The biggest merchants using bitcoin are seriously considering new crypto payment options.
Blocks are filling up very fast and many of them often come in full leaving leading to longer confirmation times and delayed transactions. Merchants are looking to litecoin and their own custom tokens. They use bitcoin because it works. If it stops working they will switch to something else. The price of bitcoin doesn’t mean anything to these merchants who use it as a real transactional protocol. They could just as easily use litecoin or Dash or any other coin with a reasonable distribution model and well backed blockchain.
First it will come as simply introducing a new payment option such as litecoin. If a merchant introduces this then many will follow and more importantly marketplaces will emerge to handle the distribution of this new coin. Markets such as Paxful and Localbitcoins will start supporting this new coin and with demand vendors will also start supporting it. The effect of this grass roots and peer to peer support will grow quickly and if the need is pressing enough then bitcoin could be surpassed as the main coin for any of these top merchants.
Here at Paxful we do over 5% of the total blockchain volume by number of transactions and it is growing. The reason for this is that we have made using bitcoin so simple that users often send a dollar at a time to pay for ads. If the blocksize continues to remain at it’s current level then we could see transaction fees equal to the transaction amount. This is worse than even the most vile ATM fee and degrades bitcoin from a liberator to a tyrant. This is not the path forward.
We all need to unite and make clear to the entire community just how serious this situation is. Leadership is needed now more than ever if bitcoin is to survive and thrive. This year will be absolutely massive for bitcoin as it expands out into the whole world of ecommerce and becomes and even more robust and full loop economy. The core devs do not speak to the people using bitcoin on a day to day basis. If they did they would see that there are people, many people, using bitcoin to pay one dollar invoices that expire in five minutes. Their grasp on the current real world usage of bitcoin is limited and it shows in the suggestions they make such as waiting minutes for a confirmation.
Any altcoin switch would set bitcoin and crypto back 3 years!
If distribution markets are forced to switch rails to a new cryptocurrency now it will drag the entire scene back three years and shatter the momentum of bitcoin. If they do this to bitcoin it can be done to any crypto that replaces it and each time it will drag us back a few years until cryptocurrency as a functional idea is weakened beyond repair. Here at Paxful we are soon to launch a new affiliate program that would payout 1000% more than the next best and give bitcoin content creators a real shot to earn the kind of revenue that could sustain them and elevate their content. Think the web before and after Adsense. That kind of exponential growth will now be sliced in half. We are also planning a program that would make accepting bitcoin nearly irresistible for every ecommerce provider in the world. Bitcoin spilling out of it’s own small economy like that would change everything overnight and with the upcoming halving the value of bitcoin could explode.
If bitcoin is going to be the financial superhighway then it needs more than just one lane. This is common sense yet the community seems gripped by madness now. We need to get these lanes carved out yesterday or the traffic is going to go elsewhere and weaken the entire ecosystem. In very real terms all the awesome developers and projects out there who are building awesome new stuff to take bitcoin to the next level have to stop and think about a new crypto currency. This will stop progress dead in its tracks and could very well be the thing that causes a huge loss of faith in crypto currency in general. We could see a flurry of new pump and dump schemes and insider trading which would further degrade the integrity of bitcoin. If this was not planned then it is quite amazing to see such a demolition happen before our very eyes.
We must rally to prevent this. Real leaders please step forward. You are needed now more than ever.
