Or, think about IRC.

In the 90s, IRC was *the* standard for online chat.  Everyone that had an internet connection and wanted to do real-time chatting or "instant messaging" would do it through the IRC network.  IRC still exists, and would probably still have been the standard chat protocol if one would have agreed on how to develop the protocol and the reference server software.

Instead the IRC network fragmented into lots of different networks.  One of the biggest splits ended up more or less as a geographic divide between Europe (IRCnet) and the US (EFnet), due to some few IRCops arguing over some esoteric protocol details.

IRC has mostly been replaced by commercial "silos", ICQ being the first one, the user count of ICQ was around ten times the user count of IRC around year 2000.

I'm quite concerned that we'll get the same situation in the crypto currency scene ... lots of different crypto currencies competing with each other and attracting only the particularly interested users, and lots of different bank-fiat-solutions for transfering wealth used by the laymen.  All siloizated, i.e. Facebook users can instantly and cheaply transfer money between themselves, etc.  And I think Facebook will be one of the biggest banks in some few years.

What do u mean by that. Is btc the wave or nah?