I've been digging deeper into the Decentraland project. I think this team can really make this grand vision happen. (They are leagues ahead of some of the other "VR on the blockchain" projects out there -- which shall remain nameless -- that only have a white paper and a website, and no experience in this industry).

Decentraland has struck up important partnerships with other respected blockchain projects too. For example:

District0x to support the sale and resale of Land in the Decentraland world: https://blog.district0x.io/decentraland-districts-40b9ada0431b

Aragon to enable decentralized governance within the Decentraland world: https://aragon.one/

This article does a great job of explaining these partnerships and the overall plan for MANA tokens and LAND in Decentraland: https://vrscout.com/news/decentraland-metaverse-blockchain/#

With the token sale coming up on August 17th, this is one to watch.

Here's an article they posed about how to participate: https://blog.decentraland.org/how-to-participate-in-the-decentraland-token-sale-1833cf0b8137

I'm very excited for the upcoming token sale. The team behind this project really knows their stuff and has been active in the blockchain world for years. They've posted their smart contract code online and had it audited -- both good signs: https://blog.zeppelin.solutions/decentraland-mana-token-audit-ee56a6bca708

Plus one of the guys behind OpenZeppelin, which a lot of ICO-related ventures use as the basis for their contracts, is on the board: https://blog.decentraland.org/introducing-the-decentraland-team-3071f7c947a

The slack channel is very active too.

Not to mention, this could be the start of the Metaverse! 

I agree with the previous posts about governments not being able to stop cryptocurrencies, but they can definitely make them harder to use in certain countries.

In the US, the SEC is making noise about regulating ICO's at some point: https://news.bitcoin.com/sec-eyes-initial-coin-offerings-for-regulatory-oversight/

Already more than one Altcoin company has said they won't offer coins to US citizens during the initial sale, because the legal implications aren't clear. For example: https://www.bitquence.com/global-remittance-and-transactions/bitquence-token-sale-not-available-in-the-u-s/

It will just take one really high-profile ICO scam to get the US regulatory authorities to act more strongly.

I think that ETH has too much momentum to die any time soon. But since much of its recent price increase was fueled by ICO's, there could be a major price correction if or when the SEC decides to regulate ICO's in the future. Bitcoin wouldn't be affected as strongly, of course, since it's not known as an ICO crowdfunding platform.