Copying this from r0ach's thread, because very relevant here:
What you say here might hold water if there was only one cryptocoin. The fact is there are hundreds and there will be thousands upon thousands of them in the coming years. Decentralization comes from every one having an easy way to create their own money/token and embed usefulness in it, to work to make it valuable. Some will succeed in this endeavor, most will fail, it doesn't matter. Decentralization is in breaking monopoly of state on creation of money and having everyone and their mother create some sort of loyalty points with value that others are willing to work for. This will be the end of state monopoly on money, this is what decentralization is about.
If all the altcoins are just the same power vacuum failure, then
no diversification is attained.
And my answer, still relevant:
Do they distribute LSD along with Crypto Kongdung.
I'll dumb it down for you: two things you can't stop in this world, gambling and progress.
I'll dumb it up metaphorically for you:
diversification of steel rolly pollies is an oxymoron.
Talk to the quants who modeled diversification of hedge funds before the collapse of LTCM.
repair industry is the winning bet here
You don't seem to understand that prediction markets fail when their boards are all sinking in the same quicksand (i.e. the same light bulb behind the star cutouts in your upthread metaphor).
Currency doesn't function fragmented. There is no relativity of multiple currencies. Currency is a loss of degrees-of-freedom paradigm.
The winner is the one who scales a new currency. There is no long-term panacea.
Huh?
There's no long term solution to the knowledge problem (how do you run out of questions to study?), but that doesn't stop academics from spending their whole life to studying one question--why? We gamble that our life has some purpose--it's irrational, yeah, but people do it every day--anyone who's jumped off a cliff or skydives know it feels good to be alive--and no amount of game theory is going to change that risk assessment.
Technologies evolve, and a lot of technologies die along the way, my point is the human desire to exit the current system is the thing that keeps decentralization going--systems reach critical mass points and KABOOM! We're left realigning the jenga pieces of value scattered on the floor of civilization. But if you had gotten this
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1319681.msg17013410#msg17013410 (don't worry; I bolded the point), we could go back to creating exit points for wealth acquired through wealth--once we stop being able to do that, we are indeed something other than human.