Bitcoin Forum

The only reason I bought bitcoins for what I consider ridiculous high prices was to speculate with alt-coins.

I actually bought quite a few of them, which I never would have bought as I think the price of bitcoins is way too high and overvalued, and you're not going to make any money at these price levels, at least not worth the risk.

I didn't sit on many of them, but the fact that I bought them and transferred them to someone who essentially created new wealth for bitcoins with the alt-coins, definitely was bullish for bitcoins. Of course if the person who I gave my bitcoins to immediately sold the bitcoins for cash it wouldn't have much effect but I am sure most people who made money/bitcoins from selling alt-coins held onto them.

So my thinking goes now that alt-coins are pretty much dead and that whole speculative alt-coin boom looks to be over, this will really hurt the price of bitcoin. Basically the alt-coins were creating new wealth for bitcoins, a big reason for someone to take fiat and dump them into bitcoin to get part of this new wealth. This is pretty much over in a big way right now.

Anothing point is the bitcointalk forum was looking at completely getting rid of the alt-coin sections at one point, but they decided to keep it and expand it. I think the reason they expanded it was that they knew the alt-coin boom was really helping bitcoin as that is the only thing most people would actually buy with their bitcoins.

My point is that this alt-coin crash is actually a very bad thing for bitcoin in my opinion. I think that was a big reason why the prices were held up for so long. I know I personally put thsouands of dollars into bitcoins because of this reason alone and I am very frugal. You can imagine what the degenerate gamblers must have put into it.

Fads come and go.

These hundreds of Alt-coins were nothing but a FAD and now I suspect we have crypto-currency fatigue setting in. The vast majority of these Alt-coins will vanish into obscurity, a few will remain. Litecoin being the only odds on certainty to still be around and relevant for some time to come. The USD volume of these Alt's however were generally so low, I doubt that it had much of an effect on Bitcoin.

I think it is rather more the crypto fatigue that is centred around exasperation and disillusionment with Bitcoin that is proving bad for the Alt's, other than the other way around. None of these Alts have any uses whatsoever outwith speculation. Speculation that was always based on euphoric visions of Bitcoin's potential and now that this euphoria has subsided and been replaced by apathy, the Alt-coins are seemingly totally irrelevant.

Agreed, I only "gambled" with alt-coins. It was actually a fun way to gamble at the time. However, I pulled out everything when it was clear that it was all going down. I never expected it to get as bad as it has. I actually made money from the Alt-coins because I pulled out early enough and got lucky with one alt-coin, which I made mostly all my money from.

I think you underestimate how much new money came into bitcoins, simply for the reason of buying alt-coins.

I look at myself who is very frugal and bearish in general. It made me put in thousands of dollars into buying bitcoins to gamble. At the peak of the alt-coins, the forum sections were booming compared to the bitcoin speculation forums. Actually I would say that most posts on this forum were probably in the alt-coin section.

I think we'll see a much more dramatic crash in most alt-coin prices once the powerful scrypt ASICs hit the market. A lot of bitcoin early adopters hate alt-coins and would probably invest some money in ASICs just to 51% some of those coins.

altcoins (except for name coin) need to go away. 
 
And no, I'm not sitting on a fortune of name coins.  It's just that they have a value to the world, and are a complement to btc.  All my name coins are lost in the nether because I forgot to back them up :(
(500 coins!)

I think bitcoin will be more stable against prices fluctuations, and speculators will move to alt-coin market. The interesting thing for me is to follow the scrypt asic pre-order market since there are so many altcoins....  ::) I think many shitcoins will die. About the price in general... new hardware means new money into the industry so I really think prices goes up. If miner buy a $10.000 hardware they will not sell until they get proper profit... not like a gpu gamer-miner ... the alt mining market will become more professional.

Much hatred, so melodrama, wow.

When I look over all the alt-coins at coinmarketcap.com (over 100+ and counting), I just feel sad.  If all that money that is invested in alts were added up and put into BTC instead, then bitcoin would have a much higher marketcap and much high price right now.

One of the core tenants of bitcoin being capped at 21mil is that "Some Government Mandarin cannot just whisk new coins into existence" as Patrick Byrne of Overstock.com was quoted as saying recently.  Well apparently he's wrong, as any idiot can just whisk a new alt-coin into existence, and lure fools in by trying to convince them that they are just as worthy as BTC long term.  Remember IOCoin, anyone?  Naw, didn't think you did.

