Bitcoin Forum

As this topic is essentially about Bitcoin, not altcoins (as the tittle wily but deceivingly suggests), I think it is a correct board to start it in

Many of us are wondering what would happen if crypto vanished altogether (and probably having jitters at such a thought). Well, I'm not that cruel, and only propose to discuss the less evil problem, if a problem at all. That is, will Bitcoin as well as a few selected altcoins (say, a couple or so) benefit from the complete disappearance of the total majority of altcoins from the cryptocurrency arena?

As I'm inclined to think, a few remaining coins would benefit dramatically. My train of thought is as follows. We can  plausibly claim that Bitcoin would be far better off now if not for the huge pile of shitcoins that turned out outright scams at the end of the day. People wouldn't have lost their money in these schemes, and they wouldn't lose it if they invested it in Bitcoin instead. Simple and straightforward logic, right?

In the same vein it is natural to assume that the death of the altcoin world would eventually do only good to Bitcoin in the long run as people won't be losing money anymore. So what d'ya think?

I don't agree with it, bitcoin rise this high because of altcoins, so if altcoins will die, people may invest in bitcoin but will not be as aggressive as before.
The market is big, people are looking to diversify their investment and I don't see any reason why altcoins should be eliminated when they offer great idea and they are building it for us to use in the future.

But what makes you think so?

Basically, you are claiming that many people who lost their money in scams (first in shitcoins, then in ICO's) somehow helped Bitcoin rise, right? To me, that looks like a very flimsy argument. Honestly, I'd rather say that it only hurt Bitcoin image as well as its price tag. You see, it is not enough to disagree with someone's opinion. You should actually bring some facts to the table in order to support your point of view. Or you could just say that you have a cartload of altcoins, and we would understand


To tell the truth, I don't see altcoins as a means of proper diversification as it looks and feels more like stealing people's money

I will take a neutral decision on this thread, I agree that people go out of shitcoin that don't promise and even pile up their money there under huge losses, if they leave some shitcoin they can invest in bitcoin or other older altcoins that have more potential rather than shitcoin that is dead, I think it doesn't matter altcoin is dead if the project is dead and there is no visible life but not on altcoin which still has potential, basically altcoin also affects the price of bitcoin, many altcoins that die and become shitcoin are now largely abandoned by people are turning to investing in bitcoin

I do think altcoins disappearing will be a net positive for bitcoin in the long term. I think that it will make people realize that 99% of projects are just purely fluff, and what mostly matters is bitcoin. People are just creating blockchains for literally anything that it's beyond stupid. Think about all those scams that left a bad taste on people's mouths.

Diversifying your portfolio by investing in altcoins is still one of the most stupidest things that surprisingly, I'm still seeing in 2020.

This is only based on my observation, there's a lot of ICO in 2017 and that was the time bitcoin reached its new ATH, so that growth could be associated to altcoins whether people are scam or not, and I also believe that those who got scam will not gonna leave the market right away, they will learn and find bitcoin as a safe investment.



Don't generalize the altcoins, true that majority of them are scams but as the market is maturing, people will realize and like I said will learn from their mistakes. We can look at the market (https://coinmarketcap.com/) once again and we will see there are altcoins that are producing results and one of my favorite is the BNB, but at the same time I am also a believer of ETH.

I hope you aren't closing your mind on altcoins because you are hating them. I'm just stating the facts based on my opinion.

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I hope to prove you wrong at least 5 years from now.

However, if we are talking in 2017, I have already proved that diversifying in altcoins is a good strategy, you guys just won now because altcoins are struggling, lol..

It's a good strategy, if you got out immediately on the top of the bubble. Buying coins/tokens at the bottom and needing to sell at the top isn't "diversification". It's speculation/gambling.

I'm going to wish you the sincerest best of luck. You're going to need it.

And what if they struggle forever?

Honestly, altcoins or not, as long as there is enough buy pressure (which means it has a product that is used by many) it will be okay. I'm pretty sure out of the thousands of altcoins that exist right now, most of them will disappear sooner or later.

The death of so many altcoins will only mean funds being diverted into Bitcoin and those few altcoins on the top of ranks. I agree that Bitcoin and the top altcoins will be the ones that will benefit if the majority of the altcoins will finally die. The worth of all shitcoins combined would still reach hundreds of millions in USD. That amount will definitely be getting into Bitcoin and top altcoins out of disappointment from shitcoins.

Yeah, I got out immediately but I will not lie, I am still holding some of the shitcoins you are talking now, but I should still be thankful because I made profit in my overall investment, just like gambling, you win some and you lose some, but what matters is you have more wins.


yeah, but I'm only referring to the rest of the altcoins I am still holding after the last bull run, and altcoins that I have accumulated post bull run.
Bitcoin is great but in every investment, you can't hold it forever, you also need to initiate properly to do the right timing to buy at sell, it just happened that altcoins are riskier but if you play the game right, you'll end up smiling in the end.

