Crypto Currency is not Winner-take-all

I was just giving more thought to the debate on which crypto currency is going to be "adopted" the other day and the idea that we’ll have one dominant currency that will be used to transact. Since I joined crypto, my thoughts on this, and the community as a whole, seemingly, have shifted and morphed multiple times.My opinion, however, is that we’ll continue to have a number of mainstream cryptocurrencies that will remain popular and highly used. I used to think otherwise, then before that I thought something similar around the time when Bitcoin was thought to be “digital gold”.Now the reason for this line of thinking is actually simple. I believe people will value the attributes of various currencies (like today, just continuing past widespread adoption). And, it revolves around communities, school of thought, trust, and the decentralized design you believe in and thereby choose to hold your wealth. I no longer see a winner take all scenario. I don’t think this is necessary either (not to mention healthy for the ecosystem). I believe we’ll have more wallets that support all the leading currencies, gateways and POS that do the same, with currency conversion offered on the fly if desired.It’s like PayPal, you can send someone EUR but they can request to receive that as USD. I see the same for personal crypto wallets, POS systems, etc. The ecosystem isn’t quite there yet, but we'll get there.People may choose to convert their payments, received in various currencies, to BTC because it’s the most well known, is the least volatile or because it’s their favorite and where they put their trust. Or, maybe they choose Nano because they have more faith in DPoS as a long term viable alternative to POW and it's eco-friendly design, or Monero because they value the highest level of privacy. Whichever coin is chosen, it's whatever you value and desire.So, what I’m saying here is that I don’t see a winner-take-all scenario playing out at all. It won’t be necessary or desired since people will have their currency of trust and choice.Think about it this way. Assume you could use any fiat in the world almost anywhere you go. All the major country's fiat currencies are supported, you have a choice. Now, which one will you keep your savings in? Which one will you keep in your daily spend wallet? How many currencies will you hold? And why? Is it because you trust that government more? Or you like their monetary policy more? Is it because their federal reserve doesn’t print as much money, or because you think the demand for their currency will increase more over time?I see crypto currencies as being much more than a protocol and open sourced nodes/wallets that live on github for you to download. These aren’t one and done projects or currencies where we’ll get one that’s perfect and stable and then it’s game over. On the contrary, these are communities, each with their own school of thought, direction and opinions about what makes the most appealing, fair and distributed currency, not much different from a government and their federal reserve.By holding a currency of choice, you’re choosing to do so because you like the direction of that coin/community for whatever reason. I think this is great and healthy, it allows us to continue to learn and innovate, provides options and allows for us to hold a currency that’s the best vehicle for our needs.

Submitted December 02, 2018 at 05:42PM

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