I worry that altcoins won't be terribly valuable for mining. Once ASICs own a bigger chunk of the bitcoin mining pool in late summer-ish or whenever, that all that will matter is how difficult it is to earn 1 unit of fiat. So if litecoin for example becomes the go to network to hash on with no threat of ASICs (don't know of any in development for LTC), it will probably have a relatively flat rate of increase in difficulty compared to bitcoin which I think will for a while always outpace LTC in the rate of increase in difficulty. As a result LTC/BTC trade rates will probably go down and if they didn't, more people would move to LTC until a lower ratio is achieved. So in essence, I unfortunately agree with OP but also believe in BTC as a means of transaction in a year or so rather than an earn wealth scheme.