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What if they won't. No guarantee mate, the "what if" stands for either the risk and reward in crypto.

The total market cap of those altcoins that will be exterminated will go to bitcoin and few alts that you're referring to. And obviously, this is beneficial for both of them but about the scams.

It's not just about scam altcoins but also those schemes that are using bitcoin to receive investments from their victims. The hyip, ponzis, pyramiding and other kinds of scams that are asking for bitcoin investments. There's no guarantee that they will not lose money if there are people in the community who are still not aware of these scams and can be a potential victim.

I'd rather have every alt disappear than Bitcoin if I had to decide between the two. Having Bitcoin stand up as the only cryptocurrency surviving would determine everyone to focus on making Bitcoin better than ever before. Right now the focus is split in too many ways imo, there are so many alts & tokens out there I lost the count..

Then trading will no longer be applicable once every alt dissappear. These will simply be like a bank when total supply of bitcoin reached if there's is no trading in the market will happen. I still choose to have some alt. But only those who are legit and with active team.

True. There's really nothing wrong about trading shitcoins as long as you can stomach the risks, as you could definitely make(or lose) money. What I was disagreeing was calling it "diversification", as diversification is done to reduce risk for your investing portfolio; which is definitely not something you can really achieve by trading shitcoins. Just to clear things out.

As per my view point the crypto market never going to stop for new coming altcoins because it is increasing day by day and some of them already have been disappeared from crypto market as like scam or shitcoin but bitcoin is always have the potential to dominate the crypto market.

A coin never completely disappear unlike most businesses, but can be dead. Bitconnect is still around and being traded from it's community, but it's dead. It is rare to see a coin be resurrected. a lot of altcoins projects will die off because a lot of them are shit or scam. I think there are more than 8000 cryptocurrencies, and 1% of 8000 is 80 which is the maximum in my opinion of use case cryptos. Don't get me wrong, may there are more but this is generally what we are sure about. The chuff of useless shitcoins will die while projects with teams, goals, roadmaps, white papers and a clue will survive.

I agree with you without alts Bitcoin wouldn't have reached it's highest peak, yes competitor make people grow more in our essential life. Similarly the same occurred in crypto currency as well, the real fact of disappearing of alts is only because of the scammers who broke the trust and belief of investors else top alts would have been in a descent price range.

If you're talking about shitcoins, they are mostly forgotten, and their disappearance on the market won't cause much effect on the prices. That's why they're called shitcoins in the first place.

But if you're including top altcoins like Ethereum, then it won't do much good either, as Ethereum has disadvantages over Bitcoin. If Bitcoin alone can't overcome its own problems especially in scalability, then a newer tech might come into play, or it won't just grow.

I'm optimistic when it comes to Bitcoin and cryptocurrency in general but to be honest, I'm still thinking that there is a chance that it will happen (around 0.00001% maybe or lower). Its not cruelty to be honest but it is thinking of both sides and take note that a coin has 2 sides and it can be applied here :).

They are predicting that 90% or more of the altcoins in the market right now will be vanished in the future because of lack of marketing, support and liquidity in exchanges. Some altcoins right now are turning into scam especially those new projects that is why many investors don't want to invest in new projects. I'd rather like that most of the altcoins right now will be vanish because to be honest, most of them are totally useless. People are just creating coins for profit.

if you wish altcoin to vanished then the market will surely go down because of no trading volume  ::)

i believe that all the shitcoins must die together with fake tokens but of course market is running because of those.
but only if we can distinguish which is which right?because there are low ranking currency that is not shitcoin also there are on the high ranked that consider as shit also.
also correct because Bitcoin cannot serve the world alone,that is why therea re altcoin to support and back this up if necessary .

It's not good to invest all your eggs in one basket and hence people have invested in altcoins to have different coins in their portfolio. Investors earlier had to just depend on one coin and couldn't have a diverse profile due to which altcoins were created and not all altcoins are shitcoins and some are stable like ETH for example. Investors need stable crypto coins as well as BTC's fluctuations are too much to handle. Just because the market is bear since 2 years, we can't just disregards to success of bitcoins due to these altcoins.

Also, most projects have stopped because of the bear market and not because they lost interest. They are waiting for the conditions to improve to bounce back.

So you'd rather have Bitcoin disappear and all these sh*tcoins and tokens survive instead? I just hypothetically said that, if I had to choose between the disappearance of Bitcoin and the disappearance of alts, I'd rather choose the latter.

