What is the advantage of other cryptocurrencies?

[Bitconian]

Hi,

I've still kind of new in this digital currency world. I just discovered Bitcoin and now I found many other cryptocurrencies.

My questions are....

      *. Is it worth it to mine in other currencies besides bitcoins?
      *. Wouldn't be better if we only use only 1 instead of 8?
      *. Does it (having other currencies) weaken bitcoins?

I do respect other currencies and their followers, it's just I don't understand this "new world" yet.  

May anybody tell me the advantage?

Thanks!!  

[DeathAndTaxes]

There really isn't any advantage.  They all are of dubious value.

They don't really "hurt" Bitcoin anymore than someone making dirt coins reduces the value of gold.  You can't prevent others from producing alternatives so live and let live.

[Bitconian]

You can't prevent others from producing alternatives so live and let live.

Of course! I was just curious about how other currencies may or not affect bitcoins.

[DeathAndTaxes]

They don't really "hurt" Bitcoin anymore than someone making dirt coins reduces the value of gold.

[-ck]

Except that the cryptocurrency microcosm at the moment is a finite relatively small number of people and generally when people choose an altchain they are doing it at the expense of supporting the bitcoin ecosystem (on whatever level you consider them "supporting" it).

[crazy_rabbit]

Except that the cryptocurrency microcosm at the moment is a finite relatively small number of people and generally when people choose an altchain they are doing it at the expense of supporting the bitcoin ecosystem (on whatever level you consider them "supporting" it).

Oh, I disagree with that. I don't think supporters of alt-coins are brain-sinks for bitcoin. Bitcoin at this point is largely becoming professionalized. You see this with the number of large players in the market and growing outside-of-the-community investment it is receiving. This argument might have still been accurate a year ago, but I don't think it's true now. Bitcoin is reaching critical mass  and it's largely now self propelling. What the alt-coin crowd is doing doesn't serve to hurt/hinder bitcoin in anyway.

The alt-coin community is more of a sandbox for newer cryptocommunity members. I would wager there is a large number of novice's here and that's quite fine.

The advantage of the alt-coins is that the rules are still not yet set in stone- nor is the pecking order of seniority. New ideas can flourish regardless of how crazy they may seem.

Do alt coins weaken Bitcoin? I would rephrase that and ask- does Iceland having it's own currency weaken the US Dollar? Wouldn't it be better if we just all used the Euro?

If your new here, welcome! By all means pick yourself up some bitcoin, but if you'd like to experiment and have fun and maybe build another currency from scratch, please enjoy yourself here in Alt-coins as well. I personally recommend checking out TRC- Its like "Baby Bitcoin". :-)

[smoothie]

D&T is entitled to his "dirt coin" outlook on things. Just don't know why he makes an effort to post here if he truly believes what he says.

That aside, the alt chains have given good insight into different ideas of block times and tested some interesting ideas.

Those religious bitcoin evangelists that think bitcoin should be the only cryptocurrency can think again.Tthat would be the equivalent of a 1 world currency.

One huge advantage that the alt-chains have over bitcoin is the amount of drama that isn't surrounding it as well as learning from the mistakes of hard-core bitcoin enthusiasts.

In my opinion, I see many of the same mistakes that were made over 1.5 years ago...still being made in the bitcoin community.

But hey we all make mistakes so who am I to judge.

Ultimately it's not what D&T or any other "elitist" bitcoiner says that matters. What does matter is what the FREE MARKET chooses as a medium of exchange. That is what is important.

[Walter Rothbard]

One great advantage of altcoins is that they put to rest a common newbie gripe about bitcoins: namely, that the supply of bitcoins is limited.  Most of us think this is a feature, not a flaw, but for those who can't be convinced, we can always point to the unlimited supply of altcoins.  Anybody who wants to go to an alternative currency that generates 50 coins per block forever is welcome to.  Or whatever arrangement they please.  If some day there's only handful of ultra-valuable satoshis left to circulate in the bitcoin chain and people can't work out a way to subdivide them, they can make change with altcoins.  Somebody could even start an altcoin with rules identical to bitcoin specifically for this purpose.  There's no real 21 million limit this way.

Another great advantage of altcoins is that it takes a lot of work to become technically proficient enough to create an altcoin.  Everybody who does this acquires a valuable skill as a bitcoin developer, even if their altcoin fails, and this increases the skillset available to the entire community.

[Mjbmonetarymetals]

I like peanut butter but I also like jam.

[smoothie]

One great advantage of altcoins is that they put to rest a common newbie gripe about bitcoins: namely, that the supply of bitcoins is limited.  Most of us think this is a feature, not a flaw, but for those who can't be convinced, we can always point to the unlimited supply of altcoins.  Anybody who wants to go to an alternative currency that generates 50 coins per block forever is welcome to.  Or whatever arrangement they please.  If some day there's only handful of ultra-valuable satoshis left to circulate in the bitcoin chain and people can't work out a way to subdivide them, they can make change with altcoins.  Somebody could even start an altcoin with rules identical to bitcoin specifically for this purpose.  There's no real 21 million limit this way.

Another great advantage of altcoins is that it takes a lot of work to become technically proficient enough to create an altcoin.  Everybody who does this acquires a valuable skill as a bitcoin developer, even if their altcoin fails, and this increases the skillset available to the entire community.

Well people who do think bitcoin should survive alone and no other alternatives should be allowed are fucked up in the mind.

That is equivalent of trying to saying there can only be one world religion. People will believe what they want to believe. Free markets dont ever choose just one thing. Good example, silver and gold. The free markets chose those TWO things to be Money. That means more than 1 crypto can be accepted as payment.

If people want to transact in soiledcoins I wont tell them otherwise. But I wouldn't given its design. Just to address an example.

