Bitcoin Forum

I hold small amounts of over 100 altcoins.  If altcoins have any use, and if any altcoins survive long enough to gain real value like Bitcoin did, then I have a good chance that one of mine will be one of the successful ones.

But 17 of my coins just got delisted at the same time on one of the exchanges.  Maybe that's just narrowing down the potential winners that are still left, or maybe it's a big sign that even the people selling us these coins don't believe the coins have any lasting value.  These aren't 17 of the shittiest shitcoins - if you had to pick 100 altcoins, some of these would probably be on your list. 

I started a big thread about it, but that thread has been moved to Service Discussions.  I didn't want to start 17 threads for the 17 coins that were delisted, because that many coins together makes it "about altcoins" more than about any single altcoin.

I kind of wanted to raise the issue of the future of altcoins in general, and how none of these coins can make us millionaires if we throw them away by the dozen.

It's not really about service, it's about altcoins.  What are altcoins?  Are they all worthless, and so it's no big deal if you throw away half a billion of them?  Poloniex is a major player in altcoins, and they just effectively declared millions of my altcoins as worthless.  How many billions of the same coins are held by other people here?

If all altcoins are worthless, then maybe my comments are just a service issue.  But if altcoins have no future, then neither does this forum.

Most people think cryptocurrency is a scam and we're all idiots to buy any of it.  Well, actually most people have never heard of cryptocurrency, but the people who have heard of it mostly think it's a joke.  Apparently altcoin exchanges and even altcoin forums agree.

If you lost millions of Bitcoins, would anyone care?  Would your friends, family, and co-workers laugh, or would they have the slightest understanding that millions of cryptocoins might be something to take seriously?  Would anyone even take it seriously at an altcoin forum, or would they just move it to "Service Discussions" because it's just another complaint and not anything important?

TLDR Version:  Even altcoin forums don't care if 5 to 10% of all currently traded altcoins are delisted in one day.  Therefore, this whole "altcoin" thing you're supposed to be talking about is evaporating as we speak and you can't be bothered to take notice.

the problem isn't altcoin in itself, but rather stupid and greedy coin dev who think they should clone everyday a new coins.
The level of absurdity has reach an unprecedented level since June.

There are way too many coin and the vast majority are just useless clone with a stupid cloned name such as darkcrapcoin, litecrapcoin, bitcrapcoin, blackcrapcoin and so on. The only reason for these coin to exist is the premine dev can dump (or the ICO dev and p&d accomplice can pump and dump...)

Before April, there was mostly 2 new coins per week (things started to get stupid during Easter holidays), now it is 2 new coins everyday. I am not even looking anymore to announcement, and not mining any of these either...

only a few good coin were produced during that time and they aren't the most successful either... which is kind of sad

Disagree.
I make btc only with shitcoin. I need 10 altcoin a day. If you re a good trader,you could make profit. Much.
I stop  mining rig and starter to trade.

Yes, if you're a good trader you can make a little money. 

Who do you think is ahead, you or the guy who bought $28 worth of Bitcoin and sold it for $700,000?

You're the guy who bought $28 and sold it for $56.  That's 100% profit, not bad!

i think making another coin market capitalization site, with only the legit coins listed is a good idea.  but how to decide which is legit and which are outright, pure scams is the problem.

or maybe coinmarketcap.com should start delisting proven scamcoins...?

I would say a large percentage of alt coins are worthless but not all of them. A large number are made by newbie devs who want to make a quick buck then abandon their coins. After a coins dev has run away it usually becomes quickly worthless.

.

think of the coins with anonymous devs.  there's prolly one dev who created 10 coins already, and still at it.

Are altcoins, in general, worthless and pointless?

Yes.


They probably should've never been listed in the first place, but this is how these shit coins work. Dump then move on. They're pointless.

You are correct, but the greedy devs are only part of the problem.  

The greedy community is a problem, but not only because of greed.  It's also because of short-sightedness.

