Why do alt currencies have value?

[TheJuice]

With the rise of LTC and more recently FTC, why do these alt coins have value? I can only think of 2 possible reasons:

1) There is something fundamentally better about an alt coin and it will eventually overtake BTC. Thus the coin has value because people are speculating that a specific coin will overtake BTC.

2) Multiple coins can coexists and may even be used for different niches within the market. For instance, LTC may be used for in person (online) transactions due to it's speed.


Thoughts?

[xan_The_Dragon]

well several factors
they are not bitcoin, people wand to diversify
for scrypt coins it is a safe haven for gpu/cpu miners
in the case of namecoin its preventing web sites from being taken down
Because they might be worth more in the future
in a lot there are already services

[erk]

With the rise of LTC and more recently FTC, why do these alt coins have value? I can only think of 2 possible reasons:

1) There is something fundamentally better about an alt coin and it will eventually overtake BTC. Thus the coin has value because people are speculating that a specific coin will overtake BTC.

2) Multiple coins can coexists and may even be used for different niches within the market. For instance, LTC may be used for in person (online) transactions due to it's speed.


Thoughts?

The coins represent work done, even if  it only the work of thousands of people that are involved in getting you your electricity to run the coin mining machine, it's still work done by people somewhere in the process of creating the alt coin.

[Brunic]

With the rise of LTC and more recently FTC, why do these alt coins have value? I can only think of 2 possible reasons:

1) There is something fundamentally better about an alt coin and it will eventually overtake BTC. Thus the coin has value because people are speculating that a specific coin will overtake BTC.

2) Multiple coins can coexists and may even be used for different niches within the market. For instance, LTC may be used for in person (online) transactions due to it's speed.


Thoughts?

Because free market. People gives value to things and they trade those things.

[digicoin]

People who mine altcoin is called speculators. They mine altcoins just because they think

+ Mass market will accept BTC and then other altcoins even if they are copycats or counterfeit money
+ Merchant will be able to manage BTC and altcoins easily because they love complexity when dealing with multiple currencies, multiple exchange rates with their fluctuation
+ Exchange altcoins into fiat money will be as easy and fast as exchanging BTC into USD
+ Getting rich is easy and should be fast

Nothing is wrong with it. They can do anything they like (if it is legal).

[Vycid]

With the rise of LTC and more recently FTC, why do these alt coins have value? I can only think of 2 possible reasons:

1) There is something fundamentally better about an alt coin and it will eventually overtake BTC. Thus the coin has value because people are speculating that a specific coin will overtake BTC.

2) Multiple coins can coexists and may even be used for different niches within the market. For instance, LTC may be used for in person (online) transactions due to it's speed.


Thoughts?

It's pretty simple, really: anything that is scarce has a non-zero value.

The value beyond that - the explanation for why different altcoins have different values - is entirely speculative. Everyone wishes they got in on Bitcoin early, so they try to catch the next wave by dropping a bunch of money on coins that have zero purchasing power. And of course the developers starting the most recent altcoins - especially pseudopremined garbage like mincoin - are hoping to get rich by building up a pile of coins before all the speculative money flows in and makes them worth something substantial.

It's fun to watch it go. And a long as altcoins provide the opportunity for more mining profit than Bitcoin, I'm quite pleased with the situation.

[kjlimo]

Because people keep clicking this link:

https://vircurex.com/register?referral_id=801-154

and buying coins!

[LeChatNoir]

With the rise of LTC and more recently FTC, why do these alt coins have value? I can only think of 2 possible reasons:

1) There is something fundamentally better about an alt coin and it will eventually overtake BTC. Thus the coin has value because people are speculating that a specific coin will overtake BTC.

2) Multiple coins can coexists and may even be used for different niches within the market. For instance, LTC may be used for in person (online) transactions due to it's speed.


Thoughts?

3) The world is full of fools [X]

[LeChatNoir]

With the rise of LTC and more recently FTC, why do these alt coins have value? I can only think of 2 possible reasons:

1) There is something fundamentally better about an alt coin and it will eventually overtake BTC. Thus the coin has value because people are speculating that a specific coin will overtake BTC.

