Hey CI, love your posts and videos.

Maybe you can answer a question for me.  Other than as a currency and as speculation , what are we buying when we buy a crypto currency?  I hear a lot of statements like "Company X is setting up an infrastructure system with a crypto that is revolutionary," but wouldn't I buy the stock of the company if I want returns on their revolutionary system?  

Take for example gold and Ripple.  If I buy gold, I might demand it as a currency (store of value), as a speculative buy, or even as a metal.  If someone wants my gold to make jewelry, they have to buy it from me.  If I buy Ripple, it could act as currency if valued by others, it could act as a speculative bid, but I don't see how it acts as value within inter-bank lending and account balancing?  The reason:  If individuals were to buy enough Ripple to take too much liquidity out of the banking system, they could just start a new block chain with the same technology and call it Ripple2 or Rapple or something else.  There would be two technologically identical blockchains ... one used for interbank trading and one on which individuals could speculate and hold "currency."

Wouldn't it work this way for most crypto-currencies?  We're not really obtaining value of the technology, but just the quality of the currency from that technology.  This would point to there being 3-4 long term players that survive this nascent industry.