Quote from: cbreum on December 05, 2017, 03:57:51 PM

I have been wondering for a long time why Bitcoin is still rising in value. Ethereum has a better blockchain, but can't follow the pace of Bitcoin.

Bitcoin is also polluting the environment with the PoW algorithm using too much energy for mining. So there is many arguments NOT to use Bitcoin, but why do we still do it?

If you want to trade altcoins on exchanges you almost always trade against Bitcoin instead of USD (or USD Teather). So you NEED to have Bitcoin. I know that more exchanges allow trading against Ethereum and others, but still the most popular marked is BTC/XXX (where xxx is any given coin).

For me it is clear that this has to change to stop the rise in Bitcoin. I think most of us is tired of the long confirmation time in the Bitcoin block chain that can take up to an hour or more. It's embarrassing for any crypto to have such a long validation time.

I therefore hope that exchanges will adapt USD as the standard measure and stop having Bitcoin/Altcoin pairs.... it will probably not happen. I'm just saying what I would like to see.

I think exactly that is keeping the Bitcoin price high.

Comments?

Also posted here: http://rimbit.dk/showthread.php?tid=656

Bitcoin's price is rising because of the increasing attention in the mainstream media, which is also the cause for the scaling problems. I think you're right about the waste of energy for mining but I think it's necessary to keep the coin decentralized. PoS doesn't feel safe for me, I think the central banks would rather buy 51% of all circulating supply than buying enough hardware to get 51% of the total hash-power. We still use Bitcoin because it was the first, I don't think the features other coins have make them better than Bitcoin. Ethereum showed today that it isn't capable yet to work on it's full potential, the crypto kitty application is the proof for that. Bitcoin core developers are working hard to find a solution for the scaling problem, its just a matter of time. I think there isn't a crypto-currency yet that can handle the traffic Bitcoin has.