Should we support altcoins ?

[Walter Rothbard]

From a "lets make the world a better place perspective" should we support only bitcoin right now or altcoins also?

Who is 'we'?

If you want to miss out on opportunities that currently undervalued alt coins present, sure, don't buy them, buy them later when they are more expensive That doesn't say all alt coins are ok to buy. Do your own research and due diligence.

To clarify, we is basically everyone in the crypto community currently.

Thinking about it from such a monolithic "we" perspective is kind of the exact opposite of what altcoins are all about.

[Elwar]

Bitcoin is a currency solely because people are willing to put their faith in it as such.

Without Bitcoin's brand and trust it would not be as useful.

By supporting alt coins you dillute the Bitcoin brand as the ultimate currency. It confuses people who have never heard of crypto currencies and takes away from Bitcoin.

That being said, if everyone were using bitcoins I would support competition with other alternative currencies as at that point you are swapping good money for possibly better money. Currently we are trying to swap bad money for good money.

Bitcoin will create the infrastructure for alt currencies to survive. Focussing on that is more important than trying to bring another currency in to do that.

[Lauda]

Bitcoin is a currency solely because people are willing to put their faith in it as such.

Without Bitcoin's brand and trust it would not be as useful.

By supporting alt coins you dillute the Bitcoin brand as the ultimate currency. It confuses people who have never heard of crypto currencies and takes away from Bitcoin.

That being said, if everyone were using bitcoins I would support competition with other alternative currencies as at that point you are swapping good money for possibly better money. Currently we are trying to swap bad money for good money.

Bitcoin will create the infrastructure for alt currencies to survive. Focussing on that is more important than trying to bring another currency in to do that.

You're right, but we should not shift our full focus on bitcoin in these (early) days either.

[BitCoinNutJob]

From a "lets make the world a better place perspective" should we support only bitcoin right now or altcoins also?

Who is 'we'?

If you want to miss out on opportunities that currently undervalued alt coins present, sure, don't buy them, buy them later when they are more expensive That doesn't say all alt coins are ok to buy. Do your own research and due diligence.

To clarify, we is basically everyone in the crypto community currently.

Thinking about it from such a monolithic "we" perspective is kind of the exact opposite of what altcoins are all about.

But bitcoin is also just a type of crypto right? its just that it was the first & its huge. 

[BitCoinNutJob]

Bitcoin is a currency solely because people are willing to put their faith in it as such.

Without Bitcoin's brand and trust it would not be as useful.

By supporting alt coins you dillute the Bitcoin brand as the ultimate currency. It confuses people who have never heard of crypto currencies and takes away from Bitcoin.

That being said, if everyone were using bitcoins I would support competition with other alternative currencies as at that point you are swapping good money for possibly better money. Currently we are trying to swap bad money for good money.

Bitcoin will create the infrastructure for alt currencies to survive. Focussing on that is more important than trying to bring another currency in to do that.

Good post, i guess im finding it difficult to judge if we could be in danger of BTC as the run away leader & get stuck with a 1 currency.  Kinda like we stuck with ebay or google & the companies have tendency to shit all over users.

Last i heard LTC was a different mining process entirely so until mining gear is invented to interchange between BTC/LTC i personally dont consider it a clone or the same as BTC.  Bitstamp said a few months ago they saw LTC with no advantages - objectively, im calling BS on that from a mining perspective alone. 

[MicroGuy]

From a "lets make the world a better place perspective" should we support only bitcoin right now or altcoins also?

Well it depends on your objectives and motivation.

Bitcoin's developer abandoned the project and disappeared into thin air. Still there are many innovative young software engineers that have picked-up where Satoshi left off and are improving his original code by adding features such as a 51% attack defense.

I don't know about making the world a better place, but these guys are giving the World a better bitcoin.

[defaced]

I think there is most certainly room for more then just Bitcoin.

[tonto]

From a "lets make the world a better place perspective" should we support only bitcoin right now or altcoins also?

Namecoin is the only alt coin worth supporting.  The others were created because their creators missed the money train with bitcoins and are hoping to create an artificial market and get rich.

