Market IntelligenceVote: Will Bitcoin and Other Digital Currencies Be Here in 5 Years?Jeff John RobertsBitcoin is the world's most famous crypto-currency but, these days, you barely hear about it.Instead, the buzz has shifted to blockchain, the underlying technology for bitcoin, which banks are now using for day-to-day business.Meanwhile, newer and more versatile types of digital currency are overshadowing bitcoin.This raises the question of whether bitcoin even has a long-term future.I recently spoke with Faisal Husain, the CEO of Synechron, which advises banks about blockchain, and asked him if he thought bitcoin and two other well-known crypto-currencies—Ripple and Ethereum—will still be around in five years.His answer: two of the three currencies will survive, but he wouldn't say which ones.You can weigh in yourself by taking our poll below, but I confess I don't see an obvious candidate for failure—or success.RelatedBiotechWhy Cancer Biotech Clovis Oncology’s Stock Is SoaringBiotechWhy Cancer Biotech Clovis Oncology’s Stock Is SoaringIn the case of bitcoin, it's by far the biggest with a market cap of around $11 billion, but its core use case is still for sketchy stuff, such as ransomware payments or buying drugs on the Internet.

Meanwhile, mainstream bitcoin companies like Coinbase and Circle are pivoting as fast as they can towards more general forms of Internet money transfers.Ripple has the advantage of being both a currency and a transport protocol, and the company that bears its name has recently locked up a number of high profile partnerships with major banking institutions.This bodes well for the company, though it's less clear the currency (known as XRP) has a long-term role.Bankers like using Ripple's infrastructure to move money around, but several have told me the currency is unnecessary, and that banks do not want to be forced to use it in the course of foreign exchange transactions.Get Data Sheet, Fortune’s technology newsletter.As for Ethereum, it's attracting the most enthusiasm right now among developers (see my colleague Robert Hackett's recent profile in Fortune), appearing to be the most versatile and sophisticated form of crypto-currency.But it's market cap is less than a tenth of bitcoin.

(Ethereum is worth around $1 billion, while Ripple is third at around $250 million.)All this doesn't mean, of course, that all these crypto-currencies can't flourish in the future.ethereum warningAccording to Adam Ludwin, CEO of a well-respected blockchain company called Chain, the three currencies will still be around, and the financial ecosystem will even integrate newer ones like Zcash (in which he is an investor)."Ijp morgan bitcoin jobdon’t think they’ll ever go away.rent bitcoin mining rigOne of their design principles is resiliency in a hostile environment," Ludwin says.bitcoin rate in 2020"Bitcoin [especially] is a clear and sustainable project."Hefree bitcoin booster

adds that bitcoin and other crypto-currencies also have a place as a distinct asset class, like gold, for people who want a store of value outside conventional currencies and investments.So what do you think?xe bitcoin usdTake our poll and predict if the three most well-known crypto currencies will still be around in five years:And, of course, take whatever results you see with a grain of salt.Online polls are not known for being conclusive.Furthermore, in the case of crypto-currency, there tends to be a selection bias in terms of who will take such a poll (think crypto-geeks and speculators) in the first place.* FM HomeCryptoCurrencyTradingBitcoin Dominance Drops Below 50% as Ripple’s XRP Market Cap Tops $11 Billion Bitcoin Dominance Drops Below 50% as Ripple’s XRP Market Cap Tops $11 Billion Bitcoin investors are currently experiencing one of the best periods ever with new higher record prices set every few days it seems.

However one trend that should cause some concern to long term BTC holders is that its dominance of the cryptocurrency market is waning.The London Summit 2017 is coming, get involved!Standing at 49.9%, Bitcoin’s share of the combined value for all blockchain assets is now under 50% for the first time in its history.With Ethereum already at a valuation of almost $8.5 billion, it’s actually Ripple XRP’s new market cap of $11.5 billion that has pushed BTC dominance under the threshold.From a record market valuation of $1.5 billion in early April, the XRP market cap jumped by about 666% as of today, making it once again the second most valuable blockchain with a new record price of $0.3 per token.In the last 24 hours alone, the value jumped by 27% with an incredible daily trading volume of $320 million.Beating bitcoin at its own gameOne possible reason for the recent jump in the XRP/USD exchange rate is that Ripple revealed a few days ago its plans to make its cryptocurrency more decentralized than bitcoin – decentralization being one of the main selling points of the blockchain concept initially.

