If you would be so kind as to indulge me. I would like to use some assumptions and logic to make some predictions.

The future always repeats the past. However, we don't know the past perfectly, so we cannot know the future perfectly.

What we know:

-Bitcoin was the first cryptocurrency to successfully launch.
-Bitcoin is currently the cryptocurrency with the highest price.

-Litecoin was the second cryptocurrency to successfully launch.
-For a long time, it was the cryptocurrency with the second highest price.

-Bitcoin's design was truly marvelous, yet we know it has so much room for innovation.
-Changing Bitcoin's protocols is difficult, and it only gets more difficult as its network grows. Yet, its value and security is closely linked to the size of its network.

-New cryptocurrencies, like PPCoin, PrimeCoin, NameCoin, FreiCoin, and BitGems, to name a few, introduce new technologies.
-All other things being equal, technically these coins have more value than the older coins like litecoin and bitcoin because they have adopted new ideas.

Conclusions I make:

-Buy the best altcoins you can find.
-Ignore hype.
-Learn as much as you can about the technology behind cryptocurrencies.

Personally, I would recommend NovaCoin because it implements both proof-of-stake and Scrypt, although I need to learn more about the alledged scam its inventor pulled.
Second, I would recommend OrbitCoin, just released a few weeks ago, if it catches on and if 0% proof-of-stake stands up to analysis.

Thanks. I'll get off my soapbox now.

NovaCoin FTW 

Scrypt - Proof of Stake

'Nuf Said

Hah! Forget the bitcoins. Keep the Altcoins

Excuse my smugness. 

I am onemorehuman and I have come to preach the gospel of altcoins.

Woe to the Bitcoiners!

If there is such a flood of new users into the bitcoin network like this graph implies, it will not be able to scale properly.

Currently, there is not enough comprehensible information, mature software interfaces, or stable merchants to enable the bitcoin network to handle all this wealth.

Most importantly, the users of bitcoin are grossly overconfident about its technology.

True, Satoshi Nakamoto and all the other developers have made beautiful leaps forward with cryptography and decentralized networking. However, the technical decisions with proof-of-work, difficulty adjustments, and block rewards remain largely untested. We do not know what the best specifications of a cryptocurrency are.

New innovations like proof-of-stake, true anonymity, and multi-purpose mining that other cryptocurrencies are developing will soon make the bitcoin technology obsolete. Software engineering cannot be rushed, it is a slow, organic process that produces winners and losers.

So, just like you have decided to put your faith in bitcoin because you knew it was better than fiat, put your faith in the newer cryptocurrencies that promise yet greater freedom.

You may be interested in Orbitcoin (orbitcoin.org). It was founded to help "open source scientists" by donating a large portion of the pre-mined currency to them.

I like ORB because it implements 0% proof of stake. In my mind, 0% pos allows owners of the currency to "donate" their coinage to the security of the network.

Also, There must be a way to make a program that can prove a user is doing some eco-friendly task. Like using clean energy, or offsetting their carbon footprint.

There will be twenty-one million bitcoins after a few years. If these BTC21 million replaced just a small percentage of the transactions made with USD's, than bitcoins could be worth thousands of dollars.

I am convinced, though, that soon bitcoin users will decide to leave it behind to adopt the technologically superior currencies that will be available.

Perhaps, instead of investing so many resources in the bitcoin network, we should prioritize the development of the technology that makes digital currencies possible.

I am a believer in cryptocurrencies that implement proof-of-stake systems. I think the public will eventually realize that the security of cryptocurrency networks does not require computational power (like proof-of-work). Of course, the Peer2PeerCoin (PPC) and NovaCoin (NVC) have flaws, but maybe they have fewer flaws than bitcoin...

Hello everyone.
I just joined this forum today in order to promote my twitter feed called The Coin Update. Of course, I plan to contribute to the forum also, and not just advertise....
If you need an active, reliable source of Cryptocurrency news, I am currently providing it at twitter.com/thecoinupdate
In the future, I would like to hook the twitter account to free, federated networks like Diaspora* and Pump.io (when its useable). Also, I own thecoinupdate.com, but I need some twitter followers before I can afford to maintain a website.

Please let me know of any suggestions y'all have. (Yes, I'm from the south) And, please, follow me.

I hope that the BTC talk users will branch out more. It really isn't healthy for so many users to congregate around one central website. We should migrate to more decentralized, federated networks like Diaspora*

In truth, no matter the track record of any OS, there is no way to be sure that it is secure unless all of its source code is available for review and improvement. So, personally I would recommend fully free (open source) operating systems like Debian, Trisquel, gNewSense, and Parabola.
If you use one of those, you can be sure that what you think the software is doing is actually what it is doing. Keep in mind that the web and bitcoin would not exist except for the philosophical innovations of the free software movement (especially GNU).

I heard a great idea about altcoins recently. I wish I could remember who said it. They said that the technology of a new coin does not matter nearly as much as the strength of its network. In the future, more adversaries may exist that would like to use their computational power to defraud new cryptocurrency networks. This can happen even if those new networks are technically superior that previous ones. For example, Litecoin is more secure and faster than Bitcoin, but for now there is a greater risk to use it because there is not as many miners using their machines to secure Litecoin.