[R160K]

Support them if they propose something useful. Namecoin, a scrypt coin, a coin based on the prime algorithm, these are interesting. But a bitcoin clone whose difference is only a different name? lol

Agreed. The ones with meaningful technical distinctions contribute to making the crypto ecosystem better. Bitcoin shouldn't incorporate innovations without lots of testing and debate, so alts serve a very valuable experimentation function, even in the bitcoin-centric viewpoint.

I just wish alts that are effectively clones of bitcoin (ie, with just the mining alg, issuance curve, or block times changed) would die faster. To the crypto-ignorant masses, having hundreds of alts makes the whole crypto space seem silly.

Me too - not only do the bit-clones need to die, but every time a genuinely novel crypto comes along people get upset they didn't get on THAT bandwagon either so that gets cloned, and those clones need to die too. Bitcoin doesn't lose much to clones - it has a large enough community of developers, supporters, users etc. that it gets on fine. But beyond the initial buzz of a good idea alt-coins suffer because users and developers are spread across hundreds of similar, mostly pointless projects. If people could get behind a few decent altcoins such that they are developed constantly and well then it would serve not only as a good real-life testnet for new Bitcoin features (as well as an impetus for a community and a Foundation now reluctant to innovate), but might also create currencies that are vastly superior to Bitcoin, at least for certain purposes. There are many coins out there, based on truly revolutionary ideas, that are still maintained and developed by a single person, egged on by a couple of investors and casual enthusiasts on Bitcointalk. There are other coins, like FeatherCoin, which have established comparatively impressive communities, and yet appear to do absolutely nothing innovative whatsoever.

Only bitcoin.

Spreading mining power out will weaking bitcoin.

As the mining difficulty of Bitcoin grows, many miners will have to drop out anyway. Essentially, all alt-coins do is give miners a "second wind" to make a little more profit before winding down their operations, rather than providing a serious blow to Bitcoin's mining capacity.

Namecoin is the only alt coin worth supporting.  The others were created because their creators missed the money train with bitcoins and are hoping to create an artificial market and get rich.

This is certainly the case with a lot of them. Even with many of the ones that are based on genuinely good ideas, the creators often delude themselves that in virtue of that their chance has come to get rich quick. As a purely speculative investment, there really is no point investing in any other cryptocurrency (for the foreseeable future at least) - there is not going to be anything like the kind of booms Bitcoin has experienced (and may yet). But there is still some modest money to be made in some alt-coins (especially from mining), and having modest, real alt-coin economies provides a much better platform for experimenting and testing new features.

Bitcoin will create the infrastructure for alt currencies to survive. Focussing on that is more important than trying to bring another currency in to do that.

Agreed. Trying to tout an alt-coin to a Bitcoin-ignorant audience (especially one with no significant numbers to back up its pitch) will be infinitely more difficult than trying to get someone who already uses/accepts Bitcoin to consider trying out an alt-coin as well. So I think all these clone-coins that go around advertising themselves as "a new anonymous, decentralised currency etc." without even acknowledging Bitcoin are not only being pretentious, but shooting themselves in the foot. The alt-coins that will get adopted will be the ones that campaign on the basis of why they're an improvement over Bitcoin. Anyone who wants to see any crypto-currencies take off has a vested interest in seeing Bitcoin do well. But I disagree that it is a waste of time focussing on alt-coins atm. People often dismiss alt-coins by claiming Bitcoin's market effect is too big to suffer an alt-coin any real oxygen. But by the same token, Bitcoin's market effect is large enough that it will suffer no serious ill effects if some people decide to focus on and develop alternatives. Bitcoin becoming ubiquitous is a pre-requisite for the success of any other alt-coin. But waiting for Bitcoin to become ubiquitous before seriously trying to develop an alternative would be the death of it - by that time Bitcoin will have been long stuck in its ways, scared to innovate for fear of shocking the market, and the notion of an alternative crypto will seem so strange that it will be extremely difficult to get a foot in the market, even if hands-down superior. We need viable, innovative, active and well maintained alt-coins ready for the day when Bitcoin (and cryptocurrency in general) becomes ubiquitous, and in order to keep Bitcoin innovating until that day.

[MaxBTC1]

Yes 100%

But its important to support the right coins.

For me these are Litecoin (silver to Bitcoins gold) and Peercoin.  Peercoin is a really nice alternative.

