I think it also depends what you call an altcoin.
In generaly will be more and more altcoins. But lots will not have own blockchain but will use other asset platforms and will basically be an asset and not an altcoin, like are now MAIDSAFECOIN, AUGUR, ICONOMI, GOLEM, ARDOR, BITCRYSTALS, NEXIUM, ...
Well, thats a good point Febo. I think of alts as any block chain based token that isn't bitcoin. I'm guessing that most others here do too.
This thread seems to be evolving into a discussion of the relationship between innovation and altcoin adoption at the moment. There have been a couple of different points of view expressed, some of which sound like unsupported absolutist statements, others which contain a degree of hopium, and yet others which sound pragmatic to me. So lets look at the different positions:
1) Innovation is irrelevant to altcoin adoption because
- There is no such thing as innovation
- Innovation is just marketing hype designed to scam yet more money out of punters
- Innovation happens, but it doesn't improve adoption
2) Innovation is important because
- The adoption difficulties we have observed with bitcoin are a result of some functional failures (privacy, transaction rate, block size, blockchain size) that innovation could solve
- There are new application areas beyond store-of-value/currency-tokens (soft contracts, data security, etc) that are useful and not currently directly supported by bitcoin.
Can both positions be right ?
This is where the conversation gets potentially interesting and divergent.
Yes they can. Adoption and innovation are separate from each other. Each have an effect on the other but neither is dependent on the other.
Hopefully this discussion will continue along these lines and not degrade.