TL;DR
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Crypto is still in the earlier phases of its overall adoption cycle, which — if it’s anything like other technologies with network effects — will eventually end in a winner-take-most situation (not winner-take-all).
Full Story
Feeling worn out by the tribalism within crypto?
Is your natural instinct to outright reject that kind of thing?
Good!
This isn’t a winner-take-all competition, but instead: winner-take-most. Which means, if you’re tired of the debate of “Bitcoin vs. Ethereum vs. Solana vs. promising up-and-comers like Aptos” — you’re on the right track.
Here’s why:
Blockchain projects have network effects.
I.e. the more people use a blockchain, the more valuable it becomes → whichever chains can attract the most users, will gain defendable shares of the total market.
Crypto is still in the earlier phases of its overall adoption cycle, but — if it’s anything like other technologies with network effects — it will eventually end in a winner-take-most situation.
Many of the 10,000+ cryptocurrencies will still die a slow death, yes.
…but again, there won’t be “one cryptocurrency to rule them all” — no single blockchain would be able to handle all the world’s transactions.
Instead, a core few will survive and thrive as users/businesses eventually center around them, encouraging further development and extending their collective leads.
It’s similar to the social media space:
Facebook/Instagram, TikTok, YouTube, X/Twitter, and Snapchat collectively own most of the market — and fend off competitors by either buying them or straight up copying them.
You can love it or hate it, but in the end — this process makes each respective platform better.
Here’re some crypto-specific examples of feature adoption:
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Bitcoin didn’t allow users to create NFTs or memecoins on its network like Ethereum did. Now it does.
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Ethereum’s user experience was terrible compared to Solana’s. So a bunch of big-brained devs created smart wallets to compete.
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Solana is fast and cheap, but doesn’t play nice with Ethereum. So the folks that created Movement (the hot new coding language behind Aptos, Sui, and Sei) built Ethereum compatibility into it.
Long story longer:
Crypto tribalism won’t make you that much richer in the long run.
It’ll just get you into a bunch of useless online fist fights.
