I'm very green...just some questions about bitcoins

[scottmazzy]

Hi,

I've got some Goldcoins (GLD) and am thinking about buying other altcoins.  But I have some general questions about this whole investment strategy.  From what I see, these altcoins are not being used very much for purchasing real items (TV's, cars, etc).  It seems that they are mostly being bought and sold for speculative investment purposes.  It concerns me that, unless these coins become useful for real purchasing power and trade, they may die a slow or fast death.

Please recognize that I am very green.  Could anybody fill in my lack of understanding regarding these coins?

Best,
Scottmazzy

[VC George]

Apart from other more deep issues like code, decentralization & even ideology (for some), indeed only Bitcoin serves as a tender when it comes to buying stuff and not only online. Other cryptos (well most of them) are pure speculation and that's why they are useless in the real world.

The spark behind bitcoin's usability came when a guy gave 10.000BTC for 2 pizzas, after that point people just started exchanging stuff for bitcoin and fast forward to today you can buy some 333 pizzas with a single Bitcoin

[Iranus]

No, you're basically right.  Most of these coins are seldom used for anything other than speculation, and sometimes they die a quick death (or, let's say, drift into inactivity - real decentralised coins never die as such).

Sometimes their speculation is okay though - ETH is usually not used to buy anything, but due to the possibility that it could be used to help the creation of wider blockchain applications, its price has rose and is fairly unlikely to fall even though it's somewhat centralised.