Quote from: BitcoinBug on November 28, 2013, 09:15:29 AM

I think it's important to understand what is going on. This is only my opinion, but feel free to correct or add anything.

IMO altcoins got popular for these reasons:

lots of newbies with regret and (incorrect) thinking in style "I missed the boat with bitcoin, what is the next big thing"
pumps & dumps are much easier done with altcoins and on newbies
GPU miners lost their profits when FPGAs and ASICs arrived and had to switch to something else. They suddenly became incentivized to promote altcoins
all cryptocurrencies are currently more than 90% speculation. The network effect, that Erik Voorhees is talking about, is only semi-valid at the moment. When Bitcoin price will reach its full potential and the system becomes more like a transactional currency, network effect will cause the value to (finally) concentrate in one currency
hype-price feedback

I see these reasons as the "perfect storm", the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. But it is also not sustainable. Newbies will learn the fundamentals, suckers from pumps & dumps will learn from their mistakes, the mining aspect will lose power (professionalization), built infrastructure will make Bitcoin more usable for day-to-day transactions.

TL;DR: don't fall for altcoins, unless you really understand the reasons for owning them

You can fall for altcoins, but just don't spend money on it. That's more the thing I think. There are plenty of giveaways on the internet, so if you want to experience with altcoins I suggest you do that.

LTC can't be ignored tho. I think this one will be the steady 2nd. Someone described Bitcoin as gold and Litecoins as silver. I think I agree with that.