According to Stellar you can get free stellar coins based on the bitcoins or ripple coins you had in your wallet at a certain date. But how do you claim the stellar coins?

https://www.stellar.org/about/mandate/

Being rich by hoarding USDollars or bitcoins is just an illusion: the real wealth is in the goods and services that are produced and exchanged in the economy.

I believe a lot in the sharing economy (apartments, car pools etc) as a way of using resources efficiently, in the optimal sharing economy you don't even need to have money to participate in the sharing economy. Instead you just have a good rating in a web of trust and people trust that you will contribute to the economy later on. Bitcoin would work as the public ledger in such economy, and hoarding bitcoins would not be necessary. The richness will instead be measured by your contribution to the sharing economy.

It's wrong to assume that cryptography will lead to a chaotic and dystopian future.
Cryptography is just a tool like knife, it can be used for good or for bad.

Some people might use this tool for bad which will disrupt the society negatively, but as a defense response the society will eventually evolve back to what we had before urbanization: strong local communities where people in the local community trust each other but are extremely suspicious to outsiders. Our social relations will be our greatest defense against possible threats from the outside.

Changing the parameters of a system will lead to instability short term but a new equilibrium emerges always.

The problem with bitcoin is imbalance:
merchants accept bitcoin, hedge it for dollar instantly since they pay expenses in dollar - which leads to a steady shift downwards on the supply demand curve as more merchants accept bitcoin payments.

In the end I belive bitcoin (or ripple) will be used mostly by payment processors as a payment system and not as money, a decentralized kind of SWIFT.
The market cap of bitcoin will in that case depend on the volume of transactions per second and how long time each party holds their bitcoins:
the shorter the time they keep their coins, the lower the price will be (more bitcoin supply available on the market)

“At the end fiat money returns to its inner value—zero.”
- Voltaire

Bitcoin is by definition a fiat currency:

The value of fiat money is derived from the relationship between supply and demand rather than the value of the material that the money is made of. Historically, most currencies were based on physical commodities such as gold or silver, but fiat money is based solely on faith. Fiat is the Latin word for "it shall be".
http://www.investopedia.com/terms/f/fiatmoney.asp

The current market value of bitcoin is mostly based on bitcoin as an investment, just like gold or other investments that have 0% dividend.
As ironic as it may seem, as more people and merchans use bitcoin for actual purchases the price goes down further.

The reason is simple from a pure economic perspective:
People are buying stuff from merchants with bitcoins acquired from mining and/or speculation.
But merchants got costs for rent, products, services and employees in FIAT, therefore they have no choice but to hedge bitcoin at the moment the coins arrive (with bitpay et al)
The same is true for industrial bitcoin miners, their costs are fiat denominated.

So we have an increased Supply of coins in the market, but not a matching Demand, which results in a price decrease until we have a new equilibrium that might be around 100 or even lower if Ripple becomes the new Crypto King.

As I have predicted for a long time Proof-of-Stake & contract based crypto currencies will win the game.

Ripple is going up every day while bitcoin is trending down... Now the market cap of Ripple is 1/5 of Bitcoin.
If this trend continues it will be the opposite, ripple market cap 5 times bitcoins.

It's a huge difference between 97% collapse in one year, or in 100 years (inflation rate of 3,5% per year). I don't see any problem with single digit inflation as it motivates people to engage in investments and consumption instead of hoarding.

If you have $10,000 and you know it will lose 3,5% of it's value within a year you should invest it in an asset that will increase at least 3,5% in value per year.
That would probably be blue chips stocks as they provide both value increase and dividend.

Sorry English is not my native language, but I try to write as correct as I can.

Ghost in the machinery! AI

Exactly, It's a bigger issue if USD collapses than other currencies, that's because most of the worlds international trades are settled in USD.

USD could collapse in one of these scenarios:
-Oil producing countries refuses to sell oil in USD
-Political instability, civil war or revolution in USA
-World war where USA is affected
-Black swan events that are impossible to predict or speculate about

Life is full of counter-party risks, still we have a functioning world economy where few people are scammed in relation to the size of the economy.

A contract based coin is not limited to USD pegging. Any financial institution would be able to issue contracts pegged to any possible asset, for example gold, silver or diamonds.

Only a fool would keep money for 100 years, instead you use money to consume, or to invest in real estate, stocks and bonds.

Thank you IRS!

That was the nail in the coffin for speculation in bitcoin.
Instead we can use colored bitcoins to issue USDollar IOUs, which implies a fixed price between the colored coin and USD, therefore no profit will be possible.
And no volatility will occur when the coin is pegged to US dollar.

This is good for commerce and consumers, and bad for speculators and hoarders of bitcoin.

The biggest problem for bitcoin in commerce is a volatile price versus US dollar, and on top of that you have to pay tax for dollar profits on bitcoins.

How can we solve both of these great issues for commerce and consumers?
We use contract based coins where 1 coin = 1 USD
If the coins value is fixed to the dollar, it is impossible to profit from it and therefore you don't need to pay any taxes on it, and you don't need to care about volatility.

Ripple is right now the most promising contract based coin, and is the coin that will benefit most from the new IRS-regulation.

In a scenario where dollar collapses to zero you would benefit more from owning a gun, ammo & food than bitcoins.

Maybe we will end up using multiple bitcoin clones (different block-chains) to prevent monopoly of a few miners?

Please think outside of the box instead of holding to the current outdated mining model -
Progress comes from questioning the current solutions and improving them.

We must admit that there are several alt-coins with better functionality than bitcoin.
But bitcoin has first-mover advantage as a brand and got the gretest ecosystem in terms of dollar value and userbase, therefore we should learn from the alt-coins and improve bitcoin.

Exactly, we should work for a sustainable future instead of doing the same mistakes as the established industries.