What is the purpose of altcoins and why there is so many of them?

[Mr.Postman]

I mean we have bitcoin. Why there is some many alt coins in this business and what is the purpose of this?

[European Central Bank]

For dreamers and the unscrupulous to burn and make money? It's a natural human trait to try and best something disruptive. I wonder how many intranets there were before the internet won out.

[eddie13]

Altcoins are a great testbed for cryptocurrency technology to try out new things in order for crypto to evolve.

They are trying out hundreds of ways to do things and finding out good ways to do things and ways to definately not do things..

I would much rather them be experimenting on shitcoins rather than experimenting on Bitcoin itself..

Also some alts are good companions to BTC IMO for there strengths of faster block times and some have increased anonymity protections that some may see very useful.

[tokeweed]

Altcoins are a great testbed for cryptocurrency technology to try out new things in order for crypto to evolve.

They are trying out hundreds of ways to do things and finding out good ways to do things and ways to definately not do things..

I would much rather them be experimenting on shitcoins rather than experimenting on Bitcoin itself..

Also some alts are good companions to BTC IMO for there strengths of faster block times and some have increased anonymity protections that some may see very useful.

Yeah.  And we're the test subjects.  And they'll take your money while they're at it. 

[eddie13]

Yeah.  And we're the test subjects.  And they'll take your money while they're at it. 

Sad but true.. Many ARE created for scam schemes alone..

[solstice]

The purpose of altcoins is to obtain more bitcoin. Without bitcoin there will be no altcoins.

[Arrakeen]

Some altcoins are created because people want to learn. Others, for greed. Some are created to free us from the grip of our current financial limitations. That's pretty much it...

Treat every altcoin as an attempt to scam you - that doesn't mean you can't play their game & come out with a profit though 

[coins4lunch]

Some altcoins have faster confirmations than Bitcoin, so you can move them around more quicker. Also some are Proof of Stake, so you do not have to mine but hold to earn coins. But yes they are mostly existing to take your BTC 

[Mr.Postman]

Altcoins are a great testbed for cryptocurrency technology to try out new things in order for crypto to evolve.

They are trying out hundreds of ways to do things and finding out good ways to do things and ways to definately not do things..

I would much rather them be experimenting on shitcoins rather than experimenting on Bitcoin itself..

Also some alts are good companions to BTC IMO for there strengths of faster block times and some have increased anonymity protections that some may see very useful.

Yeah.  And we're the test subjects.  And they'll take your money while they're at it. 

That is really interesting but how exactly you can create an altcoin and attract people for that curency. Is there any e-book for that? For understanding how altcoin works and logic behind this?

[CryptoSporidium]

Why are there so many rock bands? Chuck Berry nailed it down in 1955 with 'Maybellene', why all the copycat clones?

[twister]

For dreamers and the unscrupulous to burn and make money? It's a natural human trait to try and best something disruptive. I wonder how many intranets there were before the internet won out.

Couldn't have said it better  . People who couldn't catch the Bitcoin train, buy it in hopes that maybe one day these altcoins will bring the same result but so far nothing has came even close to that.

Altcoins are a great testbed for cryptocurrency technology to try out new things in order for crypto to evolve.

They are trying out hundreds of ways to do things and finding out good ways to do things and ways to definately not do things..

I would much rather them be experimenting on shitcoins rather than experimenting on Bitcoin itself..

Also some alts are good companions to BTC IMO for there strengths of faster block times and some have increased anonymity protections that some may see very useful.

I guess this is the reason behind some of the coins to test out new technology but how to know which ones are shitcoins and which are not?

[Spoetnik]

Yeah.  And we're the test subjects.  And they'll take your money while they're at it. 

Sad but true.. ALL ARE created for scam schemes alone..

There i corrected that for you..

[shanem]

Most of the altcoins are created to suck bitcoin out of the market and into the hands of the 'dev' and pump groups.
They are based on hype and price will be crash badly in a few months.

[iotatoken]

Different functionality. Unlike what a lot of people think, Bitcoin is not the panacea to solve all problems. There are always trade-offs to adding new functionality and utility to a system. In product design this is called 'Flexibility trade-offs' and 'Feature Creep'.

So when people ask us why we made IOTA, the answer is simply that the features needed for IoT payments (e.g. highly scalable, efficient, nano/micro-transactions, lightweight hardware) does not exist in Bitcoin or any other coin for that matter.

[Spoetnik]

Most of the altcoins are created to suck bitcoin out of the market and into the hands of the 'dev' and pump groups.
They are based on hype and price will be crash badly in a few months.

