There is this argument that bitcoin blockchain is established and has a global network, name recognition and support group in place so altcoins and other resources built on top of it have a couple of years head-start to be successful and dominate the market. OT is one example which seems to even include contracts:

http://opentransactions.org/wiki/index.php?title=Main_Page

"Open-Transactions democratizes financial and monetary actions. You can use it for issuing currencies/stock, paying dividends, creating asset accounts, sending/receiving digital cash, writing/depositing cheques, cashier's cheques, creating basket currencies, trading on markets, scripting custom agreements, recurring payments, escrow, etc."

Barriers to entry is getting tougher everyday. Ethereum has an uphill battle to fight and a community that needs yet to be created to develop tools and resources.  Any thoughts?