True -- it's going to be some time before we're all checking out at Walmart, paying our bar tabs, ordering pizza, etc. with ZCash or whatever.

BUT: That is one of the promising possibilities of cryptocurrency, and it seems to me that it's the Holy Grail of such possibilities. And it seems to be the one that the Bitcoin white paper was aiming for.

Obviously as Bitcoin grew, speculation in its increasing value was going to drive that growth, but it wasn't created for speculation purposes.

And obviously Bitcoin was also suitable as a settlement layer for large money moves, but that wasn't what "Satoshi Nakamoto" had in mind as its primary purpose.

Bitcoin was supposed to be used for ordering pizza, checking out at Walmart, paying bar tabs AND as a high-end settlement layer, and speculation on its price fluctuations was just to be expected.

But once the big players decided to shit the bed on the scaling problem, that big first use case started disappearing as fees grew and waits lengthened. I don't think that the speculation prices can hold up long term under such conditions. At some point, either Bitcoin speeds up and gets reasonable fees again, or its price plunges and stays down, while some faster, cheaper competitor takes its place as the marquee crypto.

If I had a lot of money to invest in crypto, I'd probably go include Bitcoin Cash in my portfolio. Since I don't, I'm heavy on Ethereum because I think it will last and on Steem because I can earn it instead of shelling out fiat for it.