Hi, I am new to all this, but help me understand this. If there is a crypto coin that is very useful and has functional value, not just speculative, say it becomes very expensive. What is to stop someone from just creating their own coin that is the almost identical to it, and using it instead, so high prices are not paid for the other coin? How can all these coins maintain high values, when people can just create as many new coins as they want?
Nobody can stop them from "cloning" a certain coin, lets say bitcoin. However, the clone coin even though not that expensive can't really take off if there are no miners and no investors to really jump start this clone coin.
Someone has really to promote this new coins, but how can you promote or at least gain transaction from community when it has no value to begin with? We would rather stay with the original coin, eventhough very expensive but has gained trust and confidence by a lot of people.
Look at Bitcoin Cash, similar to bitcoin and even improves it with a bigger block. However, the price is not even closer to bitcoin because the community does not support it and only a few has really used it as designed. It's merely another pump-and-dump coin. Little demand means its not gonna be sustainable at least.