A greedy person would love to buy $28 worth of Bitcoin and sell it for $700,000.  If everyone buying altcoins was that kind of greedy, all altcoins would hold their value until they were worth as much as Bitcoin.  

If I buy 100,000 altcoins for a total price of $1.00, I usually plan to sell 10,000 for at least 10 times what I paid.  If it never sells, then I've only spent $1.00.  If it does sell, then I have another 90,000 coins that are already paid for.  Why should I sell them for another $1.00, or even $9.00?  That's not worth bothering with.  So I sell the rest at different prices and I'll still have at least 10,000 saved up in case the price goes over $100.  If it never gets that high, I've made a little money anyway, or not, but I'll never be the guy who sold all his Bitcoin for a penny instead of a million dollars.  If you want to sell for a penny, fine - but you don't have to sell ALL of it.  

So the important question is which coins to take a chance on.  Obviously some have a better chance of surviving than others.  I had thought that I would trust Poloniex's judgement, added with some critical thinking of my own, and I bought almost any coin they offered.  That was a serious mistake on my part.  They delisted some coins with potential, while they're still grabbing those temporary sales on shit like BALLS.

But most people seem to agree that the only value a coin has is the value it has RIGHT NOW.  Nobody cares about the fact that almost every coin MUST increase in value the longer it survives and gains users.  In other words, these coins are 6 months old, and that is the perfect time to buy.  It's the worst time to sell, and it's far too soon to abandon.  What was the price of Bitcoin when it was 6 months old?  And what was the price of Bitcoin after 4 years?

If cryptos are truly decentralised then they should be indifferent to being or not being exchange listed....no?

hmm an example of this happening ? (not belonging to BobSurplus scam ?)
not mentionning that most of these coin don't even have any buy volume  ;D

I think you're confusing value with price.

you are trading wind, and you are good at it. great... but this clearly has nothing to do with crypto, and if crypto is that for you, I think you are in the wrong place and the reason why nobody is making decent profit.
While you are making a few dollars with your trade, if the market was less saturated you could make a lot more...
as some said, you are short sighted...

Monero has a point to exist as internet cash, Bitcoin can't be as anonymous.
The rest are speculative assets mostly.

lol it took 15 post, before someone posted an ad for the coin he is holding  ;D

altcoins are useful to embrace and develop new ideas and solutions, an alternative to the more stable / known bitcoin network

then human greed ruins most of them

Congrats on being a Full Member of something that's worthless and pointless.




Yes, but even Bitcoin needs places that buy and sell it, until more people accept it directly.

Without first being on exchanges, Bitcoin might never have been accepted directly.




Are you unaware of the fact that Bitcoin went from less than 1 penny to over 1000 dollars in 4 years?
Here's the example I was talking about:
http://gizmodo.com/man-forgets-about-buying-27-of-bitcoin-is-now-worth-a-1454150399 (http://gizmodo.com/man-forgets-about-buying-27-of-bitcoin-is-now-worth-a-1454150399)




I think you're confusing other people confusing value with price with me confusing value with price.

It did work because it was new and there weren't hundreds of coin at that time, in the current situation it wouldn't work, bitcoin would just die 3 months after launch...

Again it worked for ltc and drk because they proposed something new and were launched in a time where a lot less coin were created.
Right now, with too many coin, people are just gambling (like fabula) not investing. They are playing roulette betting on the "red"... so sometimes it hits "red" and makes some gain... but clearly this doesn't profit to any coin

Altcoins only have one purpose, and that is to get more BTC. It's easier to mine a shitcoin on day 1 than it is to mine bitcoin, and chances are you'll make more btc in the long run, so long as you dump it as soon as it gets put on an exchange.

You might as well say that BTC has only one purpose, and that is to get more Dollars.  But that's not necessarily true either.



It's easier to mine a new altcoin on day 1 than it was to mine Bitcoin on day 1.  And people made millions of dollars doing it the hard way.
Now it takes you 30 seconds and a few bucks to rent a $10,000 mining rig for a few hours, and you can even use it to mine multiple coins during your rental. 

