Well, this question is not so much about altcoins as such as about free and unrestricted competition between cryptocurrencies, by and large, bitcoin included. I think it is the first time in the modern history when it is possible to see how currencies can compete against each other without government intervention promoting one coin and trying to compromise another. If I'm not mistaken, right now we have over 1000 different cryptocurrencies. I don't know about you but to me it is an obvious overkill, a lot more than we will ever need, for real life. So how are things going to develop in the coming years? Will most of these currencies die out eventually and thus their total number is going to decline dramatically or will we always have an influx of a shitload of new coins?

What should we expect from cryptocurrencies on the scale of years or even decades? How many will be there and how many do we actually need?