We are entering a bit of a strange phase in crypto.

Consolidation has taken place - last year saw huge amounts of jostling for position in the various "spaces" followed by a fairly settled market and technology landscape. The only major new arrival is Ethereum but that's been anticipated for over a year anyway.

Against that has been the total anti-climax of bitcoin's market performance. Everybody thought it would have hit multiples of 4 figures by now and it hasn't and doesn't look like doing so anytime soon. Andreas Antonopolis "this is a 3 year project" remark is now two thirds of the way to expiry and adoption looks farther away than ever to me.

The question is what's going to happen now ?

The whole blocksize debacle shows that things are still in their infancy so we may be a few years off the point where mainstream markets actually regard cryptocurrencies as a serious asset - whatever its level of technical integrity.

On the other hand, the fact that marketcaps have been sustained this long is a major achievement. The longer they go on the most of a grip they'll have. Also, the fiat world is kind of starting to teeter. China stalling, QE not working in kickstarting economies and stocks now starting to reflect that.

To me it looks like a 2-10 year affair for crypto to make a significant dent in the world economy.

With that in mind, ED is approaching the end of his 2-year contract (or is it halfway through ? - can't remember) but Dash now has an immensely powerful facility in place to sustain its development and maintenance over that period of mainstream penetration. I think that getting the priorities right for short and medium term will be crucial to success from now on.

I'll add one:

Ron

LOL! that was tough PL DONE!

Perhaps a combination of your analysis and mine is on the cards.

We may get the odd "jump" in adoption into crypto, where something gives way from time to time. That December 2013 rise didn't seem to take much - happened in a month - and technologically we're further down the line now.

Bitcoin hasn't been "broken" yet and Dash inherits much of its "rights of passage" valuation, so I'm not saying there are not interesting times on the cards.

I'm constantly amazed at the diversity of opinion there is amongst financial commentators on the prospects for the system though. You get you're Gerald Celente's on the one hand predicting "guaranteed" 20% corrections by Christmas, then you get people for whom everything seems just rosy and
as it should be and it's a "great time to buy".

Nice   Ol Ben was the best!

only 1 one claim to fame, lol, sounds like someone has trouble counting 

To compensate for bitfinex, I have already noticed the volume going up on the other exchanges particularly cryptsy, hopes are that exchanges such as Bter will increase in volume, in the end this could add more diversity.
Shame though, don't have much reason for logging onto bitfinex anymore, the volume from Dash would also have given them added traffic for bitcoin and litecoin, so that has gone as well.

That first link is just sad (I was saying Ol, as in Old Ben, maybe should have used 'Ol ?  But no, never heard of gender neutral.  However, I'd support it for German, as I can't ever remember the proper gender for nouns, LOL

The second one, I'm ashamed to say, made me laugh.  Then, realizing that it is supposed to be true (unbelievable) felt guilty.  That's just ..... so stupid!  Amazing.

Please Vote !
Some numbers:
http://178.254.18.153/~pub/Darkcoin/masternode_payments_stats.html
Tx crowning

3000 Masternodes!
Congratulations, everybody!  

A(0) > B(0) > C(1)

If A sends to B his only 1 DASH and then B sends to C his only 1 DASH, who needs the block that contains transaction A > B? NSA?
If the B > C transaction is confirmed already who needs to verify the A > B transaction? No one.

If I accept cash I don't care who gave it to my client, right?

We should create, if it's possible, a different dynamic type of blockchain which deletes such old useless blocks (with transactions between empty addresses). This will reduce the blockhain size.