I'll be honest. I'm too embarrassed to be associated with Bitcoin to bring it up to people that I know in real life. I think there's a lot of people on this forum that feel the same way. I meet most of those criteria, and hell.. we've even developed a (mostly) clean room implementation of the Bitcoin stack, including functional double spend detection. The problem is that to the outside world, we're all now seen as loonies and overzealous libertarians living in our moms basements.
The problem isn't that the technology pieces are missing. The problem is that many of us are horribly jaded and misguided INTP and INTJ personality types with delusional thought patterns, narcissistic leanings, and what I can only describe as high functioning autism.
Heh. I cannot really argue with a word of that or put it much better
While cryptocurrencies aren't going to die, Bitcoin might have to. It is/was just an experiment, after all.
I do have some questions about this, however. Firstly, it is difficult to dislodge a first comer generally even with a much better product, and I see in the original a fairly stunning combination of well made technical decisions and startlingly good implementation (although in fairness, I've neither the skill nor time to analyze it line by line.) Secondly, in spite of the market shakeups, or perhaps to some extent because of them, I suspect that the value base is relatively widely distributed amongst the most interested geeks and most of them are not going to wish to give it up. I certainly won't.
I could see a situation where the block chain is used as a basis for other crypto-currencies or even other yet undreamed of things. My 'investment' or 'speculation' is actually more in just getting some secret keys which have a positive balance representation in the block chain than it is about obtaining a lot more USD than I already have.
