I think this conclusion is correct. I can think of two reasons why no other token has been able to surpass Bitcoin:
- Network effects arising as a result of having many crypto markets which use BTC as the base currency. This gives BTC a lot of exposure on trading platforms. BTC is therefore a gateway to the crypto ecosystem; kind of like a reserve currency.
- Most big mainstream investors don't have any interest in advancing the field. Their main concern is preventing crypto from disrupting their existing corporate interests. They will buy a majority stake in a crypto and then encourage founders to waste time and resources... They want to create jobs to keep developers busy on useless activities; that way these developers are not competing with corporate interests. Also, because all these wasteful crypto projects occupy all the top rankings on coinmarketcap and occupy most investors' trading screens, it prevents smaller, more promising projects from getting any attention so it prevents the crypto industry from becoming disruptive. (Though at best this will probably only delay things by a decade or so until new exchanges start launching and start listing different non-mainstream tokens).
Much of the BTC as base currency isn’t actually BTC on the blockchain - but “BTC” held by the exchange and transferred between customers via a database and NOT on chain.
- Network effects arising as a result of having many crypto markets which use BTC as the base currency. This gives BTC a lot of exposure on trading platforms. BTC is therefore a gateway to the crypto ecosystem; kind of like a reserve currency.
- Most big mainstream investors don't have any interest in advancing the field. Their main concern is preventing crypto from disrupting their existing corporate interests. They will buy a majority stake in a crypto and then encourage founders to waste time and resources... They want to create jobs to keep developers busy on useless activities; that way these developers are not competing with corporate interests. Also, because all these wasteful crypto projects occupy all the top rankings on coinmarketcap and occupy most investors' trading screens, it prevents smaller, more promising projects from getting any attention so it prevents the crypto industry from becoming disruptive. (Though at best this will probably only delay things by a decade or so until new exchanges start launching and start listing different non-mainstream tokens).