Este Nuno, kbm
It's not completely unreasonable. The alt-coins dilute the value of the accepted currency. In other words, when they are first created, they have a comparative trade value which over time is either endorsed or abandoned, just like a foreign paper currency on the monetary exchange. When a foreign currency implodes, it drags down the value of all the other currencies because that currency was traded away for realer goods, which raises their relative value against all currencies. We'll use BTC as the example for illustration:
A new crypto-coin is announced, it is mined and exchanged (ie: dumped) for BTC establishing a relationship of relative value. Now, what happens when that alt-coin dies? This is the downward pressure we see in the price of BTC. The closer we move toward a global economy, the closer we move toward a natural monetary monopoly and if the world population decides that crypto-coin will be the preferred medium of exchange, why is it unreasonable to assume that one surviving coin will be it?
I think it's completely unreasonable to assume the eventual demise of all other altcoins. It doesn't make any sense at all to me.
Many people still question whether Bitcoin itself will end up being the market leader 10, 20 years from now. People are never going to stop trying to innovate in the currency space now that Bitcoin has opened people's imaginations(and wallets).
I agree with yldouright: you are not talking about money, you are talking about assets or standards.
There are some things who welcome competition and use it to promote innovation, while there are other things that are strong aggregators with a positive feedback loop: the more people use a coin the more that coin is useful (same thing happens with social network, for instance).
This will not completely eraticate every altcoin imaginabile, but is a very strong disincentive.
Sure, there will be one dominant form on money in the world in the future. But I don't think we're ever going to see a monopoly happen. There are lots of niche cases that come up and people will always try to fill those needs. Also, people will always try to compete to become the market leader, even if thousands of failed before them. That is as long as the barriers to entry stay as low as they are now.
. If I ever want that one I guess I'll have to just buy it, unless something funky comes up. It looks like it has some interest from a lot of people here. I think I'm going to try it out today to see how it works, but it looks like the solo-mining window is out of reach now (for me), plus I'm still undecided if I like it. It has had a lot of recognition from the first block. It's crazy that 30 CPU's dont even get one block though, do you think someone's already made a GPU miner for it?
