Which altcoins have features that make them in any way superior to Bitcoin ?

[shtako]

Short answer: None

The worst argument is faster blocks. I have spent bitcoins purchasing vpn service, acsess to different newspapers, gambling at bitbook.biz, poker at satoshi poker and all of those purchases have been confirmed instantly. Withdrawals from bitbook, satoshi poker, sealswithclubs etc is also very fast and much faster then sites using fiat currency.

The next worst argument is that there is so few bitcoins and they are so expensive making it hard to pay 0.00345 btc for your purchase. Lol just change you wallet to mBTC and you are fine.

The biggest advantage bitcoin have is security. Most alts are very insecure because of low hashrate and can easily be attacked making them insecure.

The amount of services already developed and under development for bitcoin is massive. Bitcoin got a bright future because of that and because of the need of a payment system adapted to our new digital world.

But do we need alts?

I belive peercoin and litecoin will survive. Peercoin is innovative with the proof of stake minting and it is stabil with slow and predictable development. It have been around for a few years and established itself amoung the market leaders. In long term it got the ability to become the preferred instrument as a store of wealth. Litecoin is similiar in many ways. It is old, stable and established as a market leader. More widely adopter then peercoin and to big to fail.

Others that can survive and have significance is actually doge because of the widespread adoption. It have brought cryptocyrrency to so many new people who had never even heard of bitcoin. The importance of that should not be forgotten.

If there is one feature that bitcoin don't offer that could be improved upon in an altcoin it is anonymity.

We have several contenders the main one beeing: Zerocash supposed to launch in mai, Anoncoin and Darkcoin. We know very little about zerocash and if it will launch at all. Anoncoin is undoubtly the most exiting contender now. They are implementing the old zerocoin code and seems to be very competent and truly devoted to offer anonymity because of their political views. It is also very well distributed and fair. If they are succesful this coin might survive it and thrive in dark markets.

Darkcoin is trying to implement and improve coinjoin. This is an old method of trying to achieving anonymity that have been tried implemented in other coins before, but have failed because of lack of anonymity. But we can only hope that the devs have found solutions to the flaws in coinjoin and are able to deliver what they promise. Darkcoin is also heavily instamined with blocks size starting at 500 and quickly descending. Because of this darkcoin is probably the most overvalued coin (beside aurorascam), but it must be mentioned as a long shot.

[master-P]

I would do some serious research on most of the coins that people suggest

Says the bbq man!

I no longer trade BBQ coins, but I can't change my avatar. Plus, it's a tasty-looking logo

Oh yeah, and BBQ coins are the only proof-of-steak crypto!  

[mohammedfaiz143]

None . Because if they have features much different form bitcoin they will no longer be called "altcoin" .

[bl0ckchain]

I AM NOT LOOKING FOR YOU TO ADVERTISE YOUR SUPER FAST COIN
I am looking for innovative coins that have good features , not just speed.
Majority of the posts are just another name for a super fast coin.

I think in a few years, the top three coins will be Bitcoin (BTC), Goldcoin (GLD), and Litecoin (LTC). (in that order)

Bitcoin and litecoin get the nod because they were early pioneers and managed early market penetration. Goldcoin because it has a developer not unlike Satoshi. He keeps to himself and spends his days quietly rewriting and improving upon the early work of Satoshi. His first achievement was to solve the 51% attack riddle and integrate a solution into the GLD client. Now he is secretly writing a new java client that will be the first of its kind in the crypto world. It will be modular, plugin ready, multi-threaded, and multi-platform.

The other reason I like Goldcoin is because the name tests #1 with consumers. Try this on someone that knows nothing about bitcoin: Give a brief explanation of what a cryptocurrency is and then ask the person which one they would rather own - offer three or four coin names along with Goldcoin. What you will find is that no matter which coins you put up against Goldcoin, the average consumer will 100% of the time pick Goldcoin.

So, here we have a coin with a brilliant and unique developer, plus the best name, trading at one cent. If you look up the meaning of the phrase "no brainer" there should be a photo of the Goldcoin logo on that dictionary page.

[ThePatient]

Short answer: None

Not true.

Op asked for coins that have *in any way* a superior feature. Einsteinium, for instance, automatically gathers 2 % of all coins mined. These funds will be donated to projects furthering science. As well as a neat 'wormhole' feature.

That is a vastly superior feature. Now, BTC is better then EMC2 in a plethora of other ways, but to deny that the feature just mentioned isn't innovative would be wrong. Imagine if BTC had that? It would do wonders for its press. Every month hundreds of thousands (if not millions since BTC price is so high) of dollars being donated.

[Jeezy911]

The only coin on the horizon that has even a remote chance of overtaking BTC at this point is not a coin. Its called ethereum.

[ThePatient]

The only coin on the horizon that has even a remote chance of overtaking BTC at this point is not a coin. Its called ethereum.

It hasnt even been launched.   ...and yes it is a coin, among other things. Ether will be what will run the contracts

[jambola2]

I am going to add a new part to the OP.
"Notable coins"

[V8x8d]

I would be more concerned about the impact of Scrypt ASICs later this year (and where the GPU miners will turn to). For this reason n-factor Scrypt coins have the required features to survive as they an immune to ASICs.

We have seen the impact of ASICs for SHA-256 and this is soon to happen to Scrypt (LTC and all it's clones. Which is OK for LTC, but not for the rest). When this occurs I would suggest holding some Vertcoins, Execoin or Darkcoin. I have more faith in Vertcoin though.

[jambola2]

I would be more concerned about the impact of Scrypt ASICs later this year (and where the GPU miners will turn to). For this reason n-factor Scrypt coins have the required features to survive as they an immune to ASICs.

We have seen the impact of ASICs for SHA-256 and this is soon to happen to Scrypt (LTC and all it's clones. Which is OK for LTC, but not for the rest). When this occurs I would suggest holding some Vertcoins, Execoin or Darkcoin. I have more faith in Vertcoin though.

Ahh yes , this is an outcome I did not foresee.

I don't trade in altcoins , but for anyone who does , this is worth noting.

However , I foresee LTC actually rising due to the increasing pump of capital into Scrypt ASICs

[Brangdon]

CPU only mining doesn't make sense... Allowing GPUs and ASICs convinces more people to invest capital into the coin and allows faster growth.

Why?

Allowing general purpose CPUs to mine effectively enables more people to mine, which distributes mining power more widely and makes 51% attacks less likely.

1. What does a hashing algorithm that complex achieve ? SHA-256 seems secure enough.

I'm guessing it makes it harder to run more efficiently on GPUs and ASIC.

As to the original question, I think most altcoins have features that make them superior to Bitcoin, but so far the improvement doesn't seem significant enough to derail Bitcoins momentum. With the possible exception of proof-of-stake systems, which I'm still learning about; on the face of it, it does seem to be a cheaper approach to mining and a benefit in the long term.

[imamanandyou]

CPU only mining doesn't make sense... Allowing GPUs and ASICs convinces more people to invest capital into the coin and allows faster growth.

Why?

Allowing general purpose CPUs to mine effectively enables more people to mine, which distributes mining power more widely and makes 51% attacks less likely.

I dont like CPU only mining because it is paradise for botnet operators. Most fair coins are the ones requiring ASICs to be competetive in mining

[devphp]

Myriadcoin seems superior, as it offers 5 independent of each other algos to mine:
Scypt, SHA256D, Qubit, Skein or Groestl

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=483515.0