> All of the above metalayers create transactions on the bitcoin network, and settle on that blockchain, so if that disqualifies them all because they use bitco

> All of the above metalayers create transactions on the bitcoin network, and settle on that blockchain, so if that disqualifies them all because they use bitcoin underneath, then Dogecoin has a Counterparty layer as well :) My point was precisely that you cannot, as far as I can see, separate blockchain technology from Bitcoin. My argument is that it's not blockchain technology that's useful, but rather a blockchain, in itself, that's useful. And it's useful because it's a distributed, proof-of-work timestamp server. The value of Bitcoin comes not from the technology it uses, but from its incentive structure. An increase in the value of bitcoins feeds back into the system, resulting in an increase in security (hash rate) by way of an increase in the profitability of mining. Since Bitcoin's value comes from its time-stamping ability, and since this time-stamping is done using proof-of-work, it makes sense for an increase in the hash rate to also cause an increase in value, at least up to a certain point (provided no changes to the protocol are made to take advantage of the enormous hash rate of the current network).