Putting
this here, for other Alt-Fanboys to chime in.
Basically I'm looking at it the way Nassim Taleb does - here is a fitting comment from his facebook yesterday:
"It takes time for things to break, but they eventually break, & there should be no rush although our impulse is to think that they will collapse immediately after we become aware of the problem. Give things time... 3 to 8 years in today's complex system. By definition the fragile cannot be selfsustaining as the probability of a collapse increases with time."So long term you can define solid bands in which currencies will stay.
Each line is a prediction of usability per currency over time. I didn't choose value (too many factors), but the two correlate.
So the line is wrong - because I'm a totally biased horrible Nxt person. The shading though is supposed to show the range of possibilities.
BTS has the highest starting point - and lots of room up - because pegged assets are super useful.
But pegs never worked before. Think of it: Is Bitshares offering something new here? That has never been done before - even if huge governments tried? No one ever thought of 2 times collateral? Somehow only blockchains suddenly allow that?
This will not break today but eventually (see Taleb above). If it does once, then BTS is toast. There risk is only on the down-side, and there is no second try.
Nxt as Swiss-army knife has less clear future. In the "heat map" I tried to show that it might go to zero - but it's less likely. Bad code messups happen, but most of them are fixable. Though nothing is guaranteed except that wiggles will happen.
On the other hand, the more features, the more synergies. If a couple of big businesses pick it up, the possibilities are huge. So we have big down- and up-sides.
(Ether falls in the same category if it delivers).
Counterparty starts out the lowest now. And for all I see, it's just very limited. It just can't try the things Nxt can - and it's already said to be only half-working.
Less features - lower risk. And maybe it will never die, but I just don't see options for thriving - Medici stole its Wall-Street cake.
Thinking of it this way: All are low value right now. So actually the downward risk is low in all of them - investing in the ones with up-sides is a good bet.
