What I know is that altcoins have a bigger risk than the botcoin itself, the bigger you take the risk, of course, the closer you will lose a lot of money, the risk does exist, but we can reduce it by managing money in a good way.
To reduce the risk don't invest blindly in coins without doing your own diligent research. Some of us are investing in altcoins because of hype thinking it's worthy to invest in, then will panic if the price plunged because the hype is over. Investing in altcoins are quite risky especially to the new ones since they're not established yet. Thus, it's important to dig deeper and don't invest just because of what you think and have no concrete basis.
Anyway, invest in Bitcoin because it is good to hold for long term then include few alts in your portfolio based on your own analysis and not through recommendation. Having your own knowledge about the coins are important so you can understand if the coins are worth to hold either for long or short term.