I really really don't understand why so few people talk about some glaringly obvious facts of the crypto world. Here's one:
Bitcoin doesn't have time to fix its massive gaping ridiculous issues.
What issues? Those transaction fees that go out of control as soon as the BTC price goes up? What about the multi-hour sometimes multi-day transaction times? What about the fact that its theoretical maximum number of transactions is 7 per second, a rate it has rarely if ever attained? A rate that is way too slow to accommodate the sheer number of new people flooding into the bitcoin space expecting to be able to transact with it? A rate that is in fact the reason for the other problems?
Why do I say this? Why do I think it's already too late for Bitcoin? Because, as of right now, Dash is technologically superior, was able to upgrade its block capacity without forking and has organization, budget and proven efficacy behind it with real-world use cases.
Ethereum has similar problems to Bitcoin but at least for now has much better transaction fees and times.
As for Steem --- hhahahaahahaahah, are you kidding me?!!!!! Steem is already doing everything Bitcoin is still struggling to fork enough to achieve. Instant transaction times, ZERO transaction fees and -- let's not forget -- has achieved 1 MILLION TRANSACTIONS IN 24 HOURS. At 1% CAPACITY.
Let me repeat that.
One. Million. Transactions. In 24 Hours.
That's 100 thousand transactions in 2.4 hours. That's ten thousand transactions in 0.24 hours (aka 14.4 minutes). That's a thousand transactions in 1.44 minutes (1 minute, 26 seconds). That's 694 transactions per minute. That's approximately 11 transactions per second.
At 1% capacity.
Bitcoin by comparison at maximum is, barring the Lightning side-chain solution (which comes with its own centralization issues), be able to do AT BEST 7 transactions per second. That's Bitcoin's theoretical MAXIMUM capacity, a level it has never actually attained in the real world (well, certainly not this year anyway)
Compare that with Steem doing 11 transactions per second at 1%. That means by the time Steem gets enough users to be running at 100% block capacity -- and assuming we haven't upgraded the Steem blockchain to handle more than what it already does --, it will be able to handle 1100-plus transactions per second. That is closer to the ballpark of Visa and Mastercard than any other crypto on earth.
TL;DR - Bitcoin is legacy tech. Other coins are very rapidly overtaking it in capability, practicality and functionality, none more so than Steem. The other takeaway from all this?
Steem for its part is already the best goddamn cryptocurrency on the planet by every metric you care to judge: transaction speed, transaction time, ease of use, cheapness of use (zero transaction fees!!!), proof of concept, extant use cases, upgradeability -- I could go on but I don't need to, you get the point.