Interesting. Yes, I was aware there were a few surviving alt-coins besides Bitcoin around that time. IXCoin I think it was, which may have been the first alt, had died as well as a few others. I knew there were varying rates of profitability with the surviving alts (like litecoin) too, but nothing I ever took seriously. I never took a hard look at the viability of alt-coins until the Bitcoin Foundation uproar, which showed me they indeed could offer a value Bitcoin never could: alternative.