These currencies are all new and a grand experiment.  Most people here, I believe understand the world-changing potential that they have.  Ultimately the market will choose which currencies are here for the long term and which fall by the wayside.  Several already have.  Meanwhile, they rise and fall relative to eachother.   So yeah, its probably wise to hedge your bets.   LTC for example may be a bit riskier than BTC, but given that there will be 80 something million of them vs 21 million BTC, one could conclude that the price should be approx 1/4 of a BTC, but it is far less than that right now.  Buying opportunity?