Bitcoin needs altcoins because ...

[Paxful_Marketing]

..Not everyone is in love with bitcoin and we should be open to that..

If no alts existed after bitcoin then no statement like that will be made.

if gravity didnt exist, we could all fly. Whats your point?

[shintosai]

for some reason we need alts because it shows competition inside crypto industry if bitcoin alone it will take some time to gain some good cash and because of alt industry we able to get some options to trade our btc and hold some alts and sell it when the market shows strong movement i see alt as a another options to earn.

[Paxful_Marketing]

for some reason we need alts because it shows competition inside crypto industry if bitcoin alone it will take some time to gain some good cash and because of alt industry we able to get some options to trade our btc and hold some alts and sell it when the market shows strong movement i see alt as a another options to earn.

Well said mate. For me, i could see this from many angles. Another example would be internet browsers. Some people know that chrome is a fork from Chromium (the true and original, open source browser which google turned into Chrome and removed its beautiful security features), but unfortunately most of the world seems to only know Chrome. Then there is Firefox which is also great, followed by Safari, IE etc. They all exist because of various reasons - whether its monopoly, standardisation of systems, deals with manufacturers etc - but regardless of personal opinion or devotion, they do all exist. It would be silly to think Chromium - or any other one - should be the one and only. They all open the gate for choice and that is the most important part. I know from experience that some people do not want 0.2 of a bitcoin, but would much rather have +30K GRC instead - psychology of numbers.

With the introduction of shapeshift, one doesnt even need to worry about it anymore. Eventually people will see which suits their needs and in most cases i would assume Bitcoin would be the most useful (IMO).

[margarete11]

Bitcoin needs altcoin because it make bitcoin stronger and proving to all of us that out of thousands altcoin created bitcoin is the one who stands out , there something in bitcoin that altcoin doesn't have , so for me altcoins is maybe a tool to prove that bitcoin is above the rest.

[dhampir-D]

for some reason we need alts because it shows competition inside crypto industry if bitcoin alone it will take some time to gain some good cash and because of alt industry we able to get some options to trade our btc and hold some alts and sell it when the market shows strong movement i see alt as a another options to earn.

Some cryptocurrencies, in addition to having a larger market relative to others, have interesting proposals, and in fact may have real use in the future. The problem is with coins that offer features that do not solve any real-world problems, and work like pump and dump schemes. Such coins lead some users to lose money, and this is not a good thing for the cryptocurrency space.

[clickerz]

for some reason we need alts because it shows competition inside crypto industry if bitcoin alone it will take some time to gain some good cash and because of alt industry we able to get some options to trade our btc and hold some alts and sell it when the market shows strong movement i see alt as a another options to earn.

Some cryptocurrencies, in addition to having a larger market relative to others, have interesting proposals, and in fact may have real use in the future. The problem is with coins that offer features that do not solve any real-world problems, and work like pump and dump schemes. Such coins lead some users to lose money, and this is not a good thing for the cryptocurrency space.

I do agree here. There are good alternative coins coins and they serve their purpose. Altcoins is also as important as bitcoin just like we have so many fiat currency and their value varies.That is why we have also cryptocurrency trading.

[cellard]

Besides what I said about how alts will always exist because people love to make more BTC out of pump and dumps, it will also exist because its the fastest way to experiment with crypto technology without having to pass your own BIPs into the bitcoin code. You can get started right away.

Maybe sidechains make alts obsoletes tho, we will see.

[BitFinnese]

..Not everyone is in love with bitcoin and we should be open to that..

If no alts existed after bitcoin then no statement like that will be made.

if gravity didnt exist, we could all fly. Whats your point?

Lol if gravity does not exist then we could all be floating 


I think altcoin helps a lot on Bitcoin promotion, many bitcoin users were brought by altcoins.  There will be no bitcoin to many altcoins pairs and there will be only bitcoin to many fiat currency pairs and other commodities that requires personal details to trade.  Mostly many bitcoin traders will not exist without altcoins.

[jtipt]

For me altcoin are only for trading purposes, I don't hold them for long since I have seen that almost none of the altcoin lasts for more than few months. Bitcoin as such doesn't need an altcoin, but bitcoin community profits from having altcoins.

[PacePay]

I favor for altcoin to be beneficial for bitcoins only for one reason and that is if a new feature come up in any altcoin it give an ida to bitcoin developers and then they adopt that feature for bitcoin and will make bitcoin more beneficial and stronger while after that I do not like any other thing in altcoin compared to bitcoin.

[markyminer]

for some reason we need alts because it shows competition inside crypto industry if bitcoin alone it will take some time to gain some good cash and because of alt industry we able to get some options to trade our btc and hold some alts and sell it when the market shows strong movement i see alt as a another options to earn.

bitcoin do not need any alt coin because when it was created there was no other currency and the bitcoin users were not feeling the need to have any other crypto currenc, but now as most of the people are interested in trading therefore altcoin is the best option for them and they can invest their bitcoin in alt coin when they need so and when they realize that bitcoin price is not stable, other wise bitcoin do not need any alt coin.

