When investing into altcoins, you should not only consider whether the dollar value will go up, but whether it'll go up against Bitcoin. Why? Because Bitcoin is the bedrock of cryptocurrencies, it is the hardest money there is, because of its capped supply and monetary policy and inflation schedule which no one has been able to change, and that's a good thing (despite the Keynesian objections that doesn't allow money to be functional without inflation). Gold naturally emerged as the defacto store of value and hardest money because its supply can't be increased more than 1-2% per year. Bitcoin takes that to the next level with an inflation that's going to be reduced to zero. Thus the gold 2.0 narrative.
The robustness to change in Bitcoin is a feature not a bug – this cannot be emphasized enough.
ETHs ultrasound money
Sometime back in time Ethereum had the EIP (Economic Improvement Proposal) which supposedly shifts its monetary policy to deflationary, meaning its supply will start to decrease with transaction fee burns.
To me its odd that Eth is trying to compete with Bitcoin in the store of value front when the point of it is smart contracts. The problem with the monetary policy is exactly in that: it was changed. There is no guarantee that the monetary policy won't be changed again.
Maybe Eth's monetary policy will remain unchanged until forever, and maybe it even outperforms Bitcoin in price action. However, just because the potential for a new monetary policy change is there, it makes Eth higher risk asset for store of value in my books.
Now, that was a bit long preparation on why you should use alt-BTC pairs instead of alt-USD prices, because you have to wheigh in
Opportunity cost
If you invest in x, that same money can't be invested into y. Bitcoin being the lowest risk crypto, your altcoin should outperform Bitcoin in order for the investment to make sense. Increased risk should bring increased profit. Obviously everyone has their own sense of what is risky and what is not. Lately I've been digging further into Bitcoin and I have arrived to the conclusion that Bitcoin is the safest thing to put your money long term, when you ignore the short term volatility. That's my view anyway. Thus, I have started to shift my portfolio that way, too. Because being a debt slave for the rest of my life is probably my worst nightmare, so I want to preserve my wealth into the future.
I have sold almost all of my alts. Pretty much only things left are Bitcoin, Eth and Hive (some assets associated with it). I have shifted some Hive away into Bitcoin, too, not because I would think Hive doesn't have any potential, but because I was simply too heavy in Hive: at some point my Hive holdings were bigger than my Bitcoin in dollar terms, which I've realized, carries too much risk to my own liking.
Decentralization
This has become quite the buzzword and it has been used wrongly to promote networks that have venture capital behind it. Bitcoin is decentralized because it emerged organically and continues to operate without a central authority. It needs no marketing department, because it fills a need that humanity has in a world of inflationary world where you have to gamble to preserve your wealth: immutable money and a store of value.
The value proposition of Hive
Hive isn't a store of value, because its monetary policy isn't set in stone. It also doesn't have smart contracts, which I think is a good thing – no reason to compete when others are doing it already.
So what does Hive do that others don't, and which remains unchanged?
Store text
Well, that's at least what I can come up off the top of my head right away. Is there a market need to store text permissionlessly? There very well could be. In a world where social media companies start to take even more of an active role in censorship and control on driving their own agendas on their platforms, Hive could be what saves us from that dystopia to allow free speech and free flow of ideas online.
When you have a Hive account there's no one to block you from adding text to the chain where it's immutable.
And Hive has that advantage that it really is decentralized after forking away from Steem and deleting the attack vector that Steemit's ninja mine had. There's no company responsible for Hive. There's no one to sue. Arguably Hive has gone through a similar process that Bitcoin has: emergent decentralization from the bottom up. The top to bottom model of raising capital and building a network I would by suspicious if its called "decentralized". And you know, such ecosystems might even become something, maybe. However, ecosystems that emerge from bottom up, like Bitcoin and Hive, I think are much more robust and have much higher chance to stand the test of time and attacks.
