Bitcoin Forum

That post about the $5000 bitcoins scenario made me think, should I have some litecoins?

At the NY meeting the Winkelvii mentioned that if Bitcoin is banned or crushed, an altcoin with a tumbled public ledger is likely to replace it.

What percentage of your bitcoins do you keep in alt coins such as peercoins, dogecoins, etc.....

Thanks for your thoughts.

I would and am diversified. Part of the reason is as a hedge, but the main reason is that as more money flows into bitcoin, more money will make its way into alts. Alts have a much greater chance of large increase short to medium term as a result. Bitcoin could go up 1%-1000% this year. Alts could go up 1%-10000%+ this year. Not every alt is created equal though, so I would suggest researching. They are definitely higher risk plays.

Btw, some alts have gone up 100000%+ already this year.

So, investing in alts is not a bad idea.

50% doge 50% ripple 0% Bitcoin  8)

50% BTC cold storage
40% LTC cold storage
5% FTC & PPC cold storage
4% on exchanges for trading other cryptos
1% fiat

Zerocoin:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2014/01/13/bitcoin-anonymity-upgrade-zerocoin-to-become-its-own-cryptocurrency/

Eh, I started out with about 5% in alts but it grew to around 40-50% in USD terms... litecoin's fault, I didn't actually buy any more.

Diversification is good because it reminds authorities that if they crush Bitcoin, even easier ways for people to circumvent legacy banking will arise.

Seems interesting. I hope they will use PoS like Peercoin. Right now my personal belief is that once this whole crypto currency fever is over PoS coins will be dominant. In concept a PoS coin can have lower transaction fees than PoW coin and free market will then probably prefer PoS. Also the blockchain should be decaying so that very old transactions could be safely forgotten by the network.

Approx:

85% BTC
5% LTC
10% PPC

Interesting choices. I think XRP has the least potential as it is not typically viewed as a store of value the same way other crypto-coins are.

That said:


98% BTC
1.5% PPC
0.25% QRK
0.25% DOGE

I don't think BTC is going anywhere. The network effect is too big, and the U.S. is not going to ban it. They're going to regulate it. This is pretty clear if you just consider all of the hearings, rulings, guidance, and statements that have been issued in the past two years.

I think the purpose of this statement is solely to reinforce the idea that banning bitcoin because it can be used for nefarious purposes is counterintuitive. It would push for a larger network effect into a protocol that uses a "tumbled ledger" that would have been otherwise reserved only for those seeking absolute anonymity. Whereas, by leaving bitcoin alone, or at least not banning it, you won't push legitimate users to such an extreme need for privacy.

I'd recommend something like this:
40% PPC <- PoS overpowers PoW
30% BTC
20% LTC
10% NMC

edit:
however, I myself are not a perfect follower of this plan because I hold my stuff in cold storage so I cannot balance the percentages out very easily. I'm still 80% BTC and I think it's a safe bet.

I agree, PoW will probably become outdated in a few years from now when people realize how much energy is needed and wasted on securing the Bitcoin network while all of that can be done just as well (and perhaps even better) with a PoS coin. This is also why I have diversified into Nxt and PPC. I also own and mine some Dogecoins for fun but they aren't keepers for me, that hype will die down in a couple of months from now.

None of the altcoins you mentioned have a tumbled public ledger or any advanced features like a decentralized exchange so none of them would serve as a hedge against Bitcoin in the scenario you mentioned. I would think of something more like NXT.

peercoin is centralized crap , nxt is a premined scam.


buy Litecoin

How is peercoin centralized? It's way better by design than by Litecoin. I was selling my litecoins to buy more peercoins.

Litecoin has no real advantages over Bitcoin. I will only buy Litecoin to sell it quickly afterwards at a higher price. NXT may be premined but its distribution is actually less concentrated than BTC currently is.

For those invested in Dogecoin.  May I ask why?  Some of the others may have some benefit such as Peercoin's POS but Dogecoin is and was intended to be a joke.

If enough people like the idea of turds wrapped in clingfilm as a currency, it would be a currency.

It appeals to people. You don't really need any technical fundamentals if that's the case. I don't have any Doge myself but it might end up surprising people.

I'm not invested in Doge but I trade it to scalp extra btc. From what I saw it seemed to be a very successful marketing experiment and the community even raised $30K for a jamaican bobsled team. I'd imagine the investors there are in because they think that the success will continue and it's going even higher. Some of them even think they're doing some good for the crypto community by experimenting with different use cases, casual adoption by everyday people, and marketing techniques that bitcoiners haven't thought of or bothered with yet. Some of them claim "dogecoin is bitcoin the way it was intended to be used" - small decentralized transactions by every day people rather than all this talk about big merchants and wall street which bores them. It's like a nostalgic trip back to the early adopter phase when things were new, easy, and fun. Who knows , there might still be things to learn back there which we left behind.  Ultimately these innovations will be brought back to Bitcoin and make Bitcoin stronger.

