The purpose of altcoins ?

[Pursuer]

these days altcoins have a clear definition which also defines their true purpose, they are copy paste of bitcoin and other crypto currency codes with changing a couple of lines in order to make something (coins) out of nothing and then sell those things for real money (bitcoin) and enjoy the profit.

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[MicroGuy]

The purpose of altcoins explained in 71 seconds ....



https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVeq2rdZyPw

[megynacuna]

these days altcoins have a clear definition which also defines their true purpose, they are copy paste of bitcoin and other crypto currency codes with changing a couple of lines in order to make something (coins) out of nothing and then sell those things for real money (bitcoin) and enjoy the profit.

I agree that most of the Altcoins are forked codes of Bitcoin but that's just at the development stage, they rather tend to serve other purposes that help drive Bitcoin on. For instance a there's the need for competition on the exchanges to assist trading and without Altcoins Bitcoin cannot do it all alone except against other fiats. Secondly as we are left with a few Bitcoins to mine (5 million) and looking at the current and ever increasing difficulty rate of Bitcoin mining it is just fair to have Altcoins which can be mined with low hardware capabilities and sold for bitcoins.

[margarete11]

I think the main purpose of altcoin is to give us alternative when we feel that bitcoin is not for us I mean if we feel that bitcoin is boring or unsecured and etc we can go to something else that is much more appealing to us , it our right to choose and altcoins enables us to have that right

[olubams]

Hey there,


can somone explain me the purpose of altcoins, please ?

From my point of view i cant understand why you should support something other than bitcoin.

According to https://www.coingecko.com bitcoin has a MktCap of ฿16,118,987. the 2.best one is ether with ฿1,031,757 (i could understand mining that, it has some value)
But already the third one LiteCoin has ฿208,064 which is only 1,2% of bitcoin.

So why would someone invest in altcoins ? Are there some big issues with bitcoin (or big advantages of any altcoin ?) or just a lot of people wanna invent their own crypotcurrencies ?

Outside bitcoin world, I believe everything created is done for a purpose and for an end to meet but its on this forum I have seen Alt created without a purpose but the developers will claim they did it for a purpose but that purpose is what I dont get because for what purpose is a coin created and immediately the ICO is over, we no longer see the developer again... He has moved on to create another porposeless coin...

[danherbias07]

I'd say:

80% are trying to get a piece of the cryptocurrency cake; somehow create money out of nothing: Copy/paste some coins code, get people involved and try to make as much money as possible, before the whole thing goes tulips.

15% 10% are trying to be "the next bitcoin", classic digital money, believing, that faster blocktimes and more efficient PoW/PoS algorithms can beat network effect.

5% Actually have unique ideas how to utilize blockchain beyond value transfer, which makes them more of a kind of tokens than altcoins as in "alternative money".

EDIT: I forgot:

5% try to look like they have unique ideas but either have no idea on how to achieve their goals, or don't plan on developing anything, because they are scams.

This is the same as how I look at it. Want to create something that might end up like bitcoin or somehow even half would do. But still it is created and most of it just vanish. It takes just a week and they wont last. I dont know if it is lack support or just the developer had given up. One more thing that I am seeing is that the altcoin are making bitcoin look bigger.

[JC btc]

I think that alt coin was made from its name itself alternative coin meaning if we can't afford even 1 bitcoin at least there is an alternative coin which we can use as an alternative to buy aside from bitcoin. It is much cheaper than bitcoin that is why we also need it so bitcoin will continue to rise like a king.

[aarturka]

The only purpose of alts is to shake down hamsters, pick up their bitcoins and inflate them with useless alts 

[First.Bitcoins]

A purpose that most of the people on these forums fail to see is an altcoin focusing on meeting a specific niche market, like Gulden for the Netherlands, Doge for a friendly intro to crypto and ArtByte supporting artists & musicians.

All three of these coins have very active communities, which brings real user growth and they do not have to compete with Bitcoin.





