A good way to think of altcoins is to consider what it would take to launch your own virtual currency. How would they get adopted? What keeps people using them?

Changing people's habits, gaining trust, finding mass acceptance all take time and may never happen. There's a lot of risk in altcoins.

If I were going to bet on a currency to catch on it would be bitcoin. While it still hasn't achieved mass acceptance, it's the leader by a wide margin. Why take a long-shot when you've got a sure thing?