Altcoins are basically any cryptocurrency that's not bitcoin, plus those that popped up after bitcoin. Sure, they can be pretty risky, but there are some solid upsides too.
The whole idea behind altcoins is about innovation. Different altcoins come with unique functions and their creators are always trying to tackle issues by launching coins with specific use cases. Sometimes, investing in these can really pay off.
Also, altcoins allow for diversification. When it comes to crypto investing, spreading your investments is key. If one coin flops, having others in your portfolio can help you balance things out.
What benefits are you looking to list for us when their are people that are having their mental health crushed because they invested in bad coins that lead to their hard earned money disappearing forever due to scam project teams creating rug pulled projects in the name of memecoins, shitcoins and others with useful utilities.
It's not that all altcoins projects are bad but the problem lies in majority that had scammed people without a trace. People should have the mindset of investing in Bitcoin if they want to stay far away from heartbreaks from holding altcoins that can crashed at any point in time. This is advise that could benefit everyone that want financial freedom without gambling.
When we talk about alt coins I feel like it only has to do with a few coins and not the whole millions of cryptocurrencies spread across with faint utility parading as problem solving currencies, I feel like its just the top coins in the list that should be considered because a good number of this altcoins are pump and dumb shits.
They basically solve to no problem but instead creates distrust and confusion in the crypto space by scamming holders or those who who take the risk to gamble on them.
Diversification in altcoin is very risky and not what diversification in altcoin means in crypto but someone that doesnt have only crypto as their source of investment. Their source of investment can only be Bitcoin as crypto and then the rest can come out of the crypto space. As dangerous as altcoin investment are, there is always a way that one can benefit from them and face scrutiny before being allowed to be sold. Altcoin investment also builds potentials for some of us, it is not a very niche in the crypto space but needs to be treated with a lot of caution.
The thing with altcoins is that as much as their add up to cryptocurrency scalability, there is also a lot of bad factors that make altcoins entry a bad nightmare to some cryptocurrency investors, this have made the essence of gambling with altcoins a most necessity for the Smart investors, but for the newbies, altcoins is most risky for them.
Creators are not directly looking for ways to solve problems; the market is filled with different kinds of shit tokens and coins, which ordinarily should not be so if the creators were not selfish and just looking for a way to milk the market. Some projects are not even supposed to have tokens in the first place; if they claim to provide something good to the system, they can contribute to an already existing smart chain, but because everyone wants to become a CEO and hold a large portion of a temporary hype token, token creation becomes a necessity instead of problem-solving ideas.
Well I think you did say it there it is for diversification. I do not think it is easy for us to make big gains investing only in Bitcoin.
There is some weeks when Bitcoin will be down but some alt coins will be up. But for long term profit we should invest most of our capital in Bitcoin. The alt coins can be used to make profit but most of it will come from Bitcoin I think.
We have to know that any other cryptocurrency apart from Bitcoin there are under Bitcoin because they gain their potentially from bitciin existence, it is obvious that altcoins were created after the establishment or introduction of Bitcoin to support the market of cryptocurrency, so bitcoin give price to any other coin and if bitcoin is not experience a bullish season other coins only also not have the potentials or have the positive in the market,
It is quite understanding from my observation previously that if bitcoin is not experiencing a positive ways in the market majority of subcoins which are the altcoins will not experience a good positive in the market and secondly if bitcoin is being banned today across the countries it will not be up to a week what kinds existence only no longer be effective and within a short time will also be out of the market because people will lose trust in cryptocurrency as bitcoin is not longer into existence.. so in summary it is obvious that the life of altcoins depend on Bitcoin.
The benefit of playing the lottery is that you could win the lottery? Are you for real? People these days don't even know the basics of anything. Just because you are buying another altcoin and now own 2 instead of 1 does not mean that you have diversified anything. You are gambling. This is not diversification. If it were, then selling some of your altcoin to buy lottery tickets is also a diversification.
Diversifying from human feces to cat feces and dog feces is not really a diversification away from feces, is it? Instead of 1 type of poop all you have done is become a proud owner of 3 types of poop.
Despite those beautiful lines about the benefits of investing in altcoins, you have left out the most important advise you can give to anyone who wants to invest in altcoins which is to invest only what they can afford to lose. Most of the altcoins are not worth investing and the rate at which altcoins fail leaves nothing to desire. Altcoins can give big profits or big loss, hence it should never been followed with greed, just ensure you follow the rules of not getting overinvested in altcoins.
Some trustworthy ones include ETH, Solana, Dogecoin, BNB, and XRP. Besides these coins they are very risky because there are many altcoins circulating but their long-term projects are unclear. Even the top altcoins don't guarantee they will lose their hype in the future and eventually be left behind, like LTC, which was once hyped but now struggles to break its new ATH.
