Citi: Bitcoin: At the Tipping Point

This 108 Page paper from Citi was too good to keep just in the crypto thread.

Bitcoin: At the Tipping Point

Yea Citi these guys

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Citi is one of the world’s largest financial institutions, operating in all major established and emerging markets. Across these world markets, our employees conduct
an ongoing multi-disciplinary conversation – accessing information, analyzing data, developing insights, and formulating advice. As our premier thought leadership
product, Citi GPS is designed to help our readers navigate the global economy’s most demanding challenges and to anticipate future themes and trends in a fast-changing and
interconnected world. Citi GPS accesses the best elements of our global conversation and harvests the thought leadership of a wide range of senior professionals
across our firm. This is not a research report and does not constitute advice on investments or a solicitations to buy or sell any financial instruments

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Our goal in this paper has been to help readers understand Bitcoin’s past, present,
and possible future. Armed with a fuller understanding of what has driven Bitcoin’s
growth and how it has spurred so much additional innovation and disruption should
allow readers to better assess and determine their own view about Bitcoin’s value
and understand how future news may facilitate additional growth or force a
retrenchment and re-evaluation of its potential.

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INNOVATION Bitcoin’s underlying technology, unique social value proposition and financial
potential drew interest among initial adopters in its early days. / Growing
acceptance by businesses, availability at ATMs, and payment services indicate
cryptocurrencies are increasingly gaining a presence in the mainstream

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TECHNOLOGY Trading as an almost exclusively retail asset class before 2017, interest in Bitcoin
among institutional investors has grown substantially. / As crypto business models
mature and institutional demand increases, existing entities are revamping their
offerings and new entrants are emerging to provide enhanced data and exchange,
trading, and custody services for institutional investors.

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CURRENCY Views on Bitcoin have evolved from focusing only on its potential as a payment
system, to its ability to store value and protect purchasing power in uncertain times,
to its value as a digitally scarce commodity analogous to digital gold for investors. /
As its global reach continues to expand, Bitcoin’s borderless design and other
features may position it to become an international trade currency in the future.

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and my favorite:

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Other Cryptocurrencies May Overtake and Displace
Bitcoin
Bitcoin is the original and most well-known cryptocurrency, but there are many other
altcoins emerging and their growth is beginning to outpace Bitcoin. The market
capitalization of Bitcoin increased by 2.70x in 2020, but by 3.75x for other altcoins in
the same period. The result is that the market dominance of Bitcoin is declining.
While it is still the most liquid and well-funded coin, its market share fell to only 62%
of the cryptocurrency space in 2020, down from 69% in 2019.183
As noted back in Section III, on-chain commerce is being driven by the Ethereum
platform that has its own cryptocurrency, Ether (ETH). A host of other competitors
such as Polkadot and Tezos are also emerging and are looking to displace
Ethereum’s dominance as the destination hub for on-chain development. Each of
those platforms also each have their own native digital currency.
These newer platforms offer programmable smart contracts and open protocols that
make it easier for innovative developers to experiment and create new offerings to
attract users. Everything from games to gambling to decentralized finance offerings
are being created on these blockchains. To participate, users must pay in the
platform’s own coin. Thus, one of these platforms or a new competitor in the space
may gain so much traction that its coin may overtake Bitcoin. The Ethereum
platform already settles more dollar-denominated value than Bitcoin's platform.
184
The commerce platform may become the draw, much like the dominance of the
Apple and Google app stores in today’s mobile commerce ecosystem.
Commerce alone may not be the key driver. Because the emerging on-chain
platforms are based on smart contracts, many rely on data inputs from the off-chain
world to trigger certain actions or to effect payments. For example, a prediction site
on the blockchain may offer a market around the winner of a grand slam tennis
tournament, but in order to payout those that chose the correct player, they need a
data trigger from a reputable source in the real world to confirm the winner. In this
case, the contract terms may require affirmation via a World Tennis Association
press release.
A new type of on-chain offering can identify the data input needed by the smart
contract and scan real-world data sources, APIs, and payment systems for the
requisite information which the network then delivers back to the smart contract.
The leading such provider, Chainlink, describes their network as a “decentralized
oracle” that searches for and imports data from the real-world and delivers it to the
smart contracts that run in the on-chain universe.

183 “Percentage of Total Market Capitalization (Dominance)”, CoinMarketCa

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ill be reading this throughout the day and add some more quotes.