Topic: Best arguments to make your friends understand that altcoins are not good - page 2. (Read 1180 times)

People are more eager nowadays for profits than for privacy or security.
Surely - it would be a loss on their behalf. And they would probably come later to try things out nevertheless.

Tell them bitcoin gives privacy, and allows them to be in custody of their funds without a third-party. No one have control over their bitcoin as long as they keep it in their noncustodial wallet. If they are still not convinced, leave them alone because the are skeptical people and you wouldn't be able to convince them. Let them invest in altcoins and you invest in bitcoin, in the long run they will see the difference for themselves. Experience is the best teacher.

Agreed. The talk is surely about new alts being created each day, and only a small percentage of them would live even for a year or so, not to say prosper or evolve.

I think what OP's focused is the new batch of altcoins being launched, as they are way more unreliable and are product of scams and fake crypto alternatives. They're way too far compared to those old but significant altcoins that are still making a good position in the market.

Meanwhile, picking the best argument could not be the best solution. Or even if you have one, that won't really matter to them because they'll stick to their first impression. So just leave it to them. They'll get back to you once they have proven that they are wrong, and you are right with altcoins. Or you will know it they have proven they're wrong once they stop talking about altcoins.

Both kinds of coins exist. Above all the older altcoins have often some experimental components, but that doesn't guarantee their success so several are near-dead.

What I meant is that 97-99% of the coins are "at least" failed experiments, but they can also be ponzis or scams.

We could build a kind of "altcoin tier system" with the following tiers:

A) Decentralized & successful (example: Monero) - no premine, preferrably PoW. Of course, Bitcoin would be something like "tier A+++".
B) Semi-centralized & successful (example: Ethereum) - had a premine benefitting the developer team, but the general the inner workings are relatively decentralized and they have a working ecosystem.
C) Decentralized & low success (examples: Feathercoin, Navcoin) - like tier A, but they weren't able to build up an ecosystem, so they tend to continuously lose value or stagnate.
D) Semi-centralized & low success (example: Nxt) - like tier B, but weren't able to build up an ecosystem, so they tend to continuously lose value or stagnate.
E1) Company coins (example: BNB) - are not really cryptocurrencies, but a value similar to a security as they depend almost 100% on the operating company
E2) Memecoins & short-term fads which were able to get some community support, but will also very likely eventually disappear.

We have at most 10 tier-A coins and 30-50 tier-B coins which are those interesting for mainstream altcoin investors.
Tiers C and D can in theory be still "valuable" and even can see some spikes, can be interesting for investors who like extreme risk. They're making up most of the top 1000 coins. There should not be more than 2000 coins of these five categories. Tier E, the company coins and memecoins, are a special case. Can be interesting for those who like to invest in penny stocks.

Now we have 20-30k or millions (according to CMC) of F-tiers where a loss for investors is almost guaranteed:

F1) Centralized/semi-centralized, still not dead, but extremely high fail potential. Their main development team disappeared, only some stubborn bagholders keep them alive
F2) Decentralized & failed (example: GeistGeld) - like tier A, but failed completely (dead, no exchange listing, or 51% attacked)
F3) centralized tokens and memecoins without any community & other short-term fads (this does NOT include coins like Doge or Shiba Inu)
F4) outright Ponzis & Scams

The "failed experiments" are tiers F1, F2 and F3, they tend to live for a long time due to the stubborn bagholders (exception: if they are successfully attacked), but they will very likely never recover. F3 and F4 are often manipulated and thus if you just ride the pump you can even make profit, but the probability is extremely low.

Talking about looking at the market can ultimately make beginners enter into fomo so instead of trying to learn more about the market it would be better to find out first about bitcoin because in the end before starting to invest in bitcoin in the end learning about what bitcoin is, and how bitcoin works becomes very important.

When based on the market, it will make the expectations of beginners too high but they are confused about what kind of bitcoin mechanism makes them like confusion and do not want to accept risks when there are some unexpected things including when bitcoin crashes or is in bearish because they only focus on market increases and decreases.

