Everything's shady.  You forgot about the Goldman Sach's connection.  There's only so many people in this world that have worked for them (out of 7 billion people) and yet Ethereum has them.

Then there's Vitalik - always doing these hour long interviews and flying around the world to promote Ethereum.  When does he have time to do any development?  Why is he passed off as some sort of prodigy developer?  How is that kid more well known than Charlie Lee or actual Bitcoin developers like Gavin Andresen?  I swear that Vitalik is a mascot, some Goldmansachs executive at some table probably said: "We need someone 'hip and kewl', like Justin Bieber, to promote our scam coin to the skateboarding millenials".. "umm how about Vitalik sir, all he does is edit some magazine read by a few dozen people and he's also from Toronto just like Bieber", "Good job Samuels, keep up the good work and you'll get that raise".

nah. I think most altcoins will die in the future except handful which will continue to grow because of development, proper marketing, innovation regardless if they're being promoted on btctalk or not.

marketcap of altcoins in general have decreased substantially overtime. It's not like people don't know altcoins exist..they just think it's a scam (which is true in most altcoins cases). If people who are in altcoins think that most altcoins are scam..how do you even expect general population to think otherwise? it's like McDonald trying to say their burger is best while their employees saying it tastes like shit.

may be once exchanges are regulated we might see more investors coming in but right now if you talk about altcoins outside crypto they label it scam because they've lost money in past...it's gambling for most new investors at this point.

When people get scammed by ANY altcoin..they don't say "this altcoin is scam"..they would label ALL ALTCOINS as scam in general and stay away from it. stereotype bias kicks in and investors walk away because no one wants to lose money regardless of how small it is. Only strongest investors stick in and look for good project to invest in while weak investors (80%) walk away and look for other opportunity to increase their income.

such is life in crypto.

or bitcoin might become myspace.com and ethereum the facebook

NXT isn't really in the conversation.

Hi, I'm relatively new to cryptocurrencies and i want to start investing. I'm just wondering how to decide what currencies to invest in. There are so many its hard to decide. I currently own some: Dash coins, litecoins, shadow cash, ripple, and of course bitcoins. Is there any good methods of choosing currencies other than just identifying trends in charts or reading about them? Any other beginner advice?

you mean frontier version... im sure there will be a big dump for profit taking in the coming days with what they distributed.

as for nxt, how does their AT (automated transactions) compare to Ethereum's system? i know its not created yet, but maybe that's a good first move as nxt can see the flaws of this new system and fix it on their own release.

Doge and LTC are more popular, this is very simple   First come, first served  

Hell, no. Both will settle into their respective niches and more-or-less coexist, because that's how the wide wide world of business typically works these days.