I have come to believe that ideologically based altcoins are the future. Bitcoin started as an ideological movement against the banks, i.e. to distribute the power of money creation into the hands of the people and eliminate the need for a middleman to process payments. Now, I think bitcoin itself is mostly played out, because people have discovered that anyone can create their own competing currency using similar technology and some new ones are being created which improve upon the flaws of bitcoin.
Two of the main flaws of bitcoin are that the money creation process wastes energy and that most of the bitcoins are concentrated in the hands of the earliest adopters. Both of these flaws prevent many people who would otherwise be likely to support bitcoin from doing so.
I think new cryptocurrencies will rise which offer solutions to those problems. The best attempt I've seen so far is SolarCoin (
solarcoin.org), which distributes 99.5% of the currency to producers of solar energy, thus providing an economic incentive for people around the world to switch to a clean renewable energy source and help the environment. Only 0.5% of the currency is reserved for the founders and early adopters such as miners, so the main intention of this currency is not to enrich a small group of people.
In my opinion, altcoins which are based on promoting some philanthropic goal, such as solar power or whatever else, are going to be the future of cryptocurrency. Most normal people are never going to embrace crypto unless it is seen as doing some good in the world; otherwise, might as well just use regular money. Bitcoin itself has acquired too much of an image of shady business (drugs, tax evasion, corrupt exchanges) and early adopters getting filthy rich by hoarding coins. With that image, it's not going to catch on with the general public. Look for a few high-quality altcoins with philanthropic purposes to catch on instead, if crypto has much of a future.
