About the point Cuban makes, however, that the central banks won't allow btc to succeed, I seriously wonder about their intentions, first, and their ability to bring real buisness out of the crypto market for second.
When people say "the central banks and the gov't won't let crypto succeed," what they probably ought to be saying is "the banks and the gov't will absorb the technology such that independent cryptos will be pushed to the side," not the sort of Gandalf YOU SHALL NOT PASS that the statement sounds like. F'rexample, VISACoin is inevitable - it's really just a matter of time in determining how long it will take them to implement an internal blockchain (or variant thereof). The question for independent cryptos like DGB is not really a matter of how good the tech is (it's open source, VISA can just copypasta), it's what does DGB offer that VISACoin doesn't?
copy/pasta has never really worked, and big tech companies know it too. Microsoft and Apple (now Google too pretty much) have their own OSes, and they ALL suck, but they stick to them, cause it's better to have a technology you made/make than one you borrowed.
But more importantly, if VISA made a coin and that coin failed VISA would take a huge blow. It's not something you can do in a day. You may say they have so much money they don't care how late they join the game, but is that so? This year is closing with BTC pretty low, many alts joining the fray, and so on, but the cryptopaiments are becoming more mainstream by the day. The competition among cryptocurrencies will (you can bet on it) spark a rush for fiat, currencies that don't want to be left behind by doge and friends must forget about eating bitcoin holders' share, and go towards the "mainstream world" on their own.
The independence of a coin is another, huge, important factor, maybe THE factor. Not for the shopkeeper, who might not care, not for the hipster, but for the larger buisness and the bigger (even statal) players. It's true that cryptocurrencies' value dances harder than fiats, for now, but it does so because of the market. Speculators and buisnessmen are just "peers", and there's no "croupier" in the cryptocoins' game. In the Fiat (or VISA) game you have a "dealer" who set the rules. Through its history the dollar was devaluated manya and many times. The problem here is not even the "risk" of devaluation happening, but the arbitrion, there's nothing worse than knowing somebody can just make your money disappear at discretion.
All right, as a small player you may not be able to do much on, say, the BTC market, but you can more or less get what's going on, when BTC will go lower or higher, because the beast that drives bitcoin price is the market, not some dude whose intentions you can't know.
When you go to someone who has enough "money awareness" telling them to use a currency or to use YOUR currency is very different.
I also mentioned the intention. Currently the cryptocurrency world is not that big. There's plenty of bilionaires who have more money than the entire crypto market is worth, it's a little toy for them. Before the central banks (or big financial institutions) start eyeinh crypto it's necessary that its market cap rises. Not because central banks are dumb and don't see the potential of such technology, but because the various players (who are human) would see it as a very unprefessional behavior if the big institutions started playing games with this stupid little toy. And when an institution that backs the value of a currency starts playing games people leave fast!
Now when this "toy" becomes something worth taking notice central banks will sure still have enough money to play their own game, but they won't be alone. The very people dictating their policies will definitely have grabbed their share of crypto, and you can bet many states will have jumped in too!
The "real world buisness" in truth, is getting onto cryptocurrencies fast. It's interesting to see many non crypto related currencies starting to accept altcoins too. Many buisnesses accept crypto to earn "hipster support", to be fair, but point is they do.
We talk too often about the "hipster" and forget that the "conformist" is a far more common animal as @ReSI says:
Yes, I agree.
Today @ the pub i just explained a person. "Well digital currency will come. I just took my mobile showed him my app and explaind transaction in 2 sentence."
He was interested we got a bit deeper into conversation and in the end (5 minutes) he just trow this question:
We got FIAT why we need Digital Currency?
The advantage of crypto is obvious. Recharge paypal trough the bank, pay the paypal fees, wait for bank wire transfers, make a visa card. That's very annoying stuff! However most people, especially old people, will keep doing what "everyone does". Comupters were still a hipster thing 20 years ago over here, it was not a matter of price, who'd use that weird box? You did "real buisness" by phone or in person, pc was, for most people, just a toy. People then started using it as tyewriter etc etc etc.
The conformist goes where he thinks the majority is going (oh, just look at parties' electoral spot, they spend more time telling people they'll win than what they'll do, and it works, that's herd mentality at its best, vote a dude cause most people vote that dude).
But when "most" people start using cryptocurrencies everything goes in reverse, the dam of conformism breaks and th majotity switches in a year time. It'll be very hard for any actor to set their own pace to the game.