[severaldetails]

Altcoins are traded against bitcoins.
So altcoins increase the demand of bitcoin and with it the pric of bitcoin.
And to a lot of people trading has become an important source of income.
In general I would say bitcoin would not be where it is now if altcoins were not developed.

[alyssa85]

For me altcoin are only for trading purposes, I don't hold them for long since I have seen that almost none of the altcoin lasts for more than few months. Bitcoin as such doesn't need an altcoin, but bitcoin community profits from having altcoins.

I use alts sometimes to move money from one exchange to another. Saves on fees, confirms very quickly, it's quick and safe. Doge is particularly good for this.

[d5000]

Multiple blockchains in my opinion are a more healthy cryptocurrency environment than a single blockchain.

The main reason for me is the greater efficiency. Imagine a world where blockchains are the main payment method. A single blockchain would mean that all these transactions would have to be saved by all nodes. In a multiple-blockchain world, only a part of the transactions would have been saved by the nodes. So there is much less space wasted and it's easier to operate a full node.

That's only the disk space topic - I am not an expert but I can imagine that multiple blockchains have also efficiency advantages when talking about the necessary bandwidth to spread the transactions in the network(s). Because in a single-blockchain environment all transactions must be broadcasted to all nodes, while with multiple blockchains the users only need to broadcast the transactions to the nodes of their own network.

[manselr]

Side chain features won't be adopted or successful, because it's centralized.

Dude where the fuck do people like this come from? Im sick of hearing people talking bullshit segwit, blockstream, sidechains, lightning network... all day, all night. I mean are you kidding me. "Side chain features won't be adopter or successful, because it's centralized". Are you shitting me? This doesn't even make sense grammatically.

Sidechains are a great idea, altcoins will have a hard time justification their existence. Any project backed by bitcoin as a sidechain is better than some obscure ass blockchain that nobody supports.

[xuan87]

Most of the time people need alt coin to become trading tool, and alt coin also help bitcoin to raise transaction rate and in the future when the demand of crypto currencies is high, I believed there will be another alt coins that will have the value as good as bitcoin and we need alt coin so we have a better selection for crypto currency

[examplens]

Bitcoin can function without any problems without altcoin but altcoin gives new opportunity and ideas. There are a lot of perspective devs in altcoin world. Who knows which of the ideas will be used for bitcoin
I think if on of the banks implement cryptocurrency in our system, probably will do with own altcoin

[Redrose]

I don't agree with the testnet, because we have already the teestnet with bitcoin, if you want tot ry something you can try it there without making an altcoin to scam investors, altcoin are bad for another reason and is the fact that they remove liquidity to the bitcoin market, if someone want to buy many altcoin he will dump bitcoin for them because it's the easy way instead of going with fiat first

At the contrary, this is for me the most important one. Bitcoin testnet is a closed thing, at the inverse of the altcoins. If you would like to test a revolutionary feature you imagined, altcoins are the perfect sandbox, as no one will bother you and you will not need to refer about what you are doing to anyone.

[Wind_FURY]

I don't agree with the testnet, because we have already the teestnet with bitcoin, if you want tot ry something you can try it there without making an altcoin to scam investors, altcoin are bad for another reason and is the fact that they remove liquidity to the bitcoin market, if someone want to buy many altcoin he will dump bitcoin for them because it's the easy way instead of going with fiat first

Wrong. I can now see that altcoins deployed in a real world setting is beneficial for Bitcoin. In a Bitcoin testnet you cannot really now how new features will turn out in a controlled setting. If these features were deployed on an altcoin with real risk of losing real value in case something goes wrong then there is a lot more to learn. Think of it like beta testing for Bitcoin. The latest Beta test would be the deployment of Segwit then LN for Litecoin.

[Windpower]

...

- Alts work like a testnet for bitcoins (looking forward seeing Litecoin with SegWit)

- Once an alt feature looks working it might get adopted no matter onchain or in a side chain. (RSK)

- Alts mostly need bitcoin to trade and some bitcoins might be always reserved / locked for this.

- Alts might help to generate a closed bitcoin economy

My favorit comes here:

- Alts work like an infinite fear generator (Hydra) against any try of regulators to bring bitcoin down, since there are too many to kill and its very easy to just create a new one (like a Hydra cannot be killed by chopping off some heads, even the biggest one!) > crypto world is anti fragile and it will stay on this solar system from year 2009 on.


Any other things missing here?

Those are all correct. I am mostly looking forward to Segwit as well. It is great that we can use altcoins to test different ideas before making changes to Bitcoin. One thing that you could have added is that altcoins create competition for Bitcoin. They also show people that are thinking about investing in Bitcoin, that it is the best cryptocurrency. There are no altcoins that are even close to the price of Bitcoin.