Bitcoin Myths · #8 of 20

Altcoins Are Better Than Bitcoin

The Comparison Assumes a Shared Category

The word “better” implies a shared standard. Better at what, exactly?

Bitcoin was not designed to process thousands of transactions per second. It was not built to host applications, issue tokens, or generate yield. It was built for something narrower. It moves value between two parties without trusting a bank or a government, under rules that nobody can change.

When someone argues that an altcoin is “better than Bitcoin,” they are usually pointing at a feature Bitcoin does not have, like faster settlement, cheaper fees, or more programmability. In many cases, that feature exists. In most cases, it exists because the altcoin made a trade. What it traded away is the question the comparison rarely asks.

Calling an altcoin better than Bitcoin because it settles faster is like calling a sports car better than a cargo ship because it accelerates faster. The comparison is technically accurate and completely beside the point. They are not competing for the same job.

What Bitcoin Is Actually Optimizing For

Bitcoin’s design choices look like limitations if you misread what it is trying to do.

The block size is small. Transactions are slow by fintech standards. There is no foundation, no CEO, no roadmap, no governance mechanism, and no way to call a vote that changes the rules. These are not oversights. They are the point.

Bitcoin optimizes for one thing above all others. No single party (no government, no company, no developer, no miner) can unilaterally change the rules of the system. Every design constraint follows from that. Small blocks keep the node requirements low enough that individuals can run them, which keeps the network decentralized. The fixed supply of 21 million requires no ongoing decision-making because the decision was made once, in code, and has not been touched since.

In practical terms, Bitcoin is not trying to be a faster payment network. It is trying to be money that behaves the same way regardless of who is in power, what country you live in, or what a group of developers decided last Tuesday. For someone whose national currency loses a third of its value in a year, that sameness is not abstract. It is the difference between savings that hold and savings that quietly disappear.

That is a specific thing. It is not the same specific thing altcoins are building.

What Altcoins Trade to Get Features

The trade-offs are real and, in most cases, deliberate. Understanding them changes the comparison.

Speed requires coordination. The fastest blockchain networks achieve throughput by reducing the number of validators^{Computers that check and confirm transactions against a network’s rules. Fewer of them means fewer independent checks on the system.}, concentrating block production among a smaller group, or requiring nodes with hardware specifications that price out ordinary participants. In practical terms, the network becomes faster and more controlled in the same motion. Better engineers would produce the same result. It follows directly from prioritizing throughput.

Programmability requires governance. When a network can be upgraded (new features added, old rules changed), someone has to make those decisions. Most altcoins have foundations, development companies, or governance mechanisms that handle this. A proposal is made, stakeholders vote, and the network updates. That is efficient and flexible, but it is also a point of control. Any process that can change the rules is controlled by whoever runs it.

The evidence on monetary policy is concrete. Dogecoin launched in 2013 with a supply cap of 100 billion coins. In February 2014, the development team removed the cap entirely. The network now issues 5 billion new coins annually with no ceiling. The decision was made, and it changed the rules. EOS followed a similar path. Its inflation rate was adjusted through a community governance vote after launch. Ethereum does not enforce a permanent fixed supply cap comparable to Bitcoin’s 21 million limit. Its issuance adapts based on network activity and protocol decisions.

In each case, the monetary policy is a policy, something that can be revisited, adjusted, or overridden by the people or processes with authority to do so. That is how most financial systems work. It is not how Bitcoin works.

Three Things a Fork Cannot Copy

Forking^{Copying a project’s open-source code to launch a new, separate coin from it.} Bitcoin’s code is easy. Copying what actually makes Bitcoin work is not.

Decentralization is the hardest to replicate because it is not a technical feature. It is an emergent outcome of years of distributed growth with no coordinating authority. Bitcoin has no headquarters, no parent company, no developer team whose decisions could force a consensus change on the network. Satoshi Nakamoto disappeared in 2011. What remained was a protocol maintained by thousands of independent contributors globally, with no single point of control. That condition took more than fifteen years to reach. It cannot be bootstrapped by announcing decentralization as a design goal.

Most altcoins have identifiable founders, active development companies, or foundations with meaningful authority over the network’s direction. That is not a criticism of their ambition. It is a description of where they are. Decentralization of the kind Bitcoin has is not a starting condition. It is an outcome, and one that most networks have not reached.

Monetary credibility compounds over time. Every year that Bitcoin’s 21 million supply cap holds, the credibility of that cap increases. It has now held through four market cycles, four halvings, and repeated attempts to change it, all of which failed because no mechanism exists to force a change. The rule is enforced by thousands of independent nodes^{Computers running Bitcoin software that each store the full ledger and enforce the rules. Tens of thousands run worldwide, with no central one to shut down.} that would simply reject a block that violated it. The supply cap is not a promise. It is built into the software, running on hardware that nobody controls.

Security, in practical terms, is accumulated work. Bitcoin’s network currently processes 945 exahashes per second,CoinWarz the result of more than fifteen years of mining investment that cannot be replicated overnight or purchased off a shelf. That hash rate^{The total computing power securing the Bitcoin network. A higher hash rate means more security.} represents the cost of attacking the network. No other proof-of-work^{A consensus rule where miners spend real energy to add blocks, making the chain’s history expensive to rewrite.} network approaches Bitcoin’s accumulated security spend.

The Question Underneath “Altcoins Are Better Than Bitcoin”

The “better than” framing is not wrong because Bitcoin always wins. It is wrong because it assumes a single dimension on which winning is measured.

If you want a programmable platform capable of running applications, issuing tokens, and settling transactions at high throughput, that is what altcoins are built for. Some of them do it well, and the engineering is real.

If you want a monetary network with no controlling authority, a supply cap that has held for more than fifteen years without a governance vote, and security backed by more accumulated computational work than any network in history, the field narrows considerably.

What you value determines what “better” means. Bitcoin makes a specific set of trade-offs to achieve a specific set of properties. Altcoins make a different set to achieve different ones. Calling one better than the other requires first agreeing on what you are trying to do with money, and that is a question most comparisons skip entirely.

What do you need money to do? It is worth sitting with that before the comparison. If why Bitcoin has value is still an open question for you, that is the right place to start.

One question is worth carrying past this article, because most comparisons skip it. What did it trade away to get what it has? Ask that of any altcoin, and the answer is usually something Bitcoin would not give up. Ask it of almost any technology, and the choice gets clearer.