According to Emin Gün Sirer, the founder of Avalanche, Bitcoin will eventually be outpaced by other coins as their faster, cheaper networks digitize more and more of daily life.
Sirer, the CEO of Ava Labs, which created the Avalanche network and its native avax token, first got involved in crypto in 2003, when he created karma, a peer-to-peer digital token. This was six years prior to the creation of bitcoin by the enigmatic Satoshi Nakamoto.
Sirer’s invention never took off, but his fortunes in cryptocurrency have changed dramatically since then. He founded the Avalanche network in September of last year, with the assistance of some experts at Cornell University in New York, where he is a computer science lecturer.
Hundreds, if not thousands, of digital tokens have been created since bitcoin first appeared on the crypto scene in early 2009. Some are solely for speculation, while others are linked to blockchains populated with decentralized finance applications, and still others are used for online gaming, cross-border payments, and a variety of other purposes.
Bitcoin is still the most widely traded cryptocurrency, with a market cap of approximately $1 trillion. However, Sirer predicts that it will not remain at the top of the pile for long. “If you ask me what will happen to bitcoin, it will continue to grow, but the rate at which it grows will be eclipsed by these systems that have a broader vision,” he told Insider this week on the sidelines of the Token2049 conference.
Is bitcoin on its way out? “Absolutely,” he replied to this question.
Sirer believes that coins such as avax, ether, solana, and cardano, which are linked to networks with multiple use cases due to their decentralized finance peer-to-peer technology, could dethrone bitcoin.
He predicted that bitcoin would become obsolete much sooner than expected. Satoshi Nakamoto created only 21 million bitcoins, and no more will be created. According to Sirer, Bitcoin’s finite quality makes it bullish and a great store of value, as Nakamoto stated in the coin’s whitepaper.
“There is a bigger game out there, and systems like Avalanche are playing it by digitizing the world’s assets, and money is only one source of value. There are numerous other valuable items “Sirer stated.
Bitcoin’s blockchain, for example, does not support smart contracts, making it difficult to build on, according to Sirer. Smart contracts are an important part of decentralized finance because they allow two parties to transfer funds or assets without the use of intermediaries. They can be powered by blockchains such as ethereum, solana, cardano, and avalanche itself.
These more sophisticated networks also support digital assets such as non-fungible tokens. NFTs, or digital collectors’ items, have become big business this year, changing hands for millions of dollars and gaining the support of celebrities, professional athletes, artists, and designers.
Bitcoin has increased by 440 percent in a year, but it lags behind ether, which has increased by 986 percent, while avalanche’s avax has increased by 414 percent. Furthermore, the bitcoin network is much slower than some of the newcomers. Mining bitcoin or transferring funds takes much longer and consumes far more energy, necessitating far more computing power.
According to a recent Twitter post, the transaction time for Bitcoin is ten minutes, while avalanche takes two seconds.
“The method of maintaining its ledger is extremely energy-intensive, which means that value is leaking out of the system,” Sirer explained.
“(Bitcoin) will take some time to chip away at, but I fully expect that bitcoin will be taken over by other growing systems,” he said.
