For now, the race for leadership is still fully on with Bitcoin having a lead but that’s not carved in stone. It is not said that this will be the case forever. In a use case whereby ‘no fees’ micro transactions are vital, IOTA would clearly have a lead over most other cryptocurrencies, assuming they can get their clusterf* of a wallet and network stability up to standards.
Besides that, having various altcoins around with new variations and technologies popping up all the time is vital for the survival of this digital phenomenon. Adapt continuously or die. So I welcome altcoins instead of loathing them.
... I see a purpose and place for various altcoins.
You guys still talk about all these various coins in some hypothetical future where you see them being "used" for various things. But without the ONE CRITICAL thing, mass merchant adoption, they won't be used for anything other than trading. That's all. Years and years will pass by, and they won't have achieved merchant adoption on any significant level. So what then? Just trade?
There will be blockchains that will probably never get commercial adoption, and even then, they will achieve overwhelming success. In the future, only a small number of transactions will make them human, and all the rest will be machines: washing machines, refrigerators, coffee makers, luminaires, locks, cars, bionic prostheses, subcutaneous chips, etc.
Bitcoin, as a currency and refuge of decentralized value, is only the first application, the base layer of an infinity of advances that we can not even imagine.
Before, I was a bitcoin maximalist, I thought everything had to be developed on the bitcoin protocol. Today I do not believe in the same way. I have a more eceptic vision, product of the same division of the community. You yourself profess that bitcoin should not be considered a currency. Another here believe that bitcoin can not be everything for everyone. That's why I think that in the future there will be different blockchains interacting with each other, each with different uses and applications.
I think decentralization is about that.