I see more point into investing for those alts with real implementation value, such as lottocoin and sexcoin. Lottocoin might become a huge asset towards newer funding casino gigs without having to get a loan as a starting funding while sexcoin holds a potential to become an exclusive pay method for.... Well, a more of a red carpet entry to purchase "goods" off the adult industry :)

I think most people don't really give a damn for any technical alterations of the original source code needless to say. It's all about hype, integration and of it's implementation in the market.

I do like Doge.   The joke and the logo and the continuous dumping of millions of coins, in my opinion form a clever repellent to most speculators and keep the price increases interesting, but not an 'Oh my God, I have missed the boat' turn off.  I am investing purely because I think the community is growing faster than the price. If this continues for another few months Dogecoin could surprise almost everyone.  The only advantage Bitcoin has is the network effect, everything else is easily duplicated and Bitcoin is not growing as fast as it should be at this stage of the game and that worries me a lot.  Bitcoin is an elephant next to the Doge, but have you ever tried pushing an elephant up the stairs?

The other thing I would add is that getting my first bitcoins was a real pain in the arse. A year later and it is still a pain in the arse and a handful of ATMs are not going to change this quickly.  If you want some dogecoins you are still able to mine them directly or you just post something on reddit - nothing much, but you are off and running in a few minutes and with no cost or risk at all.

I personally do not yet fully trust that PoS can be properly relied on. PoW is much simpler.
If I understand correctly the addresses eligible for minting a PoS block are randomly drawn.
The thing is that if you own a substantial amount of addresses that can mint PoS blocks they are more likely to be drawn.
If every block that can get a reward would get it at the same time (in the same round where one round is a block being added to the blockchain) the relative wealth would not change.
Now If my block gets drawn first and I can mint enough coins to put into a new address and have that also minting I am at an advantage.

Small thought experiment:
I have two addresses that can mint with both of them having enough coins to produce a third address that can also mint.
You have one address that can mint and produce a new address. If I happen to be drawn first I produce an extra address, further reducing your chance to beat me in the next draw round.
Of course this is much more complex, the rewards are different and if you had a majority of wealth there would already be massive problems.
I'm not really good at stochastics and maybe I am missing something but I just don't feel comfortable with PoS yet.

Anyways, this is just my personal oppinion






 

The number of addresses shouldn't change anything. It's the total amount of coin age that you own that produces PoS blocks.

Yes.... bitcoin has been boring as fuck so I just let it sit. Instead of waiting for BTC's price to rise I just trade ALT coins to increase my overall bitcoin count. It's a lot more fun and ALTs are highly volatile

8 BTC in Coinbase
1 BTC in Cryptsy to ride the pump n dumps
80 LTC in BTC-E
6.6 million MEOW

No, you need a random way of selecting who gets to "mine" the next PoS block or else the system becomes predictable
Here is the whitepaper : http://peercoin.net/bin/peercoin-paper.pdf
I believe some part/all of the previous PoW block is used and hashed to derive an address. If that address exists and has enough coin age it is eligible for minting a PoS block in which the owner pays out his own stake.

Note: thats why It is probably a bad idea to have multiple consecutive PoS blocks and a mixed approach is used. If Transactions are added you could theoretically try different combinations of transactions to create a block that, when hashed would also point to one of your other addresses.

Lest anyone be deceived, it is a very inefficient "diversification" in the MPT sense if the assets are all highly correlated.

Joke or not, I invested 10% of my BTC in DOGE the week before last when I happened to notice it trending upward rapidly. Turns out by sheer luck I got in near the beginning of the biggest altcoin pump in some time, and was able to sell my DOGE last Monday at a more than a 400% profit, increasing my total BTC holdings by over 30%. That, my friend, is the best joke I've been a part of in some time.

Other than Bitcoin & Litecoin, i suggest targeting Crypto assets like Bitshares, Ethereum, CGB. Also anonymity based coins hold a lot of future like AnonCoin, StableCoin & ZeroCoin.

from the general alt scene i think Lotto holds promise as a lot of gaming sites are accepting it and a lot of games are being developed around it, if development continues in 1 year it might be the most popular gaming crypto out there. Doge has promise by its community that's very strong and growing really fast with no end in sight, plus they have a smart PR team.