You can certainly make a few hundred dollars selling altcoins as soon as you get them, if that's all you want.  But you're giving up the opportunity to hold those coins until they potentially sell for 100 times what you sold them for. 

And, personally, I wouldn't buy a coin if I 100% believed that it was truly worthless, especially not so I could sell it to other people and take their money in exchange for nothing of value.  That would make me a scammer, or a thief, or some other kind of dishonest thing I don't want to be.

No it is true, the only reason to mine bitcoin is for more fiat. The situation you describe certainly is possible but chances are it won't especially if you look at how many coins are completely worthless now,the coins that never even leave the 10 cent barrier, or the hyped up coins that lost 99% of their value within the first few weeks.

But consider this:  Most coins MUST increase in value as time goes on and as more people adopt the coin.
Especially proof of work coins, coins with increasing difficulty, and coins with a set limit on total coin supply.

Are you seeing what I'm seeing?

What it means is that a coin WILL skyrocket in price if it continues to exist.  That's all it takes - continued existence.

That's what some people saw early on, and they accurately predicted BTC to $1000 on this forum when it was $5.

The difference with altcoins is that any given coin is much less likely to survive, now that there are so many other coins. 
But, as I pointed out in my other "service discussion" thread, it only takes a little to keep a coin going. 

One single person can bring a "dead" coin back to life, and I've done it myself.
Can I keep a coin alive, by myself, for 2 years? 
Maybe, but I won't have to. 
I only have to keep it alive for 6 months, if that's the lifespan of all the other coins.

So the choice is very simple - if you think a coin will be dead next year, sell it all now.
If you think a coin will still exist 2 years from now, don't sell any of it unless you hate money.

Honestly no  ;D
usually what happens is that after a certain time, your wallet stop synchronizing and it is totally over  ;D

I found that the wallet stopped syncing for a number of coins I have. Once the network dies the coin dies.

Yeah...like that'll work. Look at BitBay for example.
By now everyone concerned knows it's at least 80% scam.......that's been proven pretty much beyond any doubt by some of the main players.
And yet people are still defending it as a legit project.
Given this level of idiotic belief in something, how in hell can we accurately define a scam and exclude it?

Like I said, that can be fixed by 1 person in 30 seconds at miningrigrentals.com

Here's an interesting view on the Altcoin question from the Litecoin creator.

https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/litecoin-creator-charlie-lee-claims-litecoin-not-need-development-says-adding-gimmicks-not-help-currency-succeed/

I notice he stole an old Goldcoin quote of mine (and JFK's) in his last tweet. lol  :P

I assume that's only if you have a version of the block chain up to date to the very last block mined. What if your wallet was off for weeks before the last block was mined and nobody else can provide you with a copy?

Then those weeks are all orphaned because they abandoned the network, and now I have 100% of the hashing power for a brief time until people notice and hop on.

A coin that is given utility and helps provide liquidity on a protocol like XRP isn't worthless.

Are altcoins, in general, worthless and pointless?

Yes
Yes

Why?

Zero barrier to entry ..
Even for BTC ..
How many BTC clones do we need ??

The ONLY advantage to BTC is first mover status

The rest are merely trading tool alternatives to mining as a way
to hopefully make/convert to BTC  ..

Triff ..

I'm fine with losing 1 dollar 98% of the time and making a million dollars on the other 2%.

Ha ha ha ha..... Oh shit this guy is serious.

Yes, that may seem unbelievable, but I'll also be fine if I lose the other 2 dollars too.  I still have some other dollars that I didn't spend on altcoins.

Please feel free to come back to this thread in 3 or 4 years, and if none of my altcoins ever brought me $10,000 profit then I'll admit you were right and I wasted my time and my hundred dollars.  Well, it's less than a hundred now since I've already sold some percentages of some coins at a profit, but I may even spend another hundred. 

