Giving here my opinion on why investing in platforms is better than investing in currencies.
Look at what happened with Ethereum, it went from a 8-10$ to over 400$ in less than 6 months, why did this happen?
It is a platform designed to have lots and lots of projects built upon it, there will always be scarcity and price increase as long as none of these projects or Ethereum themselves ruin it.
People ask, is it a good time to buy Ethereum? Long-term, it is. Short-term, who cares?
Most people are in this for the long run, trading is stressful, it is riskier by a long-shot if you dont know what you are doing.
Ethereum might drop, but if you believe in it, do you really think it wont be worth more than 35B$ in 10 years?
The same applies to other platforms, whether it is Stratis, Lisk, Ark, ETC, UBIQ or any other.
There is plenty of space for a bunch of platforms in the future, just give it time.
Compare any ICO going on on the Ethereum blockchain, almost none has had better ROI than Ethereum itself.
My say is, invest more in platforms like those I mentioned other than investing in currencies or assets.
There are so many currencies out there competing for (IMO) 3-5 places in the future, I dont think we will need more than that number of currencies.
As for platforms, they can host any type of business and project, they have more growth ahead, their future is greater.
i might be writing this with a wrong opinion, little arguments and fundaments, so I would like to hear your opinions about this topic.
Good thinking. My guess is that Ethereum is just the first of its kind. If it is flexible enough it may survive but it's staying power depends on an awful lot more parameters and unknowns than Bitcoin.
So if you speak about 'platforms', the first thing that I (still) think of is Bitcoin.
I think of Bitcoin as a digital currency.
There are no smart contracts and you cannot build directly on the Bitcoin network.
Platforms that come to mind are Ethereum, MaidSafe and Shift.
You can build dapps (distributed applications) on these blockchain networks; that to me is how you define a blockchain platform.
I agree that platforms are a huge money maker and that we shouldn't just think of blockchain tech in terms of currencies.
That said there are many other novel ideas that are neither currency nor platform.
Golem for shared CPU/GPU usage.
Factom for document auditing, management and compliance.
Storj, Sia and MaidSafe for distributed storage; MaidSafe being the one to watch since it's kind of a platform. For instance the NVO decentralised exchange that CoinMarketCap are advertising. That exchange is built on top of the MaidSafe network. We are reaching a point where networks are being built on top of networks, and it's fantastic!
I guess you could look at these as platforms, or many could evolve into platforms if they release APIs that allow you to build on them, which seems to be the smart way to go.
In any case there are so many possibilities that one shouldn't pigeon hole themselves into thinking it's only currency or platform.
Just like the internet, we have no idea what's capable.
Yes, those are assets but I believe platforms, if well built and developed and havign a fair launch will provide greater ROIs.