since you posted this in trading discussion I am going to focus on that.
you only read an altcoin's whitepaper if you are interested in its technology and want to learn more about how it works and what ideas it is implementing. otherwise as a trader reading the whitepaper of an altcoin is not going to give you any worthwhile information about it. altcoins work based on hype and pump and dump. and neither of the good ones ever give you as big a profit as a pumped shitcoin can give you.
Well, if you only focus on short time hype trading it is true, whitepaper and basics won't matter. But if you also invest long term, it may show the potential of the project.
well the problem is that I don't see that many altcoins, specially the top 5 to have any good future in the long run. it will always come down real usage and majority of them have none. when they go up based on pure speculation and hype (which you may even call "pump") it is not something you want to invest long term based on it!