‘Bitcoin and Ethereum can be dethroned only if it fully fails’, says Andreas Antonopoulos

Bitcoin evangelist Andreas Antonopoulos, in one of his talks, addressed how people are in search of investing in something that might be the next Bitcoin. He detailed how several “shit coins” come along and see themselves as the next Bitcoin. Certain characteristics including, better scalability or ease of use might be beneficial for the coin.  However, if it’s too different than Bitcoin it wouldn’t be fit for the crypto world. He said,

“So how much does the new thing have to differentiate? Well, this is the real challenge because if it differentiates enough, if it’s different enough from Bitcoin, well then it’s no longer occupying the same environmental niche.”

Additionally, he highlighted how Ethereum was different enough from Bitcoin as Vitalik Buterin managed to bootstrap and use a security chain. The virtual machine-based smart contracts application space has been solidly occupied by Ethereum, he added.

People invent slightly better solutions and expect to dethrone Bitcoin or Ethereum, however, this is a possibility only if the coins that currently dominate the space fully fail, Antonopoulos said. Small hacks and bans would make no difference to Bitcoin as the only way the king coin could fail is through a critical vulnerability that nobody could fix.

Furthermore, Antonopoulos took a dig at JP Morgan and Facebook’s entry into the crypto world. He said,

“It’s not enough for even Facebook or JP Morgan to say, Hey, we can do cryptocurrency too. No, you can’t. Not enough.”