That seems likely to me, too.

A result of doing this book club is that the differences -- not just the technical differences, but the emergent social differences -- btwn btc and other crypto projects has become more vivid than it used to be. This has produced two interesting changes in how I think about the matter.

First, the idea that some other thing -- e.g., Ethereum -- would replace btc seems absurd. It's just another kind of thing. It's like talking about replacing your blender with an air compressor.

The second, though, is that some number of these alts will exist, in symbiotic relation. I used to think that they would disappear. I now believe that some purpose can be served by the particular niches that they occupy.

Now that I write this, it reminds me of what Christian fundamentalists, threatened by evolutionary theory, used to say when they wanted to deliver a sick burn on evolutionary biologists: what use is half an eyeball? And the answer, in that case, was: quite a lot. Intermediate steps toward the evolution of the eye were hugely useful in the contexts in which they appeared.

So yeah, I expect we'll see crypto project "creatures" that exist all along the gradient of decentralization, and the only reason they'll exist, ironically, will be because btc enables them to. It's even stronger, actually: btc's success will demand that they exist, in the same way that the automobile demands that Tires Plus exist.

No idea which ones exactly, or what they'll be worth, though.