The limited understanding of digital assets that existed after the origination of the blockchain lead us toward the creation, pageantry and pursuit of potential Bitcoin alternatives.
This ideology has proven to be non-beneficial since bitcoin has continued to flourish and grow. Today bitcoin enjoys a huge share of all dollars invested into the digital asset market. This signifies the immensely important role that bitcoin actually performs in this industry.
Bitcoin is an important doorway through which everyone who wishes to participate in the digital asset market must pass.
Altcoins have been incorrectly placed into the role of bitcoin alternatives, when actually it would serve us better to see altcoins more as assets that are symbiotically linked with bitcoin. In this light the door is opened for a different kind of innovation to occur — one that seeks to amplify this relationship.
Competition or combination?
Fundamentally altcoins are assets that give you something to do with your bitcoins. But then, what do you do with the altcoin that you have purchased?
Altcoins typically find sustenance from price speculation. Many have presented the argument that the only thing that can be done with an altcoin is to sell it for bitcoin. As such, once the speculative value of a particular alternative currency begins to wane, its user base deteriorates at a fast rate.
The idea that an altcoin should be positioned in such a way as to compete with bitcoin only hastens this process of abandonment once it loses speculative value because, perception wise it has failed to “replace” bitcoin as the leading digital asset.
Observing this, it could be suggested that the notion of a bitcoin alternative should be revaluated. It should be admitted that Bitcoin is the dominant force in this market due to the sheer amount of users that populate its network and, it should no longer be ignored that not one “alternative” to bitcoin has succeeded in displacing it.
Since competing with bitcoin is an expedition toward failure and abandonment, efforts should no longer be lent to moving in this direction. Instead it might be wiser to lend more energy to developing use case scenarios for digital assets — in essence, providing better and more beneficial things that people can do with these assets.
The Meridian Combination
Meridian is not a bitcoin alternative that is positioned to compete with bitcoin for market share. Instead Meridian is a system that is built to be used in combination with bitcoin.
Meridian is designed to serve a niche purpose and therefore to tackle a specific task; the distribution of bitcoin loans.
The overall goal of the Meridian project is to make it easier for bitcoin loans to be circulated and tracked on a global scale.
The Meridian service offers users the opportunity to procure a loan of up to 1 Bitcoin at a time. To qualify for a loan users must pledge a certain amount of Meridian tokens as digital collateral.
Users benefit from this since they are able to pledge Meridian tokens to procure a Bitcoin loan of higher value.
This arrangement also brings benefit to creditors since Meridian tokens have the ability to appreciate or depreciate in value.
Simply, if a borrower fails to complete his repayments he forfeits his Meridian tokens. So not only can the original loan amount be regained but an excess of this amount can be gained via value appreciation of the Meridian tokens that were originally pledged as collateral.
More information
To join the Meridian ICO, you are invited to visit myMDN.io where you can register to participate in the Meridian Crowdsale that will take place on 12 October 2017.
Investors can buy MDN tokens during the pre-sale on 12 October 2017, and then trade them on all alternative currency exchanges.
