If you invest in bitcoin, do you invest in alternative cryptocurrencies as well?

[gabriella]

you know, litecoin et al.

what is your rationale for yes/no investing in alt coins?

[1714841191]

1714841191

[Bitbuy]

I haven't had real incentive to look at altcoins...maybe I should start looking at Litecoin. Based on my limited knowledge, that would be the only one I could be bothered to look at.

[notme]

I haven't had real incentive to look at altcoins...maybe I should start looking at Litecoin. Based on my limited knowledge, that would be the only one I could be bothered to look at.

LTC, FTC, NMC, TRC, and XPM are interesting.  I wouldn't worry too much about the others.

[Inedible]

It's possible your understanding of virtual currencies is wrong.

You're using them as an investment vehicle (and whilst they're still appreciating in value, there's some merit to that understanding) but ultimate it's just a currency.

If I said "Should I invest in alternative currencies like the Yen and the Euro too?", you can see it doesn't make as much sense.

[mvdheuvel1983]

I haven't had real incentive to look at altcoins...maybe I should start looking at Litecoin. Based on my limited knowledge, that would be the only one I could be bothered to look at.

LTC, FTC, NMC, TRC, and XPM are interesting.  I wouldn't worry too much about the others.

Forget TRC. BTC-E is delisting it.

[notme]

I haven't had real incentive to look at altcoins...maybe I should start looking at Litecoin. Based on my limited knowledge, that would be the only one I could be bothered to look at.

LTC, FTC, NMC, TRC, and XPM are interesting.  I wouldn't worry too much about the others.

Forget TRC. BTC-E is delisting it.

Right, because an appeal to authority is the best way to convince someone to abandon a cryptocurrency .

[Elwar]

I grabbed a bunch of LiteCoin back in the day but am not very confident in its adoption.

The alt coins lose value for every new alt coin created. Bitcoin has dominated and established itself so well that it has become Bitcoin and "everything else". Eventually someone will create a program to allow anyone to just come up with their own alt coin and you will start to see dozens created daily and there will be no reason to invest in them.

[ironstove]

I disagree with your train of thought. LTC, NMC, and PPC all sustain very original ideas that separate them from each other along with a solid dev team. NMC is probably the most original and might end up being one of the most successful. It's understandably skeptical to believe that .bit domains will become dominant in the near future over alternative domains, but nobody can really predict the future of technology. If the tech and access to such domains were to improve, perhaps a consumer base would be interested in having access to internet and marketplaces outside of the regulation of governments.

I do trade regularly between many of the alt coins on BTC-e mainly because I study all of the charts out of boredom anyway and if I see a strong indicator on a certain crypto, I see no reason not to throw some funds in to test out my theories.

[kwest]

As long as BTC is going up I would recommend against it. I lost 20% of my BTC because of altcoin investments. An expensive lesson, but it could've been worse. But it stung enough for me to avoid it in the future. The truth is; people don't trust altcoins. They may say that they do, but as soon as BTC starts climbing they all panic sell.

I would put no more than 5% of my BTC into alts.. right now I only have 1% in alts, and I'm OK with that.

[windjc]

Litecoin is back to tracking BTC for the moment. But I question how high Litecoin can go just on the coattails of BTC. But maybe it can continue to be a $50-75/1 ratio. I should have bought a few weeks ago when I watched it slip under $2. But I was not oppurtunistic enough at that time.

I guess I should at least dip my toe in at these Litecoin prices.

[domob]

I disagree with your train of thought. LTC, NMC, and PPC all sustain very original ideas that separate them from each other along with a solid dev team. NMC is probably the most original and might end up being one of the most successful. It's understandably skeptical to believe that .bit domains will become dominant in the near future over alternative domains, but nobody can really predict the future of technology. If the tech and access to such domains were to improve, perhaps a consumer base would be interested in having access to internet and marketplaces outside of the regulation of governments.

Exactly my opinion, too.  You named the alt's I also see most potential in (and own some, although surely less than 10% of my BTC holdings even if they are combined).  NMC is surely the most interesting and has a lot of potential (not just for .bit domains but also lots of other uses that are currently under development).

[El Dude]

Litecoin is going mainstream ,Not buying LTC right now is a bad move http://rt.com/shows/keiser-report/episode-526-max-keiser-025/

[stash]

I got 4 different cryptocurrency on my portfolio, ofcoz  the higher percentage lead by bitcoin. We dont know what would happen in near future. If bitcoin, fall another alts would take a crown very very fast.

Be smart.

[wormbog]

Altcoins tend to fall against bitcoin as bitcoin fiat value rises. You can use them as a hedge against bitcoin without having to cash out to fiat and deal with taxes.

[honky1492]

No I dont, I actually need to see some growing merchant support before I buy some alternative cryptocurrencies. For me, alternative cryptocurrencies are just pure speculation now.

Bitcoin has some practical use and Bitcoin ATMs could move Bitcoin to new level

[Zangelbert Bingledack]

Altcoins are an essential part of the Bitcoin infrastructure. They are a testing ground for new innovations that could later be incorporated into Bitcoin, a backup in case the worst should happen to Bitcoin, a hedging vehicle (not great because they're often correlated with the BTC price, but they make up for that with the frictionlessness), a tool for very fast arbitrage on the BTC price between exchanges (as soon as a major exchange besides BTC-e adopts them), and another way to tumble coins.

Expect the altcoins that are the most useful for one or more of these functions to grow with Bitcoin, and as better altcoins for a given function emerge expect them to surge in value even faster.

Right now Litecoin is the leader in all those functions except for new innovations and tumbling. Namecoin and Peercoin are arguably more innovative, as well as Primecoin. A more untraceable altcoin could prove to be superior for tumbling in and out of (though CoinJoin may render it obsolete).

In conclusion, I can see reason to invest in Litecoin (most established, dev is brother of BTC China CEO), Namecoin (distributed DNS idea is potentially awesome), Peercoin (different mining system could possibly prove useful), and Primecoin (advances mathematics, which is at least interesting and should generate some interest from academia at least). The rest don't seem to offer any kind of promising innovation or aid in the above functions any more than Litecoin already does, but I don't know much about the more minor altcoins.

[paratox]

I am surprised eMunie wasn't mentioned already. It seems to integrate a lot of ideas that other promising  altcoins are based on, into a single digital currency.

[BitcoinAshley]

Alt CCs - good to throw in at least a little. Litecoin took off, I bought it when it was a few cents (I remember thinking, hmm, this is the most popular altcoin, and I can buy a few thousand with chump change) and now it's what $8? Good decision.

Most of them aren't going anywhere but it's not a bad idea to throw some chump change into LTC, NMC, the more popular/unique ones.

It also dilutes the effect that chain fork threats have - i.e. "what if there was a huge flaw and Bitcoin stopped working tomorrow." Sure, the alts are based on bitcoind, but a fatal flaw isn't necessarily going to affect all the alts so sometimes it's not bad to have a ready-and-willing blockchain that folks could move to if there really was a problem. Would it actually work out this way? Who knows. Maybe if this happens, bitcoin and all altcoins would tank. But you never know until you try, and let's not try.

Otherwise it's just speculation. So have fun!

[ajw7989]

its good to look at the more well adopted altcoins since you can take a huge hit with the unpopular ones. NMC and litecoin have really taken off and a huge profit was made by people who bought them. I would say litecoin and bitcoin are the 2 safe coins to invest in currently

[Paladin69]

It's amazing how many are nuts for PPC.  It has virtually no supply cap.