I don't really care if the market goes down, as long as I can still make use of Bitcoin. This is when those seeking get-rich-quick strategies go away and the true users of Bitcoin survive on the network.

if the elimination of shitcoin can be done in full then automatically investors will think of pursing their assets only for quality coins, of course it will provide benefits for bitcoin, and selected altcoin. Although this is not possible, but I am thinking about how to create a system that can rank caste on coins from every chain, it might be a solution to separate altcoin that is really good and active with others.

It already happen, bitcoin is still better even wit the pile of shitcoins.
There are people who lost money investing in shitcoins but not only in shitcoins actually as there are also people who lost money investing in bitcoin.
Without altcoin, people will have no choice where to put their money if bitcoin will go down, so that would be a boring market.

What makes this market more attractive is the variety of assets people can trade and major part is the altcoins market.

It is really impossible to eliminate shit coins or those coins that are trash meaning doesn't have any value at all because world of cryptocurrency is very huge and many people will still make an ICOs and introduce a new token that eventually will become shit coins in which at the first place it has a good value but later on when the project has been done the value of that shit coin will dump in which it will become shit coin meaning it has a value but very low or dump side.
It would be good if the developers of this shitcoin will stop making on it to lessen this kind of trash coins, and so that the investors will not afraid to invest on the projects.

As long it is good coins, i think market will still not have big problem with it. It is almost same with them who not listed bad tokenss in their exchange. If me, personally agree if only good coins in market because we still can trade it, with pump and dump or manipulates, some of that altcoins not dead yet and stay in exchanges, and it is good actually.

i don't believe alts are going anywhere just like btc have come to stay regardless of what non btc supporters might have to say, there are some good alts that has really gone deep in trying to develop a use case for their tokens/coin, such alts have a better chance to excel even more,

btc can not provide the services needed in various aspect of economy, hence the need for alts to fill this need, for those alts that are disappearing, it only shows they were created solely to make quick money, no ambition or goal to achieve, so they have achieve their short term purpose and will disappear, but the real long term alts will continue to strive towards achieving their goal.

I think some altcoins are beneficial because there are some that serve a differnt purpose than Bitcoin such as for smart contracts, privacy, microtransactions, etc.

I think that it would be good if the bad altcoin projects would disappear, but to be truly a free market, they should fail organically.

definitely most shit coin will gradually die off because they have nothing to offer, majority of this alts are just for pump and dump only, nothing special about them, it is even better this way, the market need proper sensitization of all the crap coins around for a healthy market.

Well OP surely has a point about the loss of altcoins being a positive motivation towards the increase in value of Bitcoin as well as it's market cap. But let's not forget that some altcoins have very good use cases and bringing real life solutions to the world. Hydro and Link is doing a great job. Maybe, people need to either go for some of these good coins or just invest in Bitcoin. Completely getting rid of all altcoins is not the best solution.

Altcoins exist because they fulfil a need that bitcoin fails to fulfil. For example, I move money from exchanges using alts simply because the withdrawal fees on bitcoin are too large. There are never any mempool backlogs on alts either, so you can move coins like Litecoin or Doge swiftly and then exchange for fiat on exchanges like Kraken.

Buying altcoins is not diversification. When bitcoin goes up, altcoins go up. When bitcoin goes down, altcoins go down much more. You are not negating risk at all by buying altcoins, which is the whole point of diversification. If you get really lucky and catch some random pump and dump you might make a little profit, but the vast majority of people who hold altcoins lose money. Just ask anyone who bought pretty much any altcoin during the bullrun at the end of 2017. 99% losses from their ATH is commonplace.

If you want to diversify your investments, look at vehicles outside of crypto altogether.

If a project has stopped being developed or worked on because the price has fallen, that's a pretty sure-fire guarantee that it's a trash project and the creators/developers are only in it for the money. Look at bitcoin in comparison. New releases and new features being worked on constantly, regardless of whether the price is $3k or $20k.

That's a problem with centralized exchanges, not with bitcoin. I trade peer-to-peer, and for the vast majority of my trades I pay fees of around 1-3 sats/byte. If you are paying 0.005 BTC per withdrawal, or whatever these scummy exchanges charge, then you should be looking for a new method to buy and sell bitcoin.

The reason altcoins confirm quickly is because a confirmation on an altcoin is only a fraction as secure as a confirmation on bitcoin. A litecoin transaction, for example, takes more than 36 hours (https://howmanyconfs.com/) to reach the same amount of security as 6 bitcoin confirmations.

I'm not exactly sure what "most" means in this context, but I fully expect 90% of altcoins to disappear eventually, simply because there's no reason for them to exist--and it would seem that the market doesn't agree with that right now, but eventually it probably will realize this fact. 

