Why Bitvice does not offer other cryptocurrencies
This is a contentious topic and has created differing ‘tribes’ in Crypto communities.
When looking at some of the first principles of Bitcoin, decentralization and irrevocability – Bitcoin is far ahead of Ethereum and the other thousands of Altcoins. There are over 100,000 Bitcoin full-nodes distributed globally that are currently validating and securing the network. These are self-sovereign nodes that are hosted directly on hardware.
Ethereum only has around 8,000 full-nodes, however, around 60% of these are hosted in the cloud (AWS etc.) This is where decentralisation plays a key part… What if AWS decided to close their services to Ethereum?
When looking at irrevocability, Bitcoin is completely lost if used or sent incorrectly. Due to its central powers, Ethereum decided to roll-back its blockchain when a massive hack occurred in 2016. If this actually occurred, can Ethereum actually market itself as a ‘decentralised’ Cryptocurrency?
These are all important points that argue for Bitcoin’s use case: to be completely decentralised through +100,000 full-nodes, have no irrevocability, no central point of power or authority and to become the world’s reserve currency.
But what about smart contracts and transaction speed?
Bitcoin’s second-layer has had many recent developments that allow smart contracts to be built into transactions such as time-lock functions etc. These currently are and will continue to be relatively competitive to Ethereum’s value proposition; yet it is on a more robust and secure network.
The Bitcoin second-layer also allows for millions of transactions per second and this will continue to improve over time. Effectively, this makes Ethereum and thousands of other cryptocurrencies redundant.
We believe in the term, ‘Bitcoin, not Blockchain’. When taking into consideration The Network Effect, Game Theory and The Schelling Point there is no need for thousands of Blockchains.
We believe Altcoins are a highly speculative asset class with close to no underlying value. Only a tiny amount of investors make good returns (1%) whilst 99% see returns whither away within days - when the bull market inevitably ends.
Bitcoin, on the other hand, is now an instiutionally-accepted, prudent and proven asset-class that is simply in the right place at the right time - with governments printing money relentlessly. It is the only asset on the planet, where its supply is completely unaffected by its demand. It is the complete antithesis of central bankers' perpetual money printing.