Ripple CTO Stefan Thomas explained: “A key benchmark that we aim to achieve is to become more decentralized than Bitcoin, which at the time of writing is 51% controlled by just five mining pools.This means the largest five pools working together could achieve a 51% attack and reverse transactions (double spend) at will.For Ethereum, this number is even lower: only three pools are needed for a takeover.To match Bitcoin, the Ripple Consensus Ledger (RCL) would need just 16 trusted validators.Add more, and the number of tolerable faults increases accordingly.In other words, RCL will not just meet, but exceed the decentralization level of other public blockchains.” xDon't stay behind!Sign up for our newsletter and get all the hottest news in your inbox daily.* First Name Last Name Email address* I would also like to receive business enhancing offers and promotionsComments Report News First NameLast NameEmail message*Name Found a mistake?First Name*Last Name*Email* message*EmailBrian, March 28, 2017June 23, 2017 ’s commitment to reserve 19% of the initial lumens—19% of the initial lumens—a total of 19 billion lumens—for people who hold bitcoin.

Today, we are announcing that for the next round, we are distributing up to 16 BILLION lumens to bitcoin holders or 16% of the initial lumens.On June 27th, 2017, we will make available these lumens to any bitcoin holder who wants them, including those that received lumens during the first giveaway round.If this is new to you, you may ask why are we doing this?When we were first designing Stellar, Bitcoin acted as a profound inspiration.The Bitcoin network was the first to show that it’s possible for a group of untrusted parties to agree on a common database, and the Bitcoin community still influences our understanding of this technology’s impact.Get notified with updates on the bitcoin-lumen program.June 26, 2017: We’ll take a snapshot of the blockchain at the first block mined with a timestamp on June 26th (UTC/GMT).This snapshot will record the coin balances of all bitcoin accounts at that time.June 27, 2017: We’ll publish a claim page, allowing bitcoin holders to verify that they control a given bitcoin address.

We will then send that address’s share of lumens to the provided Stellar account.To get a sense of the giveaway math, take Rachel as an example: At time of snapshot 16,215,950 bitcoins in existence Rachel owns 10 bitcoins Rachel can claim 16,000,000,000 * (10/16,215,950) = 9,866.83 lumens Calculation Rachel owns .00006167% of the bitcoins in existence at the time of the snapshot.Her 9,866.83 lumens therefore equals .00006167% of lumens given away.August 27th, 2017: The bitcoin lumen program will conclude.’s operational fund and to the Build Challenge.Due to regulatory restrictions, this program is closed to residents of the U.S.states of New York, Georgia, New Hampshire, and Connecticut as well as the nations of Iran, Cuba, North Korea, and other countries subject to sanctions by the United States.These restrictions are subject to change to account for changes in regulatory posture. will not participate in the bitcoin-lumen program or claim any lumens from it.

On June 27th: we will provide a link to the claim page, where you will need to complete this simple process: Most bitcoin wallets support this, including: Please note, if your bitcoins are with coinbase you won’t be able to claim your lumens.If you’re not using an exchange, then law requires us to ensure you’re not on the U.S.sanctions list or located in any of the restricted jurisdictions listed above.We’re using Facebook account verification to complete this check.We know this kind of sucks.Privacy is a top concern for the Bitcoin ecosystem. won’t use your Facebook data for any other purposes and will never post to your account.If you’d rather not share your Facebook information, you can still go through a participating exchange.Participating exchanges (we’ll update this list as exchanges contact us): If your bitcoins are located on any of the above exchanges there is no action for you to take.They will handle the process of automatically crediting your account with the appropriate amount of lumens.

If your exchange is not on the above list then you must either ask them to participate or move your bitcoins elsewhere to claim.Before June 27: If you’re an exchange or other business that holds a pool of bitcoins for customers, email from your business email.Include your hot wallet Bitcoin address, and we’ll ensure that the lumens given to that address are sent only to you.After you receive lumens, we encourage you to give them to each of your customers proportionately.Email with questions or to discuss options.In addition to distributing lumens to bitcoin holders, we have also reserved 1% of the initial lumens (1 billion) to holders of XRP.For XRP, we took a snapshot of the ripple ledger 6,762,000 (a ledger occurring May 22nd 2014).Any ripple account holder with less than 7.5 million XRP (~$50,000 USD at that time) in their account at that ledger qualifies for the giveaway.Every qualified XRP holder can participate in either one of two ways: On June 27th we will provide a link to the claim page, which will walk you through this simple process: The Stellar network is inspired by Bitcoin—we’ve taken lessons from it and added the ability to tolerate non-rational actors in an environment with low computing power.