Investing in altcoins is an option only for very experienced day traders. If you are not one of them, don't even think of stepping on this risky path. They say, Bitcoin is volatile, but in fact it's pretty stable compared to some alts. Also the probability of it going down to zero, is far less than that for any of alts. Nevertheless, even with BTC, don't invest money that you may need in the near future, lest you end up selling at lower price than paid for it.