Quote from: Miz4r on February 03, 2014, 11:02:53 AM

Quote from: nwbitcoin on February 02, 2014, 07:57:13 PM

I like alt coins and have owned a fair few over the last year.
Most of my current value is in Litecoin, but only because it actually has a real cash value away from bitcoin. I also like Peercoin and recently got very interested in Nxtcoin.

However, the trick is to realise that alt coins are the future. Bitcoin is currently doing the work of introducing crypto currency to the masses, but it isn't going to be the coin used by the mainstream. That is going to be an alt coin.

That is far from certain and too bold a statement. It all depends on whether Bitcoin can adapt and incorporate the innovations altcoins will bring. If it can, whether through things built on top of the Bitcoin protocol or through a hard fork if all else fails, then BTC will become the coin used by the mainstream. And with the amount of people invested in Bitcoin and a strong ASIC network backing it, you know it will do everything it can to stay on top of the crypto foodchain. I think it's always good to diversify into a few promising altcoins, but I wouldn't bet most of my money on them right now.

Most of the alt-coins do not provide any significant advantage over Bitcoin.
You have to realize that alts are primarily used for speculation. Of course anyone invested in it will claim that the changes make it far superior to Bitcoin.

Lets take fast block creations as an example. You are led to believe that fast block creation speeds are good. But are they?
In the unlikely but possible event that a large group of miners is separated (think undersea cable fails etc) you are facing a chain split. The faster the block creation speed
the worse it gets because the alternative chain grows quicker. So what do you gain? a bit faster confirms.
This can be solved using a service built on top of Bitcoin. Think about something like fast consensus ( i.e. what ripple uses) to form agreement upon transactions coupled with some sort of
deposit in case malicious entities to try and double spend.

Oh, and while I think it is good that Nxt has its own codebase the distribution of wealth there is practically asking for a trillion forks that deal with that issue.

I am not saying that alts have no merit, on the contrary. If I want to transfer a couple of cents (Tip or whatever) I'm not gonna use Bitcoin where the transaction fee might be higher than the amount.
Litecoin or DOGE or whatever can fill that niche. I just think that most people will put most of their trust into Bitcoin, diversifying a bit into alts for whatever reasons they have.

At this stage there is nothing fundamentally wrong with Bitcoin to warrant a full-fledged exodus. Any altcoin is weighed against Bitcoin. It has become the gold standard of cryptos.