Exactly. Though I have seen ZCash stories on YC HN frequently, the commentaries of my peers have combined with my prejudicial biases to coalesce into the opinion that ZCash will not be a significant part of future commerce, and there is no advantage to me in buying into it now, while it is in the ground floor.

At this point, in order for me to pay attention to any crypto-currency other than Bitcoin, it would have to allow for more than just one of the following:

  - buy black-market without getting pinched, more easily than paper money
  - pay bills with a verifiable proof of payment, more easily than checks
  - buy from untrusted parties, more easily than credit cards
  - save at lesser risk of theft than cash in the mattress
  - save at lesser risk of confiscation/forfeiture than money in the bank
  - save at lesser risk of market volatility than Bitcoin alone
  - allow anyone to issue barter scrip
  - facilitate trade-chain settlements and redemptions of barter scrips
  - allow both anonymous transactions and provable-identity transactions
  - facilitate honest trade while crippling scammers
  - stable decentralization, such that N% attacks are impossible
  - built like a pile of bricks, instead of a house of cards
  - no excessive pre-mining or front-loading
  - if not future-proof, at least future-resistant

So far, the only thing Bitcoin really has going for it is that it got to the mountaintop first. But since no other alt-coin has proven to be superior in more than one or two of the ways that matter to the users, none have yet displaced even it, and never mind surpassing any of the traditional currencies.

And I think none of the schemes set up to reward those investing in the costs of development will succeed. In the end, a currency has to be a commodity, and you can't charge much more as seigniorage on a commodity currency than the actual cost of operating the mint, unless you have a monopoly. Otherwise, you're better off running the power plant than the data center packed with ASICs.