A lot of people missed it: Another Bitcoin journalist is on the record as saying he didn’t initially expect digital currency to have any more staying power than the fad for pet rocks. Way, way more people missed the boat than got onboard—and plenty of early passengers bailed out when the going got rough. Even the ship’s crew (to stretch this metaphor to the breaking point), which is to say the early adopters and Bitcoin miners and startup founders and software developers who were advancing and advocating for the technology back then, had no guarantee they wouldn’t run aground. Along the way, there were plenty of reasons to doubt Bitcoin’s success: There were price bubbles and crashes and scams and arrests and epic meltdowns, which is what made it such an engaging story to tell.

While it may be too late to make a pile of money on Bitcoin, cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology have a lot of room left to run. The speculative frenzy and resulting press has obscured just how remarkable these innovations are, how smart and hardworking many of their creators are, and how varied and significant are the needs and problems—techies call them “use cases”—they are trying to solve. This isn’t investment advice, but anyone with an interest should not only research Bitcoin but look beyond Bitcoin to other projects, such as Ethereum, Dash, Zcash, Golem, Augur, and SALT. Some are trying to be a powerful new medium of exchange, while others are meant to power software applications or provide users with new financial tools. Many are still early, too early to have proven themselves, but the excitement among those in the know is palpable.