Quote from: hilariousandco on December 27, 2013, 08:07:28 PM

Quote from: bittycee on December 27, 2013, 07:55:33 PM

I've been keeping my eye on some of these altcoins. Some of them trade higher than others, but some keep steady. Overall, there are more and more of them coming out and I'm not sure if they're helping the overall cause or diluting the idea of altcoins.

What makes a good altcoin? Like anything else it needs to have a perceived value. There are a ton of altcoins out there and I'm wondering if it's marketing that makes them known. For example: Dogecoin. It's cute. It has a meme. Will anyone really use it after the meme has faded?

No they wont. They'll just move on to the next flash-in-the-pan coin.

In my opinion, a good alt needs to have some merchants willing to accept it. Otherwise it'll just die off.

Exactly my feelings as well. As long as people are willing to pay their hard earned BTC/LTC for something as crazy as DOGE, I'll be there to mine the DOGE to sell to them. Once it becomes unprofitable for me to do so, I'll move on to the next fad coin that is.

But you brought up another important point about merchants accepting a particular coin. That could be an issue as well. What happens when some merchants start accepting coin A, others accept coin B, some have started accepting coin C, etc.? I will admit also that there are a few other niche markets where a niche coin could be useful (CasinoCoin for example), but aside from that, there needs to be only a couple top coins.