[DryPowder]

Well, you need to analyze the markets and study the fundaments of all Alt. Coins; the most important question that you will ask yourself is WHY ALT. COINS EXIST?   
I don’t want to make a statement in this topic because I will catch some fire in the process, but the idea here is to diversify and succeed as an Alt. Coin.

[crazy_rabbit]

Experimentation is a good reason. Bitcoin after all is still an experiment in the idea of Crypto currency. Alt-Coins are experiments in Bitcoin.

[Vitalicus]

Only 2 altcoin will survive.
LTC - it have a diferent algoritm of hashing: "scrypt"
PPC - algoritm "sha256" (BTC is "double sha256") + proof of stake,

The others alcoin cryptocurrencies are copy of bitcoin

[Atruk]

Only 2 altcoin will survive.
LTC - it have a diferent algoritm of hashing: "scrypt"
PPC - algoritm "sha256" (BTC is "double sha256") + proof of stake,

The others alcoin cryptocurrencies are copy of bitcoin

They might continue, but I'm not sure what they have ought to be considered a life.

The altcoin that can thrive is probably going to be namecoin, simply because it has fucking uses.

Litecoin was started fairly, but is only asic resistant for people who care about that. PPCoin has had security flaws in its proof of stake before and if it ever becomes worth anything will probably have crippling exploits found.

Meanwhile boring old grandpa namecoin can act as a torrent tracker. Grandpa can translate .onion links.  Namecoin will let you store whatever shit you need in its blockchain like fucking time stamps. Other than the fact that Litecoin is ASIC proof no altchain presents a convincing reason to mime it unless it is merged mineable.

[crazy_rabbit]

Only 2 altcoin will survive.
LTC - it have a diferent algoritm of hashing: "scrypt"
PPC - algoritm "sha256" (BTC is "double sha256") + proof of stake,

The others alcoin cryptocurrencies are copy of bitcoin

They might continue, but I'm not sure what they have ought to be considered a life.

The altcoin that can thrive is probably going to be namecoin, simply because it has fucking uses.

Litecoin was started fairly, but is only asic resistant for people who care about that. PPCoin has had security flaws in its proof of stake before and if it ever becomes worth anything will probably have crippling exploits found.

Meanwhile boring old grandpa namecoin can act as a torrent tracker. Grandpa can translate .onion links.  Namecoin will let you store whatever shit you need in its blockchain like fucking time stamps. Other than the fact that Litecoin is ASIC proof no altchain presents a convincing reason to mime it unless it is merged mineable.

Litecoin isn't ASIC proof by any means. It's just is too worthless to bother developing an ASIC for it. Not to mention ASIC's are GOOD for a coin. It means the network is even more secure. You should WANT an ASIC for litecoin, it would make it stronger and more secure.

Alt-coins will always exist. They are people experimenting with Bitcoin. If you want to get rich, you should go do something useful with BTC.

[Atruk]

Litecoin isn't ASIC proof by any means. It's just is too worthless to bother developing an ASIC for it. Not to mention ASIC's are GOOD for a coin. It means the network is even more secure. You should WANT an ASIC for litecoin, it would make it stronger and more secure.

Alt-coins will always exist. They are people experimenting with Bitcoin. If you want to get rich, you should go do something useful with BTC.

Alt-coins will always exist.

The way litecoin handles the memory versus processing power trade-off means any litecoin ASIC would be a weird mix of logic circuits and RAM, and even if you try to optomize it for a substantial number of nonces processing power will necessarily beat memory and very slow cycles will happen. This shit is a nightmare if you are an employed engineer and a wet dream if you are a contracting engineer.

I like altcoins, and I think some have very good ideas behind them. I'm pretty sure we both agree that FRC is crap. The big difference between us I  see reading your posts is that you see something magic with TRC that I don't while I'm turning BTC into NMC because NMC are useful.

[crazy_rabbit]

Litecoin isn't ASIC proof by any means. It's just is too worthless to bother developing an ASIC for it. Not to mention ASIC's are GOOD for a coin. It means the network is even more secure. You should WANT an ASIC for litecoin, it would make it stronger and more secure.

Alt-coins will always exist. They are people experimenting with Bitcoin. If you want to get rich, you should go do something useful with BTC.

Alt-coins will always exist.

The way litecoin handles the memory versus processing power trade-off means any litecoin ASIC would be a weird mix of logic circuits and RAM, and even if you try to optomize it for a substantial number of nonces processing power will necessarily beat memory and very slow cycles will happen. This shit is a nightmare if you are an employed engineer and a wet dream if you are a contracting engineer.

I like altcoins, and I think some have very good ideas behind them. I'm pretty sure we both agree that FRC is crap. The big difference between us I  see reading your posts is that you see something magic with TRC that I don't while I'm turning BTC into NMC because NMC are useful.

+1

(NMC probably really should be the alt-coin that people focus on)

[Walter Rothbard]

Except that the cryptocurrency microcosm at the moment is a finite relatively small number of people and generally when people choose an altchain they are doing it at the expense of supporting the bitcoin ecosystem (on whatever level you consider them "supporting" it).

Thought question: I played with testnet last night.  Did that come at the expense of supporting the bitcoin ecosystem?

[Latines]

It’s better to mine the ethereum classic. Bitcoin is now very unreliable. And if you want to understand all the coins, understand the whole crypto world, then you need to read a lot, no one will be able to describe in the chat everything you need to know.

[Suharti12]

Of course there are many advantages of Cryptocurrency other than Bitcoin that we can get, for example in Cryptocurrency trading. With so many Cryptocurrency coins besides Bitcoin, there will be many choices and opportunities for us to get profit from trading coins. If you want to mine other coins besides Bitcoin, of course we can also get profits.  But fortunately mining requires large capital.