But those shitcoins won't exactly disappear altogether.  They'll probably just end up with nobody mining them and exchanges delisting them.  That's as close to death for an altcoin as you can get, but there's no telling if they'd be resurrected one day.  And I'm not sure how all of that would bode for bitcoin or the remaining altcoins.  In order for those altcoins to die, there would have to be a strong mood of pessimism regarding crypto, so it might be a bad thing for all coins.

I don't see any of that happening for a while, though.  Altcoins aren't dead; they've just been beaten down and will probably bounce back eventually.

If the huge majority of the altcoins will perish, the crypto market will be more focused on Bitcoin and a few selected altcoins. And if that happens, the investors and crypto supporters and users will be left with no other choice but only on what's on the plate. And so the benefit would certainly go to Bitcoin and the few altcoins that are left.

But, one thing is for sure, the altcoins will stay alongside Bitcoin. I don't think there will ever come a time in the future of the crypto market that only a single coin will remain standing, which is most probably Bitcoin. The digital age has come and as it develops more, it is expected that cryptocurrencies will become part of the culture of finance. Altcoins serve different purposes in these modern times of ours, other than what Bitcoin is offering.

If the majority of the altcoins vanished, of course, the remaining coins will benefits maybe a huge volume will be transferred on these coins. But this scenario I guess will never happen new altcoins is created almost every week or every month I see a new Announcement thread or bounty thread about a certain coin/token. Bitcoin alone is like an island, altcoins add colors to the blockchain technology it gives additional features that bitcoin does not have like smart contracts, etc. but we can't deny the fact that the majority of altcoins is sh8tcoins I can't think of a solution to stop them, just avoid it.

We've seen alts come and go, there are many that have just faded in the dark. Crappy alts deserve to just perish and let the market focus on what truly deserves to live.

When the bounty hype and hunt will stop & become non-worthy, all these useless tokens will just fade away. I'm still waiting for that moment. The market still isn't mature, it needs a lot more to go through. When the crappy coins will perish, the market will show its true value. Imagine if suddenly all the millions sitting in sh*tcoins were moved back to Bitcoin and.. idk, top 10 coins. The market would take large moves.

yes it would do good to BTC. though the price is dictated by the market.

the less options for investors to pick which coins to buy will be better for crypto and probably for B TC because its the usual pick for new investors in crypto.  with the teams not updating anything at all since bear market and then the volume obvious close to zero, its best for the altcoin to disappear in the market. there are several of these projects already and hope they are not going to come back.

We would never know if bitcoin would still reach $20K and then drop back to $3K without those shitcoins. I don't think they were relevant enough to affect bitcoin and drag the price down to almost 90%. We can plausibly claim also that even if they invested in btc alone, they would have still lost.

This is what a "bitcoin maximalist" would love to see. Without the competition brought by altcoins, it's possible that those who are in charge of bitcoin blockchain development wouldn't care about improving scalability and lessening fees since they have the monopoly. That wouldn't be good either.

He may never know for sure but as the past movement of Bitcoin I am pretty sure that it will still go in a new all-time high maybe the time is not really right for now but I am pretty sure that it still will,

Along with the drama of halving it may increase in value and may also end up a failed, but that all-time high will still come, and by many lost with some investors is the weak hands that are selling first.

Are you seriously saying that you do not see a reason to see most of the altcoins in the market eliminated? There are a few good altcoins out there and we all know them but why do we need thousands of coins, most of them are either scams or a fork of another coin that no one really cares about, it is time to recognize the truth the experiment of altcoins has been for the most part unsuccessful, even if there are a few coins with interesting ideas most of those could be implemented in bitcoin in the future leaving all of those coins with no utility.

I don't think so, no. Bitcoin wouldn't change much with or without the altcoins. The people who currently own altcoins wouldn't necessarily have that in Bitcoin regardless, they could go stocks or whatever. Less altcoins benefiting altcoins? Maybe, but not by much.

In any case its a moot point. Its like those that would want to see a single Linux distribution, or a single desktop environment, or a single web browser: Its never happening. The nature of Free and Open Source software promotes diversity by its very nature, altcoins will continue to exist even if they never achieve success and most will die anyway because there is simply too many of them and many have changed things for the worst (centralization, etc).

Scammers existed before Bitcoin, with bitcoin and with altcoins. Some people lost money in altcoins while not being a scam at all, they simply trusted something that the market deemed worthless.

Bitcoin would not be far better off without the altcoins, it would be, about the same. If there were no altcoins it means it wasn't free and open source and that would lead to a far much worse situation, that thankfully never happened. Closed proprietary software, or security by obscurity is absolute garbage (cryptographers had known that for decades).

