The above image is a romantic, idealised representation of pioneers. The brave adventurers who ventured into the 'Wild West' to gradually civilise it - and get very rich doing so. Pioneers are part of the American cultural pantheon, they justify contemporary 'american-ness' and their story, shown in a positive light, remains seldom questioned, but is this picture perhaps misleading? Are the USA today really a pioneering society? Today I would like to tell you about how the organisms that arrive first, while dominating their ecological niches, never remain for ever - and what this means for crypto.
People who are born via C-section, as opposed to those born naturally, have a different skin microbiome, suggesting that the bacteria present on their mothers' skin or in her vagina colonise the baby's skin and determine the character of its microbiome for evermore. Think of it this way: if 20% of a bus gets filled up on the first stop, people who get on later will potentially not get the best seats and even should some of that initial 20% get off at some point, their presence from the onset of the journey will determine what the bus seating looks like between stops: you have a greater impact on the bus as a whole if you get on early. Bacteria, bitcoin and other such organisms are different from people in that they tend not to have the need to move from a convenient place: unlike people, who usually have jobs to go to.
And so we arrive at crypto. Bitcoin, while not the first form of digital currency, is frequently lazily described as the coin that 'started it all'. And there is a lot of truth to that. While BTC had been recently surpassed by ETH in terms of address activity, it remains the most dominant cryptocurrency by market cap, volume etc. But is this to do with how well BTC is designed or perhaps simply to do with the fact that BTC arrived early to the party and ate all the peanuts? What would have happened if Monero had been the first crypto, followed by BTC? For some reason, Monero is considered an 'altcoin', but what if I told you this is a very hazy, if not outright lazy and worthless concept?
If an altcoin is a coin alternative to BTC and BTC is 'the coin that started it all' just by virtue of well... starting it all and not some underlying fundamental difference in architecture or usage, then BTC shall remain the only non-altcoin in perpetuum, should it even lose its dominant position. Or maybe BTC would became an altcoin when ETH overtakes it in price, which has been prophesised by various media outlets and institutions. Both formulations are essentially useless, since the perspectives they bring to the table are essentially meaningless and don't help in appraising currencies' fundamentals. You end up calling things 'altcoins' simply because they were launched after BTC or they are not no. 1 in market cap or other indicators, which only tells you something about popularity and as we have discussed, deciding to buy or sell based on the market's mass psychology is a very crude and inefficient way to invest.
Don't get me wrong. Bitcoin was the pioneer that shaped the reality of modern crypto. It has staying power and I have long-term confidence in it. But do not for one moment assume that BTC is for ever. First came the fur trappers, then came the gold rush, finally, the railways (regulators) caught up and the Wild West, for better or worse is no more. The myth of the pioneers still shapes American imagination and will for ever, since it has made itself comfortable on the collective imagination bus from station one, but pioneers in the US today are few, far apart and have an IRS bounty on their heads. If BTC is to remain dominant it has to fight for it like any other coin, unless it is to remain the only non-altcoin by the power of imagination alone. I am not suggesting that BTC is in any immediate danger, determinism is a poor way to view history, but the misconception of altcoin vs. bitcoin has got to go if we are to invest rationally.
Do not confuse the staying power of BTC in culture with some implicit mythical force that will always place BTC at the top of the charts. While a lot of finance is make-believe, a lot of the human body is water. And yet we are not water - those hard bits make all the difference.