2) Multiple coins can coexists and may even be used for different niches within the market. For instance, LTC may be used for in person (online) transactions due to it's speed.


Thoughts?

It's pretty simple, really: anything that is scarce has a non-zero value.

The value beyond that - the explanation for why different altcoins have different values - is entirely speculative. Everyone wishes they got in on Bitcoin early, so they try to catch the next wave by dropping a bunch of money on coins that have zero purchasing power. And of course the developers starting the most recent altcoins - especially pseudopremined garbage like mincoin - are hoping to get rich by building up a pile of coins before all the speculative money flows in and makes them worth something substantial.

It's fun to watch it go. And a long as altcoins provide the opportunity for more mining profit than Bitcoin, I'm quite pleased with the situation.

Mincoin is not garbage, it's the rarest and fastest coin out there! One day it will trade higher then bitcoin that's for sure.

[markm]

Many nations have their own currency, there are how many, hundreds maybe, of fiat currencies, so it actually makes sense there should be at least as many cryptocurrencies.

Once upon a time it was hoped that every nation in Freeciv would have its own currency, so that every nation currently on Earth and even many that were only once upon a time on Earth, and some that on Earth are regarded as fictional, would each have a cryptocurrency ready and waiting to adopt any time it decides that it has had enough of fiat.

Since now not only the Russians but also the Chinese have launched a coin of their own I guess it is getting to be time to go check out the planets of the Galactic Milieu and find out just how much territory the Russian and Chinese civilisations control out there. (Both were rather large at one point as I recall, although not as technologically advanced as the Martians, Brits and Canucks...)

-MarkM-

[erk]

I

Mincoin is not garbage, it's the rarest and fastest coin out there! One day it will trade higher then bitcoin that's for sure.

No it won't the design is garbage it will dies like all the scrypt based coins, unless someone invents low power ASIC's to mine them. The coins that win in the end will be low power fast transaction, with no requirement to store a local copy of the entire block chain. Scrypt was designed to be a power waste, it was intended to prevent brute force attacks, not for coins.

[LeChatNoir]

I

Mincoin is not garbage, it's the rarest and fastest coin out there! One day it will trade higher then bitcoin that's for sure.

No it won't the design is garbage it will dies like all the scrypt based coins, unless someone invents low power ASIC's to mine them. The coins that win in the end will be low power fast transaction, with no requirement to store a local copy of the entire block chain. Scrypt was designed to be a power waste, it was intended to prevent brute force attacks, not for coins.

PM me when 1 MNC =  0.1 BTC i'll sell you some at good price!

[Vycid]

Mincoin is not garbage, it's the rarest and fastest coin out there! One day it will trade higher then bitcoin that's for sure.

No it won't the design is garbage it will dies like all the scrypt based coins, unless someone invents low power ASIC's to mine them. The coins that win in the end will be low power fast transaction, with no requirement to store a local copy of the entire block chain. Scrypt was designed to be a power waste, it was intended to prevent brute force attacks, not for coins.

PM me when 1 MNC =  0.1 BTC i'll sell you some at good price!

I bet you got some of that pseudopremine, huh? 

[Luckybit]

With the rise of LTC and more recently FTC, why do these alt coins have value? I can only think of 2 possible reasons:

1) There is something fundamentally better about an alt coin and it will eventually overtake BTC. Thus the coin has value because people are speculating that a specific coin will overtake BTC.

2) Multiple coins can coexists and may even be used for different niches within the market. For instance, LTC may be used for in person (online) transactions due to it's speed.


Thoughts?

Their purpose is to water down and inflate BTC. Any alt-coin which is produced over 21 million (as in less scarce than BTC) serves only to water down BTC. Litecoin is basically a watered down BTC and is worth less compared to BTC because too many total Litecoins will be created.

Litecoins could have been a success if only 11 million were created.

[Luckybit]

Mincoin is not garbage, it's the rarest and fastest coin out there! One day it will trade higher then bitcoin that's for sure.