Altcoins might wish there were less of them, but that isn't happening either. Nothing stops you from making your own coin, even if its literally just Bitcoin with another name (your own blockchain). That's the beauty of it. Now convincing the market that yours is worth anything, that's a whole other matter... It is like, trying to sell a product in a place with overabundance of said product.

Considering that most altcoins are turning into scam after years of milking the unsuspecting investors, it will be difficult for new teams to get listed in exchanges while new investors today are already warned about new altcoins. The old ones are going to be in the market if they continue to keep developing.

Less altcoins that will successfully listed in exchanges due to them asking more money will discourage new scam teams and ultimately BTC will be the most bought coins making its price surge. Its not just going to be good for BTC for for all the remaining altcoins.

If altcoins should start disappearing, that would make a lot of people to quickly start losing interest in altcoins and that would strengthen the fact that Bitcoin is the more secured cryptocurrency there is. A lot of people would leave altcoins and rush back into Bitcoin. So yes, Bitcoin is really going to benefit from it and a lot of altcoins will lose, just like you have said. The only altcoins that will survive it will be those at the top that have gained trust already like Ethereum, Ripple, and few top altcoins.

Yep, that’s true. It will even be good because a lot of people would realize that Bitcoin is the true cryptocurrency and it will help the Bitcoin market to grow heavily and it will maybe reach a stage where it will become quite stable and won’t be easily manipulated or something like that.

First of all: Define what Bitcoin is for you - just a ticker ? A special protocol impl or the bigger idea (that started 2008 - without any tickers) ?

At the moment, the market has already been formed, there is a flagship represented by bitcoin, there are several altcoins that are more or less close to it, there are altcoins occupy any of niches, and there are a huge number of different coins that are abandoned and do not affect development industry.

More investors came into the space because of altcoins, It was a FOMO to new investor, with the idea 'if they missed the bitcoin at less than 1 dollar they have other opportunities'. Most of them started well with a good pump in price against bitcoin, it was quite easy with richer investors when bitcoin was less than $1000. Invariably most of the trade were paired with bitcoin,and bitcoin to fiat was more dominant at those period. So it was easy for bitcoin to achieve the high volume trade and absorb most of the money in the space from altcoin. I believe bitcoin would have enjoy a good price ride but never this high.

currently there are no projects that can be the right place for investment. Better investment is only in bitcoin, although the benefits are very long, but this is the safest because if investing in an ICO or IEO project, there will be many scams and will make the assets of the investors. the investor is gone and makes the name cryptocurrency worse.

It seems you are confusing correlation for causality

In other words, you implicitly assume that Bitcoin reached an ATH due to altcoins emerging en masse, right? Or, put differently, if it weren't for altcoins, Bitcoin wouldn't reach so high a price in 2017? If anything, I think it is quite the other way around. For example, if there hadn't been a split which led to the creation of Bitcoin Cash, Bitcoin would have reached even a higher price by the end of 2017 (and probably wouldn't have fallen so much in 2018)


This is just another example showing that people don't pay particular attention to detail as I was not generalizing all altcoins (I said "Bitcoin as well as a few selected altcoins")

I know that all altcoins depend on bitcoin prices but it requires just a little jump in the price to see altcoins as profitable while those investing in bitcoins need to have a good investment of 1000+ USD to get a good profit which is not in the case of altcoins where you can invest as little as $100 and see yourself earning a good profit. Not to mention the amount you pay as fee in bitcoin transactions and confirmation time.

There are many other investments one can make but here I have found altcoins more profitable than bitcoins as these altcoins start from a price of $0.01 or less where bitcoin was in the start.


That's true but since the market is now almost dead, can't say the project was trash or not as some projects were really doing great when they were launched.

The altcoins have spaces to grow, but according to the latest situation it is very hard to choose the right one for the investment, whereas bitcoin seems promising any any other coins. Yes you can find altcoins start from a price of $0.01 for the last two years we hardly seen iny positive movement in there.

It is definitely a bigger idea

I'm paid with bitcoins for doing online jobs (like translations or whatever), and without Bitcoin this wouldn't be possible. It is not only that of course as there are other applications beyond being "just a ticker" (by which you seem to refer to speculation, I guess), but that's what instantly comes to mind when asked such a question. So I looks like I defined what Bitcoin is for me (it is not just a ticker), and what comes next?

Well, we assume to step down in 2014-2015-2016. which is still very little altcoin. and Bitcoin is very good with its pattern. altcoin remains a favorite for investors and crypto traders. Big and chaotic changes exist after 2017. which all shitcoins enter and take part to damage. I totally agree if the majority of altcoin is eliminated. only the best altcoin you have. so crypto returns to good.