Nxt Coin holds a lot of promise as pure POS but the phase where u would've gotten super rich is long gone, the price is also currently dictated by artificial scarcity.

What's so great about LottoCoin? They give random amounts of coins to miners which will make the price unstable. Why would I accept it as payment? That doesn't make sense. I'd say it's a bad coin.

its the gaming infrastructure that is already built and being built around LottoCoin that matters, not the coin itself. I've been around the Lotto community since the start and witnessed how quickly the gaming infra has grown in just a month. If you think about it most Bitcoin/litecoin clones are useless since they offer nothing new over Bitcoin, what matters is the people i.e. the community and developers that bring value to the coin.

True, but why should anyone build gaming services around LottoCoin INSTEAD of Bitcoin? I'd go for BTC from the beginning.

NXT is one the most innovative of the new cryptos and it has grown rapidly because people see this innovation. I feel it will continue to grow for that reason. I've never been a fan of most of the alts simply because they are rip offs with slight changes. Yes they have been good for making money, but few provide any real innovation. NXT is new code and full of interesting features. People have always been talking about what the crypo that will become Facebook to Bitcoins Myspace, I'm not sure if that will ever happen, but it will require innovation and new features so I will invest in any potentially groundbreaking new crypos. We could also have a Visa/Mastercard/American Express situation, or Android and iOS, but I don't feel Litecoin fits into that since it is just a clone. 

Yeah I think NXT will be what Litecoin wishes to be (i.e. the silver of crypto). Mainly due to its way better scalability.

But I don't think NXT will surpass BTC though, the network effect, the infrastructure and the reputation of BTC seems too strong.

Also Bitshares will probable have a significant place in the final crypto landscape if the price tracking mechanism works according to plan.

NXT is just plain terrible. The UI is terrible, the premise is nonsense, the adoption is non-existent.

Just install it and try and use it, then try and trade it, then dump it and run for your trusted satoshi clone.

funny how you people say Litecoin is a clone , when it's really not .


the real clone is dogecoin.

There will be an user-friendly client on February 14 and I think the adoption is very good for a coin which was officially launch a month ago.  Also I don't understand what you mean by "the premise is non-sense".

Exactly, and so the wealth that is created form the shape of a.... wait for it.... pyramid.

Yup, those in the beginning, get a perpetual and proportional increase in funds, to the detriment of the subsequent adopters.  So GET IN FAST OR YOU'LL MISS THE BOAT.  ....ahhhh, such a scam.  What's hilarious is how they describe the perpetual mining as "inflationary", when economically, it is exactly the opposite.  It is like the CEO of a company issues stocks to his employees and gives himself the most, then executes a stock split proportional to how many you own - giving himself EVEN MORE SHARE OF THE COMPANY.

PoS is a very very subtle way of screwing people.  Make the math complex, give it a confusing name, but it's still a pyramid scheme.

PoW is inefficient, but I am hopeful of coins like Primecoin which successfully perform useful proof of work.  Disclosure: I am not a holder of XPM any longer - but it is the best altcoin thus far.

LOL, 'adoption is non-existent', it has actually grown rapidly. HAHA it is already the 5th biggest market cap in two months of existence, catching up to cryptos that have had years to grow. Not sure how that can be interpreted as anything but a great start at this early stage. There is nothing nonsense about it. Your issues with its ultra early UI (which will be address shortly with real clients), and dismissive nature towards its innovation ( or inability to even value that innovation) are more your issues than NXT itself having any problems. The primary issue people have complained about is how the original coins were 'unfairly' distributed, but the distribution thus far is actually slightly better than Bitcoins current distribution. The future is never certain, anything can fizzle, but NXT is doing wonderfully so far and has earned the attention it has received.

I consider anything that has taken Bitcoins source code and modified it a bit to be a clone. Litecoin, Dogecoin, and the majority of the altcoins fit into that. Litecoin has been lovely for speculation and making money, and I hope it make people more money, but it is a complete 'me too, me too' coin that brings relatively little to the table.

    
Stop and Ban those alt coins copycats now

Almost all(in fact, all) of the alt-coins out there are going to be a waste of time.  They're being created to take advantage of people who get super excited about different things and then get pumped and dumped.

Most alt coins are completely pointless and just poor replicas of what's already out there with little to no improvement.

Those alt coins(junkcoins) are spreading the investment of bitcoin and can't be good for crypto as a whole, they will also destroy people's trust of cryptocurrencies after their crash and run and disapparation. only their "developers" or "early adopters team" will get rich quick by taking your money away.