I'm hoping others do indeed get "alt-coin fatigue" and start to realize that by overly investing in alt coins purely out of greed, they're hurting the overall core bitcoin agenda long term, not helping.

The free market is a bitch, isn't it?

This isnt over, by a long shot.

It is as it is. Would a goldbug complain about silver, platinum, palladium?




Funny thing is, that even without alt-coins, you still have to trust the developpers, that they will never change the 21 million cap.

FFS! NO! You don't... If ANY dev changes the cap it's code is running a different coin in yet another (usually worthless) fork that won't be mined, relayed, used, by anyone.

One should never underestimate human error.

i've been looking forward to this.

the altcoins need to go away.  this crash will serve to make that happen.  and then Bitcoin can continue on.

No, but a goldbug would complain if there were over 100+ other shitty PM derivatives created in the lab that were all sucking $$$ away from those 4-5 main natural ones that exist.  Luckily for the goldbug, true PM alchemy doesn't exist... yet.  ;)

Very few altcoins really have ever appealed to me.  I first started with Litecoin, as most people getting into Crypto in October of last year.  I was lucky to buy a few at $9 via paypal in some IRC's.  I was able to watch them almost hit the $50 mark as I assumed they would because I was seeing prices on Ebay that people were willing to pay jujst because they had no freaking way to get them!

I was then sucked into Worldcoin for a while just because it was beautifully done and I didn't understand transaction times and speeds and security and how it all played together in the blockchain.  I was still very uneducated at this point.

After selling my Scharmbeck shares at their peak and getting out or Worldcoin once I finally realized the one simple fact that "Holy shit you guys, we need to stop distracting our community with all these altcoins and preach the BTC Gospel, because in the end, its the only coin that matters".

I did my research and I am glad I didn't buy in when the peaks were high, but I have been constantly buying BTC during crashes because unless Coinbase and Bitstamp die overnight, crypto will trek on forward, with not much except huge government regulation cascading on its growth.


Now I am a BTC Miner, I have 5 Antminers, an S2 Pre-order, and I pay for almost everything I possibly can in BTC, thats no joke.  I realize the great potential of some altcoins. Tthings like Namecoin, and Vertcoin appeal to me for different reasons (I only have the latter), but in the end BTC is all that matters.  We are way too much in our infancy for anyone to care about ASIC resistance.  Way too much in our infancy for anyone to take Namecoin is the possible DNS solution of the future, and certainly way too much in our infancy to convince merchants to accept anything other than bitcoin if they aren't already taking bitcoin.

So what do we do?  We need to get our fucking hussle on and set up our friends and local businesses with Online wallets and payment services.  If they ever get a significant amount, teach them about securing paper wallets and importing them and the like.  Maybe eventually explain mining to them in rudimentary terms.  It is going to be an uphill battle.  But my recommdation is this:  if you own altcoins, thats great, don't be a leach speculator and maybe help their community when time allows, but don't kid yourself into thinking that BTC shouldn't be EVERY HODLers TOP priority.  We have a huge fucking PR problem on our hands, and you all need to set a good example by not being an asshole or pretentious exclusionary piece of shit, but really to take the time to calmly and concisely explain why bitcoin makes sense; why its an important piece of technology, and why they should at least take the time to understand it.  Getting people on board with bitcoin is much like getting a woman to go home with you; you have to be cool in order for them to care; confident in order to make them interested; and to the point in order for them to make that leap.

Aaaaaaand that just turned into a speech.... /facepalm

tl;dr:  Sure fuck around with altcoins, there are some cool ones, but make bitcoin priority!

are the altcoins crashing?

Litecoin's mini-bubble just burst, but that was completely due to bitcoin speculators seeking short-term profits. it's simply tracing out the same bubble pattern as Bitcoin, and i see no fundamental reason for it to trace all the way back to pre-November prices.

i think the crypto-despair is infecting the other coins, but sentiment lows are always the best time to buy 8)

--arepo

Even then investors in PMs would have to accept the fact. Noone would complain about facts - they tend to be there despite human wishful thinking.

EDIT: If true, that bitcoin has a superior design the "shitty" alts will go away. But this is not a fact right now, it is speculation time.

If a prolonged bear market develops in BTC, one could speculate that some alts will decouple and push in the opposite direction.

We never had a prolonged BTC bear market with serious alt competition.

