Apple had a better operating system than Microsoft, but Windows took 90% of the market.
Betamax was better than VCR, but Betamax wasn't widely adopted.
Bitcoin is the brand name in the space. The coins have no intrinsic value except market acceptance. So being in the leader position is huge. Most of the ecosystem is being built for bitcoin, not the alt currencies.
Perhaps LTC stands a chance of being a complementary currency.
And do you know the reason WHY ms-dos/windows took more market share than mac?
They didnt try to take the hardware as well, and thus had THIRD PARTIES selling their OS for them.
Do you know how I learned about bitcoin? Not by meeting a bitcoin miner, not by visiting btc-e and checking the exchange rate, but by needing an alternative to libertyreserve, visiting a Third Party merchant website, and seeing that they gave a discount if you bought with bitcoins.
All the alt coins are crap because they arent the standard. As if it isnt hard enough to start a fucking currency with no government or traditional financial support people have to go around bickering over whether to use scrypt or sha. Really? Its practically the same, just take the first one so cryptocurrency critics cant turn around when litecoin or whatever coin and say "itll die out just like bitcoin" and work together for once in our fucking lives and make something actually happen. Dont bitch and try to be hipsters among a group of hipsters and use an alt coin just for the sake of being a hipster.
If ANYTHING can kill cryptocurrencies as a concept, its the introduction of too many of them. Plz stop it already and try to aid the one cryptocurrency that has the greatest chance od success because its actually, you know, USED.Oh right. Just like every other product/invention ever made.
Oh noez too many auto companies, software companies, food product companies...they are all going to crash because there is too many of them.
Bitcoin is still a pea in an ocean. There is tons of capital all around the world that can still come into the crypto currency arena and you are already claiming that cryptocurrencies will die because there are too many of them?
The idea of a cryptocurrency is out of the bag. The genie has been let out. Just because Bitcoin is the first does
not mean:
1. That it is the only viable option.
2. That no other alternative could come out and be successful
3. That if others like it are created that it would kill cryptocurrencies altogther.
This is laughable. The logic fail is epic.
Edit: Even precious metals that were used as money had 2. Gold and silver. And that was decided by the free market.
If people accept something as payment, it doesn't matter what you think or call it, that is the free market working.