And then the other day when Bitshares PTS turned my 150 coins into 85,000 coins, I sold 1800 of them for about .8BTC.  Oh, I guess that means the other 99 altcoins are paid for, maybe you don't need to come back in 4 years since I've spent a total of nothing.  And I still have the rest of the coins.  It was fun seeing my account value increase by 32BTC overnight, but it didn't last long.  Of course, if there were a lot more people on the exchanges, say in 3 or 4 years from now, something like that could go a lot bigger.

But then, if BTC continues to go up in price, that .8BTC could already have made me a thousand dollars.  But I'm sure you already know exactly what will happen, and - let me guess - it's not that?

And, for example, if Curecoin even approaches its launch price, which some people already paid and believed it to be worth, then I've been making over $100 a day for the past 3 months.  So that adds up to...I guess it would be about $10,000.  Of course maybe Curecoin will never see that price again, and I'll be stuck with the fact that all I did was help cure cancer, Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's, diabetes, and blindness.  I guess them's the breaks.

Anyway, enjoy your 2 pizzas.  Hope they were worth 5 million dollars each.

One approach you might consider is to make an equal dollar bet on the
top 10 to 20 coins by market cap and leave it at that ..

Triff ..

I've already bet a dollar on 100 different coins, and no wager with this guy has the potential to pay out like those investments.  Unless you want me to put $1.00 in escrow, he gets it if my coin never reaches Bitcoin levels, or he pays me $100,000 if it does.  Anyone who won't give me those odds can save your breath about how I'm stupid to take those odds on the exchanges.  It's my dollar and you're not offering me a better way to spend it.

Enjoy your $5,000,000 pizza, and I'll enjoy my $1.00 crypto lottery tickets.  I'm not even saying don't buy the pizza, I'm just saying it won't kill you to save at least one pizza's worth of coins, just in case.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/bitcoin-pizza-day-pies-now-worth-million/story?id=23824128

Lol, i dont think you choose right way to pick the wining horse. If you want to cover all there are more then few 1000.

Pick the best, with:
-bringing something new
-good developers
-solid community

Maybe you will not need to have more then 20 wallets.

BitShares, NXT, Ripple, Stellar, Counterparty and possibly MaidSafeCoin could all have real utility in the next year.

OK, you put $100,000 in escrow and I'll put in $1.00 for each coin.  Whoever is right after 3 years gets all the money.

While you're doing that, I'll still be buying some coins.  I'll put more than $1.00 in the best coins, but I'll still put $1.00 in the long shots.

It's actually kind of funny to see someone get this defensive about their bad investments, but I feel I should be able to clear up a lot of your misconceptions.

1. This is not an altcoin forum. It is an altcoin subsection of a Bitcoin forum hence the name bitcointalk
2. If all altcoins die out this forum does in fact have a future, it's called bitcoin
3. The altcoins that get thrown away aren't the coins that will allow you to make millions, maybe 3 cents max
4. If being removed from one of the many exchanges kills a coin then quite frankly it doesn't deserve to be alive

Yawn, as if bitcoin isn't an alternate currency and also a cryptocurrency

Blah blah blah this coin and this coin will be worth 3 cents max let me tell you exactly what will happen in the future blah blah blah

If mtgox blah blah blah then quite frankly blah blah blah doesn't deserve to blah blah blah

I've already made more than 3 cents on the coins Poloniex delisted, so your prediction is already wrong.  But I can tell you some things that will happen in the future: 

#1, the U.S. dollar and many other fiat currencies will continue to be worth less, year after year.  The price of all surviving cryptocurrencies will therefore likely rise, even without the other deflationary features of the coins.

#2, some currency will be thousands of times bigger than Bitcoin currently is.  Maybe the dollar, or Bitcoin itself, or another coin, but the plain fact is that Bitcoin is almost nothing right now compared to the money being spent every day by 7 billion people.  So for an altcoin to surpass Bitcoin would only require that coin to be something 99% of people have never heard of, instead of 99.9% like Bitcoin.

Altcoins are certainly not worthless and pointless. They make a few on the inside a lot of money. 

most of altcoins are garbage, but some of them are really innovative

Altcoins are great.