So, to truly benefit from investing, you need to invest in Bitcoin for the long term.
One thing is that everything that has advantage also has its own disadvantages and so Altcoins are no different. Op mentioned innovation and diversification as an advantage but didn't really mention the disadvantages of investing in altcoins. For many, the disadvantage of investing in altcoins is greater because of its high volatility nature which makes it dangerous investment when you intend to hold for a long period of time. It high volatility nature is what makes it more risky especially for new investors who don't know how to research properly. When diversifying we need to put everything in consideration and see if the investment would be in our favor.
New altcoins have are coming out everytime which makes it easy for scam projects to be introduced in the market and without proper research one will easily get scammed. The mistake most people do is the poor research when investing.
If we speak about the benefit of altcoins as far i know some of altcoins offering the innovation liked Litecoin who purposes to efficiency and transaction speed and Monero who offering the features for privacy and annonimity so, i think if you feel the features of those altcoins can beat bitcoin then you can start to invest on them immediatelly because probably this is the benefited which bitcoin don't have it
But the most problem if we speak about the volatility i think the volatility of altcoin prices is more danger compared to bitcoin especially the new altcoins and if you were looking the benefit of long term especially for investment i think bitcoin is the right coin because when altcoins potentially can gone but i can ensure bitcoin would be last long and following it the prices will be high in the future
I understand the angle you are taking this from, but I tell you, I would have loved it if it's only Bitcoin, a lot of issues as we see them today would not have occured. Fine, altcoins were created for different purposes, of which they do them well, and one of the purposes is faster transactions, lower fees, avoidance of congestion in Bitcoin blockchain etc.
Aside from that, they are den of thieves, rippers, manipulators etc. If there were no altcoins, crypto investments would have been better, as everyone must have known what Bitcoin would do better, and even Bitcoin itself would have hit higher prices and many more people would have benefited in a market that can't be manipulated.
But don't overdo it. People might think that diversifying a lot will save their portfolios. It's also a matter of what kind of altcoins are you going to choose. So, therefore as you diversify, make sure that you choose the altcoins that you're going to diversify with because if not, you're doing the wrong thing about it. While it can truly cover the losses that you'll get from the other altcoins, but sometimes it will also get you the most losses if not wise in choices.
I like to think of bitcoin as gold and altcoin as stock. Aside from the volatility difference, there's also fundamental difference.
Bitcoin is less volatile and should be where you put your money at when you're done with your investments with stock. Because altcoin feels like startups for the most part. You just betting on a project that you think gonna make it big.
This is why I don't invest for too long in altcoin and just wait for the right time and the right season.
I am dubious of altcoins as investments, even in the whole top of the market-cap list I do not see any other than bitcoin to "invest" in.
To me the value is in what I can actually use.
Stellar I can actually use, it works better than bitcoin for the Galactic Milieu as a platform for its tokens.
Basically long long ago it became apparent that free open source off-the-shelf-useable exchange software was not happening, whereas anyone can exchange anything for anything else simply by issuing their own IOUs on platforms like Stellar.
Ripple might also have worked, it seemed, early on, but then they took away their at-home client and went all big-brother-ish, so Stellar became the obvious choice.
Once it is possible to go ahead and trade without worrying about having to deal with third-party "exchanges" that so often de-list what you want to trade or just fly-by-night with both sides of the order-book it becomes feasible to actually pick-and-choose things to make worthwhile to invest in by picking-and-choosing things whose scale is small enough that one's own scale of operations is big enough to make a real difference, so that one can actually influence how good an investment the thing is going to turn out to be by becoming more and more of a force actively supporting the thing.
It becomes feasible to pile up larger and larger "treasuries" tying up larger and larger percentages of all minted units of one's chosen things, absorbing more and more and more of them from anyone willing to "dump" them cheaply, until long term the "dumpers" will run out and the true rarity phase, where hardly anyone ever "dumps" them, starts to come into effect.
Admittedly choosing some things that still have quite a few issued units still in the hands of "dumpers" can be a handicap, but well over a decade of experience has shown that even such worst-case scenarios are more a matter of taking a long time than of being doomed to failure long term...
-MarkM-
The biggest advantage alternative currencies have is the potential for higher profit and also networks which are faster and cheaper than Bitcoin.
Though, how the market stands today it is pretty much a hard task to be able to select a legitimate alternative currency before it explodes in price and market capitalization.
One could end up scammed pretty easily, so it is better just to have some of one's money staked in Bitcoin, instead of doing the same with shitcoins.