Why so many alt coins?

[number37]

does not make sense to me...

[Lethn]

It's called a free market

[Pokerfan]

People make new coins hoping to sell them and make easy money.

[worldinacoin]

There is a lot of experts here who do this as a service.  Therefore those who can pay get their alt coins, a lot had come out, more to be out I guess.

[homad]

THCoin  ..get it

[hotbabe]

Most of them will fail, but it's always a good bet to go on such a alt coin...

[jonnylatte]

I consider it a good thing that they are being developed and that most are failing. If one succeeds then it must offer something better than what bitcoin provides or it must offer something that bitcoin doesn't. The ones that fail prove that bitcoin is competitive. That doesn't mean that bitcoin will fail if one or more alt coins succeed since there is a huge market for these currencies to grow into. It also means there is some place for miners to go when they are out hashed by ASICs.

[thecoinmaker]

Different coins, different flavours.. yum yum yum

[sealberrder]

you never know, maybe after 1000th tries something interesting emerges. So keep trying...

[bitbitcoins]

good question

[thecoinmaker]

you never know, maybe after 1000th tries something interesting emerges. So keep trying...

I am coding some, will release here soon.

[robertsu]

when I wake up, tehre will be more new coins? heheh who will pay for all of them hmmmm?

[thegamekind]

people want to create a coin some fail some succeed

[bumpk1nK]

Most of them will fail, but it's always a good bet to go on such a alt coin...

mining when not on exchange as well as buying when on exchange is like gambling - you pump the money to black hole wishing you score one time!

[JSMill]

Greed

[Amph]

cuz we poor guys with vga can't mine bitcoin anymore

[mprep]

Because many 12 year-olds want their own coin. 

[Svennisen]

Because people want to:
1. Create new coins and hoping for them to become popular.
2. Creating new coins to scam newbies to digital currencys.
3. Other coins get popular cause miners who cannot afford a btc mining rig starts mining alt coins instead.

[mack00]

As noted in the first response, its a symptom of the free market.  Considering the amount of press, financing (lot of silicon valley action now), and increase in volume/value of Bitcoins over the last six months, it was only a matter of time until someone said "Hey I can do that too". 

Bitcoin has a big head start but there are some heavyweights with a lot of money behind them (Ripple).  Competition is good for consumers (us) though because it forces the producers to increase their product value either through efficiency or innovation. 

[Eva Braun]

People like alt coins thats the short answer.