To date bitcoin has not only the largest market capitalization in all of cryptocurrency, it has a market cap so large that it controls nearly 70% of the entire industry. The fact is no other project has ever come close to being able to overtake it.

For years claims have been made that eventually something better will come along but the truth is, better things have come along and still they just can't compete. There are logical reasons behind this but it seems the masses just can't wrap their heads around it.

We know that not just some projects, but actually the majority of projects can do more transactions per second than bitcoin can. We know that projects have come along and created more energy efficient protocols such as proof of stake or proof of capacity. Yet nothing has ever come close to bitcoin's market cap.

In 2016 and 2017 many people in ethereum claimed a "flippening" was going to take place. This was the belief that ether could overtake bitcoin in market capitalization but looking back that never happened and not only did it not happen, it was never even close to happening.

The question is, why does bitcoin have such a commanding control over the industry?

There are actually several factors as to the reasons why and that's what I want to talk about.

Decentralization

First of all is decentralization. A lot of people will try to argue bitcoin has lost its decentralization because of large mining pools and corporate control over mining, but this was always expected and it doesn't actually stop the currency from being decentralized.

It has been proven time and time again that despite the control over mining, the miners will do whatever is demanded by the users. This of course makes a lot of sense as if the users are not happy with the direction that bitcoin is going, there are a ton of other options that they can switch to. So despite any control miners are claimed to have, they are still at the whim of the users.

Although bitcoin is not the only decentralized technology, it is one of the few top projects that can claim it is completely decentralized. A lot of people would argue that Ether, the closest runner up to bitcoin is also decentralized but the truth is as decentralized as the technology is, the public at large does not actually see it as decentralized.

One of the things that was really smart about the creation of bitcoin was that Satoshi Nakamoto remained anonymous and then left the project early on. This is one of the biggest reasons that bitcoin is viewed as more decentralized than that of ethereum.

If one researches, they can easily see why I claim the ethereum project is not viewed as decentralized in the public eye. Back in June of 2017 the ether value crashed. It crashed due to a rumor that its founder Vitalik Buterin had died. In the course of a single day, ether saw a loss of over 4 billion dollars in total market capitalization.

This means despite the technology being technically decentralized, the public at large and those invested in ether and the ethereum project see the entire project's success centralized around Buterin. This is very different than those invested in BTC. BTC has seen major developers and companies come and go from the Bitcoin Core development team. There is no single entity or person tied to its success.

This is one of the many important key aspects of why bitcoin has such a commanding lead. Its also a very valid argument as to why coins like Facebook's Libra don't stand a chance. People involved with cryptocurrency want decentralization.

Media Domination

Next on the agenda of bitcoin dominance is media domination. It can't be argued, bitcoin controls the media. Hardly a day goes by where crypto news sites don't mention Bictoin in their posts. Sure they talk about other cryptocurrencies but none come even remotely close to being talked about as much as bitcoin.

Outside of cryptocurrency news site, even mainstream media talks about bitcoin and this is not something many other coins can claim.

In most first world countries if you ask if people have heard of cryptocurrency at this point, you will hear the answer is "yes". However when asking what cryptocurrency is, the majority think Bitcoin IS cryptocurrency.

They may have heard of Libra in recent days, but they have not heard of bitcoin cash, ethereum, EOS, ripple, monero, nor any other cryptocurrencies. For the most part they associate all crypto with bitcoin.

The reason is, when it comes to mainstream media, the major networks are not talking about any other coins.

No Distractions

Although bitcoin is not alone in not having this feature, at this point it's a feature most new blockchains want - networks that can create tokens backed by smart contracts.

The problem is most people don't really see a need for smart contracts and not a whole lot of smart contracts have shown a valid reason for them to exist. Smart contracts generally only have two purposes. The first of those reasons is to issue tokens. However practically a smart contract is not needed to issue tokens.

Plenty of platforms exist where you can just click a few buttons and tokens are generated and you are free to distribute those tokens any way you see fit, no contract is needed at all to generate them.

The second reason is mostly for purchasing things. For example a few games have been created where you can earn and spend tokens within the game. The smart contracts are used as means of ensuring the end user cannot be cheated.

However the claims of smart contracts has always been so much more. This picture has been painted where one day in the future you will be able to rent a home and the entire thing will be maintained by a smart contract where funds will be in a wallet and if you stop paying then your home can get locked so you don't have access until you pay the rent.

The reality is, smart contracts are not legally binding. Using the above as an example, if you were in America with such a contract, a huge legal issue arises because its actually illegal to lock someone out of their home, and a landlord cannot evict a tenant for lack of payment without a court order. In some states the battle to remove tenants can go on for many months.

All of this boils down to not legally enforceable contracts that may border on illegal depending on how they are used.

So really smart contracts are not yet a point most people care.

How does this relate to bitcoin dominance over the markets? Well it means bitcoin transactions are not bogged down by tokens and contracts that as of yet have no serious need. There are no distractions when it comes to bitcoin. It is money. There is no other purpose of it.

Merchant Acceptance

Perhaps the most important thing that keeps bitcoin well above all other cryptocurrency is the merchant acceptance.

No other token or coin is more accepted on a global scale than that of bitcoin. There are literally hundreds of thousands of places to spend bitcoin with merchants in every nation that exists.

In nearly all instances if you find a merchant accepts cryptocurrency, bitcoin is on the list of what they are willing to accept - if they accept any other type of cryptocurrency at all.

Some other cryptos have tried to break into this area but most have failed. In the cases that they have not failed it is extremely rare you would find a cryptocurrency as an accepted form of payment and the merchant not accept bitcoin.

In many cases, such as is the case with one of the most used merchant accounts, that of bitpay, the only option a merchant has is to accept bitcoin or bitcoin cash. No other altcoins are even offered.

Equally when it comes to offline shopping, point of sale software such as squareup only offer bitcoin and credit cards as an option. These types of point of sale systems are what you would find when sitting at a table in a restaurant where you see a tablet like device where you can swipe a card and checkout - or in the case of bitcoin scan a QR payment code to checkout.

Historically businesses are not quick to adopt things and when they do, they are not quick to replace them. Its only been within the last 15 years that many corporations have gotten rid of massive giant computers called mainframes and replaced them with more modern networks and personal computers. In some places you will still see those old mainframes.

If they can't even get rid of technology that has been outdated for over 40 years, they are certainly not going to keep switching to the latest and greatest cryptocurrency technology. This means if they are already accepting bitcoin the likeliness of them switching to another currency or adding another cryptocurrency to the mix, is simple very far off from happening.

Government Acceptance

A lot of people will overlook this do to the fact that bitcoin has no specific regulations but the truth is many governments have embraced bitcoin, or at the very least attempted to embrace it.

Take for instance the state of Arizona in the US who attempted to pass regulations that would allow people to pay taxes with their bitcoin. Granted that legislation did not pass but it shows the world, that some governments are attempting to take bitcoin seriously which is not something a whole lot of other coins can say.

Obviously this isn't limited to just the US. Japan was the first country to really legitimize bitcoin by completely recognizing bitcoin as a payment method.

It's these little things that sets bitcoin ahead of all other currencies and makes it very hard for any other technology in cryptospace, no matter how advanced, to really compete with bitcoin.

This isn't to say that bitcoin will forever be the leader of the pack, but certainly for the foreseeable future other coins have a lot of work to do and a long way to come before they will be able to overtake the bitcoin market capitalization.