Are altcoins practically useful at all, or is it just BitCoins?

[btguydude]

I know that there are many stores that accept BitCoins nowadays, but do any useful stores accept altcoins, if so - which? I can't seem to find a comprehensive list.

Here's how I see it from the research I've done so far: there are some small insignificant companies that accept a couple of most-popular altcoins that are no better than BitCoins.

Note that I don't want to insult anybody, by insignificant I mean subjectively, here's what's insignificant to me: limited to the US and/or very narrow choice of goods, like some guys selling special homebrew keychains or some type of special clothing, etc.. 999/1000 times I'm either not interested in it or can't afford some special little gadget, and I'm only interested in companies that ship to Europe.

Well, hope I did not insult anyone and explained my question properly.

[The Sceptical Chymist]

Nope, your analysis is pretty spot-on.  I like DOGE for some reason, but there's nowhere to really spend it.  Yes, on Reddit there are people who make keychains, pens, and all sorts of DOGE stuff, but I could not live on DOGE alone.  Or any other altcoin for that matter.  To answer your question, they are very impractical for this very reason.  I suppose they're good for gambling, but so is bitcoin.

[canth]

Altcoins are useful testbeds for proving features that can't be easily included in Bitcoin due to any number of reasons. Altcoins with useful features that cannot be easily incorporated into Bitcoin will have value.

As far as practicality, it's too early to tell. For example, Litecoin continues to be useful despite the fact that isn't accepted by many merchants. Why? It allows for the BTC chain to be broken for money laundering privacy purposes. In the future, perhaps Monero will provide a superior privacy feature, even if Bitcoin is used on either end, because it breaks the chain of transactions.

[btguydude]

Nope, your analysis is pretty spot-on.  I like DOGE for some reason, but there's nowhere to really spend it.  Yes, on Reddit there are people who make keychains, pens, and all sorts of DOGE stuff, but I could not live on DOGE alone.  Or any other altcoin for that matter.  To answer your question, they are very impractical for this very reason.  I suppose they're good for gambling, but so is bitcoin.

So... Privacy-oriented coins are pretty much pointless then... Since you would have to trade them to BitCoins or Paypal balance or whatever anyway. That said, coins as of now are useless and you might as well go along with Paypal or credit card if you want to shop online. About the same amount of security and anonymity anyway.

That's really too bad, I was wholeheartedly hoping for someone to tell me "YOU'RE WRONG!" and explain why. Oh well...

Altcoins are useful testbeds for proving features that can't be easily included in Bitcoin due to any number of reasons. Altcoins with useful features that cannot be easily incorporated into Bitcoin will have value.

As far as practicality, it's too early to tell. For example, Litecoin continues to be useful despite the fact that isn't accepted by many merchants. Why? It allows for the BTC chain to be broken for money laundering privacy purposes. In the future, perhaps Monero will provide a superior privacy feature, even if Bitcoin is used on either end, because it breaks the chain of transactions.

Yes, in the future, assuming the government will fail to implement even more severe controlling measures into the society, they will be useful... But right now, in 2015 still... Well.

As for testing stuff... Monero and some other currencies use CryptoNote which as far as I know is the only truly anonymous way for coins to work. There's around 10 coins that use that so far, but having in mind what's above, unfortunately they are all completely useless. Unless you offer hitman services on the darknet or something, but that's not the case for me.

LiteCoin and other well known coins like NameCoin, NXT, Peercoin, QuarkCoin, etc., they don't seem completely anonymous or secure compared to anything that uses CryptoNote. That's as far as I have read so far however, and I'm a total newbie here. I also saw some type of privacy-related hole in CryptoNote that's been recently solved by a fork too.

Anyway, so testing to me seems kinda pointless too, as BitCoin doesn't seem to be going the privacy route, it seems to be going the opposite direction from the few news articles that I've read recently (and I'm very new in the cryptocurrency crowd so I may be wrong).

[MyBTT]

There is no useful altcoins, all of them just copy bitcoin's concept and their founders are looking for some quick cash.

[eddie13]

In the exchange world DOGE can be very useful for moving money because it is faster, usually has much lower fees, it's much better for microtransactions (like faucet size value), and is plenty liquid at most places..

[Spoetnik]

@btguydude
Seems you got it covered (you see what is going on)

TestNet can be used for many Feature testing but they don't use it
because they want the coin on an exchange to make money $$$

Which is the main use for them.. trading as tokens on an exchange.
Which winds up making them look far more like a digital pyramid scheme "token" that a currency.

Many of us started out way more optimistic one of these coins would accomplish adoption.
Time goes on.. years go by and we all eventually realize these coins will not be used as "currencies"

The whole game is about trying to make a more convincing scam..
These days "they" push hard to involve the world in their block chains.
Take ETH for example.. guys on Poloniex chat were going on about how Microsoft and IBM were "using" ETH.
MS simply added support for ETH via their Azure services.
And IBM supposedly was testing some internal private use scenario.
And i said to the guy on chat, well why would i care if IBM is using ETH on their private network ?
Or any other private company large or small..
Think about it..
Why should we give two shits if some buzzword "block-chain" bullshit used by some companies.
Only way i see that mattering is if they have a private token/coin used internally that is -linked-
to the outside world and then to exchanges and use etc.
This is not the case though !

So i wish i could say more positive things about Altcoins but i can't think of anything LOL
so far..

EDIT: Fixed some spelling mistakes.

[btguydude]

There is no useful altcoins, all of them just copy bitcoin's concept and their founders are looking for some quick cash.