Bitcoin has a limit of only 21 million, however with all these so called "alt coins", the total number of crypto is in fact unlimited and make all cryptocurrencies end up into a ponzi scheme(only detract from people's perceived value of Bitcoin and the legitimacy of cryptos in general)

Stop and Ban those alt coins copycats now, let the money flow back to the bitcoin!

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=432187

yes and, you can't stop it.

Sure you can.  Just click the "ignore" link next to banaltcoin's post.  Works like a charm!

Fuck off you moron. This is what's called a free market. If you don't like it then don't invest in them, but you don't get to decide who should invest in what coin. Will lots of people get burned buying stupid coins? Yes they will, and that's perfectly fine. The coins that are good will remain in the end, and you know what, that coin may not be bitcoin.

I have all mine in dogecoins. It is the most promising crypto :D

50% crypto-currencies, 50% other assets(mostly cash plus fund, bond, stock and PM)
For crypto-currencies, 90% Bitcoin and 10% alts(mostly Litecoin plus some Peercoin, Feathercoin and Ripple)
Re-balance when any category out of +- 5% range

Altcoins are going mental.

There is a scrypt coin launched 6 hours ago, has network hashrate of 5.5 Gh and difficulty over 80 with 100 coming in next dozen blocks.

Freaky unbelievable.

what coin is that?

SaturnCoin.

My retirement portfolio:

30% Bitcoin
20% Litecoin
20% Dogecoin
10% US dollars
10% Saturncoin
10% gold

I would usually have a chunk in real estate but the current housing market seems a bit risky for my taste.

I like alt coins and have owned a fair few over the last year.
Most of my current value is in Litecoin, but only because it actually has a real cash value away from bitcoin. I also like Peercoin and recently got very interested in Nxtcoin.

However, the trick is to realise that alt coins are the future.  Bitcoin is currently doing the work of introducing crypto currency to the masses, but it isn't going to be the coin used by the mainstream.  That is going to be an alt coin.

History teaches us that change comes through little differences. Technology is no different, and the past 20 years has seen so many examples of this.  The internet started for the public with glorified text files.  By today we can video chat with individuals while we watch live TV and shopping with international traders all on the same screen!

What bitcoin fanboys need to remember is that none of the above example can not be done with the glorified text file internet of 1992. 

Bitcoin gives us structure
Nxtcoin gives us proof of stake and true decentralised trading
Just remember it took years of awful search engines before Google turned up and gave us everything we wanted. Nobody remembers the first search engines like webcrawler and Altavista - yet without them, Google would not exist.
The next alt coin will give us the next step towards everyday use, and the cycle continues. 

If you are not diversified into alts, your bitcoin pension pot is going to be worthless! ;-)

It sounds like you believe that BTC price will crash along with BTC when a replacement coin starts to take over.  Are you still holding BTC?  What is your plan of action with regard to selling your BTC holdings when you suspect that BTC will go down?

This is so very possible its not funny. I also had a nightmare where google releases a pre-mined coin backed by a million GOOG shares. I mean it would murder bitcoin over night.

So far, all the coins proposed by large organisations are centralised. JP morgan, google, and ripple.
smart money will not flow to those, but I fear the same as you do, the ignorant would first support a google coin.
It is a terrible test. the people have an opportunity to save themselves....... will they choose google coin? Id rather they choose dogecoin....

remove dogecoin saturncoin , usd and replace with silver and more LTC and you'll be fine.

That is far from certain and too bold a statement. It all depends on whether Bitcoin can adapt and incorporate the innovations altcoins will bring. If it can, whether through things built on top of the Bitcoin protocol or through a hard fork if all else fails, then BTC will become the coin used by the mainstream. And with the amount of people invested in Bitcoin and a strong ASIC network backing it, you know it will do everything it can to stay on top of the crypto foodchain. I think it's always good to diversify into a few promising altcoins, but I wouldn't bet most of my money on them right now.

75% in Bitcoin ( for real serious bussines, my family's future )
25% dogecoin ( for funny stuff, charity )

also invest in company related to bitcoin.

Most of the alt-coins do not provide any significant advantage over Bitcoin.
You have to realize that alts are primarily used for speculation. Of course anyone invested in it will claim that the changes make it far superior to Bitcoin.

Lets take fast block creations as an example. You are led to believe that fast block creation speeds are good. But are they?
In the unlikely but possible event that a large group of miners is separated (think undersea cable fails etc) you are facing a chain split. The faster the block creation speed
the worse it gets because the alternative chain grows quicker. So what do you gain? a bit faster confirms.
This can be solved using a service built on top of Bitcoin. Think about something like fast consensus ( i.e. what ripple uses) to form agreement upon transactions coupled with some sort of
deposit in case malicious entities to try and double spend.

