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.
Ethereum would be a better alternative but people(investors) like to see results and investing in bitcoin gets you results.
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?
This is something unfortunate to learn because AFAIK clean renewable energy(hydroelectricity) is whats used by big mining companies.
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).
Its the father of all cryptos and its just fair that other altcoins are pegged to another crypto and not fiat.
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.
Its a small price to pay but in the long term a fix is needed to get mainstream adoption.