This was Bitcoin’s big year, but where does it go from here?

Sizing up Bitcoin is a tall order. Even as the price of one bitcoin soared above $10,000, a debate raged over what, exactly, Bitcoin is: A digital store of value, a revolutionary payment platform, or the promise of a completely new, blockchain-based financial system.

The truth is that Bitcoin is all of those things, but whether it’ll succeed as all three — or any of them — remains to be seen.

The most important problem these upgrades were supposed to fix bitcoin’s biggest problem—that it’s escalating popularity had exposed an underlying issue with Bitcoin’s distributed database. The issue limited just how much Bitcoin could process at any one time, making the network congested and transactions expensive (not to mention power-hungry).

Put simply, while Bitcoin has exploded in value and popularity, the base technology has remained stagnant. And that casts a shadow on its future — right when competition among cryptocurrencies is on fire.

More >>>