Gopher was completely different from HTTP. It also came out about the same time as HTTP, giving it no initial lead. The alternative cryptocurrencies are virtua

Gopher was completely different from HTTP. It also came out about the same time as HTTP, giving it no initial lead. The alternative cryptocurrencies are virtually identical protocols to Bitcoin, using a fork of the code, but are just incompatible with BTC clients. They came out much later than Bitcoin and at no stage in the last four years have they come close to rivaling Bitcoin's mindshare or market capitalization. It's possible that in the future, a completely new protocol will come out that will be significantly better than BTC, but so far there's nothing on the horizon, and I think it's unlikely someone will make a Satoshi Nakamoto like effort and create one.