I can tell you 1 important thing about Altcoins, or cryptocurrencies in general. The amount of money invested in 99% of the coins has nothing to do with the market cap, or the value of the coin. And the only way to "make" money in cryptocoins is to sell to someone after the fact. This is the way a pump and dump works. Not everyone makes money, since in order for someone to make money, someone else has to lose money. A lot of coins can be pumped with very little money. Yes it will take ALOT of money to pump a coin like BTC or LTC but for the most part if everyone on the forum pumped $1000 into a coin. Heck even $100 into a coin it would drive up the price massively. Which causes a frenzy from people wanting to jump in on the wave. You can't just stop and coast on a high priced coin, and everyone can then sell at the new price and everyone makes money. What you need to do then to make money is signal everyone to sell their shares at the time all the investors are trying to jump in on the action, and sell your shares before they know what's going on. Then in the mass selloff, the price of the coin will probably drop lower than the original price, and everyone jumping in on the wave will have lost a lot of money.
Highly illegal in the real world, but perfectly normal in the cryptocurrency world.
Haha, well said! Paintings work the same way too, people 'pump' the price up in auctions even though it is not that worth but there will be investors who are willing to pay that high price.
If we all invested into a specific altcoin, it may make other altcoins obsolete, maybe even Bitcoin, and that altcoin may even be our 'main digital currency' that replace Bitcoin. It may happen, but in the real world not all will switch to that altcoin. *Hypothetical Situation*