Are altcoins, in general, worthless and pointless?

[Febo]

Lol, i dont think you choose right way to pick the wining horse. If you want to cover all there are more then few 1000.

Pick the best, with:
-bringing something new
-good developers
-solid community

Maybe you will not need to have more then 20 wallets.

OK, you put $100,000 in escrow and I'll put in $1.00 for each coin.  Whoever is right after 3 years gets all the money.

While you're doing that, I'll still be buying some coins.  I'll put more than $1.00 in the best coins, but I'll still put $1.00 in the long shots.

Yes. You did it!
Is so easy. Well is hard work to find best ones, but is easy to know how is best to do it.


And i dont have 100k USD if i would i would buy hmm 290k Moneros, and doubt would have to ever worry about anything.

[roparker2014]

Put $100 into 100 of the "best" coins, fair enough - it's a nice, fun little gamble.
It definitely is a gamble though - no one has any way of knowing which (if any) of those coins will survive long enough to make you a profit - let alone long enough to jump 10,000X in price and become worth $10,000.

The problem is, if one coin does make it to that level of worth, it is likely to be in many years time - and there's no way of knowing that it will be one of the coins which is "best" today. So to improve your chances you have to continually invest time in researching the current "best" coins.

Eventually it becomes a trade-off of time. It's very, very hard to make a full time living off of Crypto gambling, just as it is with any other kind of gambling - its possible, but you need an "edge" which gives you a chance against the house. So most people involved also have full-time jobs, and therefore not an infinite amount of time to put into the game.

So - like everything else - it becomes a matter of working out whether it is an efficient way of spending your time. I've put 100s of hours this year into cryptos - analyzing, trading, investing, mining - and made a little bit of money back. The problem is, I've almost certainly made less than I would have done if I'd worked minimum-wage in a kitchen washing dishes for the same amount of time.

(Lets say - conservative estimate - I've spent 200 hours trading, researching, etc, coins - in the UK at £7.50 p/h which is what I believe is current minimum wage for someone of my age, I would have made £1,500 or $2,334.)

During all that time I've spent this year, trading and investing, from a starting investment of £200, I've made about £700 profit (mainly by gaining from LTC/BTC rise at the right time).

Now, earning it my way was a lot more fun - I did it sitting on my arse, in front of the TV, smoking some fine plant materials. I also learned a lot about how markets work - and a hell of a lot more about how scammers operate. It's been a ride. So I'm fine with it.
But if my intention had been purely to make money, I would have been far better off taking a second  job in a kitchen.

TL/DR Whether Altcoins are worthless depends on your aims. If your aim is to enjoy them, have fun and learn, they are not worthless. If your intention is purely to make a profit, they are fairly worthless.

[resya]

I only have few $$ in alt coins and put most of my money in bitcoin investment. Happy christmas everyone i hope you have a nice time with all your crypto

[marcoman22]

I made some money with altcoins but never used them for buying anything. So they are not worthless for me atleast.

[cakir]

If you want to be rich via altcoins you need to do something like that;
What does this coin offer people?
How many of these offerings are came true?
Did they come true in time?
Is dev team working good?

If those questions' answers satisfy you then you should try to collect at least 0.1% of the total coins.
If there's 1 mil coin, you should get at least 1k when they're cheap of course

[chesthing]

I'm waiting for another spike in btc price for alts to pick up steam again, which may or may not happen (but I think it will). Right now it's just way too easy to lose, with pretty much no coins pumping like they were last winter/spring - so risk/reward is too low for the gamble. Sad to say but if alt trading volume doesn't improve drastically I've bought my last alt.
As far as whether they are worthless/pointless, they can make a lot of btc which in turn can make a lot of fiat. That's about it.

[youngmike]

Alts are made for P&D groups to harvest dumb money 

[chesthing]

Alts are made for P&D groups to harvest dumb money 

True for very few alts these days, most now just dump.