DISCLAIMER: I am the founder of ArtByte, so of course I am biased. If anyone is interested in why a community based coin works, here is a presentation I made about a year ago: http://slideshare.net/MikeCabaniss/artbytepresentation-51478350

Announce Thread: ArtByte Announce Thread
Website: ArtByte.me
Music Download Site: music.artbyte.me
Pool Server:pool.artbyte.me

[Spoetnik]

The only purpose of alts is to shake down hamsters, pick up their bitcoins and inflate them with useless alts  

It is about fleecing lunch money from children and naive idiots in a corrupt lawless immoral greedy joke of a crypto scene.

Any questions ?

Won't you be a life time bag holder (doomed to dump for a loss one day) Today ?

Don't worry your bags will magically become super duper valuable if you come to Bitcointalk and post shill comments and cry FUD and Troll all the time !

Crying FUD for bucks $$$ is big business !

[Danimore]

I see 4 main reasons:

1) Some altcoins like Dash have built in privacy features

2) Transaction costs for Bitcoin keep going up, this is already becoming a problem with my dealings in 3rd world countries. Altcoins can have a much higher rate of transactions without fee pressure.

3) Some altcoins like Ethereum are turing complete which means you can actually run some types of programs on their blockchain. I would stay away unless you have some specific use case though.

4) Testing new ideas like Myriad's 5 different POWs.

Yes, You are right. you have hit my thoughts. it's the same as gold , silver and bronze. we have many choices to use them.

[jpoker272727]

Hey there,
can somone explain me the purpose of altcoins, please ?
From my point of view i cant understand why you should support something other than bitcoin.
According to https://www.coingecko.com bitcoin has a MktCap of ฿16,118,987. the 2.best one is ether with ฿1,031,757 (i could understand mining that, it has some value)
But already the third one LiteCoin has ฿208,064 which is only 1,2% of bitcoin.

So why would someone invest in altcoins ? Are there some big issues with bitcoin (or big advantages of any altcoin ?) or just a lot of people wanna invent their own crypotcurrencies ?

Saying the truth bitcoin does not have all necessary things and it not complete at all so many people have 'invented' new coins for new things.

For example ICONOMI does offer new things in the cryptoworld and it's good to test new ideas, improve the privacy of the users using this coin.

Transaction fees mostly are much cheaper that bitcoin but this is a small reason to move from bitcoin, but also for trading this is great.

[Herbert2020]

Saying the truth bitcoin does not have all necessary things and it not complete at all so many people have 'invented' new coins for new things.

this may have been true once. specially in the early days that bitcoin came out but these days with these new coins i have indeed lost my faith in altcoins to "invent" anything new and good. sometimes a new project comes out that seems to be good but after a while of checking i see it is the same pump and dump as always.

Transaction fees mostly are much cheaper that bitcoin but this is a small reason to move from bitcoin, but also for trading this is great.

the fees are lower mostly because the block rewards are high and difficulty is not high enough to make mining that hard. also it is low because the price of altcoins are low.
also they are lower because if they were high nobody would have send anything.

[jpoker272727]

Saying the truth bitcoin does not have all necessary things and it not complete at all so many people have 'invented' new coins for new things.

this may have been true once. specially in the early days that bitcoin came out but these days with these new coins i have indeed lost my faith in altcoins to "invent" anything new and good. sometimes a new project comes out that seems to be good but after a while of checking i see it is the same pump and dump as always.

Transaction fees mostly are much cheaper that bitcoin but this is a small reason to move from bitcoin, but also for trading this is great.

the fees are lower mostly because the block rewards are high and difficulty is not high enough to make mining that hard. also it is low because the price of altcoins are low.
also they are lower because if they were high nobody would have send anything.

It's not just you, most of us have lose our faith to them because they invent some unnecessary things (at least for the current/next year(s))

But saying the truth some of them have good innovating and have a better privacy (sometimes worse sometimes better) for their community.

The block reward don't know if it is higher but mostly it is less and some do not offer block reward (for example ICN?)

[Redrose]

Altcoins have diverse purposes according to their nature. For me there is four categories : the totally new ones, the shitcoins, the dedicated ones and the one developper ones. The first ones' purpose is explicit. The shitcoins have no purpose. The dedicated ones exist to sustain a need, like most of the gaming-oriented ones. The one developper ones are the altcoins where there is a single talentuous developper. The purpose of these ones is to let this guy use its talent. Innovations generally come from the last group.