[2017-03-12]Using an Altcoin to Save a Few Cents May Not Be Worth It

[hellowarda]

As the Bitcoin network experiences transaction congestion and higher fees many people have considered alternatives to avoid these issues. During transaction traffic peaks, a few cryptocurrency supporters have recommended using altcoins to save money from bitcoin miner fees and speed up settlement times. However, using an altcoin to save a few cents on a transaction may be more of a hassle than you think.
read more:https://news.bitcoin.com/using-an-altcoin-to-save-a-few-cents-may-not-be-worth-it/

[ImHash]

Whether you are going to exchange bitcoin into other coins or not? that alone requires doing transaction in bitcoin, so if you are going to do that why would you exchange them at all? just do the transaction.
When people talk about using alternatives they talk about full migration, starting to mine alts, store them, trade and exchange them entirely without using bitcoin's blockchain at all.
Of course using alts to save even a few bucks is not worth it.

[1Referee]

People are of course free to do whatever they think is right, but it's pointless to force yourself to use altcoins instead of Bitcoin just because you want to transact in form of crypto. In some cases there is no other option, but in general, you're better off just using good old fiat to buy whatever you want. I have been doing this basically since the very early days of me entering the Bitcoin world. The only way I prefer Bitcoin instead of fiat is when I transfer money from one place to another. In that case the fee is not of any concern to me as the benefit of the transfer of value greatly outweighs every other "negative" aspect(s).

[Valiance]

Sometimes people try too hard with alts when they're not really going to go anywhere.  It's strange how often people who didn't really care enough about Bitcoin anyway and weren't going to commit to it anyway somehow get pulled in by the marketing of another altcoin that doesn't really matter and won't just take over.  I think this is a mistake that a lot of new users make.

[dumpida]

Sometimes people try too hard with alts when they're not really going to go anywhere.  It's strange how often people who didn't really care enough about Bitcoin anyway and weren't going to commit to it anyway somehow get pulled in by the marketing of another altcoin that doesn't really matter and won't just take over.  I think this is a mistake that a lot of new users make.

For the time being, the altcoin is not worth it. But in the long term, if there is still big congestion in the bitcoin network, people will use altcoins such as Ethereum.

[TraderTimm]

Simply put, its arbitrage risk.

You are risking the liquidity of the market you are trying to trade into, the slippage of your order fills, any fees involved with the exchange you are using. Also you are potentially generating another taxable event by exchanging one coin for another, but that can be debated.

Going outside the Bitcoin ecosystem has costs, there is no free lunch. I find it silly to have posts announcing they "saved on fees" when really all they did was burn more time and effort just to avoid paying a dollar - when its all said and done.

I value my time too much to throw it away on juggling alt-coins to save nearly nothing.

[richardsNY]

For most people it's not worth the hassle, but there are enough penny pinchers that will go through all of this to save themselves a few k worth of satoshi's. Just look through this forum and see how many people actually click on links or register somewhere just to receive dusty satoshi's as reward. It's embarrassing, but it's also the hard reality. But then again, people are free to do whatever they feel food with. Let them waste their time.

[equator]

As the Bitcoin network experiences transaction congestion and higher fees many people have considered alternatives to avoid these issues. During transaction traffic peaks, a few cryptocurrency supporters have recommended using altcoins to save money from bitcoin miner fees and speed up settlement times. However, using an altcoin to save a few cents on a transaction may be more of a hassle than you think.
read more:https://news.bitcoin.com/using-an-altcoin-to-save-a-few-cents-may-not-be-worth-it/

Ya it is true that due to bitcoin network congestion some of them are trying to promote the altcoin to be traded but still their are no direct buyer and seller of this altcoin in other format apart from Bitcoin conversion so until the altcoin are not directly buy and sell in fiat currency only bitcoin can be used. First the altcoin should start trading in fiat currency and users should start accepting it then only this way of transaction will be usefull

[Harry Callahan]

I am using alt coins every now and then when i get frustrated with the transaction delays in bitcoin and i do accept the risk involved if the price involved is really high and with the price of alt coins at an all time high it is really risky for that matter and alt coins are more volatile than bitcoin.But i do use when situation demands.

[Papa Bear]

Using an Altcoin to Save a Few Cents May Not Be Worth ItBitcoin’s network effect runs deep and it has the largest infrastructure compared to every other altcoin. Merchant acceptance for altcoins is very low compared to the 100,000 plus merchants worldwide who accept bitcoin. So using an altcoin to save money is not so convenient as there are very few places that accept other digital currencies. Bitpay’s merchant services has no altcoin support alongside a great majority of global payment processors and debit cards that only utilize bitcoin.

[junlyaa]

The scaling issue is just drama, that takes forever. Everyday I saw news scaling issue, Segwit or Lightning Network and the miners hold their position and increase the fee.I believe in Bitcoin, but I hate to wait forever for a decision to make the network more stable and fix the scaling issue with more than 300000 transactions each day.

[veleten]

so to save up 50 cents on a transaction they suggest I convert bitcoins to a risky altcoin
volatile to the max or unpredictable like ETH or DASH?
and to discover that they had to write an article I could have told them that beforehand
besides,to convert bitcoins to any altcoin you would still have to pay transaction fees every time

[swogerino]

This is what I have been just thinking actually.
With having to have it transferred out of the exchange to your wallet then to convert it if you are to want it in btc then what are you left with in the end?
Also with the transaction fees toppling $1 to transfer out of your wallets which is 0.005btc to confirm properly, it is not worth it to collect those alt coin if all your going to do is change them to btc at the end of it all.