[runpaint]

Put $100 into 100 of the "best" coins, fair enough - it's a nice, fun little gamble.
It definitely is a gamble though - no one has any way of knowing which (if any) of those coins will survive long enough to make you a profit - let alone long enough to jump 10,000X in price and become worth $10,000.

The problem is, if one coin does make it to that level of worth, it is likely to be in many years time - and there's no way of knowing that it will be one of the coins which is "best" today. So to improve your chances you have to continually invest time in researching the current "best" coins.

Eventually it becomes a trade-off of time. It's very, very hard to make a full time living off of Crypto gambling, just as it is with any other kind of gambling - its possible, but you need an "edge" which gives you a chance against the house. So most people involved also have full-time jobs, and therefore not an infinite amount of time to put into the game.

So - like everything else - it becomes a matter of working out whether it is an efficient way of spending your time. I've put 100s of hours this year into cryptos - analyzing, trading, investing, mining - and made a little bit of money back. The problem is, I've almost certainly made less than I would have done if I'd worked minimum-wage in a kitchen washing dishes for the same amount of time.

(Lets say - conservative estimate - I've spent 200 hours trading, researching, etc, coins - in the UK at £7.50 p/h which is what I believe is current minimum wage for someone of my age, I would have made £1,500 or $2,334.)

During all that time I've spent this year, trading and investing, from a starting investment of £200, I've made about £700 profit (mainly by gaining from LTC/BTC rise at the right time).

Now, earning it my way was a lot more fun - I did it sitting on my arse, in front of the TV, smoking some fine plant materials. I also learned a lot about how markets work - and a hell of a lot more about how scammers operate. It's been a ride. So I'm fine with it.
But if my intention had been purely to make money, I would have been far better off taking a second  job in a kitchen.

TL/DR Whether Altcoins are worthless depends on your aims. If your aim is to enjoy them, have fun and learn, they are not worthless. If your intention is purely to make a profit, they are fairly worthless.

Good post.  I agree it wouldn't be worth it in the short-term unless you're having fun.  I am definitely having fun, and I still give it a slight edge in favor of working for money - working for minimum wage has 0 chance of making you rich next year, while altcoins have .00000001 chance.

Unless you sell all your coins, in which case there's 0 chance.  Most people can't understand that you haven't lost anything until you sell for a loss.  They're ready to give up as soon as the market drops a little.

[junglemouse]

Some alts IMO are better than BTC, besides the strength the btc network has over any coin by far.

Even total shit coins can have a purpose, therefore be worth something.

As far as trading alts its like picking up nickels in front of a steamroller, if you pick enough up know when to gtf out of the way.

[GoldSeal]

When Scrypt asics become common place, they will legitimize some altcoins. The ones that survive will be the ones with the best branding and communities behind them. Expect scrypt asics to roll out hard in 2015 especially if we see a run up in the price of BTC. A run up in BTC is the catalyst altcoins need to make a turn around.

[nanomo]

the problem isn't altcoin in itself, but rather stupid and greedy coin dev who think they should clone everyday a new coins.
The level of absurdity has reach an unprecedented level since June.

There are way too many coin and the vast majority are just useless clone with a stupid cloned name such as darkcrapcoin, litecrapcoin, bitcrapcoin, blackcrapcoin and so on. The only reason for these coin to exist is the premine dev can dump (or the ICO dev and p&d accomplice can pump and dump...)

Before April, there was mostly 2 new coins per week (things started to get stupid during Easter holidays), now it is 2 new coins everyday. I am not even looking anymore to announcement, and not mining any of these either...

only a few good coin were produced during that time and they aren't the most successful either... which is kind of sad

Disagree.
I make btc only with shitcoin. I need 10 altcoin a day. If you re a good trader,you could make profit. Much.
I stop  mining rig and starter to trade.

+100

[activebiz]

there's just too many altcoins these days.

[GoldSeal]

I only buy Casinocoins. I'm doing everything I can to capture these and take them out of circulation.