Let’s explore an interesting look into how the interest in cryptocurrencies has grown much more compared to the interest in Bitcoin.
Bitcoin maximalists may argue that the average person is about 10 times more likely to know about Bitcoin than they are about cryptocurrency. However I would counter that argument with two important points:
- The relative growth in interest about cryptocurrency vs Bitcoin has been far greater over the past 6 months
- The interest in cryptocurrency over the past 3 months has remained much more stable than the interest in Bitcoin which has dropped sharply.
Both of these points are deductions I made from looking at this Google trends graph over the last 12 months comparing the interest in Bitcoin to the interest in cryptocurrency:
Judging by the graph one can deduce that although the interest in Bitcoin grew by a factor of about 5.25x (jump from 16 to 100), the interest in cryptocurrency grew by a factor of about 12x (from 0.5 to 6), hence more than double the growth rate of Bitcoin!
Furthermore, although the interest for both topics diminished after the huge bull market, the decrease in interest was more pronounced for Bitcoin which fell by about 60% (from 100 to 40) than it was for cryptocurrency which fell by only about 25% (from 6 to 4.5).
The graph below with the 5 year graphs relating to cryptocurrency and Bitcoin further illustrates the points above while also showing how the interest for cryptocurrency has experienced unprecedented growth when compared to Bitcoin.
The goal of this post is not to bash Bitcoin, far from it in fact. Bitcoin has been the brand name and driving force behind cryptocurrencies and has established a robust security foundation which is unparalleled. It serves as a brilliant store of value.
However to think that blockchain technology is limited to serving just the purpose of a great store of value would be myopic and foolish, despite it being the best tested and most established use of blockchain technology.
There is SO much that blockchain technology has the potential to achieve as we’ve seen recently with the ever growing number of new cryptocurrencies and projects being launched and Bitcoin is not suited to realising the potential of many of these projects, Ethereum being the best example so far of what we can achieve when not getting overly fixated on the limitations of Bitcoin.
Not only do I think it’s inevitable that Bitcoin’s dominance will fade over the coming years but I also would be very disappointed if it didn’t because if it stayed dominant, it would mean that the development of other use cases for blockchain technology would be embarrassingly slow and that would be unfortunate news for all people who believe in the enormous potential of this ground breaking technology.
What are your thoughts on the issues discussed?
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hooked2thechain
Image sources: www.startupmanagement.org and https://trends.google.com/trends/