2017 was the year of Bitcoin and also the year for crypto currencies in general. The huge gains in Bitcoin had a knock on through the entire ecosystem and lifted many Alt Coins into the limelight also.
As we closed out the year there were some big talking points.
- Bitcoin Futures
- 250000+ unconfirmed transactions
- $80 transaction fees
- Big sell off that dropped Bitcoin into the $11000s range
- Falling market dominance.
There has been some recovery.
- Only 150000+ unconfirmed transactions now (Is that good lol)
- Fees are tied to backlog and hence have dropped.
- It has recovered to the $14-15000 range
So what does 2018 hold for Bitcoin?
I do not believe it is all good for Bitcoin but thought I would try and trigger a discussion around where people feel the markets will go.
For me I believe this will be the year of Alt Coins and Bitcoin will suffer a slow drain.
Last years Bitcoin growth was self fulfilling in ways. The growth fueled more people to invest and by late in the year it was hard not to see Bitcoin in the news about the gains.
We have already seen the growth of Ripple, a "contentious" coin in the market as many do not see it as a true decentralized coin. There are also that huge mountain of coins that could be used to flood the market and drop the prices. They are "mostly" locked away in contracts now but I can see them used for quantitative easing if the price spikes too much.
There has also been a re-positioning of coins in the market cap race, even Etherium has been unseated from the number 2 spot.
So what is going on?
I think the addition of Bitcoin Futures has finally given Bitcoin a two sided market and also people have realized that many "big" coins do not have the throughput required to actually function with wide adoption.
From where I am sat the big gainers this year would probably be
- Ripple
- Stellar
- EOS
- Steam
That is unless the current big coins can solve all their scalability issues.
I do not see this for Bitcoin, the 2X fork failure proved there are too many big egos with different views fighting over control and nothing gets done. Then you have the miners... Why would they want the system faster? Slower means more backlog and ever growing fees they collect.
So what do people think?
Woz