Still bullish on LTC, because desperation.

LTC/BTC pair still has potential for upside move. 6h indicators looking good.

Haha, forget it.

That was your mind? Thought it was arepo´s  :D


You just confirmed it  :D

Buy Low!  (or sell low and buy back lower)
MEOW went up over 100% just a day or two ago...........lol?
https://www.cryptsy.com/markets/view/149

Some risky things are safe if you get a good enough price.

Buy high sell low repait until broke.

Yes.

Altcoins are now mostly dead to the threats/FUD about btc-e, and alt-coins were one of btc's biggest businesses.  This represents yet another sector of the market leaving, like gox and China. Now people are selling their bitcoins instead of holding them on altcoin exchanges to trade altcoins and there is a reduced incoming interest into crypto as well.

Yes. I think nubs have been damaging their portfolios like ships over rocks in these slow and uninspiring times. the litecoin bubble hurt a lot of people, those who have been stung by a pump and dump will be timid to enter bitcoin.

I definitely think that there is a significant impact with the scamming, pump and dumps, crashing, hacking, etc. of many things in the alt-coin scene. It causes a relatively new market segment to go away and the hacks also contribute to driving the price down as those bitcoins are continuously laundered and cycled so that they can be dumped.

The 100+ diferent coins are collapsing under their own weight of dilution and its about time ....

When you are cutting coke and if you just keep cutting it all you end up with is somtheing you would use to bake a cake

There are a handful of alts that bring something to the table ...all the rest are junk

Winter is Here ..its not COMING ...lolz .... its time to rebuild consolidate and look forward to a more mature crypto future

A future that does not have 101 clones of litecoin

Nah, The alt-coins have never really had a bit impact on bitcoin. Dogcoin is probably the only one that has, because it brought some people into the cryptocurreny world who were not interested before. Still, copycats continue to be nothing more than a footnote.

When things look hopeless, and prices are down ~80 to 90% you have a perfect time to:
Buy, or give up and sell the rest off cheap?

maybe you can argue this point about Bitcoin, but I can't see how alt-coins can turn themselves around.

I have been preaching in the alt-coin forum many months ago that the growth rate is way too high and there is absolutely no way the prices can be sustained. To top it off all the alt-coins basically share the same investment money. Lets not forget about the miners who will all mine the most profitable coin to dump.

agreed 100%. Glad some other people notice that alt-coins were a big business for bitcoin. I think it had a much bullish impact to bitcoins than people want to give it.

I think it helped sustain the high bitcoin prices for a long time. Now that this is over, bitcoin should fall back to sustainable levels.

I called this and I knew it would happen people making tons and tons of altcoins so stupid exchanges can't keep up miners cant keep up to many alt coins makes not enough miners to mine = difficulty never going up = anyone can mine and get a lot = worthless I look to Betacoin why? because developers are working behind scenes to create new services I don't think alt coin is dead but I do think it is in a dead zone its still hanging in there what things make bitcoin worth so much? Stores accepting them, Atms, people paying big amounts for them news reporting it you take all those things and apply it to any other altcoin and that altcoin worth money as well.

There is no solid case for optimism.
Two days ago I made over 100% in under 3 hours on a hopeless coin.
Those types of returns can keep me going for a while.  :)

With the major sell-off of altcoin, I would have expected BTC to rise, since selling altcoin = buying BTC.

Still depends heavily on the fiat flow.
People selling off alts might also be going totally into cash.




>>> Has anyone mentioned that alts tend to lead?
The alts might bottom first and head higher before BTC. This happened several times in the recent past.

bad alts make btc worth less.

there is a good chance an alt will replace BTC.

Personally I think PPC,DOGE,LTC, XRP, EMUNIE, NEM and maybe NXT and XPM


are all long term hodl material.

PeerCoin in particular has had no competion in the backbone store of value arena from any alt.....it really stands out.

Download the peercoin blockchain you will see what I mean....really quick.

It would be really, really great if the altcoin pumpers would explain what makes their favored alts of the day so great. You know, instead of just saying that they are.

This.  Especially when Bitcoin is open source, programmable and can over time adopt new features of any alt coin out there.

Also, who in their right mind really thinks that a currency named DOGE is going to take over the world?  Can you imagine world leaders saying "We are supporting the DOGE currency for World trade." The stupid name alone will hinder Dogecoin from going anywhere, just like BBQCoin.  Unless the future prophesized by the movie Idiocracy actually comes true, lol.

