Presumably new exchanges would spring up to fill the vacuum, as a lack of exchanges would create a market opportunity.

The price would probably respond to the impetus behind the exchanges' disappearance, rather than the disappearance itself.

I contend that most cryptocurrencies have basically been riding Bitcoin's slipstream in terms of attention, adoption, and market performance. Altcoins have high beta values in cryptocurrency, which produces enticing opportunities, especially during "Mania" phases of market cycles. Everyone wants to beat The Market, and it's a natural (if misguided) assumption of newcomers that they are "too late" to profit considerably from Bitcoin, the de facto standard and baseline of cryptocurrency.

What this means in practice is that non-Bitcoin cryptocurrencies will almost certainly never completely disappear, but it's very possible that their relative valuations are still temporarily overinflated and that Bitcoin's compounding Network effects and status as a focal point, in particular in tandem with the Lindy effect, will result in a continuance of its historical performance dominance over other tokens (particularly in aggregate and over the long-term).

The most direct answer to your question is, basically, the Network effect phenomenon.

Here are a few selected resources which explain and extend this perspective:

• Bitcoin - a 6-sided Market and Network Effect by Antonis Polemitis
• The 7 Network Effects of Bitcoin by Trace Mayer
• Bitcoin is Worse is Better by Gwern
• Bitcoin as Decentralized Money: Prices, Mining, and Network Security by Emiliano Pagnotta
• Bitcoin’s Gravity by Gigi
• Crypto Network Effects by Tobias Huber
• On Bitcoin Maximalism, and Currency and Platform Network Effects by Vitalik Buterin
• Bitcoin: Time Compression, Causation And Feedback Loops by Hans Hauge
• Why Bitcoin Matters by Marc Andreessen
• "It has the potential for a positive feedback loop; as users increase, the value goes up, which could attract more users to take advantage of the increasing value." by Satoshi Nakamoto

Very interesting analysis, thanks for sharing.


Looks like the Endorsement Rate is now showing 2.23 / block on https://explore.veriblock.org/network-stats

It could have been a bug, or perhaps it was a result of a lagging moving average calculation. I wasn't able to find any source code for their explorer at https://github.com/VeriBlock so it's not clear how exactly they are calculating that endorsements figure they display.

I don't think this is a very good description, personally. The only notable similarity between a Lightning Network payment and an vanilla Bitcoin transaction seen in a node's mempool is that neither one has yet been confirmed in a block. There are significant distinctions between the two, though. For instance, the Lightning payment can be immediately used in a subsequent transaction without waiting for a block confirmation to occur.

It might be as simple as increasing the default timeout value:
If that doesn't work, you might run down this list and see if anything suggested there helps.

Yes, any coin based off of Bitcoin Core 0.18 (which didn't make any strange Lightning-breaking changes) should support Lightning Network functionality. More good news: lnd has multi-chain abstraction set up and there are tutorials out there which you'd probably find useful as references.

Also, on a related note, Lightning Labs' blog post on Bitcoin ↔ Litecoin atomic swaps on Lightning is definitely worth a read.


See here for the code changes that were necessary to add Litecoin support to Zap. You could use this as a template for your own extensions to support whatever coin(s) you're interested in.

This seems to be a variant of Delegated Proof of Stake. You would probably benefit most from the following:

1) Compare and contrast your proposal against alternative DPoS solutions.
2) An example or reference implementation, so that the code can be analyzed and tested directly.

Both of these would make it much easier for others to provide useful feedback and input on your research.

I wouldn't recommend using this, based on the first sentence in the README:


Instead, see this article for an informative walkthrough of the process. It includes python code and a few helpful tips to keep in mind. However, if you're planning on using these keys to store or manage significant sums of money, I would recommend using either a dedicated hardware wallet (like Trezor or the Ledger Nano X) or Bitcoin Core itself, built and run on a machine that has never been online (and ideally doesn't even have networking capabilities at all).

First and foremost, before ever putting a penny into Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency, you should set aside some time to research and understand what the technology is, what value it provides its users and society at large, and what makes it so special relative to the systems and solutions that came before it. This usually takes at least one read-through of Satoshi's whitepaper and a fair amount of supplemental Googling.

It can be tempting to skip this step and try to start buying different cryptocurrencies in the hopes of getting-rich-quick, but at that point you're essentially just blindly gambling and hoping that you get lucky. It's definitely possible to get lucky (and plenty of people have made a lot of money doing so), but it's not a realistic long-term strategy for building wealth.

Once you're sure you understand the core innovation(s) underpinning Bitcoin, and you feel like you can articulate the value proposition in your own words, you are ready to consider an actual financial investment in the space. At this point, you're also prepared to start evaluating other cryptocurrencies and their distinct value propositions, but it's worth remembering that many (perhaps even most) of the projects you encounter are focused on impressing newcomers and marketing themselves effectively, rather than distinguishing themselves via true technological innovation. There are, of course, exceptions to this rule... but you have to do your own research, patiently and calmly evaluate both sides of any given argument, and make a sincere effort not to get caught up in FOMO. Rushing into significant financial decisions is never a good idea; you have to be careful and think critically.

In this case, do you feel confident that you can explain the value proposition of "HST decision token" thoroughly, and have you spent more than a few days researching the subject and critically evaluating whether it can truly compete with Bitcoin as an investment? Have you laid out the different time horizons that matter to you, and are you able to justify their respective relevance? Have you determined what your price targets are, and come up with a stop-loss strategy? Have you discussed the decision with anyone else (whether it is with professional financial advisors, technological experts who are totally unaffiliated with the project, or friends and family members whose opinions you respect) and if so, have you taken their input into account? Have you done your best to set aside your emotions before acquiring a stake in the project? Are you comfortable with your investment portfolio (and savings) outside of cryptocurrencies? These are all important factors that you should be considering thoughtfully before sinking any serious sum of money into this sector, and if you haven't done this sort of thing, it's probably a good idea to take a step back and figure out your long-term game plan(s) before making any more decisions or moves.

There are actually a couple of different ways to approach this problem. For a good high-level overview, see this article.