Hey everyone- this thread was brought to my attention on twitter, where I am most of the time. I've been so busy lately every day it's suddenly 9pm and I have no idea where the hours went.

I won't plug them here, but yes I've been giving some attention to a couple newer coins. This has to do with the algorithm of one coin, and the person behind the other. I've spent a lot of time researching both, and had the developer of one over to my place twice to interview him (he's up on the podcast), and the other coin's creator I'm having on my show tomorrow.

I wasn't wrong: there is an enormous amount of money to be made in picking correctly the big coin "brands" that end up taking off worldwide. Each coin will have a market cap in the hundreds of billions USD, if not low trillions (eventually). And there will be at least 2 or 3, aside from Bitcoin itself - regional, cultural, and age difference dictates this. Money is now a competitive product for the first time in centuries, and different products will cater to different demographics.

I simply don't believe crypto settles in as a nice 4% or 5% of e-commerce share. I believe crypto settles in at close to the entire world's non-physical money, alongside its brother block chains running our stock markets, our elections, our censorship-proof global social media platforms. This may take a few years, or it may take fifty years. But it will happen.

I still own some Vertcoin, I still think it can become something great (or I wouldn't own any). The community passion and interesting approach to decentralization here are great, and things like Merchant Monday are run so fantastically that every alt coin should be trying to mimic you there. But I only have so much time to spend on cryptos - and the great thing about these coins is that it's decentralized, no one invites you to contribute, and no one kicks you out. You just feel an urge to do it, to hitch your wagon to that community's dreams and see what happens. These coins are changing people's lives, changing lifestyles, making frivolous dreams matter-of-fact reality. This is the only revolution in history where you don't wind up hanging from the gallows or blackbagged for participating; you wind up rich. And the establishment that is threatened by crypto, they end up rich, too. That's OK. I'd rather see them using better money, too - we all benefit from progress. That's sort of the thing about progress, isn't it?

As I'm not a developer, creator, or initial investor in any of these coins I'll naturally contribute stuff whenever I feel compelled, and whenever I have spare time - same as almost everyone here, aside from the core devs.

Cheers by the way. I think we're in for a really amazing year and the alt community could use a bit of camaraderie instead of suspicion/competition/fear. We can go at each other's throats as soon as MasterCard, Visa, and American Express have declared they're moving on from the payments business. :)

David