all of my research, I’ve learned that in this game, there is no opportunity for personal bias or emotional attachments, only the chance to make the SMART move and invest in whatever coin is pushing ahead of the competition.
My goal isn’t to put my money into Dash or Bitcoin, but into whatever coin provides the most functionality and real world application.
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