You bring up a big issue for me, which is the forks. The forks make "Bitcoin" inflationary as opposed to deflationary. While I think the mainstream media usually gets things wrong, this is something they have pointed our that I agree with.
Also for many people crypto' s are a leap of faith. It does not instill confidence when there is basically a civil war going on in the crypto world. When Roger Ver and a few Asian exchanges and miners tried to make Bitcoin Cash the "real Bitcoin" I knew it was the beginning of the end. If Bitcoin Cash does achieve a higher market cap than BTC then it will not be the real Bitcoin, it will simply make all crypto's "alt coins" including BTC. While that may be a good thing in the long run, it will lead to a big delay in mainstream adoption of crypto's.
My fear is the last thing we need is for governments and the big banks to be given more time to coordinate their attack against crypto's.
I'm not too worried about forks or the huge amount of ICOs we're seeing. To me it's part of the development and adoption process. Although many people seem to be motivated by greed (getting rich fast without doing much for it), in the end things will start to stabilize. That might take some years, who knows.
I think it shows the options cryptos give us, that just needs to sort itself out. Good ideas and good dev teams will survive and bad ones will fall the the sides. Only after that will the real adoption process begin.
Banks and governments already realized that they cannot stop the process. When it was just a few coins, like btc and ltc, they could have tried, but with so many alternatives popping up everywhere it simply means that if they attack one, people can move to another and then another coin.
Governments and banks may want to start their own cryptos, but since they're centralized institutions, they can never really bring the strength of something decentralized like proof of work blockchain...
We live in interesting times, let's see where this (organic) process goes...
Interesting times indeed. I have no fear that blockchain will go on. It will thrive. I too have no problem with the ICO's or forks in general. I have a big problem with Bitcoin forks. To the mainstream Bitcoin IS crypto. We need the mainstream to have confidence in Bitcoin. It is "supposed" to be the rock of crypto. The "safe bet". The coin they can only make 21 million of.
There is no patent on blockchain per se. So what really gives Bitcoin value is the belief in it. It has great value because we believe it does. Those outside the crypto world need to see that confidence and conviction of those inside it.
The civil war in Bitcoin leads to skepticism not just about Bitcoin but crypto currencies in general.
The one thing we need ASAP is for there to be exchanges where you can buy many alt coins with fiat. I hope Bittrex will replace Tether with USD and make it available for all trading pairs. The sooner Alts can operate independently of BTC the better.
Good chatting with you.
Yup, I see your point. Great chat indeed, following you now :-)
Same. It's been quite informative following this thread.