The first time I ever heard about Bitcoin was from my dad in 2011 when the price sky-rocketed over $30 US per Bitcoin. He said "maybe you should put $1000 dollars on this", Of course I never did. I never even researched it.
At the end of 2013/early 2014 the price rose exponentially over $1000 US. At the same time Litecoin (LTC) had also risen to crazy new heights at around $35 US. Of course being new to the space and completely naive of market cycles & the entire Bitcoin & crypto-currency space, I bought the top. I bought Litecoin because I was told it was going to outperform Bitcoin, as it was faster and lighter. Like everyone else new to this space, I just did not get it. The next 2 years Litecoin fell over 95% from the All Time High - I ended up selling it for an extremely low market cap alt-coin (shit coin) which in turn resulted in the loss of my entire investment. During this 2 year period I continued to trade and hold these shit coins, resulting in loses in the 10's of thousands. I felt down and very depressed. I wanted to make lots of money over night and become rich - who doesn't.
At the beginning of 2016 I had a sudden realization - Bitcoin was still thriving as number one. I asked myself "why had nothing managed to take it's place"? - I researched every article I could about Bitcoin. I spent an entire day glued to my computer screen. I had been playing around in the space for a few years now and I had completely missed the point - The entire reason for Bitcoin's creation. These articles led me down a deep dark rabbit hole, making me question everything I knew about money. To be quiet honest it made me a little sick. From that day forward I became completed jaded of our entire fiat system and completely obsessed with Bitcoin's beauty and ingenuity.
Why had governments & central banks designed a monetary policy which is able to subtly thieve value on so many levels? Why is the average person left to pick up the bill over and over again (tax-inflation-tax-tax)? Because it is broken and on an inevitable path of collapse. It was always designed to favor the rich and penalize the poor. Power breeds corruption, simple. Whether your government has the best intentions now or not, they're operating on a currency which is unsustainable. The cracks are beginning to show, however nobody seems to be too concerned - But more of this doom and gloom later.
As well as seeing the reason for Bitcoin's creation, I had now realized Alt-coins/shit coins were mostly created as a scam to profit your Bitcoin. Although I don't think they're completely pointless, I firmly believe you are basically gambling your hard earn Bitcoins, leaving it up to chance that the development team won't abandon the project or that the coin is not part of a hidden elaborate scam. By all means buy alt coins to make more Bitcoin, at your own risk. Just please consider a more ethical approach and the reason we're all here.
As well as most alt-coin projects being scams, they are also vastly fundamentally challenged compared to Bitcoin. For e.g Bitcoin's hash-rate (Network security) is 100's of times greater than its closest rival Ethereum (see https://bitinfocharts.com/comparison/hashrate-btc-eth.html ). On an ethical level, I strongly believe it will be near impossible to compete with Bitcoin's monetary policy - True hard money. Bitcoin's price started from zero and anyone at the time could mine it. Ethereum had a huge pre-mine and a bunch of tokens sold for at ICO (Initial Coin Offering) for a price of $0.30. Ripple XRP tokens were basically created out of this air - no production cost behind it i.e mining (I think there was a community airdrop, still completely illegitimate). Other coins are far worse the further you go down the list.
To summarize, these are my thoughts on why Bitcoin is still number one;
The smart money who properly do their research, will continue to buy Bitcoin as they can clearly see there's no real competition. While a lot of VC's back Ethereum and Smart Contracts, Bitcoin is still in it's own niche market as being the hardest money on earth, and for now this will have the greatest use-case. It's consistent growth of metrics & fundamentals (pseudonymous creator, hash-rate, largest development community, infrastructure, adoption, utility, true scarcity, most decentralized, most censorship resistant & largest network effect - the list seriously goes on and on) continue to attract new investors. As long as the internet continues to churn, there's not a single reason in my mind why this momentum would come to a halt.
The limited supply of 21 million coins is much more scarce than what advertised on paper. The real supply of Bitcoin's availability on the open market is estimated to be around 5 million coins (due to hodlers & loss of private keys over the years). You only have to look at old articles of guys looking through dumps to find their old hard drive. Ethereum does not have a capped supply.
Since 2016 my confidence in Bitcoin has only grown, I continue to see it new at angles and in new positive lights to this day. I now firmly believe our future will be a better place eventually, purely due to Bitcoin's existence.
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