Speculation aside, is there any reason for anyone to adopt an alt-coin?

[Stampbit]

Considering the overhead of exchanges, wallets, passwords, clients, miners, payment processors etc.. that must accompany a cryptocurrency, is there any real advantage to current alt-coins that warrants the cost of its adoption?

[Nolo]

Considering the overhead of exchanges, wallets, passwords, clients, miners, payment processors etc.. that must accompany a cryptocurrency, is there any real advantage to current alt-coins that warrants the cost of its adoption?

Why do businesses accept Mastercard if they already accept VISA?  The more payment options the customer has, the more likely they are to frequent your business. 

[Stampbit]

Considering the overhead of exchanges, wallets, passwords, clients, miners, payment processors etc.. that must accompany a cryptocurrency, is there any real advantage to current alt-coins that warrants the cost of its adoption?

Why do businesses accept Mastercard if they already accept VISA?  The more payment options the customer has, the more likely they are to frequent your business. 

So the real advantage to adopting current alt-coins is that their alt-coins. Anyone else?

[markm]

Ease of interchange. They are eaisier to flip between than trying to flip between bitcoin and various forms of fiat.

Also unlike things like EVE Online currency, Lindens, World of Warcraft gold and such you can flip without worrying that some central authority is going to decide they don't like what you did with their currency thus confiscate it or reverse a transaction etc.

You gain some privacy for example by flipping between bitcoin and litecoin, but the more alternatives you have the more paths you have for such privacy and compounding such privacy.

Plus maybe if there are enough of them you could end up with only a few famous ones being checked looking for your wealth instead of a fully exhaustive check of all possible hiding places or transit routes for value being investigated.

-MarkM-

[Yurizhai]

Potentially different people involved, communities, experience. Almost like a different team maybe? I don't watch sports and always wondered how so many people can love X team over another when there's like 20 people per team, hundreds in the country, it all seems arbitrary right? Yet people get INTENSE about that. Same with coins, you have options to have a new one and different experience. You might like the name better, the features better, and thus the experience better. Some coin called AnalCoin might come out tomorrow with a picture of a butthole and people who adopt it just think that's funny. Maybe there's a coin called ShadyCoin and people use it for shady shit only.

I don't know man.

[Vorksholk]

If an altcoin brings something new to the table, its adoption is easily-explained. For example, if a coin was released that combatted extreme gains by early adopters, the coin would server a niche, or a particular purpose.

Adoption of the "scam-coins" as some people like to call them (coins that just have a few variables changed) in my mind is simply market diversity. Just because Hershey's makes chocolate doesn't mean we don't like Nestle. Same with coins, All alternate currencies today are viable for just the simple reason that they split up a market further, which can be looked at as both good and bad. There's nothing wrong with these coins, and they are based on tried-and-true code.

[Walter Rothbard]

is there any reason for anyone to adopt an alt-coin?

Yes there is, and it's been posted on a bunch of threads.