Bitcoin Forum

Can someone explain me why we need them? I mean, if every shop adopt bit as payment will be expensive to adapt other coins as payment also.

So , why we need those alt currencies in a economical/performance view?

thanks

they are 'needed' because most people can't mine btc  ;) and so many missed the btc boat, nothing yet in the crypto community is actually a useable currency.

Some of the altcoins offer an unique feature, but most of them are rubbish.

As the altcoins are much easier to mine, most of the people mine them and trade them for more reliable altcoins (FTC, DGC, TAG), LTC or BTC. They can make more profit with doing that than mining LTC / BTC instead.

we need alt coins, its the beauty of freemarket innovation, in the end few will remain most will die.

Why does each country need their own currency? The USD is doing just fine.

USD  ::)

Thanks for that laugh :D

:)

The question isn't "why have altcoins?", it's "why not?"

And keep in mind that everybody doesn't have to agree, those who think alt coins are bad can ignore them, those that think they are good (or at least interesting) can work with them.


This would only be true if every business was going to setup their own wallet and daemon, etc, which no business is going to do, they're all going to use 3rd party services. 3rd party services can add as many coins as they like and it makes no difference to the business.

For the coin payment gateway the effort in adding another coin is minimal, (cryptsy supports about 50 coins).

For a business using the gateway they wouldn't even notice when a new coin was added, their customers would just have 1 extra option when making a payment.

We don't really need them because most of them have no new features. People however sees them as an opportunity for them to be in during the early stages so the look appealing. Some people even argue that altcoins are good for the ecosystem but i don't think thats the case.

These threads always turn into

"why we hate opensource" type threads.

Precisely.

M3gaman: instead of asking why, you should ask why not? This is the beauty of both free software and the free market here. Software gets forked for a multitude of reasons, but in this case altcoins provide a fantastic testing ground for ideas that might be considered too radical to be merged into the (increasingly) conservative Bitcoin. Some ideas may not ever be merged into Bitcoin, and that's okay too. Just let the marketplace of ideas run its course :)

Idk I like multiple coins but did you hear about guy holding up a sign making 20k that gives a bit of hope lol saw this on ifunny http://ifunny.mobi/i/kpiQVpPY1

Some of us enjoy coins that provide something over BTC, also diversity is a good thing.  BTC might be heavily regulated soon, whereas some coins might be extremely hard to regulate soon like megacoin or anoncoin.

True true, muahahaha dark wallet..... jk kinda hard getting your hands on btc though... and diff. crypto currency is a bit easier for newer people who can just get off faucet and go on an exchange and exchange it to start. Like me...still waiting on .05 btc from coinbase...just started and already got scammed so i didn't wanna risk too much. I have 0 anything wanna help out... ;) ;)

IFC: i3cXCFzDqknNpxRjEHCHnSATXhhv7s57HA
Btc: 1unjziGsexfBVSyRf3vqKUUyDLpjoaJLZ
FTC:6mvoamXLs36eHH3aLUd1wUyKw2CXFHHjAp

By coins that provide something new you mean megacoin? What new except the spash screen and speculation opportunities does mgc provides anyway  :P

Alt coins don't need to be regulated , because you can only sell them for BTC.
Any vendors accepting megacoin , ultracoin, shitcoin?

That simply isnt true. Let me enlighten you.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=273148.0

we miss the bitcoin train

Yeah , i'm impressed!  Common.....

Show me one vendor accepting an alt coin and not btc.
I'll show you 100 that do the opposite.

I need Altcoins for buying low and selling high :)

This guy nailed it right in the head.

Not everyone jumped onto the Bitcoin boat early on, so now they are regretting it. However, Bitcoin is OPENSOURCE, so some creative people were able to copy BitCoin and make their own altcoin that would be a LOT easier to mine, and they hope in the future it would have value like Bitcoin some day, but Bitcoin is the first and the BEST.

Without altcoins, there would be nothing for people just getting into bitcoin to mine. Even with a pretty decent graphics card on a standard computer (7950), you would get 0.0004 BTC/day mining bitcoin straight up. That kind of return wouldn't keep anyone interested in continuing mining.

Without altcoins, there wouldn't be an exciting, dynamic, and fun secondary "stock market" where you can trade bitcoins for other virtual items and witness a true free market in action.

