Someone will solve our problem. We won't like it.

[Puppet]

It's not as uphill as you think.  In small illiquid markets all it takes is one real or perceived negative.  Every next generation of new users represents a bigger user base then the last.  Once they are comfortable and familiar with it there is no learning curve and 1st to market advantage isn't that great.

Its not a matter of familiarity. Its a matter of usability. I can already pay for my mobile phone invoice,  pizza and spaceflights in bitcoin. Those vendors already have the system in place, but they wont take my junkcoins. So Im more likely to obtain bitcoins because they are more useful.  And the opposite is even more true, if you are a vendor and you want to experiment with crypto currencies, which one will you implement? Unless you come up with a very good reason, you are going to pick the one most of your customers are likely to have, ie, the most popular one. Which will only help making the most popular coin even more popular.

Since bitcoin is still so small, Im not saying this is insurmountable, but whatever coin is going to challenge bitcoin will have to provide a tangible benefit.

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[Peter R]

The bitcoin infrastructure is actually not that small.  KNCMiner quickly sold-out 1,000 Neptune miners for $16,000 each.  Thats $16,000,000 just from one product run from one company.  Multiple this by all the other mining companies and all the various iterations of mining products, and the total USD invested into just the bitcoin mining infrastructure is most certainly measured in hundreds of millions of dollars.  There's about a quarter million bitcoin nodes (at let's say $500 per node hardware cost = $125,000,000), and numerous services design to mesh with this infrastructure and the bitcoin protocol.    

This functional network of expensive hardware and well thought-out software will not just be "tossed aside" or repurposed.  

[nodroids]

The bitcoin infrastructure is actually not that small.  KNCMiner quickly sold-out 1,000 Neptune miners for $16,000 each.  Thats $16,000,000 just from one product run from one company.  Multiple this by all the other mining companies and all the various iterations of mining products, and the total USD invested into just the bitcoin mining infrastructure is most certainly measured in hundreds of millions of dollars.  There's about a quarter million bitcoin nodes (at let's say $500 per node hardware cost = $125,000,000), and numerous services design to mesh with this infrastructure and the bitcoin protocol.    

This functional network of expensive hardware and well thought-out software will not just be "tossed aside" or repurposed.  

Hear hear! and at $5000 a BTC I think the value you sink into a protocol just to carry and store your wealth starts to be questioned, i.e., why wouldn't I use another, similar protocol at these high valuations? Also someone else can come along when BTC is approaching $1 Trillion market cap, and easily afford $100 Million to upstart and market a better coin with the infrastructure in place.

I'm hedging more and more with Litecoin as the BTC valuation increase. Plus you gotta know it's coming to more exchanges soon.

[skivrmt]

The bitcoin infrastructure is actually not that small.  KNCMiner quickly sold-out 1,000 Neptune miners for $16,000 each.  Thats $16,000,000 just from one product run from one company.  Multiple this by all the other mining companies and all the various iterations of mining products, and the total USD invested into just the bitcoin mining infrastructure is most certainly measured in hundreds of millions of dollars.  There's about a quarter million bitcoin nodes (at let's say $500 per node hardware cost = $125,000,000), and numerous services design to mesh with this infrastructure and the bitcoin protocol.    

This functional network of expensive hardware and well thought-out software will not just be "tossed aside" or repurposed.  

Hear hear! and at $5000 a BTC I think the value you sink into a protocol just to carry and store your wealth starts to be questioned, i.e., why wouldn't I use another, similar protocol at these high valuations? Also someone else can come along when BTC is approaching $1 Trillion market cap, and easily afford $100 Million to upstart and market a better coin with the infrastructure in place.

I'm hedging more and more with Litecoin as the BTC valuation increase. Plus you gotta know it's coming to more exchanges soon.

I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with diversifying into various coins.  But think of them as trading penny stocks.  Usually there are reasons these stocks, and these coins, are pennies.  Most of them will be worthless one day.  1/2 may make it out of 100 (and yes, there will be many hundreds of coins eventually), and that's being generous.   Merchants will use Bitcoins.  Will they use more than one coin?  Sure, there are a few out there that do, but I don't see it becoming mainstream anytime soon where major merchants will accept multiple crypocurrencies.