Thing is i do notice fear among users here about any coin that may 'unseat' bitcoin. Yet the endless scaling debate went on for so long, while us users of the currency, the 99% not using forums mostly found transactions getting slower and slower, fees going up and up, all the while the endless debate and deadlock, hence BCH was born.
There have been years in which to solve this problem, or implement some breathing space. SegWit was one example of breathing space that we finally got, but 1MB block sizes simply will not do it, the transaction volume it can process is too small. Unless you wished to keep bitcoin as a 'store' of value, in which case an altcoin like BCH or Litecoin will take over for day to day currency use. I Want to be able to transact with my clients without endless high fees and slow confirmations, and Bitcoin simply does not fit that bill anymore but it can be used to store 'savings' for example. I won't pay a $10 TX fee if PayPal can do it for 50p, or Litecoin can do it for 0.01p.
Bitcoin is awesome, but it will be limited as a digital 'store' of value unless it scales, simple fact.
Centralization is also a big problem, the ASIC arms race and the sheer waste of power, will probably see some hybrid consensus system in the future, POW is simply too energy intense, the power grids of many countries will not handle it, and many hot climates the overheads of running a farm due to cooling issues and more expensive power is concentrating the mining power. Proof of stake will mean only those who are rich get richer, a hybrid system like proof of importance works better as a consensus mechanism in my opinion.
All those gigawatts of power as manufacturers will keep trying to make better ASICs to knock over others to 'stay in the game' and get more profit than those using older ASICs for a while until they upgrade, rinse, wash, repeat until we hit the end of the silicon road then it changes a bit
There have been years in which to solve this problem, or implement some breathing space. SegWit was one example of breathing space that we finally got, but 1MB block sizes simply will not do it, the transaction volume it can process is too small. Unless you wished to keep bitcoin as a 'store' of value, in which case an altcoin like BCH or Litecoin will take over for day to day currency use. I Want to be able to transact with my clients without endless high fees and slow confirmations, and Bitcoin simply does not fit that bill anymore but it can be used to store 'savings' for example. I won't pay a $10 TX fee if PayPal can do it for 50p, or Litecoin can do it for 0.01p.
Bitcoin is awesome, but it will be limited as a digital 'store' of value unless it scales, simple fact.
Centralization is also a big problem, the ASIC arms race and the sheer waste of power, will probably see some hybrid consensus system in the future, POW is simply too energy intense, the power grids of many countries will not handle it, and many hot climates the overheads of running a farm due to cooling issues and more expensive power is concentrating the mining power. Proof of stake will mean only those who are rich get richer, a hybrid system like proof of importance works better as a consensus mechanism in my opinion.
All those gigawatts of power as manufacturers will keep trying to make better ASICs to knock over others to 'stay in the game' and get more profit than those using older ASICs for a while until they upgrade, rinse, wash, repeat until we hit the end of the silicon road then it changes a bit