Probably, the reason why there are still a small number of altcoin is because of the platform not readily available to the market. Yes, we all know that Ethereum and EOS make it possible for the market to open up opportunities for business to use crypto, though, it is not the most effective way to positively impact the market.


This is the continuation of the creation of tons of altcoins which probably for the sake of having their so called "Own Cryptocurrency/Altcoin", the race to enter the smart contract spreads this toxic mindset that result to what we have right now, which is allot of altcoins not worthy, and without value.

Actually, they have value

And this value is strictly negative (which is essentially what this topic as about). People invest their hard-earned money in these shitcoins, eventually lose their investments, and this invariably affects the whole market in a prohibitively negative way (i.e. their money is gone for good). As you can see, having a negative value is a little bit different than having no value at all (not the same as being neutral)

That's the bad side actually. Bitcoin were still highlighted not just because of those shitcoins that are popping around the market but because they can't really beat Bitcoin. Some investors claimed that their own altcoins will save them, let's face the reality.
"Altcoins weren't as the same as 2017".
They are starting to disappear now but Bitcoin remains the first spot. If not for the scammers, altcoins are still flying until now.

You are right, I was thinking of that and I believe it was Altcoins which makes bitcoin reach its ATH.
The thing is, when that time there's a lot of running ICO, they invested on it as ICO that time are so profitable, but then its just normal for risk management purpose that the team who own a project in ICO would raise BTC and ETH as these two coins are more stable compared to the others and even some have converted their ETH for bitcoin, so btc's demand increases.


Not sure I would agree with you on this because when I say altcoins, I am referring to majority of coins that are created through ICO.

I have a different opinion. For me, no altcoin is scam coin. It is wrong to say that coin A is scam coin because associated project with coin A never launched or team ran away. Coins still remain decentralized and works perfectly like bitcoin even if project gets scrapped. Bitcoin offers nothing more than an average ERC-20 token. It works same as an average ERC-20 token. The reason why the price of Bitcoin is so high is the trust on the long-built network of decentralized nodes which keep bitcoin functional. No other cryptocurrency have similar network. So even if other coins remain or vanishes, bitcoin won't be affected much in either positive or negative term.

https://coinmarketcap.com/all/views/all

now we have 5,067 altcoins... It is known that most of these altcoins are pump and dump schemes and people buy bitcoin to trade with these pump and dump altcoins, this means that these altcoins also contribute to bitcoin adoption and it seems to me that these altcoins are not going to die anytime soon, as hard as it is to understand, there are many people who like altcoins (even though in many cases these people are at a very large loss they still hold altcoin)

We should specify that all altcoins will never disappear and they should not disappear. Altcoins have their roles. They are probing different areas, looking for new uses without compromising the main thing that gives all cryptocurrencies their current value - Bitcoin.
We need them to be those frontiersmen. Their failures are showing Bitcoin where it could improve and where it should not because going that way may lead to loss of value.
Also failures of altcoins show people how strong Bitcoin is compared to shitcoins and how it handles a bear market vs altcoins.

Most shitcoins should die but not all of them.

Okay, I see your point

It could be said that people who invested in altcoins and ICO's were also indirectly investing in Bitcoin. That, technically speaking, may be true per se, but we must keep in mind two things. First of all, investing in Bitcoin through ICO's (as you now confirm) doesn't mean that people wouldn't have invested in Bitcoin if there hadn't been these ICO's

Further, and more importantly, these investments failed for the most part in the end, with folks losing their money. Obviously, they wouldn't lose it had they invested in Bitcoin instead. So any way you look at it, these failed ICO's damaged Bitcoin in the long run even if they had first contributed to its growth (which is a big if in and of itself)

i dont know if there is no altcoin, people still interest and make other progress or stack on bitcoin, just bitcoin. altcoin give you more colour on crypto, we cant say when altcoin disappear, bitcoin will rise although many shitcoin from there. but, many people and i take profit, more profit on altcoin too. so, no matter how its going on but altcoi. can be other option to make profit even though from shitcoin

Could not agree more. The shitcoins and scams that happened these past 2 years made some people believe that bitcoin is the only trust-worthy coin out there,  along with some other established coins that are basically dependent on bitcoin's existence too. Though if say, altcoins altogether vanish, this could possibly cause a negative feedback on bitcoin as well. More and more people might cash their investments out in fear that they'll lose their money too, some people wouldn't afford bitcoin's price if ever it reaches a really high value and that could cause a stagnation in bitcoin's end too.

