Yeah I'm of the opinion that Ethereum is the top dog, but it will take some time for that to be realized since Bitcoin has the first mover advantage, brand name, is simpler to understand, and is everyone's first exposure to the market.
Ethereum trumps bitcoin in pretty much every metric except for market cap, which is lagging because bitcoin has the name brand, simpler for people to understand, and misinformation spread by bitcoin maxis and competing chains
Bitcoin is the first, the biggest, the sanest, the nopremine, no tricks blockchain. Bitcoin has the biggest amount of brainpower behind it. Bitcoin has the biggest market cap, liquidity, and brand. Bitcoin is the best crypto for government resistance, and the victory over Bcash, and soon over segwit2x, shows the determination of the community to ability to fully utilize it all over the world and behind anonymization network like Tor etc. Bitcoin has its scalability vision ready (Lighting Networks). Bitcoin is the killer-feature of the blockchain, and the only reason blockchain makes any sense.
Ethereum is just a pump for people that think they've missed the boat on Bitcoin. That's why it grew up so quickly, and people are willing to throw so much money at whitepapers with nothing behind them. Ultimately, Bitcoin can do anything that Ethereum can - it's just a matter of time before it will suck the marketcap out of ETH, just like it did with many other cryptos.
I do think Ethereum will overtake Bitcoin eventually in usage. In some ways it already has. Ethereum's transaction fees are set to drop like a rock over the next few years, and so many useful things are built on it already.
To be fair, ethereum is a newer, and more experimental platform- It has many arguable advantages over Bitcoin, but as an etherean I am happy to agree that right now Bitcoin is more established and also may be somewhat more decentralized (given that the ethereum community is giving some deference to the core team at this early stage, in the future this will likely no longer be true)
I do believe one day Ethereum will overtake Bitcoin, but I think we may be a few years away from that (possibly next cycle). Reason being is that everyone's first exposure to crypto is Bitcoin. It's hard enough for them to understand that. After that they have a better foundation to start understanding Ethereum. Once you understand Ethereum and see the network effects it has and that all innovation is happening there it's pretty easy to see how it has more growth potential. The ability to stake is what I think will really steal from Bitcoin's "store of value" narrative though as it offers people interest and will also lock up circulation which will help with price stability.
Ethereum is the most interesting altcoin I agree but it was always designed to be something sufficiently different to bitcoin, unlike most altcoins.
However ethereums adoption is considerably below that of bitcoin, possibly because the use cases are so varied there is not one strong reason for involvement. There may be many minor reasons that small specific groups have an interest in it but that isn't sufficient for widespread adoption.
The most important thing Ethereum is working on is PoS over PoW, and that technology, I expect, will transfer to bitcoin I'd Ethereum implements it successfully first
Bitcoin will likely stay the dominate singular cryptocurrency for a long while, but Etherum has already surpassed it in terms of network effect, and will likely have more value held on it's blockchain than bitcoin in a matter of years.
Bitcoin has shown it is uninterested in being anything but digital gold.
I'm curious how others on HN feel: I think Bitcoin is an evolutionary dead-end and the future is Ethereum. Ethereum is more powerful and allows more development on top of it than Bitcoin. I think Bitcoin still holds sway because it was first, but I think Ethereum has a brighter future. Anyone have a good rebuttal, or am I on the mark?
Kinda side-tracked, but I can agree. although will it be specifically Bitcoin? I think that's where the debate is. IMO Ether is the most prominent at the moment.
But Ethereum is a technically superior option for both cases. It does what Bitcoin can't do, but it also does what Bitcoin does better, and has a roadmap to improvement beyond that. Bitcoin is still wildly slow and destroys the environment, and Ethereum is on track to mostly not do that, to say nothing of "post-Eth" projects like Pulsechain.
Now, I'm sure Bitcoin will enjoy name recognition for some time, but in my experience, always bet on the tech.
At this point Bitcoin looks set in filling the role of the most standard cryptocurrency for some years to come. Now it's more a social experiment than a technological one.
Ethereum has stolen the throne when it comes to advancing blockchains as a technology: Turing complete scripting, promising research into proof-of-stake and exponential scaling, etc...
It is the most well-known one, but Ethereum is the one with the most users and DeFi. What is your critique of Ethereum?
* Just saw your edit with the coins listed. I agree, but I also think it's just a matter of time before a DeFi system gets more attention than Bitcoin.
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