Newbie's perception of the cryptocurrency market

[exapted]

This is my first post.

For fun, I'm going to post my relatively uninformed perceptions of the realm of cryptocurrencies.

1) Bitcoin is visionary and because it is like a brand now, it will continue to dominate the cryptocurrencies market.
2) It is plausible that everyone would suddenly exchange Bitcoin for another cryptocurrency, causing Bitcoin to die.
3) Litecoin offers better security and faster transaction confirmation, but that's not enough to get people to transfer much of their value to Litecoin. Future innovations in cryptocurrency will matter more to users than the differences between Bitcoin and Litecoin. Most Bitcoin users do not mind waiting an extra few minutes for transaction confirmation, and most investors probably don't consider the possibility of a 51% attack on Bitcoin.
4) Anonymity is valuable, so the first cryptocurrency to adopt the featureset of Zerocoin will get a lot of attention.
5) Ripple agents will experience market success before open-transactions takes off, and threaten the future of cryptocurrencies.

My goals are to compose some programs for automated exchange and payment, get a good understanding of the cryptocurrencies market and to learn how cryptocurrencies work. I'm also really interested in Zerocoin and similar efforts.

[Drug5bitz]

What is zerocoin? That's one I haven't heard of. As for Ripple, fuck it plain and simple. It's not a real crypto it's big business getting a piece of pie.

[exapted]

What is zerocoin? That's one I haven't heard of. As for Ripple, fuck it plain and simple. It's not a real crypto it's big business getting a piece of pie.

Zerocoin is not a complete cryptocurrency in itself. It is a distributed mixing service designed to be integrated into a distributed cryptocurrency. Here's a blog post about it: http://blog.cryptographyengineering.com/2013/04/zerocoin-making-bitcoin-anonymous.html

I have a similar attitude towards Ripple as you. I guess more open and distributed currencies will prevail. But as an exchange platform I think it could offer some advantages, and so maybe XRP will be promoted as an alternative to BTC/LTC/etc. for day to day use.

[Drug5bitz]

I'll check the link now. I agree with ripple being an easy way for mainstream adoption. In the end when people realize the ease of use, and less fees. That is when we will see a drastic change in the market. Just my $0.02