Yes the smartbridge technology is what interests me in Ark too. Being able to handle other coins from a platform is great! But on the flipside, a lot of projects have devised ways of handling other cryptocurrencies through wrapping them in tokens. I'm not sure what Ark does differently, except market it better? (which is important of course)
Stratis' focus on privacy is actually because of businesses. Businesses like blockchain but they don't want all of their private information open and public to everybody (like the competition). I think this is actually why Ethereum wants to implement privacy features too. As for NEO, they have a similar but different approach. NEO itself won't have privacy features, but the parent company OnChain will create private blockchains for enterprise, which are then able to interact with the public and open NEO blockchain. So privacy does play a role for all of them, in fact, except NEO seperates the two into two kinds of blockchain and the other two try to create a hybrid formula.
The fact that the Tumblr can mix bitcoin is more of a side benefit to the focus on privacy, I believe. The fact that Bitcoin whales may want a Tumblr is more of an added attraction to speculating on STRAT.
But like I said before, I could do without STRAT. Looking for an exit but I'm not sure where. I bought my STRAT when they were 170-230K satoshis. Now it's all the way down to 63K satoshis and it has been a lot lower. In dollars I'm 'okay' but just calculate how much I lost in BTC and it's enough to make one cry!
I feel your pain on STRAT, but like you said, may as well hang in there till the new year. My friend bought a load at the top of the market also. He was going to offload them today, but told him the same. Sure if you're down already, may as well see if it sneaks back up.
I think Smartbridges are slightly different than wrapping tokens and atomic swaps as you'll access the other chains from Ark itself. That gives you a better "get-out" if one of the chains starts becoming unsecured or you need to use multiple chain features at the same time. Only time will tell, but having read up on it and earning my PHD in understanding mental crypto developer talk, I'm well up for it.
Great point you make on Stratis needing privacy for business! Can't believe I missed the whole memo there.... Didn't even think about the impact of public eyes watching the money in or out of the business or worse, execution of contracts! Guess I've been looking with innocent eyes till now thinking about pure Dapp development and wondering why no one has built a kittens game on the......ahhhhh yeahh, that's not worked out well for the chain eh lol!
I only heard about Cryptokittens the other night. Still trying to take it all in. They're like stickers of cats eh! Gotta catch em all! (does that work in this context?)
Well the thing that keeps nagging me about Stratis is how the chart looks like it's widening (when you zoom out completely). Holding is kind of a gamble for me.. it's either going to flop and stay this point or it may blow up big like the first time it blew up big.
I'm confident in my other holdings to make up for any losses STRAT brings.
Rejoicing with IOTA right now.. bought in at $0.28...! Too bad it was one of my smaller holdings, although it is bigger now :)