Quote from: raid_n on November 06, 2014, 09:56:55 AM

Quote from: _biO_ on November 06, 2014, 09:36:48 AM

Quote from: raid_n on November 06, 2014, 09:12:15 AM

Arguments on the network effect only work to a certain degree. An analogy would be to claim that something like Facebook or Google will be the sole existing service simply because it has the biggest network.

Alt coins need to offer something pretty good to overcome the network effect of bitcoin. So far, they don't. And with sidechains on the horizon, it's possible "real" altcoins never will.

The irony is that they don't. Or would you honestly claim that for Litecoin there is any real improvement.
All it takes is regional acceptance on a larger level to make a coin relevant for people in that area.

We can argue all we want about if, in the long term, these alts have merit but the reality is that they exist and some have quite respectable market caps for offering very little innovation.

Litecoin offers a few small things: It's a bitcoin alternative (bitcoin obviously can't offer that), faster confirmations, more decentralized mining (at least at the moment) and probably some more things I don't know about. But that's simply not enough to dethrone bitcoin and never will be.

Alts will have merit, most definitely. But they will be built as a sidechain pegged to bitcoin.