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Will these new Ethereum based cryptocurrencies be able to transact freely between fiat and other cryptos outside of Ethereum?
Or would they be able to only convert between ETH?
The only way ETH maintains or increases in price by design is if there are incentives for people to purchase and hold onto it. If ETH is designed to ultimately be used to pay for computational power required to secure the network and execute transactions, what then determines the price for computational power.
"The only way ETH maintains or increases in price by design is if there are incentives for people to purchase and hold onto it."
In the long run I believe your statement above is false and your statement below is true
"If ETH is designed to ultimately be used to pay for computational power required to secure the network and execute transactions."
You asked the right question: "What then determines the price for computational power?"
Answer = supply and demand
Right now speculators dominate the ETH markets. Long term the success or failure of Ethereum will depend on the demand for ETH to run DAPPS. The price of ETH will eventually approach the supply/demand of ETH to be used as fuel for that purpose
If they use the standard token interface then their tokens are intended to be tradable on any exchanges implementing that interface for trading. ATM i don't see that any exchanges that implement token trading using the intended approve() and transferFrom() functions and traders instead must deposit their tokens into an exchange wallet. This means that there is a high risk that the DAO (for example) could fail to reach quorum as the exchanges will hold massive amounts of voting power, which could also be abused.
The gas price is determined by the miners. This can be raised or lowered and determines the price of computational power.
There are 3 particular values that I see contributing to ether's market value. 1. It has intrinsic value because it is the only token that the network accepts to run code. 2. It has financial value because it is required to buy tokens in a DAO/DO 3. It has speculative value on the open market dependent upon the above two fundamentals.
A large component of the speculative value is and will be driven by the increased scarcity as DAO's lockup supply as capital at a rate faster than mining can create. The DAO has locked up some 15% of total supply which will take mining a couple of years to replenish. A further upward force comes at the acceleration of adoption as Ethereum mainstreams over the years.
