The buzz around Bitcoin lately has focused solely on its price. But where is Bitcoin heading?

What is the future path for Bitcoin?

The number one issue on anyone's minds who have been around Bitcoin for a while has to be scalability - now more than ever. Yes, it's true, when Bitcoin is just a "store" of value, being clumsy, big, and slow isn't a huge problem. But, if it gets to a point where it's barely useable, it's a big problem. Plus, if it is intended to be used as a peer-to-peer cash system, it should be cheaper and faster to transact than it currently is. The failed SegWit2X upgrade was one attempt at addressing this problem. The original SegWit upgrade, which is already enabled in Bitcoin, should help. This will enable pay channels alongside Bitcoin that will ease traffic on the main chain. It is possible that this could greatly help with scalability, but it's too early to say, for sure. Most exchanges and wallets are not yet implementing SegWit, so it's a bit of a waiting game.

The Lightning network could also help tremendously with scalability issues. Again, it is early days, but this may also enable much faster transactions and interaction between other supported currencies. With SegWit and Lightning, Bitcoin might just make good progress in its scaling problem.

Bitcoin will also address some interesting use-cases with the implementation of Rootstock. This will enable a side-chain, pegged to Bitcoin, that is able to run smart contracts. This could potentially open Bitcoin to a plethora of new applications. It will boost its utility in many different scenarios, connecting Bitcoin deeply with the "Internet of things".

A significant future development of Bitcoin is its inevitable further forking. Of course, many Bitcoin forks could succeed and find great utility in the future. But this may also serve to dilute the value of Bitcoin itself. This may harm the Bitcoin "brand" in a sense. On the other hand, it could be that Bitcoin becomes the groundwork, the foundation for many forks of many different use-cases that will be sorted between failure and success by the free market, much like the internet itself spawned many great companies along with many failures. Perhaps Bitcoin will be the underlying network to support all of these future applications.

So stop and consider the future of Bitcoin, not just the price. Where will we see Bitcoin in 5, 10, or 15 years? I'm guessing a lot of places where we do not expect it. The future will be very interesting, indeed!

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