Ahem, and these altcoins, are essentially 'forks', mainly scamcoins - really, as time goes on, they will be lost in the sea of altcoins. Why?
Simple: with each derivative fork the new altcoin makes itself much weaker in ALL of these ways:
-less hashing power than the real Bitcoin network. Thus new scamcoin will be less secure.
-less open, global development of protocol codebase than real Bitcoin. Thus new scamcoin slow to innovate and be more vulnerable.
-less (true) independent full nodes on the network than real Bitcoin. New scamcoin more susceptible to attacks on protocol and hijacking.
-more concentration of coins to fewer individuals than the real Bitcoin network. Thus new scamcoin becomes more unfair with time.
-more geographic concentration of mining than the real Bitcoin network. Thus the new scamcoin will have more points of failure.
-more hardforks demonstrate all these points moreso with each iteration to global public. Thus new scamcoins lose value vs Bitcoin every year.
-is just another altcoin
Bitcoin is ultimate store of value and its popularity has strengthened over time and maximizes value compared to any other altcoin...why?:
If it can be shutdown, and have assets frozen by a bank or government, there would be no value
If it wasn't secure, there would be no value.
If it wasn't immutable, there would be no value.
If it wasn't globally distributed, there would be no value.
If it wasn't so strong, open-source decentralized and unstoppable, there would be no value.
If it wasn't so scarce, there would be no value.
If it was easy to spam transactions, there would be no value
If it was stopped after all major banks on Earth banned in 2013 to today, there would be no value. (say "bitcoin" when transacting and watch the block of the transaction. simple fix=never mention "bitcoin").
If it didn't have the history of 8+ years (and still no hacker can exploit bitcoin blockchain), there would be no value
If its development wasn't decentralized around the world, there would be no value
If there was central "leaders" or foundation for the coin, there would be no value
If it was exactly like fiat and only did transactions, there would be no value.
Bitcoin has all the characteristics needed combined to make the most value and increasing more than any other financial-asset option coming from the manipulated fiat central-banking debt-system.
To anyone curious, this is how bitcoin has faired even with the many hundred of altcoin forks from its open source standard it set;
Chart of performance of assets from Xmas 2014 to Dec 1. 2017 (in USD terms):
Bitcoin/USD
S&P 500 Stocks
Real Estate (REITs)
Gold
Bonds
![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=http%3A%2F%2Fi63.tinypic.com%2Fnvphuf.png&t=665&c=_cIvvwUvoIoPDw)
Here are weekly peer-to-peer localbitcoins cash trade data for two random countries as time goes on. Right-most area is the most recent past week.
![](https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fs9.postimg.org%2Fg5b8qe99r%2Fdeletepeterscreenshot.png&t=665&c=f2vtmMPXLOMt_Q)
Hi centralbanksequalsbombs , Thanks a lot for your detailed explanation. It is very useful.