Oh, and while I think it is good that Nxt has its own codebase the distribution of wealth there is practically asking for a trillion forks that deal with that issue.

I am not saying that alts have no merit, on the contrary. If I want to transfer a couple of cents (Tip or whatever) I'm not gonna use Bitcoin where the transaction fee might be higher than the amount.
Litecoin or DOGE or whatever can fill that niche. I just think that most people will put most of their trust into Bitcoin, diversifying a bit into alts for whatever reasons they have.

At this stage there is nothing fundamentally wrong with Bitcoin to warrant a full-fledged exodus. Any altcoin is weighed against Bitcoin. It has become the gold standard of cryptos.

raid_n, the biggest point about faster blocks actually is: Do they really mean faster confirms?

Answer: Not really.

Confirmations are a measurement of security. Simple speaking, when you have 1 confirmation in Bitcoin it means the mining power of 10 minutes says your transaction is confirmed. If you have a coin with 1 minute Blocktime 1 confirmations means the mining power of 1 minute says your transaction is confirmed

That means if you wait for 6 confirmations in a Bitcoin transaction, you should actually wait for 60 confirmations in the other coin and that only if the same amount of Hash Power would back it.

The only (very small advantage) is the 1. confirmation where it would already have the security of 1/10 of a Bitcoin confirmation.

That most services wait for 6 confirmations, no matter the Blocktime just shows how little understood that is.

Well it does mean faster confirms (on average), but weaker confirms ;).
The real issue only arises when malicious entities try to double spend.
If the requested transaction is honored even after a fork there is no problem.
Which is why I think this is not that much of an issue for future real world situations.
You'd want to have a service wrapped around Bitcoin that has extremely fast confirmation times anyways for stuff like point of sale.
They'd probably charge a small fee for covering the risk of double spends.

52% BTC
35% PPC
12% XRP
1%  NXT

In the past XRP investment was bigger, then its price fell.

73 % BTC
10 % DigitalCoin
10 % WorldCoin
7 % DigiByte

Let's see how this plays out :)

This is an awesome thread. I'm in bitcoins, gold and silver mainly but definately interested in diversifying into more crypto currencies. Peercoin and Litecoin sound quite good for starters.

Can anyone recommend good ways to do this? Do you have respective wallets for all these synching with their own blockchains or hold it on the exchange ? What exchanges are good ?

I recommend using https://myaltcoins.com to track your alt coin diversification situation.
Have about 75% of my net worth in cryptos, 20% in silver, 5% in fiat.

Crypto Holdings:
90.6% Bitcoin
4.7% Nxtcoin
2.2% Litecoin
2.1% Mastercoin
0.4% Namecoin

https://i.imgur.com/v945wKu.png

I always have loads of alts but to be honest I don't threat them as investment. It's just trying to buy low and to sell higher.

Bitcoin is single one that I'm comfortable to hold for longer period, all others are just a way to gain more bitcoins. So far, so good.

i have 90% in bitcoin

remaining 10% i plan to put in worldcoin, quarkcoin, usd-e, klondikecoin( 8)), litecoin, peercoin, nxt coin and possibly earthcoin

what do u think about this?

As I see it (and I should charge for this on a subscription service!) BTC might have another mad run where it shoots up to $2000 or maybe more, but it won't go much higher. We are already getting to the point where everyone that counts has heard of bitcoin.  The laws are being worked out, and a few people are buying and selling using it.  But I don't see the price crashing, I just don't see it growing to the silly figures we were predicting a few months ago.

Bitcoins are not going to die for at least 5 years, but their relevance is doing to dwindle after the various laws have been ratified. The technical issues regarding their use is not yet relevant to the mainstream, and for that reason, the advantages of Nxtcoin and the other alts are mostly academic. However once we all start buying and selling outside the banking system, then we will see the alts really taking off.

I don't hold any bitcoins in cold storage, but do convert my alts into bitcoin before I convert into fiat.  However, I can now convert Litecoin into cash as well, so I don't actually need to use bitcoin anymore.

In the long term (5 years +) the crypto currency industry is going to look very different.  I would assume that Bitcoin might become the slang term for crypto currency, but I don't think the coins we are currently holding are going to be the coins we use.

I recommend Litecoin.

Some advice:

1. Don't buy LTC when there is a major BTC bull-run, buy LTC from BTC after the stampede is nearing its peak.
2. Go all-in LTC and gamble.
3. Usually the low LTC/BTC rate will go up in a few days-weeks.
4. Profit ???

you forgot to hodl LTC .

muahaha MUAHAHa ...