Quote from: jetto on July 05, 2013, 06:39:18 PM

There are many alternative virtual currencies to bitcoin, such as litecoin, novacoin, etc., that have significant advantages to bitcoin, and there are probably many more currencies that will be even better yet to come. Given that, I've felt for a while that bitcoins are valuable now, but they've got an expiration date, because in the end, even if it takes decades, people will choose the best, most advanced, and most effective currency. So it surprises me when I read things like "I expect the price to hit four-digit numbers by the end of 2013 or in 2014, with further exponential growth continuing in coming years." from notable people in this field. What is driving this enthusiasm for bitcoins in particular? I've always thought the ability to change the properties of a currency is very limited. Am I wrong in this assumption and am I missing something? Do people assume that bitcoin is going to be the one to go in the thousands simply because it's the first? It seems to me that people in the end will choose the best option, but maybe I'm wrong.

None of the alt coins have ANY advantages over bitcoin, and I'd say that most of them have serious disadvantages. An alt coin would only be worth using if it had a serious advantage over bitcoin and none do. Bitcoin was there first and that means a lot in this world.

Litecoin's faster confirmation time is actually a disadvantage as it doesn't do much aid in in-person store transaction and it results in a less secure blockchain.
Scrypt is only useful in that it isn't what bitcoin uses so there are no ASICs for it yet. If litecoin was actually useful we'd see ASICs designed for scrypt and on the market in months and litecoin mining would essentially be the same as bitcoin mining. There reason why there are no litecoin ASICs is because the market is far too small for any designers to give a damn.

Bitcoin does not need a "silver" to it's "gold". Bitcoin is divisible to 100 million pieces and doesn't "silver". I don't really get what people mean by that analogy anyways. To me it sounds like: here is Bitcoin, it is like gold. Or you have use Litecoin instead, which is like Bitcoins crippled step-brother that no one uses, isn't accepted anywhere, and isn't really as good. You can have that instead if you like. Why would anyone chose Litecoin over Bitcoin?