Doesn't really matter if a coin been mined or just created out of the thin air and distributed on some fancy way, if there are no real world services for it.
^ This. Mining is fetishized in this community, to me it's just a means to an end. People forget what attracts the mainstream to Bitcoin is not how the coins are created but the end use of it.
Non-minable coins rely mostly on unreliable dev and investors, there is basically no future to them, because anybody going to these coins are only interested in short term profit (and no mining means also no string attached... you don't need to buy or sell hardware or anything... ), there is nothing in that which would bring confidence in those coins to make them mainstream... (well even if you reinvent again and again silkroad... )
No, you invest in the coins themselves and hold them like equities which pay a dividend. There is an investment, just not in hardware and electricity.
Don't get me wrong, I'm a gpu miner with several rigs running 24/7 and happy as a clam with how eth is rolling up. However, I am also openminded and see the advantages of POS, so I'm also building a stake in Ripple using my mined eth.
BTC has become centralized by the four major pools in China. China is well known as a currency manipulator so expect more of the same for BTC in the future.
BTC and ETH have both proven to be archaic at this point. When their networks get flooded they can't handle it well. Some transactions taking days is exactly what it wasn't intended to be. I don't know what THE coin(s) will ultimately be, but I do know it won't be BTC, ETH, LTC, or BTH. Maybe IOTA, Ripple, Steem, Walton... who knows. Maybe we'll get a better handle on it by 2018/19.
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