They allow experimentation and learning about consensus networks.  They are worthless which is also great becaues it gives us freedom to play with things.  If you are in it for the money you are claiming your life is also worthless.     

I find altcoins as well great. I have a lot of them and i've never sold one of them. I'll keep them all and i will see within a few years where they are. If they are still alive or dead. Maybe there is one good one between them. You never know. Bitcoin also started very low and look now.

Exactly.

If 1 of your coins ever becomes 10% of the small thing Bitcoin now is, you'll be a millionaire.

I think this is exactly how some altcoins will survive; (near)zero barrier to entry. A coin like this can be distributed to new users with relatively low cost, and used to educate the masses and put cryptos right into everyday peoples' hands. With the right distribution model combined with an actual use outside of buy/sell/trade, an altcoin can become very relevant, even thrive IMHO.

Some people with altcoins make a great profit - they know which altcoin to buy and sale  ;D

Crypto is in experiment stage.

In 10 years..only few crypto will survive.

People who profited most from bitcoin were the ones who bought it 2 years ago before price boomed to $1200. We have handful of altcoins who're only one year old.

Only time will tell the rest.

It's never bad idea to throw some change in altcoins you believe in because you never know what will happen in 10+ years.

As i said a few posts here before. I keep all my altcoins for a few years and see what happened with them in the future. If there is only one good one between them, i have luck. If not, so it is.

you can always do that, doesn't cost anything...
but good luck sincyng your wallet in a few years (took 2 days to sync jpc wallets after 2 months without syncing)

You might also have some surprises: the coin getting swapped (and/or taken over by some dude) while you were expecting to just let them sleep...
(happened to me with MRC, 36M coins lost... many I bought actually)

you might have some good surprise, but if you mined millions of shitcoinA by AnonDevA and the coin never took off, there is little chance it will in 3 years (especially since the dev will most likely stop developing after 1 month...)
And the main problem now, is that there are people who want to take over dormant coin (supposedly for the community) and who will probably change everything, making the coin in your wallet completely useless... happen too often at the moment.

What you say might work only for coin which have a strong dev team, very active etc... (so not the usual shitcoin...)

edit: and actually this is probably another reason why so many coin gets release, some dev think that some random coin, will become the new bitcoin while they are not doing anything... this really not the way how things work... (it didn't work this way for bitcoin, nor for any successful coin... randomness still have some limit)

From all the altcoins only less than 1% is serious and brings innovation so it has a chance to a bright future actually. Look for those build on top of Bitcoin with serious devs with connections, ambition and some deep pockets.

for once, I wasn't thinking to the bobcoins but rather some genuine newbie coin... which gets abandoned after 1 or 2 months because nobody cares and/or he found a new hobby...

If the entire alt section of Bitcointalk was flushed down the toilet tomorrow, it would be step in the right direction for mainstream adoption.  The major projects such as NXT, Counterparty, and Bitshares would find a way to collaborate on a new forum or some other free market idea that distance themselves from the complete trash. Anyone feel the need to take a shower after spending 15 minutes around some of these posts?

 answer to the question.

   No and Yes.

Do you think the 16 coins that were just delisted by Poloniex were all trash, with devs either being scammers, incompetent, or irrelevant?

I don't dig into smaller projects. This is a reference to the alt section in general that makes Nigerian scammers looks like angels in comparison. If this section disappeared tomorrow, I don't think it would be a huge loss for the type of projects I follow personally. To each their own.

Well you said Bitshares was one of the few major projects, but Poloniex just delisted Bitshares DNS. 

So is there any difference between Bitshares and all the other trash, even to Bitshares supporters?

They're worthless and pointless if they don't offer anything new, but if they offer something different they likely will, but 99% don't and are just pump and dump scams so I'd avoid them.

Yes. You did it!
Is so easy. Well is hard work to find best ones, but is easy to know how is best to do it.


And i dont have 100k USD if i would i would buy hmm 290k Moneros, and doubt would have to ever worry about anything.