I doubt at least some of the very few anonymity/security/privacy oriented coin creators are looking for quick cash. There's at least one guy who isn't, if it could be in any way useful and I had the coding skills, I'd make a coin myself just for that purpose. But seeing as no coin is useful and there's plenty great coins (excluding BitCoin) already out there, that would be a waste of my time.

In the exchange world DOGE can be very useful for moving money because it is faster, usually has much lower fees, it's much better for microtransactions (like faucet size value), and is plenty liquid at most places..

You have to be able to spend the money though, so unless I misunderstand something, you have to go to some exchange site and get yourself some Paypal credit anyway. Perhaps useful for selling stuff, but nobody's using them, and there's many more coins that are much faster than BitCoin and have a huge advantage of privacy, anonymity and even security.

snip

That is too bad... The only way I'd care about coins is if they provided me with security, anonymity and privacy, and I could use them for more than trading for them to stay in one of 15 wallets I had to download.

I have to rethink the whole idea of privacy now. For a day or two I got blinded by all the new information coming in about private/secure/anonymous currency like certain coins. But you just can't use it. So what's the point?

I'm honestly not sure if you can keep your privacy then, considering the only anonymous way of buying something is cash. Unless you get yourself one of those credit cards, but I heard they're being picked off now as well.

I was truly hoping for some positivity or way around it that I missed... Eh.

[Spoetnik]

15 wallets ? .. that is cute LOL
I deleted most of mine when i broke 14 gigs.

And anon coins will never work so your chasing a gimmick that is a fallacy.

Not only that but the outside world will be less likely to adopt coins that can be tracked.
Banks for example do not want to support hiding transactions from Silk Road guys.
Anon bullshit will do nothing but attract a stupid naive minority here that know shit all about security.
And turn off the outside world (ranging from Grandma to banks)

Bitcoin tracking has gotten people their money back after crimes.
There is a reason there is lots of US Federal laws with money.
There is reasons why you give your ID to exchanges.

Your Dash or Monero etc are going no where.

[e-coinomist]

I have to rethink the whole idea of privacy now. For a day or two I got blinded by all the new information coming in about private/secure/anonymous currency like certain coins. But you just can't use it. So what's the point?

I'm honestly not sure if you can keep your privacy then, considering the only anonymous way of buying something is cash.

9 out of 10 ISIS terrorists prefere Greenbacks for their weapon delivery payments.

So yes indeed, privacy coins are somewhat "out". Probably not even surveilance costs of the crypto sphere are justified anymore from a budget perspective. It's Tax Money.

[shanem]

Most of the altcoins are not useful and they are clones of bitcoin.
Why would I use the other altcoins when I can just use bitcoin?

[Luqman]

Some altcoins are practically uses in some case, just like IEC coins they used as the payment for buying gold and silver but the website built by the developer

[dannyman]

Many 'alts today aren't really alts but are shares in some kind of online business, sia coin, get gems, storj coin, all ultimately are attached to a real world product and the coin is more a token in that closed ecosystem.

Bitcoin does need a few competing currencies though just like in the real world, maybe VNL will compete as a pure payment coin as bitcoin is more made as digital gold rather than VISA.

[mtnsaa]

There's absolutely no use for altcoins except to provide some different way to do things that Bitcoin may or not adopt. 90% are scams too, 100% are easily manipulated so the market itself is a joke. You can make money of course if you have some inside tips.

As for the future, don't fool yourself with nice talk and features, you can make money trading but there's more chance you hit the lottery than to ride one of these projects "to the moon".

[btguydude]

15 wallets ? .. that is cute LOL
I deleted most of mine when i broke 14 gigs.

And anon coins will never work so your chasing a gimmick that is a fallacy.

Not only that but the outside world will be less likely to adopt coins that can be tracked.
Banks for example do not want to support hiding transactions from Silk Road guys.
Anon bullshit will do nothing but attract a stupid naive minority here that know shit all about security.
And turn off the outside world (ranging from Grandma to banks)

Bitcoin tracking has gotten people their money back after crimes.
There is a reason there is lots of US Federal laws with money.
There is reasons why you give your ID to exchanges.

Your Dash or Monero etc are going no where.

Privacy is possible except right now you have to go to far lengths to get it. And I don't care about the US, I'm not from there and I'm glad I'm not.

I still think it's possible to use it.

I wonder, how does something like BitCoin work when you're buying at say amazon, how do they count tax and all that for businesses? Do they just report it as normal income in USD?

You could do the same with something like Monero if your business was to accept them, I don't see why not.

9 out of 10 ISIS terrorists prefere Greenbacks for their weapon delivery payments.

So yes indeed, privacy coins are somewhat "out". Probably not even surveilance costs of the crypto sphere are justified anymore from a budget perspective. It's Tax Money.

We can debate the need for surveilance in general and the invasion of privacy by the US government, but that's offtopic.

Most of the altcoins are not useful and they are clones of bitcoin.
Why would I use the other altcoins when I can just use bitcoin?

For privacy, for example. And security.

There's absolutely no use for altcoins except to provide some different way to do things that Bitcoin may or not adopt. 90% are scams too, 100% are easily manipulated so the market itself is a joke. You can make money of course if you have some inside tips.

As for the future, don't fool yourself with nice talk and features, you can make money trading but there's more chance you hit the lottery than to ride one of these projects "to the moon".

Well, I'm not looking to trade, I'm looking to accept coins that encourage privacy however. For legal stuff of course. That's the only thing I'm interested.

Otherwise, it's all completely useless. Including BitCoins. They are useless because the idea was crypto, and it's not crypto. Better to just accept euros or dollars and be done with it, the way I see it. Unless it's actually private and secure like Monero and similar coins.

[Blawpaw]

ALtcoins are very useful since it enable developers to correct and innovate over bitcoin limits and imperfections.