It's the question on almost everyone's lips, who are in the crypto space in some form or other. We saw BTC drop a little in price last night (well, nearly $2000 to be precise) and, as surely as night follows day, the rest came tumbling down soon after. Oh yes, it can get very frustrating to watch if your main portfolio is top heavy in the alts. STEEM always seems to get hit particularly bad and this latest move was no exception. However these price movements have led many to conclude that Bitcoin may eventually be the last token standing whilst laying waste to everything else. Could there really be any truth to this?
Well, first off, nobody knows for sure the answer to that question. The crypto space is just too new to make any sweeping predictions such as this. It all boils down to common sense and logical judgment based on the limited amount of information we have to go by. Now, it's no secret that Bitcoin is undoubtedly the face of crypto for the time being. Hell, BTC itself has enough naysayers of it's own claiming that it is an experimental technology that simply can never be sustained over time. I beg to differ, but again, this is just my opinion. So when the likes of us, in the market place, discover some great new coin and decide to aggressively marry our emotions to it, the sheer scope of what we're actually dealing with can easily get lost in translation.
We are a blip on the radar, given the bigger economic picture. Hell, even single companies have more capital invested than out entire marketcap put together! So at present, price can be pushed and pulled any which way it feels like with relative ease. This behavior can be expected to last until the "speculative" nature of crypto currency slowly dissipates. Most people buy into Bitcoin based on pure speculation alone, that the price will rise over time. That's the perfect "attraction magnet" for an investors mindset. And I'll bet many of those same individuals wouldn't even know to do with them. They will simply be sitting a wallet somewhere until further notice. It's the "word around town" that garners more interest that anything else, at this extremely early stage. The actual technology, blockchains, real world use-cases. Stuff like this just doesn't matter at this stage. So given the very superficial reasoning behind investing in crypto currency at the moment, throwing money at the one coin that has by far the biggest marketcap of them all as well as highest popularity, would seems a no-brainer move. But nothing lasts forever.
Every altcoin project that exists today, might as well as irrelevant, if you're looking at it from a purely financial standpoint. Bitcoin will be the first out the gate, no questions asked. But at some point in the future, speculation will take a backseat to functionality. People are inherently fickle and get bored easily. When the excitement of a new and exciting technology wears off, euphoria wears off and sanity sets in. Those projects that are positioning themselves today for that eventually shift, will be the winners of tomorrow. Comparing an altcoin's status in relation to any other digital token is akin to banging your head against a brick wall. There is no simply point. Because nobody cares. "When" care kicks in, those alts that have a solid product to showcase, will join the ranks of Bitcoin. Maybe not in terms of value, but "applicability" in an ever-evolving digital world. It just makes sense. Yes, many will fade out, I'm sure of that, but a handful will survive and flourish, just like exactly what happened at the end of the "dot.com" era.
So my closing point is that development for the alts, at the juncture, takes precedence over anything else. This is the time for dedicated groundwork in regards to a future where competition will be a very real and harsh facet of the crypto market. Only the cream-of-the-crop will make it. The overwhelming majority will not. This even goes for tokens which share the same use-cases. The best of those groupings will stand tall, the rest simply wither away and die out. So I say no, Bitcoin will not be the only digital token out there when all is said and done. However, there won't be much left over either. The impending "altcoin exodus" of the future, is both exhilarating and frightening to contemplate. Therefore I'm watching the markets and placing my chips down very, VERY carefully indeed...
@ezzy)