Well part of the reason I posted the above link and also why I appreciate the link the from oco101 is that I'm not thinking about leapfrogging bitcoin. To be honest, bitcoin is so small it is hardly worth mentioning and far from invincible as well. What does concern me is the current financial system going completely nuts and having lost all contact with reality.
How do you compete with magic acts and untenable financial hocus pocus acts in the short term? Bitshares does not have the luxury of limitless nearly interest free loans, like these banks seem to have. Also when talking about network effect, is nobody realizing that the banks are so far ahead in that respect you'd need eye-prosthetics to even be able to discern crypto?
The real competitors I'm worried about are not other cryptos, unless it is infected by one of these powerful diseased structures. I don't mind people deluding themselves in seeing something in the mumbo jumbo market trading pattern voodoo or people believing gambling/speculating is a viable alternative for an actual economy of production, what I do mind is when these nut-jobs start controlling and effecting other peoples lives. My hope is that either bitshares or any other crypto-project for that matter is a tool to cut away these monstrous cancers from our society or create a completely separate alternative. I might be overly pessimistic but I'm afraid the tumors are now out of control and taken over all our defensive mechanisms, I think it might be better to give up on this patient than waste time trying to save it. (Translate to, it might be better to not expect anything from our current financial system and just go a completely separate way).