I agree with some of what you say.

Some altcoins need to go away. Like in any healthy market there needs to be competition. That is how markets work.

Litecoin perhaps is not competing with Bitcoin but they are growing in the same digital age.

Who knows perhaps Litecoin dies and Bitcoin solely lives.

So far the markets have spoken that Litecoin has some value.

I think alts that are based on smart contracts and crypto assets have the most promise. Also anonimity alts like darkcoin with active development.

The vast majority of alts are scams, most of them lost 95% of their value in the crash. Also a new wave of country based coins are coming up replicating auroracoin which are all 100% scamd. Get rich quick schemes(for the owners of course). however it was a good opportunity to increase the amount of bitcoin and litecoin you had while the boom was going on.

Alts will be around as long as BTC is around

Yea if you ask me the ALT crash will only be better for bitcoin.  I could be mistaking but I see it as a positive for Btc. 

It's not about taking over the world, it's about getting 25% of all crypto currency transactions of the world, that'd be good enough for Doge ;D

Also, who in their right mind would have really thunk that Windows would become so popular as to take 90% of all PC market being so buggy, especially the earlier versions (95, 98)? It's all about marketing these days, you naive dude. First you create demand for a product, then the product sells, not vice versa. From this perspective whichever coin does more efficient marketing efforts, wins. Not necessarily technically best. Although all bitcoin clones are about equal as far as technical details go. And if we had to choose a technically superior alt, it'd undoubtedly be NXT, but it lacks in marketing at this point.

Windows is the primary OS because it is better for the majority of people. This does not even bear discussion. That's also why it is ridiculous that so many here promote linux, most people do not and will never use it.

'Better' is a very illusive term.
I can say DOGE is better than Bitcoin for the majority of people, because people feel better when they use it, because: a) they get more of DOGEs for the same dollar (they don't care about divisility, they care about round numbers), b) there is no shady business associated with DOGE (no Silk Road past).

That's all that matters.

And they did it with only voluntary customers, retailers, employees and stockholders. There was no use of violence or reliance on government force, backed by violence. As with all monopolies by merit, there was competition on the fringes, OSX, linux, and with with evolution of devices into mobile, they lost their monopoly. A happy series of events for the free market.

Who says DOGE can't be renamed?  It's happened before.  If the name is really the problem then it isn't much of one.

What a preposterous idea to rename DOGE!
Unless it's renamed to Doggy, I disagree with the idea of renaming :)

I have come to believe that ideologically based altcoins are the future. Bitcoin started as an ideological movement against the banks, i.e. to distribute the power of money creation into the hands of the people and eliminate the need for a middleman to process payments. Now, I think bitcoin itself is mostly played out, because people have discovered that anyone can create their own competing currency using similar technology and some new ones are being created which improve upon the flaws of bitcoin.

Two of the main flaws of bitcoin are that the money creation process wastes energy and that most of the bitcoins are concentrated in the hands of the earliest adopters. Both of these flaws prevent many people who would otherwise be likely to support bitcoin from doing so.

I think new cryptocurrencies will rise which offer solutions to those problems. The best attempt I've seen so far is SolarCoin (solarcoin.org (http://solarcoin.org)), which distributes 99.5% of the currency to producers of solar energy, thus providing an economic incentive for people around the world to switch to a clean renewable energy source and help the environment. Only 0.5% of the currency is reserved for the founders and early adopters such as miners, so the main intention of this currency is not to enrich a small group of people.

In my opinion, altcoins which are based on promoting some philanthropic goal, such as solar power or whatever else, are going to be the future of cryptocurrency. Most normal people are never going to embrace crypto unless it is seen as doing some good in the world; otherwise, might as well just use regular money. Bitcoin itself has acquired too much of an image of shady business (drugs, tax evasion, corrupt exchanges) and early adopters getting filthy rich by hoarding coins. With that image, it's not going to catch on with the general public. Look for a few high-quality altcoins with philanthropic purposes to catch on instead, if crypto has much of a future.

DOGE's only value against other cryptos is its name and the meme behind it. Only because of that people use it. I have no DOGE.

You mean distributed to some people who destroy wealth by producing expensive solar energy, paid for by the masters, who steal from the people by means of violence, giving them a halo of environment friendlyness? Yeah, that solves everything.