"In the blockchain space, you can't get all of the three at once: decentralization, security and scalability."

To this i have to say that i find all those things about Bitcoin debatable at best. For security youre arguing basically from the point of size and ill argue that there are other ways to provide asset security to a reasonable degree that you wouldnt have to fear losing your $$$ that doesnt require blockchain at all.

Let's keep this in the context of blockchain/crypto. Bitcoin is overwhelmingly the most expensive one to mount a successful 51% attack against. That's because the miners have a humongous hash rate.

Decentralization i find to be overvalued (and debatable) and not nearly enough of a reason to adopt it.. Scalability i wont really argue with bitcoin, lol.

Decentralization is the entire point of crypto.

All of those things are provided better by other cryptos.

Decentralization? Which one?

Security? Which network is harder to take over than Bitcoin?

The question is:

What does Bitcoin do for crypto that no other crypto can?

My answer is: "Absolutely nothing".

The point of cryptocurrency is to be an uncensorable way to transmit value and to have decentralized decision making over monetary policy. Every participant of the network must be replaceable and no single participant must be able to control it. Bitcoin has never been hacked and taking control of the consensus mechanism is astronomically expensive. Which coin can top that?

If the question was:

What has it done in the past?

Then i would say "A lot".
But we dont live in the past.

When it comes to censorship resistance, which coin can compete with Bitcoin?

Bitcoin and gold are the hardest forms of money humanity has ever had.

I dont agree with that statement at all. I dont see Bitcoin or Gold as money. Neither of them fulfill >enough functions of money. Bitcoin less so then gold.

The properties without which money is useless is salability across time and space. Bitcoin and Gold have hard supply caps. Bitcoin is a superior version of gold because it is much more transportable.

Steem's value proposition is enabling freedom of speech. The high and unstable inflation of STEEM makes it impossible for STEEM to become a widely used currency.

Yeah, i dont agree with that either. On free speech, sure, but STEEM has exactly the same base fundamentals as any cryptocurrency. Cross border payments, its basically free to use, no fees, 2 second transfers. All those attributes make it better then any crypto that claims to not be a utility token and wants to compete with Bitcoin.

What about value? Because of SBD, STEEM has a token issuance rate that is both high and unstable. Yes, the transactions are high but it is absolute shit as a store of value even in the short term. Just look at the extraordinary price volatility.

Bitcoins deflationary nature makes it impossible to be any kind of basis on which you can build a world economy.

That claim is demonstrably wrong. In the 19th century, major currencies were in the gold standard, yet global economic growth was rapid.

While Steem might be a utility token and im happy with it remaining as such, the inflationary aspect (although unstable atm) would be a much better basis for being adopted as money over Bitcoin.

The size of the money supply is completely irrelevant as long as the money used can be divided into sufficiently small units.

It would need a drastic shift in perception and use case and while it is highly unlikely to happen, the potential is at least there while i dont see Bitcoin having any kind of potential to achieve that same thing.

Bitcoin has the potential to be adopted as a digital hard asset by central banks if its market cap grows sufficiently to stabilize it first.

"Fiat currencies are propped up by the fact that governments have tools of coercion at their disposal to make using them the path of least resistance and the fact that central banks have hoarded a full third of all existing physical gold."

Government coercion indeed is where the value of fiat comes from. But no one can argue that there is no value in that. You have to create something that provides value beyond that level and i dont see Bitcoin achieving that at all.

Governments can never resist the temptation to debase their currencies for very long. That process is unfolding before our very eyes at the moment. Negative interest rates are at thing in some countries. Open market operations by central banks are inflating the everything bubble as we speak.

Remember, the populace were willing to give up all their rights to dictatorships and communist governance. We havent changed that much in 30 years.

Communism resulted in utter failure.

Again... Gold.... As much as the space seem to love it, i dont see gold, outside its industrial application as something that is inherently more valuable then fiat thats backed by globally entangled government coercion. Its use case trumps anything Gold can provide in terms of being money.

Gold can back up money. In fact, even going back to the gold standard would be better than what we currently have. The fact that central banks have hoarded so much gold (a third of the global supply) is telling of the inherent weakness of fiat money.

Gold is better than fiat because of its hard physical supply cap. Just look at the price history of gold in dollars.

"If Bitcoin grows sufficiently and if fiat currencies continue to be debased at an accelerating rate, central banks may begin to purchase Bitcoin to gain possession of currency with a hard cap."

Youre saying here that if people buy more bitcoin then people will buy more bitcoin.

What I'm saying here that all societies throughout history have used money. Commodity money came first. With metallurgy, gold replaced every other commodity money. Money is needed as a way to store value and to transmit value with ease. Something will always be money. The question is whether a single entity (the government) can be trusted with the creation of money. Based on history, the answer is no.

But you can make the same argument for any crypto out there.

All the other cryptos are weaker forms of money at best like silver was to gold. Weaker forms of money will always lose out to stronger forms of money because stronger forms of money are more readily accepted.

Bitcoin lives on its brand, first mover advantage and im saying that project like steem at the same MC would provide magnitudes more value to the whole ecosystem. Its not even close. Its like a Olympic jumper making the leap of 10 meters and another one leaping to Mars.

STEEM will never be as accepted as Bitcoin and thus will never surpass Bitcoin in terms of market value. First of all, DPoS is a much weaker consensus mechanism. The monetary policy of STEEM has been altered once before and there is ongoing talk about altering it again.

Im not saying Bitcoin wont go to 100k. I never mentioned price once. Im saying that Bitcoin at 100k would still be a pestilence on the crypto space once it moves to 50k after that. Im saying that there are at least a hundred projects out there that could achieve much more right now with higher Market caps. Steem being one of them and the speculation tied into bitcoin will potentially ruin all of them.

Steem needs to create fundamental value. It's all in the number of active users.