Crypto success vs. Bitcoin success

After researching a lot of Crypto 2.0 systems (tiny.cc/Crypto), I started thinking about whether some systems could surpass Bitcoin. We have a lot of proponents of a world with only Bitcoin, only some Bitcoin copy, or all of the cryptos going the way of the dodo. While I'm personally a proponent of the Singularity of Money concept (a world with many interchangeable currencies), it is still interesting to ponder whether Bitcoin or cryptocurrencies in general will gain mass adoption among the general population.

Thinking about this for awhile, the conclusion seems to be that

Cryptos will succeed if the banks are failing. Bitcoin will succeed if the governments are failing.

Let me explain why.

People want faster horses

A lot of you should be familiar with the quote allegedly by Henry Ford - "If I’d asked people what they wanted, they would have asked for a faster horse". A similar sentiment can apply to cryptos. People don't want a new currency, they want their old currency to be better and faster. People are used to thinking in USD and Euro, not Bitcoin or Dogecoin. It would take a lot of mental effort for people to switch over to a new currency, and that might be a large barrier to overcome, not to mention the issues of price stability and so forth.

At the same time, if you have a system that offers what the banks offer only better, you are very likely to be able to compete with them. This is why PayPal and Alipay are very likely to be used for online payments, while bank wires in North America are not as popular.

Banks surround themselves with a lot of policies and discriminate against their customers. International payments are a pain, credit cards are outdated and the whole system is filled with inefficiencies. As such, if you'd have crypto systems that allow you to pay in your national currencies only better and faster than a bank, those systems are likely to succeed in the modern world.

It is very likely that the 2.0 systems that allow people to deal directly with their local currencies without jumping through random hoops will thrive in the near future. Ripple is already positioning itself to be "the internet of money" and appealing to the current financial systems.

While Bitcoin and similar systems might be a part of the solutions used, it might also be seen as an unnecessary step when it comes to money exchange not denominated in BTC. However, there are some cases where Bitcoin might be the solution needed

Governments failing

If a national currency is stable, people want to use that currency. If the national currency is not stable, people want to get rid of it and use something else. If you're in a country like Argentina or Venezuela with an inflation rate of 10% or even 60%, or perhaps have experienced the Cypriot financial crisis or the more recent fall in the price of Russian Rubles, you might be thinking to yourself "I don't want to use this currency any more".

At times like these, we start looking at alternatives - gold, dollars, franks, etc. However, those can be seized or frozen. A more modern alternative would be to look at cryptos.

And herein lies the strength of Bitcoin. While it might look unappealing to the western world, it offers an alternative to people that are losing it all. It is apolitical, not controlled by any government and is easily transportable. As such, in a world where the governments fail everyone with their monetary policy, Bitcoin and similar currencies have a room to thrive.

Conclusion

It is very likely that cryptocurrencies will succeed in the near future due to the stagnation in the modern world. However, for Bitcoin to become widely adopted, we would need to see entire regimes start to fail and people wanting to take their economy into their own hands.