{"id":225604,"date":"2022-03-19T04:00:10","date_gmt":"2022-03-19T04:00:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cryptoslate.com\/?p=225604"},"modified":"2022-03-20T19:17:33","modified_gmt":"2022-03-20T19:17:33","slug":"5-next-bitcoins-that-werent","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cryptoslate.com\/5-next-bitcoins-that-werent\/","title":{"rendered":"5 \u201cnext bitcoins\u201d that weren’t"},"content":{"rendered":"

Whereas every new \u201cEthereum killer<\/a>\u201d gets attention, as do disaster projects like HashOcean and BAS, it\u2019s important to look back in time to some older projects (that means over 2 years plus, in crypto) that generated huge hype which never translated to results.<\/p>\n

\u2014not scams or complete failures, but projects that never quite lived up to their hype.<\/p>\n

By looking at these, you\u2019re reminded that in an emerging, volatile industry like crypto, even large, highly-anticipated projects don\u2019t always go as planned.<\/p>\n

Bitcoin Cash<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Bitcoin Cash<\/a>, or BCH, is both a payment network and a cryptocurrency. As of March 9, the 27th largest cryptocurrency by market cap. BCH was launched in August 2017 as a hard fork of the Bitcoin blockchain.<\/p>\n

It reached an all-time high on December 23, 2017, at $3,923. Its price has largely maintained similar fluctuations to BTC<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\"Footprint
Footprint Analytics – Price of BTC and BCH<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Bitcoin Cash was forked to increase Bitcoin's 1M block limit and has now reached a max of 32M blocks. Therefore, per transaction processed speed is much higher than\u00a0 BTC, and transaction fees are lower. But Bitcoin Cash can\u2019t beat\u00a0 BTC in terms of market cap for now.<\/p>\n

Why it didn't work<\/strong><\/h3>\n

BTC is still the primary crypto for decentralization, cross-border transactions, and continues to evolve as a store of value. It has now become analogous to digital gold, with the payment function fading away.<\/p>\n

Digital gold is more valuable than a means of payment. BCH is unable to surpass BTC because of its positioning, as iron is less than valuable than gold.<\/p>\n

BCH was also affected by the Fed's interest rate hike, balance sheet reduction, and the fall of US stocks. The best time to surpass BTC has been missed.<\/p>\n

With a new bear market on the horizon and negative political factors, there could be a new wave of downward pressure on BTC.<\/p>\n

However, BCH still has an active community that believes it could make a rebound and become the next big thing, as evidenced by Bitcoin Cash's Reddit community.<\/p>\n

Ethereum Classic<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Often mentioned alongside BTC, ETH has its sister, Ethereum Classic<\/a>. Even though it is a network with ETH technology and BTC concept, it has not shaken Ethereum's position.<\/p>\n

Ethereum's hard fork occurred in July 2016, when founder Vitalik Buterin proposed the idea of a hard fork. To recover the assets stolen by hackers from the DAO. Eventually, Ethereum forked into Ethereum and Ethereum Classic.<\/p>\n

Ethereum Classic, ETC, is ranked 34th in cryptocurrency market capitalization. The fork keeps the vision and philosophy of the original Ethereum, with a higher degree of decentralization and community autonomy, but with only 15% HashRate support.<\/p>\n

Nowadays, both the token price and ecosystem applications are far less than Ethereum.<\/p>\n

Why it didn't work<\/strong><\/h3>\n

From the hard fork, the original Ethereum founders and team left to go support and lead the current Ethereum, while Ethereum Classic was taken over by a new team.<\/p>\n

In terms of supporters, with 85% HashRate support after the fork, Ethereum has far more supporters and higher demand than Ethereum Classic.<\/p>\n

In terms of ecosystem integrity, Ethereum has become the top public chain<\/a> TVL, while not many projects are deployed on Ethereum Classic.<\/p>\n

So, in many ways, even though Ethereum Classic is more committed and decentralized, it didn't end up being the dominant player in the blockchain world.<\/p>\n

NEO<\/strong><\/h2>\n

NEO<\/a>, formerly AntShares, was launched in China in 2014 by Erik Zhan and his team as a public chain. It was an open-source project in 2015 on Github and completed ICO capitalization a few months later.<\/p>\n

NEO<\/a> supports the development of its own cryptocurrency, digital assets, and smart contracts that can achieve thousands of transactions per second.<\/p>\n

Neo's price has risen very sharply. From $0.08 at launch, it reached an all-time high of $198.38 on January 15, 2018, an increase of 2,478.75%.<\/p>\n

But it was short-lived, and the overall downward trend is evident in Footprint\u00a0 Analytics<\/a> data, with the current price at $21.27.<\/p>\n

\"Footprint
Footprint Analytics – Price & Trading Volume of Neo<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Why it didn't work<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The former 1,000x coin has fallen, becoming the 77th largest coin in terms of market capitalization. This is not due to objective off-site factors such as the poor performance of the cryptocurrency market, but rather NEO itself.<\/p>\n