Anything less than 3 years to measure success just wastes your time and gives bad results
I disagree. It might have taken bitcoin years before it had any value but the landscape has changed. Three years to measure success is ridiculous. Cryptocurrencies are no longer just some geeky experiment like bitcoin was when it started. The foundation has been poured. Those building on that foundation will need to move quickly or get left behind. Bitcoins history is just that. To be successful going forward, a cryptocurrency will need to rapidly deploy features people want, create an infrastructure that will support it, and users willing to adopt it. If a currency doesn't accomplish those things it will go nowhere.
I think one of the reasons for the exodus out of altcoins is that people have been speculating on the next bitcoin. It's become apparent to many that the majority of all altcoins are just quick schemes to make money. They all promise this and that, new features coming, etc... None of the promises have come true. None of the altcoins have succeeded in gaining any significant adoption and most likely none of them will.
If any cryptocurrency wants to be around in three years then it needs to offer something people want and it needs to offer it now. If it doesn't it won't be around in three years, monero included.
Telling people it might take three years is like shooting yourself in the foot. People aren't going to do that. They are already losing patience
as proven by the recent selling. People want results now. That's just a fact of life.
rpietila is correct. It is not surprising that he hails from an extreme northern cold-climate culture which has developed heroic standards for delayed gratification.
Large, long-lived complex systems like elephants and humans have extensive gestation and pre-adolsescent growth periods.
Monero hasn't even been born yet and is still a fetus. Its price is based on ultrasound readings, not direct observation.
We are in the 650 day process of growing a wise crypto-elephant, not a 30 day rush job to pop out a vapid scamcoin chipmunk.
When Monero is finally delivered, it will have well developed advantageous features (GUI/DB/webwallet) which will allow it to survive in the wild:
http://www.bbc.com/news/health-18507515It would be nice if all the impatient bedwetting toddlers would make good on their threats to sell their Monero and leave.
But they won't, because despite all their noisy threats and temper tantrums, they want to be where the cool older kids are.
For better or worse, we just have to put up with the little parasites' incessant demands for instant gratification.