Even though 2019 ended on a lull for Bitcoin, it remained one of the best-performing assets for the decade, as well as comfortably the strongest and most robust cryptocurrency. Bitcoin’s dominance, popularity and performance over altcoins have been far superior in most aspects.

The last altcoin season came with the attachment and growth of the ICO fever through 2017, but since then, Bitcoin has remained on top, and in 2019 even started heading towards 80 percent over the entire market.

Altcoins have exploded, reached their pinnacle, fallen back down sharply, but struggled to regenerate as well as Bitcoin. It makes one wonder if an altcoin season will ever blossom again, and if it does, what will be the catalyst. However, if it does not, what are the reasons Bitcoin remains so comfortably at the top.

To answer that last question, it is important to look at what makes Bitcoin, Bitcoin. What makes the major cryptocurrency sp prefered to other coins – especially as it is the original and there have been 10 years of potential improvements to be made from other blockchains.

In the blockchain space, a killer application has yet to be realized, especially one that utilizes the tokenomics of the industry. Cryptocurrency remains the best use of the technology, and for that reason, monetary blockchains like Bitcoin are still key.

Ethereum and the ‘World Computer’ type blockchains are meant to be the major competition to the Bitcoin but have failed to perform on the level many would have hoped in the mainstream.

Bitcoin does boast some key competitive advantages that can not be repeated by other coins at the moment, such as being a decentralized transfer of value, its scarcity, the robustness of the blockchain and the lack of any corporate governance.

Scarcity is one aspect of Bitcoin that has been in the news recently, and especially with 2020 now upon us, as the mining reward halving is set to take place in May. This will have a profound effect on the scarcity of Bitcoin and should drive the demand for the coin higher.

This in itself plays a role for scarcity without demand is nothing. Bitcoin has garnered the biggest following as the oldest blockchain and cryptocurrency and thus its scarcity makes it more desirable. Not many other coins have the same, global, reach as Bitcoin.

For the other coins trying to compete, they have a number of areas to try and best Bitcoin on – and currently, there just does not seem to be a way towards that.