Quote from: hypostatization on January 07, 2014, 02:13:59 AM

How far have you looked?

Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, IDG Capital Partners, FF Angel, Lightspeed Venture Partners, The Bitcoin Opportunity Fund and Vast Ventures all found Ripple: https://ripple.com/

They emphasize support of all currencies (thereby mitigating price instability issues of single currency systems), payments, and decentralized exchange.

Ripple is indeed an extremely interesting system and I believe that one reason it is attracting so much interest is because it does not disrupt the whole financial eco-system. Ripples are as I understand it more akin to a payment network/system rather than a cryptocurrency. Unlike cryptocurrencies like BTC LTC etc. Ripple does not offer an alternate currency as much as it addresses a need to transfer currencies. As such it is extremely important for the long term viability of cryptos given how it allows for a merchant to take payment in local fiat whilst the buyer can pay with e.g. BTC.

The way I see it, cryptos will not "revolutionize" the world by having actors switching currencies left and right. The switching costs are too high, it breaks established ecosystems controlled by VERY powerful players, and uncertainty is still too high for mainstream businesses to adopt cryptos of any kind. However, payment processing systems such as ripple, bitpay etc. will pave the way for their adoption.

This is why I would like to see a crypto putting way more emphasis on business aspects. Two reasons stand out:
1) Technological aspects are pretty much qualifiers by now. Business models and business aspects become ever more important if a crypto wants diffusion outside miners and the user community.
2) For payment systems to adopt a crypto, the crypto has to show that it is a viable trading currency that is used in trade.

As I see it, there are still a plethora of possibilities to encourage diffusion of cryptos, and many different business models can be applied. Technology will not sell itself. What I am interested in is discussing these options, and by what viable means they can be incorporated into cryptos. I am by no means claiming that coins such as Doge/CAT/moon etc. will not succeed in the future, as previously said many other factors than business related and diffusion related play a central role. I am however saying that they make very little sense from those perspectives, as does the majority of cryptos today, but they do not necessarily need to.