According to the book Positioning, yes, it is psychological. The first brand in any particular category will generally stay in the first position in the public's mind, which can generally only hold the top three names per category, seven at most. So, in marketing, it's smarter to position your brand as number two, next to number one. Maybe the "Lightning Network" will indeed make Bitcoin the best, whether or not it actually is, without a layer two built on top.
Have to check that book out, thanks for that! Yes I think I've seen it referred to as being the prime mover in an industry and soaking up the sales/business. It might make transactions quicker which would be better but I think the utility of other blockchains will help them surpass Bitcoin long term. Time will tell!
Yes, it's Positioning: The Battle For Your Mind by Al Ries and Jack Trout. I read it 25 years ago. The human mind can only hold and categorize so many brands, and seems to narrow everything down to three per category. Coke, Pepsi and ... can you even remember the third? Coke is apparently best for taking rust of fenders. I hear that Polygon is getting popular, then find out it's a layer two on Ethereum. So that is it's category, layer two, positioned next to Bitcoins lightning network. Ethereum is positioned number two against Bitcoin as a layer one. It's trying to beat BTC by having more uses on layer two. But i tend to agree with Michael Saylor on this. Anyway, Litecoin was one of the first to position itself next to BTC, as four times faster. But Saylor points out that faster will not be the main attraction for a layer one, rather security. Look what has happened to Litecoin. Now that Ethereum is POS, it is probably in it's own category now, number one in that category.
I was just thinking the other day that BTC is getting close to reaching the 1.5x decade time-line. In the speeding world of cryptos, that's pretty ancient, and one can argue has stood the test of time. However, unless smart-contracts are banned, I still prefer to put 95%+ into ETH.
According to Saylor, Ethereum's recent big change makes it essentially brand new, and now needs yet another decade to pass the test of time.
I am quite happy to sit on my staking dividends (3-4% APR) for the next decade In fact, I'm about to violate my recent rule regarding no more purchasing of cryptos, and start filling up even more ETH. However, as for my registered-accounts, I am still focusing primarily on real-estate based securities such as REITs. The bookvalues are stupidly undervalued right now. I am not expecting that to last forever. We can sit here all day, every day and try to evaluate exactly what BTC/ETH's intrinsic values are, HOWEVER, at least you can tell RIGHT NOW exactly how much unit equity there is by the financial statements of the REITs. You will not get 100x-1000x rewards on them in the next decade, but at least you know there is a very high chance it's an excellent bargain.
RC Cola, man! Royal Crown tastes way better than the other two (to me), but it gets buried under the marketing and advertising might of Coke and Pepsi.
Yes, one of the points in the book is newer/other brands can possibly be better, but it's hard to break into the first and second position once they are established. It might be one reason the crypto market has a 90+ correlation to the SP500 or the Nasdaq or Dow as a "risk asset", like a stock, instead of inflation hedge asset as digital gold. Not even gold is acting properly as such.
Indeed perhaps that is what Ethereum was angling for as a bi-product of moving over the POS as well as the obvious other benefits of leaving POW behind.