Of course that bitcoin and ethereum are the major cryptos and it will always be like this, but you should know that everybody is interested in just investing in more revolutionnaire and innovative projects, such as ICO's and other kind of projects that we are seeing everyday.
Even with Ethereum I could see the project failing long term, what's stopping the Bitcoin developers from implementing smart contracts? Should the community decide for it, this is something that could easily be done. You can already do this, albeit being centralized with
RootstockRootstock is a smart contract platform implemented as a sidechain of Bitcoin. It provides a similar functionality than Ethereum, but using a token that is pegged to Bitcoin - so it doesn't affect Bitcoin's value/price because it's not competing with it.
A sidechain is an independent blockchain, but it provides a "link" to the Bitcoin blockchain. In the case of Rootstock we are talking of a "pegged" sidechain. That means that the value of the token (unit of value, "coin") of the Rootstock blockchain is pegged 1:1 to Bitcoin's value (1 RSKBTC = 1 BTC).
How does this work? Well, first for every token created in the RSK blockchain a Bitcoin is "frozen" on the main Bitcoin blockchain. That means that they cannot be moved or used while they are frozen. So there are never more RSK tokens than frozen Bitcoins - the Bitcoins are "backing" the RSK tokens. This way, you can transfer Bitcoins easily to the RSK blockchain.
The trickier part is the other way around - "redeem" RSK tokens for Bitcoins. That is an important mechanism for the peg to work, because it ensures that you get a Bitcoin for a RSK token every time you need it.
For this to work, the RSK coins must be "burnt" or destroyed and the account who "froze" the Bitcoins on the main chain then can "liberate" the Bitcoins again. You destroy a RSK token and get a Bitcoin from this account.
This is not possible in a decentralized way still (there is a Bitcoin "opcode" or "command" missing), so RSK's strategy for their first release is to have a "consortium" of different organizations controlling that Bitcoin account that "freezes" and "unfreezes" the Bitcoins that are transfered to and from the RSK sidechain. These organizations then decide to "unfreeze" the Bitcoins if they detect the RSK tokens have been burnt.
As for Ripple, I'm thinking it's just a "phase", I'm certain Ethereum will overtake it again for second largest market cap. The main draw to currencies like ETH and BTC is decentralization, Ripple is the total opposite of that ideology.
Litecoin just a copypaste? i agree, but this "copy-paste" has been the most succesfull copypaste that somene could created that has a value of more than 12 billion dollars.
Yeah, but I don't see any inherent value behind Litecoin, it's the same argument I made for Bitcoin Gold, it's only good for pump and dump
And i agree with you about Zcash, zcoin, zCrap, and all the other cryptos that start with Z.
Monero and Dash have no value either IMO, here's some arguments against using Bitcoin mixers I found on a pro-Monero website
The main arguments here are: mixing services are centralized, there's a bitcoin rich list, bitcoins can be 'blacklisted', and there's a public blockchain. Every argument put forth here is flawed, decentralized mixing services already exist, if there's a worry of an address attracting attention because of a large balance, simply split it up into several addresses. The blacklisting argument doesn't even make sense because that's the entire point of a mixing service, it obscures the original origin of the coins. And yes, bitcoin does have a public ledger, but it's pretty difficult to figure out where the coins even came from in the first place after going through a mixing service.
