It is my understanding that
1 bitcoin = 100,000,000 satosi units
That's trillions of units. So what is the point of bitcoingold, bitcoinsilver, bitcoincopper, litecoin etc etc. Why is all this happening and where is the value. It starting to look like what the Fed does with money printing.
Forget the subject of smart contracts and lets focus just on a currency. Why do we need anything other then just the bitcoin block chain?
Let's compare it to the businesses in the real world, competition is normal in this aspect because other businesses with almost the same thing to offer wants to achieve goals like what the first one/pioneer achieved already.
Bitcoin Gold, Bitcoin Silver, Bitcoin Copper(I don't see this one), Litecoin(this is not Bitcoin) all of this are fruits of Hard Fork except for Litecoin. Bitcoin developers doesn't really want to split the community or even make a confusion to this different Bitcoin names but the splits is inevitable when upgrading(I am not a professional bitcoin though but that's what I understand) for much better explanation go here
http://www.businessinsider.com/bitcoin-fork-explained-gold-segwit-segwit2x-cash-the-bit-3-2017-10.