Any & All coins are targeted by pump groups whether that was the dev's intention or not.
You think so called pump groups only stick to specific coins ?
They jump to ANY coin they can see has some users and screw it leaving it a mess.
If a coin has users it gets raped.

So they can claim they have good intentions but it doesn't matter.
The end game is the same.
Broke investors.

Ideology and Reality are two different things here guys..

[MisO69]

Its always about making money, but isn't everything about that?

Some new crypto is actually created to further the technology along. Bitcoin is great but its 2009 tech, we need to keep evolving so we keep making new altcoins.

The few legitimate "2.0" coins out there are - Bitshares, Ripple, Ethereum, Counterparty, Maidsafe, Next, Stellar, Mastercoin, eMune. I know I missed some so you need to do more research.

You'll find these projects at different stages of development. None of which have caught on and gone mainstream yet but neither has bitcoin. Will any of them? I hope so since I hold some of them.

Then you have the anonymous coins. - Dash, Monero, Aeon, ShadowCash, and a few others. These attempt to hide transactions in the blockchain. They work and will work better with more adoption. I hold some of these as well.

Hi-PoS coins (High Interest Proof of Stake) these are forks of Peercoin where holding coins generates interest. I actually like these, just with the recent bitcoin rise they seem to have tanked.. Some are - Bottlecaps, Hobonickels, Tek, Netcoin, etc.. Not sustainable but fun to stake and trade.

We also have the bitcoin forks. Which is most of the coins.. These are copies of the bitcoin core where the developers changed the parameters of the coin. Generally these are total amount, emission, block time and of course premine.. A ten minute job for someone that has done it before. Most of these are made to enrich the developer and nothing more. Some have lasted over the years and are traded at low volume. I would stay away from these.

[First.Bitcoins]

Some altcoins are designed to focus on a specific community or need, such as ArtByte, which supports artists of all kinds.

-------
Announce Thread: ArtByte Announce Thread
Website: ArtByte.me

ArtByte (ABY) is traded on Poloniex and Bittrex

[TPTB_need_war]

I believe there are certain features which can't be grafted onto Bitcoin (for various reasons ranging from technical to vested inertia). I also believe some of the features are crucial for mass adoption.

And thus I believe the ultimate purpose (or challenge) is to create an altcoin that challenges and surpasses Bitcoin in adoption.

I believe the altcoin that is doing this will be obvious to everyone, and you won't even need to ask this question.

Since it is not yet apparent, I argue no such altcoin yet exists.

As for existing altcoin work, some of it has been experimentation that has advanced some of the technologies that a cryptographic coin needs, e.g. Cryptonote's one-time ring signatures. But so far, most of the altcoins have been merely pump and dump schemes, and/or investment alternatives to Bitcoin's volatility and changing mining demographics (e.g. Litecoin), and the myriad of factors in this dynamic is more complex than I can capture/describe in one sentence.

It is a chaotic free market. Who would want it any other way   Prefer totalitarianism  

This question reminds me of the guy who asked why do we need so many programming languages and when we will stop inventing more of them. And the venerable genius Eric S. Raymond replied (paraphrased), "I don't have a good answer for that, we will continue creating new programming languages for as long as there are programmers" (or something like that).

Edit: here is the link to the video where I heard him say that:

http://jobtipsforgeeks.com/2012/05/17/lessons-from-a-jug-talk-with-eric-esr-raymond/

[c0ffer]

There are many great points posted in this thread about why altcoins exist.

Altcoins create opportunities to experiment with the different technological and economic factors that can affect how a digital token functions.

There are many aspects of cryptocurrency that are being discovered and explored during this time and altcoins are a critical part of it.

[Spoetnik]

"experiment with the different technological and economic factors" ?

horse before the wagon ?

long ago it was apparent a clone would not suffice *anymore (to get some adoption from us)
there for a gimmick was needed.. first it became "services" value added tacked on 3rd party stuff.
from there it blossomed with various other gimmicks.
Specialized coins took off.. Like Country Coins or Anon coins or Marijuana Coins
The the save the whales coins came along.

The real genuine experiments that have come out are rare.
Prime coin XPM for example or maybe Quark were sincere attempts at things.
Coins like HYP or CENT and most others are simply masked scammy faggotry.
The dev's are well aware what a high stake coin will end up like down the road for example.

And actions speak louder than words.

A lot of these experiments can be applied to existing coins or simply run on TestNet
there is no requirement to put them on exchanges all the time, parting naive users of their Bitcoin.

ALL of them end the same way.. pumped and dumped and dead.
look around..