so many new alt coins created

[picasso]

does not seem to make sense to me, why still people buy them?

[torbank]

Because they're worth *something*.

[coinedBit]

actually, everybody is hoping that they will fly as high as the real thing, aka btc - do your maths: some of the early btc adopters only had to invest 1k-10k USD (or do the corresponding mining through dedicated GPU/FPGA hardware at a time when a block was still at 50) to make excessive profits within just a few years. Which is exactly the reason why LTC is becoming popular, not to mention those early-bird adopters who never had to spend anything at all, but were merely mining at a time when virtual coins could be easily coined using consumer-grade hardware, and when electricity was no issue (because of mining hardware being "colocated" in dorms or at their workplace).

[exogan]

does not seem to make sense to me, why still people buy them?

People hope someday those altcoins will be as valuable as BTC.

[Welsh]

People think, copying a few pieces of code will earn them thousands, I EVEN saw a guy claim that he will make us millionaires in a matter of weeks, hmmm...his thread got buried and so did is idea.

[mikaelh]

It's a new gold rush over and over again.

[coinedBit]

People think, copying a few pieces of code will earn them thousands

it already HAS made them money, simply because of increasing adoption rates - btc mining is all about ASICs now, which is why all the GPU/FPGA hardware is now being utilized to do LTC mining, in other words, coming up with a crypto-currency based on BTC is not at all stupid, it's just simple - and early-adopters are going to profit anyhow.

Just do the maths: you could invest $5k US in LTCs or spend the same amount of money on dedicated mining hardware. People able to accumulate 1k-5k of LTCs at this time, are really only waiting for an LTC bubble, i.e. like the 04/2013 BTC bubble, where the value exceeded $200US. It's really just a matter of patience, i.e. time - consider it "compound interest", get in early and accumulate LTCs and exit once you have reached a nice ROI.

[SlobBastard]

At the risk of sounding like someone who is too lazy to use Google - is there a website somewhere which keeps a running list of all the alt currencies out there?  I guess I'm a little scared to go looking in some respects, as if there are like 1,000s then my fear is that it will in some way hinder any one of them becoming mainstream.  Am I being too paranoid? 

Since BTC is in the lead right now is there any way that another alt currency could overtake it?

[torbank]

Overtake, no. Continue to trade for a significant fraction of, definitely.

[mprep]

does not seem to make sense to me, why still people buy them?

People hope someday those altcoins will be as valuable as BTC.

As they say hope dies last... along with the money spent. 

[theHamburglar]

Alt coins can have certain benefits over BTC such as transaction cost or speed, but nobody anticipates altcoins to overtake bitcoins anytime soon

[hany103]

they just pump then dump then create a new cryptocoin to repeate the process.

[hingall]

yes, there is enough to create other......