Excerpted from Carl Miller:

“A programmer can piggyback on the bitcoin code, customise it, and within a day give you your own currency. There are around 70 cryptocurrencies currently being traded in reasonable quantities. At the moment, most have tinkered around with bitcoin to offer some kind of additional edge. Litecoins offer faster transactions. Worldcoins, designed with a small total cap, promise to appreciate over time. Anoncoin claims to be more anonymous (obviously) and Stablecoin to have “military-grade” encryption.

Yet a second kind of cryptocurrency is appearing for another reason. Devcoins are used by open-source developers. Peercoin are used by those who desire, in their eyes, a more equitable way of sharing out the currency in the first place (bitcoin is notoriously unequal, a few big miners and early adopters hold the majority of bitcoin wealth). Coinye Wests will be for gigs and music. Sexcoins are self-explanatory. These new cryptocurrencies are being used as a way of affiliating with a group, community, interest or set of principles. Using dogecoins, which sport no particular advantage over bitcoins at all, is most directly a cultural rather than a financial decision.

We are moving into an era where the currency we use be a conscious, active, even activist decision, a value statement based on who we are and what we need. Imagine: eco-cafes will trade in currencies where a tiny percentage of each transaction goes to a good cause. You will pay your child pocket money in a currency they can only use on certain, child-proofed things. We might pay our officials allowances in a completely non-anonymous currency so we can track everything they spend. Niche groups and communities, from survivalists in Utah and comic book fans in New York to terrorist cells, will, with just a little bit of technological know-how, be able to create and finesse a currency that works specifically for them.

I confidently predict that the number of cryptocurrencies that are regularly traded and used will radically grow. Their exchange with each other is also likely to grow more intensive and seamless. We might end up habitually using dozens of currencies without noticing, as super-fast transactions allow us to move our money into the currency we need at that time. You might quickly exchange the sexcoins you have left over from last night into bitcoins to pay your freelance designer, devcoins to make a contribution to her open-source project, and a childcoin so your kid can browse amazon whilst they wait.

Cryptocurrencies are now part of our cultural and technological development. Their attributes and capabilities will constantly change. At a barest minimum, the security conscious will lump on more and more ways of keeping them secure against theft. The privacy conscious likewise will do so against detection.”