Confessions of a Crypto Noob: WTF Are AltCoins?!

     So I'm approaching two full months vesting in and learning about Cryptocurrencies. The first month (if you didn’t read) was a real roller coaster. Hacks, halvenings and hardforks, oh my! During the Titanic 2 (aka the Bitfinex hack), I was in a full panic, watching Bitcoin's value drop dollars by the minute. I scrambled to find a place to shelter my investments and stop the bleeding. Talking with the same friend who convinced me to start investing, I had noted to him that the only thing that hadn't really seemed to lost value that day was Dash. I knew nothing about it. He said it wad a solid dev team with a long history of solid work. I moved everything back into USD, and he moved into Dash.

     I stopped my bleeding. Made a few bad trades trying to regain quickly, and at that point needed to settle down. My friend told me moving into Dash really saved a decent size of his portfolio. It didn’t drop. Then I started to watch Dash, week by week, gain 10%. On the second week it was enough for me to jump in. I still kept looking for fast opportunities. NAV Coin, Kryptonite, WeedCoin, AMP, MAID, LISK, Monero (sad I didn’t buy then), and many others. But something became abundantly clear to me. I began to understand just why AltCoins had earned the nick name “shitcoins.” (That by the way, was not what I found in all the coins I just spoke of.)

     It seems most AltCoins are worthless. Not in monetary value, but in work value. I hate to borrow from a certain male enhancement drug commercial, but we really are “in the age of doing.” The value these coins hold is in their real world uses. The broader the uses, the more potential they hold to become something great, something useful, and something mainstream. I realize that the term AltCoin really applies to anything that isn’t Bitcoin, but in my eyes, Bitcoin has become itself an AltCoin. It’s only claim to fame at this rate is being first. It’s a massive first, that set up this whole system, but it seems as a coin, and a system of work, it’s left in the dust. Bitcoin’s technology is relevant, but its system is not. It’s that fact that makes AltCoins that much more profitable. 

     In the history of man, when it comes to trade, the value of what you have, has to be on an equal level of what you have. If you have 10 loaves of bread, and your neighbor has two goats, and you both agree that 10 loaves of bread is equal to 2 goats, well then you have a deal! But if your neighbor does not think its two loaves of bread his 2 goats are worth, but instead your 1 ox, then your 10 loaves of bread have value to you, but no one else. That's the main problem with AltCoins. If they are short sighted and merely exist instead of solving problems, then there is no value to their existence. 

     Ethereum, Synereo, Dash. We have companies pushing the envelopes of technology, information, and finances. Those companies are many and diverse in ideas and end goals. Two months into this digital space and I'm seeing how this is just like the late 80s and early 90s when people were thought of as crazy to have a personal computer in their home. The next step in society and technology is where the companies behind AltCoins come in. Do your due diligence and you will discover that some of them, in fact, are not shit.

Disclaimer: I currently hold coins in BTC, ETH, DASH, AMP, STRAT and LISK.