Re:S&P Dow Jones Indices to launch cryptocurrency indexes in...
by pashamur on Thursday December 03, 2020 @01:31PM
(#25292568)
Even domain names follow the same pattern - in the last decade there has been a huge number of new domain extensions that have been approved for use; if you go to namecheap these days you have hundreds of options for your personal site.
Yet the vast majority will still use .com, .net and .org, and those still remain the most valuable. :)
The reason that IP addresses are scarce is not because it's not possible to invent a new protocol, but because everyone else uses IP so only IP addresses are useful.
Spectrum might initially appear to be fundamentally scarce, but even then, people can invent other ways to communicate (and they did! copper wires! IP!).
These are all examples of networks - their value is proportional to their popularity. So yes, anybody can create a new cryptocurrency, but currencies are mainly valuable because of who you can use them with. Dollars are valuable because so many people accept them!
So if one cryptocurrency really gains traction, it will be hard for any other cryptocurrency to compete unless it offers something fundamentally new and different.