Altcoins without a case use will eventually disappear from the face of cryptocurrency development, many of these altcoins were created by based on nothing, so, their disappearance will be inevitable when time come. What we are seeing today will be more serious with altcoins without prospect. Any investor who still invest in altcoins might blame their actions later this year.

I think lots of Altcoins will disappear because the value will be to low it already happened to a lot of coins and just will continue.
That is why it is really important to only invest in the really important Altcoins that actually add value to the Cryptomarket.

Because I don't think Altcoins will completely dissapear some actually add something new to the Cryptoworld or they work togheter with some of the main Altcoins.
But Bitcoin and Ethereum are definitely the main Crypto's which you should have but time will tell what the other Alts will do.

Some altcoins will die and some others will stay alive, day by day new coins born and die, and you can find the list of those coins in the next link:

https://deadcoins.com/

There you will find Deceased Hack and Scam coins...

That remains to be seen

People may buy bitcoins with alts, but how are they buying altcoins in the first place? Right, with their dollars, euros, or whatever. Then think about it, if there were no altcoins hanging around, the same people could be buying bitcoins directly leaving the altcoin market out of the equation and completely irrelevant as a result, with the implication being that alts do more harm than good overall since money gets lost in the process. If people end up with bitcoins, they would still end up there without altcoins as an intermediary, right? Even faster, and likely without incurring the loss of money somewhere in between

This is not something that can be generalized easily. Yes, I agree if the majority of shitcoins that do not have a strong foundation and strong market interest will sooner or later disappear. But there are many strong altcoins that help strengthen cryptocurrency, which indirectly supports the development of BTC so that it is more widely known and adopted in various fields. So, the relationship between BTC and altcoin (which is potential) is a symbiosis of mutualism, mutual benefit.

What my mind tells me is that if majority or almost all of the shitcoins disappear, then it will be positive news for the "altcoin" market, since there will be limited altcoins and investors that have lost money and are still losing money when they are searching for good projects will have good options to choose from to invest in.

But the bitcoin may not benefit from the elimination of shitcoins, bitcoins controls the market imo and the altcoins market doesn't have too much influence on the bitcoin, I think we should be more inquisitive about if bitcoin crashes, what becomes of altcoins.

Maybe not, it only causes a chaos that some people will generalize and think that all altcoins will turn into a scam. But Bitcoin could gain the benefits as people will only look to it and there will be no more competition held around and most likely, Bitcoin price will getting higher as it looks today.

We knew that altcoins are still depending on Bitcoin's existence if that thing will happen, expected that the entire crypto market will vanish by then. So much to thin that the whole crypto market relies upon the shoulder of Bitcoin's future. Once Bitcoin finishes, it all be gone.

Yes, Bitcoin is the middle men disruptor, the new internet protocol for value (precious information) transfer, it brings a sheer immutable time / data timestamped ledger - secured by PoW.

If  all meaningful electronic applications can make use of such a single system- cheap,  borderless, open-including, scalable, ...  , than no other system / coin / alt ... is ever needed

This is what Bitcoin aims for, not really caring about speculation or tickers

With a few replies along these lines here, it seems to be worthy of a separate entry

People buy bitcoins but then they have to sell them for altcoins (according to this reasoning). All in all, it means that Bitcoin sells and buys necessarily balance out in the end, with the net effect on Bitcoin price being close to zero (technically, it is not quite correct but it pretty fast approximates to that state in the long run). And that's not all, obviously, since it is what comes next that matters most here, and so many people forget to think about it

These pump and dump schemes steal money from wannabe investors, and that is the end result which ultimately counts. So if some or even most of these 5,067 altcoins are not technically dead (read, delisted from all important exchanges), this doesn't mean they are not left for dead with the orderbooks empty on the buy side (read, there are no more idiots left willing to buy these shitcoins)

Altcoins are in no way promoting Bitcoin. Bitcoin is standing on its own and do not need support from these Altcoins. Experienced and knowledgeable people always go for Bitcoin. Beginners choose Altcoins for trading as they do not know much about this market, and so is the reason why they get caught by the net of scammers. In the end they do not get any kind of benefit so Altcoins cannot compete with Bitcoin.

It's people's own fault for falling for scams and being so stupid and greedy like an idiot. Altcoins have a purpose and it's not altcoins fault people are stupid and greedy. Altcoins can be used as currencies for businesses and things with real world use. The problem is most have no use yet idiots still buy it.  ::)

Even now, there are most of the investors who are constantly in search of better projects which can give them immense profits which they were not able to get from bitcoins at the early stage. A lot of people missed the chance to buy bitcoins at lower price which makes them feel they might buy any altcoin at that lower price now and watch it growing in the coming future.

