We are looking at a repeat of business cycle here. We look at Paypal, eBay, and Amazon. These successful portals have successfully build an ecosystem around themselves, ranging from payment integration, online shopping, and they are almost one of the cornerstones of the internet and laid the foundation of e-commerce. Many small business entities have a business model that is tightly integrated around these internet giants. Even hobbyists who uses internet as a sideline source of income embraces Paypal and eBay for their needs.
Even Apple has successfully build a sphere of influence and many citizens depended on them for a living - we are talking about Apple Mac experts, Film makers who uses Final Cut and a new breed of Apple iOS developers. All of them depended on Apple for a living.
If we were to bring the same rational to the realm of cryptocurrencies, it is not likely any of the new coins (including Ether) is going to be successful in the near future unless there is an ecosystem around them. Building an ecosystem is unlike constructing a new building. It requires a vision and fulfillment of a need. So, if Bitcoin as a cryptocurrency is able to fulfill this need, where will other coins stand?
Effectively, an ecosystem is needed to make the crypto-asset successful. Most successful portals have prevailed by building an ecosystem that backs-up around themselves, thereby ensuring that trustworthy data can be provided to interested parties who want to audit the system. It’s like having a sphere of influence that will serve as the eyes of the many nodes functioning.