Almost trance-like, I've been looking at this website for the past few hours: http://fiatleak.com/
Looks like the recent, and still on-going Bitcoin bull market is being caused by China's currency movement. Whether or not if that's a good sign for long-term currency longevity, one thing's for sure - our minds are absolutely incapable of truly comprehending the magnitude of what's to come, if mass adoption really happens.
Are cryptocurrencies an inevitability of the times? Maybe my optimism comes from assuming that most things are just technical hurdles, and a responsive social platform with a 3-second blocktime helps with market efficiency.
The speed of cash is important so that capital is being utilized, direct or indirectly to the betterment of a currency. And check this out. An entry of the word currency in an online etymology dictionary:-
1650s, "condition of flowing," from Latin currens, present participle of currere "to run" (see current (adj.)); the sense of a flow or course extended 1699 (by John Locke) to "circulation of money."
When geeks start mixing attention, currency, and electricity for non-geeks, maybe something beautiful eventually happens. After all, attention is really the only resource that every single human being owns. It's something that is now shareable at the speed of light in social space, and perhaps a currency that sets itself up that way is the highway.
But aren't all currencies abstracted products of social attention? Maybe it's the same thing in all systems, except for speed and structure. Personally, I think currency distribution primarily through social means is incredibly powerful as it is not only exclusively available to those with material capital. In terms of risk-taking, I sincerely think that the economics of risking time and attention is just as real as a Bitcoin miner risking material capital to purchase and maintain machines (that do all the work in the end anyway).
And just like any electrical circuit - there is intended function (make life awesome) and resistance (squabbling and structure). Both STEEM and Steemit's design philosophy seems to be making it as responsive and as low-barrier as possible, effectively minimizing other kinds of resistance.
Now consider the classic formula V = IR. Voltage equals product of current and resistance. With a limited power source, lowering of R(resistance) is bound to increase I(currency). So is this a good sign? Who knows? What I'm describing here might not even be a fair parallelism. But neuron-to-neuron, mind-to-mind, and so, currency shall flow.
Classic circuit image taken from Wikimedia.
@kevinwong