Do Altcoins Have Future?

This article will be dedicated to the question of whether the altcoins will survive the overall situation on the cryptocurrency market and whether they ever be able to surpass the glory of Bitcoin!

Despite the huge crisis of the last year, 2018 has become rather preparatory for many cryptocurrencies. The capitalization has reached $ 130 billion. Compared to traditional markets, the industry is still negligible - but it's trying.

For further development of the blockchain market and for it to become a full-fledged participant in the global economy, institutional investors should use digital money in day-to-day tasks - investment and pension funds, insurance payments, banks transfers, and so on.

However, large and serious players cannot enter a dubious industry or an unregulated market. They need regulated infrastructure, ready for large flows of funds.

What currency does have such infrastructure? American broadcaster and well-known Bitcoin (BTC) bull Max Keiser suggested that the cryptocurrency market rally will not include altcoins in a recent interview with CNBC.

Keiser said that with the development of the cryptocurrency space and adoption of Segregated Witness (Segwit) and the Lightning protocols, people began to better understand the store of value Bitcoin offers, as well as scaling that would happen off-chain. This, per Keiser, made crypto owners move their funds back into “the most secure chain [bitcoin].”

Keiser further projected that altcoins are going to lose their value significantly or even disappear out of existence as “all that cash is going to flow into Bitcoin.” He reasoned that with the current dominance of the Bitcoin market (it amounts to 60%) — which Keiser implies could go to 80%–90%. “The altcoin phenomenon is finished,” he stated.

Recently, veteran trader and author Peter Brandt predicted that Bitcoin will continue to grow but altcoins will not feel the benefits of such growth. Brandt said that unlike the previous bull market cycle in 2017, Bitcoin’s gains would not have a knock-on effect elsewhere. He summarized, “Cryptomaniancs expect alts to do so again — they may be very disappointed.”

In late June of the year 2018, ThinkMarkets chief market analyst Naeem Aslam predicted that Bitcoin will hit somewhere between $60,000 and $100,000 during its next bull run. He argues that by the time Bitcoin hits $20,000, the discussion will move from conservative estimates to forecasts of $50,000 per BTC; from there, breaking $50,000 will move the price target to $100,000.

The year 2018 ended with uncertainty in the market: Bitcoin did not die, as it was predicted hundreds of times, but it also did not rise like it was predicted the same number of times. However, against the background of falling prices of many cryptos, business representatives had the opportunity to show that their activities related to cryptocurrencies and blockchain had the right to life, could be valuable and useful even in a falling market. Analysts stated that they would like to hope that this trend will continue in 2019. And it did.

But what is the future of cryptocurrency and decentralized technologies within business structures? And what to expect from 2019?

A year ago, when we investigated forecasts for 2018, we saw a lot of opinions that, this year, there will be applied cases for many cryptos with a clear value that can be implemented on an industrial scale. At the end of the year, we saw that no such cases had appeared.

Such a transformation should involve, at least, the digitization of business processes and, importantly, a change in business models in general. When a decentralized registry is attempted to be pulled on models that are centralized in nature, the same result is always obtained - it is easier to proceed without a blockchain involved.

As per some guesses, in later 2019 attempts will be made to create decentralized business models, such as Internet 3.0, where the benefits of decentralization will be obvious for everyone to see.

The bulk of the BTC is in the hands of traders, so the cost of Bitcoin is still highly speculative, and the volatility of 10-15% is to be considered the average. Price manipulation will stop if the number of goods sold for Bitcoins or the Bitcoin price will begin to be regulated at the state level. This is the opportunity for many altcoins.

Another point is that miners in different countries where BTC is mined (mainly China, Russia and Asian countries where electricity is cheap) vary greatly in the prime cost of a single coin, from $ 3,200 to $ 5,400. In some mining farms, electricity is not completely legal, in others - equipment is delivered at a significantly low price, etc. For example, in Georgia, they have an average price for electricity at Free Zone for about five cents. With such a price and installation costs, the approximate price of 1 BTC should be around $ 4,500-4700. However, it is not the case and it's one of the Bitcoin deficiencies.

The previous years in the blockchain industry can be called the years of pragmatism. At the same time, one of the main operators of the industry in terms of research, development, and application of technology has become the corporate world. In order to objectively sum up the past and move on to the forecast for the future, it is necessary to give a brief overview of the development history of the corporate blockchain and analyze it in-depth. This, however, is the matter of some other articles.

It started relatively recently: in 2015, a number of large companies started to work with technology, in particular, at the DevCon1 conference, Microsoft announced the availability of the private version of Ethereum in the Azure cloud, thereby confirming a serious technology bet.

Thanks to the work done over these two and a half years, the democratization of the corporate blockchain took place in 2018: a whole set of tools appeared to solve the problems of security, integration, creation of complex infrastructures, and many more.

There are new enterprise platforms for creating a private blockchain, such as Pegasys, as well as improved versions of Quorum, Corda, and others. Real cases of technology introduction in various industries began to appear. Altcoin future seems to lean towards real-life use cases and not investment.

An excellent example is a company Bühler, which operates in the current field of the food chain, whose goal is to ensure safety and waste-free food.

We can say for sure that we look into the next year with great optimism and interest. We are entering a new era with all the necessary conditions for the accomplishment of real affairs and the fulfillment of our expectations towards the altcoin future.

In fact, we live in a unique time, as we are witnessing the emergence of a new industry, the development of which can be compared with the launch process of a space rocket: it has undergone training, launch and overcoming gravity, and in the next couple of years we will finally see it flying.

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