For those wondering about Peercoin (PPC):
Whereas proof of work generates bitcoins using computational power, proof of stake relies on the coins that people already have in their possession.

The network gives people more coins based on how many they already have, under a minting algorithm that acknowledges the age of a coin (giving a whole new meaning to the phrase ‘old money’).

The idea is to create a system that uses less electricity than a proof of work-based system. Other benefits also include low inflation – transaction fees are destroyed to offset inflation from proof of stake minting – and longer-term stability.

taken from: http://www.coindesk.com/peercoin-vault-of-satoshi-deal/

[SeanArce]

Competing currencies is the way to go

[jeppe]

The coins that i support are BTC LTC and PPC as they all are a little different from each other. LTC and PPc are good coins for newbies as they are not as expensive and have good potential to raise in value dramatically like BTC did .

[R160K]

Yes 100%

But its important to support the right coins.

For me these are Litecoin (silver to Bitcoins gold) and Peercoin.  Peercoin is a really nice alternative.

I agree that Peercoin is a really excellent alternative - it is based on a really good idea that cannot now be implemented into Bitcoin, and does have a decent supporter base (for that very reason) compared to some other altcoins. I'm not sure how big their development team is though, I wish more people would stop faffing about solo starting unoriginal coins and put their collective time and effort into developing radical new features for a project like this. At the very least, a successful altcoin needs a large enough pool of developers to be able to keep up with Bitcoin development - constantly evaluate and implement (where useful) all the advances being made to Bitcoin, and indeed other cryptos - whilst simultaneously trying out and implementing revolutionary innovations. Even if it does get in some brilliant new features, if it doesn't keep up with the comparatively tame but constant developments of Bitcoin then its advantage is significantly weakened. In terms of new features, I'd personally like to see a messaging layer (so that nodes/clients can communicate with each other directly over the network for more complex tasks like multi-signature contracts) and greater anonymity (e.g. ZeroCoin).

Litecoin on the other hand I don't really see the point of. It's only original feature (other than scrypt which really makes little difference to its usability) seems to be that it was the original clone-coin (discounting Namecoin, which btw is an excellent alt). They have a lot of backers, but mainly just people who hope that it will boom like Bitcoin - there doesn't seem to be much particularly radical going on with it, so personally I think it's a waste of time. Bitcoin will need to get huge before any other crypto gets a look-in, and by that time others (like PPCoin) will be big enough to take on LiteCoin. BitCoin's #1 spot is guaranteed for a long time yet, but I wouldn't be so sure about LiteCoin's #2 - especially considering that by investing in LiteCoin, one is accepting the premise that alternatives, with much lower market value and market share, can be worthwhile investments for the future - so what's to stop those same investors moving to an alternative alternative, if it starts to look significantly better. The #2 crypto will be one that offers superior function.

[Lauda]

I think there is most certainly room for more then just Bitcoin.

A few alts will probably suceed.

[grever]

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You can read more about it on link bellow:

https://www.viberate.com/participation

Whish you all to invest the right way!

[Cryptopher]

All altcoins have a place within the crypto-space, most of which belong in the proverbial trashcan.

I'd like to see LTC and ETH get further traction. It's inevitable that some of the new money is going to trickle into these promising alts that are supported by major exchanges.

[felipe04]

Yes because the more digital currency the more good in the future.Think if we have altcoins and it similar to bitcoin,We can earn more by that and to have also some exchanger to cash out our money here in crypto.We can do also not depend only in btc because we have more coins.Moreover it's good to know if we have that then say after that.

[Freddyclose]

I support the alts, there is still a very nice project, when the market will be more regulate, the scams will disappear all will be better

[chacha66]

Alts are so varied its insane, there are literally thousands. But many are great coins that do great thing or at least have the potential to if they carry on. So yes, support Alts that make sense to you. Why not?

[xBitHodler]

We should support altcoins simply because Bitcoin can't be used for everything. Does Bitcoin support smart contracts and tokens like Ethereum? Does it work as fast as Litecoin? Does it have completely anonymous addresses like Zcash? Bitcoin is far bigger than all this coins. They are all used for different purposes by different people. It is really hard to introduce an upgrade to Bitcoin because our community is big and has many different opinion on for example the block size or whether or not we should have introduced SegWit.