This diversifies their investments into major altcoins which do not have that great price in the current markets but are potential to grow in the coming times. People have faith in bitcoins but the price for bitcoins is already that high that most of the people can't even afford to buy a single coin. Buying in fractions would give least profits.

This would depend on whether the cause on which most altcoins disappeared has something to do with the market or prohibitions caused by third-parties (e.g. government, etc.).

If the cause of disappearance has something to do with a prohibition executed by counties in disallowing the utilization of alternate coins in general, then expect that this may also affect bitcoin negatively.

On the other hand, if the cause of disappearance of altcoins has something to do with the shift of the investor's interest in the market and they are leaning towards investing MORE in bitcoin, then this may affect bitcoin in its price positively. This would entirely depend on the reason on why altcoins are slowly dying on the market.

Exchanges are already doing this kind of filtering. There are way too many altcoins that simply just die and they don't want nothing with them. Others simply get delisted when their volume plummets. Did you see the number of coins listed in coingecko? Now enter the most popular exchanges and see how many they trade.

Everyone can make their own coin, doesn't mean it will be successful or accepted by the market. And yes, there are also the scammers.

Most altcoins are simply just ignored by default to begin with. They have to fight hard to get recognition, prove what makes them worth over the competition. They all say they are, but the market (aka. the people with their voting wallets) think otherwise.

Same thoughts.
Altcoins are essential like what Bitcoin means to everyone. There won't be any challenge if only Bitcoin exists in the virtual world as a currency.

As you can see, opinions vary on this subject

If you follow the thread and read the responses posted here, people are expressing quite the opposite views. Personally, I agree that the net effect of altcoins on Bitcoin (and its market valuation aka price) is negative. To make things abundantly clear at this point, I'm talking specifically about the net effect, i.e. all things considered, weighed in and accounted for, which means that if only Bitcoin had existed, and maybe a few other altcoins that pick up where Bitcoin leaves (as there are many dimensions to what a cryptocurrency can do), the whole market would have been in a far better shape than it is now

Well, that is not to say it is in a totally bad shape today, but just picture how it could be if people hadn't been losing money all this time. But likely too much of a good thing, though (read, never happens in real life)

Actually death of altcoins would make people lose their investments. They would also not be able to convert their altcoins into bitcoins before they are dead. This would leave them with no money. But yes, in case the investors predict the future markets and convert their altcoins to bitcoins before they are dead than it might be beneficial for the price of bitcoins for the long term.

Bitcoins have no intentions to exit the markets and hence it has made a lot of investors stay tightly close with bitcoins and in any case where altcoins are on the verge to die, those people would be instantly supported by bitcoins to stabilize their financial situations.

I agree with your points. Altcoins and some ponzi schemes that rised during 2017 which turned out to be scam put this mentality in some people that Bitcoin is a scam. This has been spread among ignorant people that didn't do proper research about crypto before joining in.

yeah it feels nice to see that your wallet has alot of different kind but i still do care of thier value  . it would be more better if you got many kinds of coins with different good values too  .  i dont diversify too but i only stick on one coin to get the most out of my money   . buying different coins is still diversification  , no matter how long you wait   , win or loose   .  if you think diversification can reduce risk , well you need to choose the best coins  .

Most altcoins are already dead beyond redemption

And people have already lost their investments. It just happens that their brains can't catch up yet and finally come to terms with this sad fact. As I'm strongly inclined to think, this has a lot to do with the so-called sunk cost fallacy, according to which a sunk cost is money paid that cannot be recovered. The meaning is that people who already invested their hard-earned cash in shitcoins refuse to accept the truth that the money is gone, as in gone for good, while they continue to cherish a hope of getting it back one day thereby making their life only worse (we all have been there, and probably not just once)


If the altcoins these people invested in have already lost any value, Bitcoin rolling high will be of little consolation to them

But somehow we are benefiting by then during that time if we sell it immediately before hypes is over. But t is really disappointing when we are still holding these coins until today coz definitely they are turning dead by now and we can no longer get use of it. This is why only legit projects would still stand and pass through some difficulties and those projects that just created to fool people will absolutely just go and vanishes.

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If we are planning to invest altcoins see to it that you'll strong enough to face the consequences and not be fooled by anyone else. Try to avoid/ignore those projects that offer huge returns cause that obviously turns a scam.

Yes, this actually has a domino effect. Bitcoin and its development team are unknown, so to expand the adoption of cryptocurrency many altcoins are taking the opportunity to develop projects that are more easily "reached" by the general public. So with this approach, it is expected to get a unique niche for its development. A truly serious project and a real function will surely form a strong niche with a good community, while careless projects will find it difficult to gain market trust and eventually disappear.
So we have to be really selective and choose a strong potential altcoin.