Altcoins are extremely important in bitcoin adoption, and cryptocurrency adoption in general. Sure, many of them will not last as long as others, but let the market sort that out. Personally I don't understand the hate of altcoins at all, especially from Bitcoin zealots. Bitcoins gain a lot from the existence of altcoins.

Quark is silver to bitcoin's gold!

Competition is healthy for everyone.

Who said we need them?

I disagree. I think alt-coins are handi-capping bitcoins as people are hesitant because they may beleive one of these coins could overtake btc (not true). Also, as a online cyrptor currency if these alt coins didn't exist and their users had btc instead, the btc market cap would raise by at least 1 billion. These alt-coins also only become successful if btc performs well, So alt-coins are crippling btc while reaping rewards from its success.

you alt coin scumbags!

Well , I agree with most of what you said , but not with the last part.
I imagine altcoin beliebers like jackals or hyenas fighting over leftovers.

it was slightly sarcastic but thats hard to convey over text. I have around 20 of a handful of altcoins myself  ;D

Jackal :))))

Indeed people think that way but there is only psychological value to that logic. Every altcoin is pegged with bitcoin so it's prettu much the same no matter in which wagon you are going to jump. Of course the recent altcoin boom provided alt holders with some better profits but in the long term i don't thing that there will be any significan differences.

By that argument we should only use USD.

Show me one vendor that uses btc and not usd and ill show you 10,000 that do the opposite.

Just 10,000?  ;)

And Kelsey, you've got your finger off the pulse if you think BTC still isn't a useable currency.  Months ago a journalist survived for a period of time spending nothing but BTC for all her daily needs.  Indirectly, altcoins then become useable as well by exchanging them for BTC.

Also, some altcoins do bring up new ideas.  For the moment however, you can only speculate as to whether they will get the kind of traction BTC has.

I think in the long term somebody will come up with a universal payment platform that accepts any crypto from a customer and just pays the business in cash.

Most businesses don't want to deal with cryptos directly anyway, and they'll happily pay a small fee for somebody to facilitate crypto transactions for them.

But the structure of this means that bitcoin is no longer needed as a conduit between the alts and cash, a customer can just select their alt from a dropdown box, make a payment, and the business gets cash. Bitcoin is only used if the customer chooses to pay in bitcoin.

Just like some businesses here in China will accept my Euro, but they'll go to the bank and exchange it for CNY.

- For experiments with new features (e.g. PoS in PPC, NMC DNS system, Datacoin storage).
- To improve liquidity of cryptocurrencies.
- To experiment with new hash algorithms and security concepts (Tenebrix, Primecoin...).
- To expermient with new economic paradigms (e.g. demurrage in FRC, ultra-high PoS-minting rates like NVC, automatic stability mechanism in eMunie, constant low inflation in PPC ...).
- To detect security risks (see the 51%-attacks performed on some altcoins)
- As a hedge against Bitcoin volatility
- Monopolies are never good
- To make some altcoin early adopters rich

And finally:

- So Bitcoin early adopters don't become too rich ;D

Has this last sneeze of bitcoin finally prove to you that all alt coins are just clones?
The chinese mentioned only bitcoin , not cryptos , not ltc ppc gorrilacoin.
And... all alt collapsed! Why? Because they are clones, nothing more. Get rich quick schemes.

Also , at least the ratios usd only/bitcoin vendors is improving.
Bitcoin/alts  ... is going down.

Bitpay?

https://www.gldtalk.org/devteam/evil.png


Competition makes things better for the consumer.

The byproduct of all these altcoins competing for marketshare ensures continued innovation and invention which was stalled when Satoshi abandoned his Bitcoin project and disappeared into thin air with over 1 millions coins.

And or course without altcoins we wouldn't have videos like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mA64WczpA88  :D  ;D  :D

A hedge against bitcoin volatility isn't possible because alt coin's prices are pretty much pegged with bitcoin. Although i agree that they can act as a live simulation for various concerns.
You may want to add to your list the experiment about what happens when all the coins are mined. Some alt coins are almost mined completely already.

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you can join cryptsy and send me a little sumthin sumthin if you know what I'm saying...  ::) or just put in my trade key on dashboard in the referral box. Now is the time to trade and gain more and don't undersell just hold until you can sell at even just a bit profit. Find your own method of trading. Mines seems to be working I've learned how to use charts more effectively :)

Now we're getting somewhere. Thanks guys