No it won't the design is garbage it will dies like all the scrypt based coins, unless someone invents low power ASIC's to mine them. The coins that win in the end will be low power fast transaction, with no requirement to store a local copy of the entire block chain. Scrypt was designed to be a power waste, it was intended to prevent brute force attacks, not for coins.

PM me when 1 MNC =  0.1 BTC i'll sell you some at good price!

I bet you got some of that pseudopremine, huh? 

They are right it will trade higher than Bitcoin and it may turn out to be better than Bitcoin but because it was designed in such a way it's not something I would prefer over Bitcoin. PPC on the other hand has a good chance to take Bitcoin if Proof of Stake is proven to work.

Right now Proof of Stake has security issues but if they solve those it will be the next best thing to BTC. The total worth of a coin is based on the total number of coins produced and the ease of producing them. Litecoin is only worth at best 20% of Bitcoin so why is it useful if it's only 25% of a Bitcoin?

Until a coin actually is worth 150% of a Bitcoin it's not a future oriented altcoin. Mincoin is actually the first coin to be worth more than a Bitcoin but the problem with Mincoin is it was practically premined out of the gate and doesn't seem to offer any actual value beyond a pump and dump profit motive.

[Vycid]

Mincoin is not garbage, it's the rarest and fastest coin out there! One day it will trade higher then bitcoin that's for sure.

No it won't the design is garbage it will dies like all the scrypt based coins, unless someone invents low power ASIC's to mine them. The coins that win in the end will be low power fast transaction, with no requirement to store a local copy of the entire block chain. Scrypt was designed to be a power waste, it was intended to prevent brute force attacks, not for coins.

PM me when 1 MNC =  0.1 BTC i'll sell you some at good price!

I bet you got some of that pseudopremine, huh? 

They are right it will trade higher than Bitcoin and it may turn out to be better than Bitcoin but because it was designed in such a way it's not something I would prefer over Bitcoin. PPC on the other hand has a good chance to take Bitcoin if Proof of Stake is proven to work.

Right now Proof of Stake has security issues but if they solve those it will be the next best thing to BTC. The total worth of a coin is based on the total number of coins produced and the ease of producing them. Litecoin is only worth at best 20% of Bitcoin so why is it useful if it's only 25% of a Bitcoin?

Until a coin actually is worth 150% of a Bitcoin it's not a future oriented altcoin. Mincoin is actually the first coin to be worth more than a Bitcoin but the problem with Mincoin is it was practically premined out of the gate and doesn't seem to offer any actual value beyond a pump and dump profit motive.

This is ridiculous. Why does a successful altcoin have to ever be worth more than Bitcoin? If it's much less scarce than Bitcoin (like Litecoin or Feathercoin, for example), each individual coin will have less value even if the sum total of all coins is worth more. That's fine. We know that there will be 4x as many Litecoins, and 16x as many Feathercoins. So, really, if we want to compare their value to Bitcoin, we want 1 BTC to equal 4 LTC or 1 BTC to equal 16 FTC.

Or, if you want to be even more technical, we can compare market caps directly - the total value of all outstanding coins.

To give you an idea:

The total number of outstanding BTC is 11103125.
The market cap of LTC is 560474 BTC.
The market cap of PPC is 52086 BTC.
The market cap of FTC is 15668 BTC (Estimate, calculated myself).
The market cap of MNC 1170 BTC (Estimate, calculated myself, may be off by 10 or 20% because nobody trades them and the order book has a huge gap between asks and sells).

So you can confidently say, regardless of how many coins it takes to add up to a Bitcoin, that BTC > LTC > PPC > FTC > MNC.

[defaced]

Why does bitcoin have value?

Because people give it value.

If there is a demand for somthing, and the supply is limited, it should have worth.

[anderl]

I had a similar discussion with someone at work a few weeks ago. nothing in the universe has value without a being declaring it has value.  A bar of gold to the last person on earth is worthless, but a companion is priceless.

[TheJuice]

Why does bitcoin have value?

Because people give it value.

If there is a demand for somthing, and the supply is limited, it should have worth.

But why does FTC have demand then? It now has over 1 millions $$ in 'demand.'

[powdabam]

Because the first idea isn't always the best, IE; Yahoo, Myspace, bitcoin etc.