I like alt coins and have owned a fair few over the last year.
Most of my current value is in Litecoin, but only because it actually has a real cash value away from bitcoin. I also like Peercoin and recently got very interested in Nxtcoin.
However, the trick is to realise that alt coins are the future. Bitcoin is currently doing the work of introducing crypto currency to the masses, but it isn't going to be the coin used by the mainstream. That is going to be an alt coin.
History teaches us that change comes through little differences. Technology is no different, and the past 20 years has seen so many examples of this. The internet started for the public with glorified text files. By today we can video chat with individuals while we watch live TV and shopping with international traders all on the same screen!
What bitcoin fanboys need to remember is that none of the above example can not be done with the glorified text file internet of 1992.
Bitcoin gives us structure
Nxtcoin gives us proof of stake and true decentralised trading
Just remember it took years of awful search engines before Google turned up and gave us everything we wanted. Nobody remembers the first search engines like webcrawler and Altavista - yet without them, Google would not exist.
The next alt coin will give us the next step towards everyday use, and the cycle continues.
If you are not diversified into alts, your bitcoin pension pot is going to be worthless! ;-)
It sounds like you believe that BTC price will crash along with BTC when a replacement coin starts to take over. Are you still holding BTC? What is your plan of action with regard to selling your BTC holdings when you suspect that BTC will go down?
As I see it (and I should charge for this on a subscription service!) BTC might have another mad run where it shoots up to $2000 or maybe more, but it won't go much higher. We are already getting to the point where everyone that counts has heard of bitcoin. The laws are being worked out, and a few people are buying and selling using it. But I don't see the price crashing, I just don't see it growing to the silly figures we were predicting a few months ago.
Bitcoins are not going to die for at least 5 years, but their relevance is doing to dwindle after the various laws have been ratified. The technical issues regarding their use is not yet relevant to the mainstream, and for that reason, the advantages of Nxtcoin and the other alts are mostly academic. However once we all start buying and selling outside the banking system, then we will see the alts really taking off.
I don't hold any bitcoins in cold storage, but do convert my alts into bitcoin before I convert into fiat. However, I can now convert Litecoin into cash as well, so I don't actually need to use bitcoin anymore.
In the long term (5 years +) the crypto currency industry is going to look very different. I would assume that Bitcoin might become the slang term for crypto currency, but I don't think the coins we are currently holding are going to be the coins we use.