Put $100 into 100 of the "best" coins, fair enough - it's a nice, fun little gamble.
It definitely is a gamble though - no one has any way of knowing which (if any) of those coins will survive long enough to make you a profit - let alone long enough to jump 10,000X in price and become worth $10,000.

The problem is, if one coin does make it to that level of worth, it is likely to be in many years time - and there's no way of knowing that it will be one of the coins which is "best" today. So to improve your chances you have to continually invest time in researching the current "best" coins.

Eventually it becomes a trade-off of time. It's very, very hard to make a full time living off of Crypto gambling, just as it is with any other kind of gambling - its possible, but you need an "edge" which gives you a chance against the house. So most people involved also have full-time jobs, and therefore not an infinite amount of time to put into the game.

So - like everything else - it becomes a matter of working out whether it is an efficient way of spending your time. I've put 100s of hours this year into cryptos - analyzing, trading, investing, mining - and made a little bit of money back. The problem is, I've almost certainly made less than I would have done if I'd worked minimum-wage in a kitchen washing dishes for the same amount of time.

(Lets say - conservative estimate - I've spent 200 hours trading, researching, etc, coins - in the UK at £7.50 p/h which is what I believe is current minimum wage for someone of my age, I would have made £1,500 or $2,334.)

During all that time I've spent this year, trading and investing, from a starting investment of £200, I've made about £700 profit (mainly by gaining from LTC/BTC rise at the right time).

Now, earning it my way was a lot more fun - I did it sitting on my arse, in front of the TV, smoking some fine plant materials. I also learned a lot about how markets work - and a hell of a lot more about how scammers operate. It's been a ride. So I'm fine with it.
But if my intention had been purely to make money, I would have been far better off taking a second  job in a kitchen.

TL/DR Whether Altcoins are worthless depends on your aims. If your aim is to enjoy them, have fun and learn, they are not worthless. If your intention is purely to make a profit, they are fairly worthless.

I only have few $$ in alt coins and put most of my money in bitcoin investment. Happy christmas everyone i hope you have a nice time with all your crypto

I made some money with altcoins but never used them for buying anything. So they are not worthless for me atleast.

If you want to be rich via altcoins you need to do something like that;
What does this coin offer people?
How many of these offerings are came true?
Did they come true in time?
Is dev team working good?

If those questions' answers satisfy you then you should try to collect at least 0.1% of the total coins.
If there's 1 mil coin, you should get at least 1k when they're cheap of course ;D

I'm waiting for another spike in btc price for alts to pick up steam again, which may or may not happen (but I think it will). Right now it's just way too easy to lose, with pretty much no coins pumping like they were last winter/spring - so risk/reward is too low for the gamble. Sad to say but if alt trading volume doesn't improve drastically I've bought my last alt.
As far as whether they are worthless/pointless, they can make a lot of btc which in turn can make a lot of fiat. That's about it.

Alts are made for P&D groups to harvest dumb money  :)

True for very few alts these days, most now just dump.

Good post.  I agree it wouldn't be worth it in the short-term unless you're having fun.  I am definitely having fun, and I still give it a slight edge in favor of working for money - working for minimum wage has 0 chance of making you rich next year, while altcoins have .00000001 chance.

Unless you sell all your coins, in which case there's 0 chance.  Most people can't understand that you haven't lost anything until you sell for a loss.  They're ready to give up as soon as the market drops a little.

Some alts IMO are better than BTC, besides the strength the btc network has over any coin by far.

Even total shit coins can have a purpose, therefore be worth something.

As far as trading alts its like picking up nickels in front of a steamroller, if you pick enough up know when to gtf out of the way.

When Scrypt asics become common place, they will legitimize some altcoins. The ones that survive will be the ones with the best branding and communities behind them. Expect scrypt asics to roll out hard in 2015 especially if we see a run up in the price of BTC. A run up in BTC is the catalyst altcoins need to make a turn around.

+100

there's just too many altcoins these days.

I only buy Casinocoins. I'm doing everything I can to capture these and take them out of circulation.