Bitcoin Forum

the forward progress of technology and continued rise of globalization makes the concept of a decentralized cryptocurrency increasingly relevant. but how many altcoins serve a distinct and unique purpose? will altcoins become more numerous and specialized to fulfill specific purposes, or will they tend to merge in a more generalized fashion?

The only one so far is Bitcoin, others are just money grabbers. A look a the ridiculous valuation of ICOs recently shows most are not in it for the tech or to improve the space but to rob investors. Pokaldot project is a good example, majority of their ICO fund is trapped in a contract until when and the team is now saying it will not affect their development of the platform so they just collect the fund because gullible people are willing to donate it to them for free

yeah I see where you're coming from.. bitcoin is definitely the front runner, but I think ethereum and its smart contract capability might fill some gaps. monero is another cryptocurrency that has some unique functionality, with respect to anonymity. I don't know... I think we're going to see a few coins endure while the vast majority are left behind.

Not many will serve a distinct and unique purpose and most will cease to exist after a short while. A survey was conducted on how many github projects regarding cryptos were still active and iirc the number was 8% and less. This means that 90%+ the projects that start out dont make through the whole progression of what they set out to do. Knowing that you should be careful investing in projects that look dead or near dead.

There have been almost millions of altcoins on the market, and so many of them are already dead, so there is nothing to discuss about that. Some altcoins just appear on the market, and in a few days they are dead because they didn' receive the enough attention from the investors, or maybe they were just stuck on the ICO price and then it went down by a lot of money, and the investors decided to dump all their coins.
The market can sustain as much altcoins as it wants, the only thing that makes the difference is the people, we are the only ones who decides which altcoins are going to be in there.

All of the new cryptocurrencies has in reality one orienteer, and it is Bitcoin. Most of people have never heard about the majority of new altcoins. Only single coins survive and can compete with the leaders — ETH, Ripple, DASH, Litecoin, Monero.
Probably market can sustain thousands of alts, but will they sustain the market and its competition?

I feel like more and more altcoins will emerge as application specific projects, such as wallets, exchanges, casinos or even taxi hiring for example. But these projects will continue to be overshadowed by generalized projects, such as ETH, NEO, EOS, etc.

People like to hype about things and it's hard to hype about a niche that doesn't rake in much in the first place.

Overall though, we're going to see more niche market coins.

I think market is capable of running 100 coins minimum, but if you are asking how many can prove itself as currency, I would say not more than 5. Bitcoin, Litecoin and some other anon coins.

Merge - Not possible in crypto
Unique feature - only ten to twenty of the coin out there are offering something different or based on specific niche

Its just hard to stop people from forking existing coin and coming up with new alts. These days even people without any technical knowledge are running ICOs with ETH based tokens which is worst than before. Only few out of thousands of altcoins will survive in long run.

There isn't a specific number that the market can sustain, we have a free economy and everyone can do whatever he wants, if he wants to list his coin and can do so let him do it. There are millions of stocks trading on various exchanges worldwide, there isn't any limit at to how many you can have. Actually the more there are the better, because it make the entire exchange or economy itself more diversified (instead of having a few rich companies you have many less rich, silly example but that's the general idea), it makes as well the economy stronger because people are not depending on only one company and the entire system is not that interconnected, which is good (if one falls it will drag someone else with him).

 I think there is no limit, but one day the regulation will came and after that it will be devided in to black market
with a lot of cryto tokens and the official one with 20 or 50 of them and i think it's gonna happend in the nearest two
years

Well altcoins is used as a generalized therm. As alt coins meaning currencies I can only see a few making it for the long haul. New features are being added to existing coins so as to reduce the need for specialized currencies.

But altcoins also is used to describe blockchains for smart contracts like Eth, Neo and the like. There is room for more of these

And altcoins also refers to tokens. Tokens used for access to services things like Fun, Steem, Maidsafe, Factom. These are limitless because there will be mechanism to allow the conversion of these in the background where you aren't even aware that they are there. You will have wallets that you tell whether to hold that coin or instantly convert it to some other base currency like Btc.

There are other categories like holding a stock that pays dividends like Omg and Obits. These are innumerable as well.


I don't think the space is overcrowded and has no room for others but I do think it has become harder to sift through all the rubbish to find the good ones to buy and hold

There are approximately 3000 altcoins in the market. Most of them have no actual business. Bitcoin is the king of the market.

there is only a very few number of projects that are actually worth calling a "project" in my opinion. probably less than 5 are like this. the rest of the them (about a thousand something) are just copy cats or worthless projects that have been made for pump and dump reasons only.

and the market doesn't care. they come in like the penny stocks market, and stay around for a while then die and disappear into the dust and give their place to hundred other useless projects.

There are high number of altcoins and there is no limitations for the altcoins to be listed in the market. We have already seen a big trend this year of many new altcoins being introduced and it is not a bad thing. The only thing which makes me worried is that almost all the alts are made with the intention of gaining profit in a shortest possible time and most of the time dev dissappers after getting the profit from his single altcoin and move to create another one solely for gaining the profit from it too.

I think while blockchain technology will become more and more common, we will see more and more its application.
I'm not sure about "traditional" cryptos, but we will see more and more tokens related to real business. And its courses will rely on business success.
So main competition will run on business field, and token course will be just like indicator.
The traditional" cryptos will probably become platforms for tokenized businesses. I doubt about bitcoin future, cos it seems to be completely useless in future outlook. But it still have chances to evolve.

There is no limit as of now because nowadays a simple coin or token can be created by anyone with slight knowledge.
If the people keep on buying coins like them then be prepared to expect more coins like those. The whole market is filled with shitcoins which is neither an utility nor useful. We need some kind of regulations to control these activites as soon as possible.

I think altcoin will more and only specific to meet certain goals. They make it join the more common mode, so it's easy to understand and use a lot of people.

In my opinion, most ICO will eventually die, leaving fewer than 200 ICO, so it's crucial to choose an excellent ICO project.

More Cryptos means higher overall liquidity a good thing.  Can support many many more yet in my humble opinion.

Despite the fact that now there are a lot of altcoins, many of them will die soon. The market keeps only strong and popular coins which are useful and used by many people

Not a lot for sure. One everyone cashout to BTC or top coin, the price will very low.

Really worthwhile projects will take their place in the market. But this is in my opinion 10-15% of all altcoyins. The rest will simply go to nowhere with time. If the project does not need people, then it will not live in the market.

Survival of altcoins is necessary for the survival of bitcoin. If altcoins could not survive in ecosphere by any means then trust of investors in bitcoin too will be devastated. Thats why altcoins and bitcoin they need each other.

I agree, but it might be even less than 10%. I think if we would be very surprised of what goes on behind closed doors.