Quote from: eJ3k1 on July 17, 2012, 01:25 pmSo, I created this thread so we could philosophize a bit about the future of BitCoin.Do you guys think there will be alternative crypto-currencies, ie competitors of BitCoin, in the future? Talk in the BitCoin community says that if BitCoin ever gets accepted by the big public, the value of a BTC will skyrocket. And there's people who appear to be holding on to thousands of BTC's solely for that reason.But if BTC ever gets widely used, I think that means that the whole idea of digital currency get's widely accepted. I suspect that in such a scenario, various alternatives will also pop up. And along with that, various exchange sites, etc. BitCoin is designed to mimic regular currency. However ever since the early days, there have always been various types of coins competing, and today it's still going on. Why couldn't that happen with digital currency?How do you guys predict the future of BTC?Well of course there's the "free" and "strong" coins which ape the Bitcoin although I notice with considerably less success.I was discussing this with the Editor of Bitcoin Magazine a few weeks ago (Yes, I move in the best of circles :-D) and he and I agreed that as mining becomes less profitable and supplies of new Bitcoins begin to dry up we'll see a new Crypto Currency crop up to replace it.My guess is that this will happen several years before the Bitcoin supplies run out and that there'll be several warring factions - it may be the case that we never do settle on a single crypto-currency to use again but my suspicion is that one currency will become the winner. I imagine the most attractive type will be one which is decentralised like the Bitcoin but doesn't require a publicly searchable block chain to require anonymity - how this would be done of course is anybody's guess - I'm just a banker, perhaps our more gifted SR users can enlighten us as to what steps have already been taken in this direction.V.