It will be different when they learn bitcoin first because the increase and decrease will be considered as a natural thing especially it is a short-term risk but will not reduce the fighting spirit to stay in bitcoin because they realize that bitcoin is not too suitable for short-term investment but for the long term.

no no no no no you are mis understanding the point here

the supply element(separate thing to scarcity) is the production rate per hour which comes under the cost analysis as that is how you calculate the cost(x production per time vs resource cost of production per time = cost per x).  but the scarcity element(separate thing) is part of the market speculation above the cost amount

in short
supply = production rate per time
scarcity = total ever to be produced in future (the cap)
they are separate things

lates take anything in life.. such as a loaf of bread or a litre of milk
if no where on the planet can anyone make a loaf of bread/litre of milk for less than 50cents.. no one will be willing to sell milk for less than 50cents
however there are people that are willing to sell milk for 52cents and make 4% profit and just mass produce it and beat the competition to being the main supplier at a good value market price

however if the same milk/bread, knowing it can be made for 50cent in cheapest place on planet and say $5 for the most uneconomical place on planet. no one would want to buy bread/milk for $20 as thats excessive premium, so if something is selling for $360 that can be made anywhere by anyone for $5.. stay clear. its a manipulated bubble and will pop eventually
yep even if its a limited edition/ highly scarce thing, there would be some speculative limit where even the most enthusiastic fans would say is too excessive

many altcoins have this low window of cost across the planet but have a excessive premium of market speculation.. so be warned about those crap coins, especially if there is no real world utility/demand

there is a natural economic window where speculation(above value cost) sits where the market will play within
so when bitcoins base cost is $60k, no one wants to sell below that.. and thus becomes the non-zero market bottom for this period
where as ethereums underlying cost is 1000x less at just $50. meaning its non zero-bottom is $50 for this period

then when you look at the speculative market above the value. ethereums market price is at a premium, way above its value point. where as bitcoin is only 1.5x its value point, meaning bitcoin is still a good deal better than ethereum as a store of value
ethereum being at $3.6k is an excessive premium of ~70x its underlying cost. where as bitcoin is only $100k at a god value of just 1.5x its underlying cost

ethereum can crash all the way down from $3.6k down to $50 far easier than bitcoin can crash to quad, trip or double digits

again.. its basic economics of cost valuation of the base units manufacture/production/mining/minting, and then looking at the speculation above that
all economics of all assets/commodities have this.. and its worth learning because it then gives you a base to then understand if something is then market speculating at a near value or near premium.. or even at a excessive bubble manipulation amount

you can then look into the reasons of the speculation. such as the feature/benefits/utility.. or if the market is highly speculative due to pure manipulation.
for instance some of the reasons for the SPECULATION ABOVE COST is due to scarcity, is due to usefulness. but the whole scarcity thing is a speculative drive of the market price

Such mindset as landed some folks in some bad spot , bitcoin still remains the best and the safest cryptocurrency to invest on , some others are still trying at there but not all, so don't be deceive by their shinny promises, some altcoins as landed some folks In some bad spot because they thought all cryptocurrency have the same potential as bitcoin, which is lies, most of them usually endup dumping without any hope or sign of recovery but when comes to bitcoin despite the dip it will keep bouncing back even stronger .

A well-rounded argument would include honestly telling them several altcoins are legit, long-lasting projects and provide features which Bitcoin cannot do.

Thanks mate, maybe even 99% is accurate! taking into account all the coins that are not even listed... Which are many

That's what i meant by saying that your comparison is misleading. You are still measuring it as of one full coin vs one full coin. Even if eth's cost of mining ends up to be significantly lower in the end, it still doesn't make any sense to compare it that way.

That's like measuring the value of those full coins by their price, and ignoring that if we should compare them by marketcap.
And sure, you can count the the lack of buy walls as a disadvantage for eth, but that just underlines my point devaluating 1 full ETH even more.

I give you that "indefinitely" was exaggeration. I thought that was obvious when pointed out, that costs would need to come down to sustain the (achieved) price.
But when do you see this S curve staring to show and how? Before people are alarmed of the energy costs of it or after? You don't see voters starting to complain at some point, if their electricity costs go higher when the demand for mining increases? And how do you see all the no-coiners voting then?

It takes time to build energy efficient tech and that curve might not align well with the efficiency of the tech.

The only argument I would have is that this is nolonger the ICO era when altcoins were really booming 💥,  today we have too many selfish people creating these altcoins to enrich themselves and pull the rug when the receive some $$$ for the sell and you can never be too careful.

If you want peace and little no no headaches over your crypto investment,  Bitcoin is the way to go!

But unfortunately with.some friends , with certain friends you can advise but they will still do the opposite because of stubbornness

Of course the views are different but if you look further for more rational issues only talk about profit, but sometimes people see something based on the fundamental level for the convenience of doing something based on the capabilities provided by bitcoin itself.
When it comes to money, of course we will look for a hedge and it is impossible for people to get involved in bitcoin just because of the ease of transacting.
Bitcoin can be relied on to protect value and that is in line with what most people are looking for to protect their money because even though we consider other advantages, something related to money only talks about profit and generally that's what we do.

Altcoins especially these failed altcoins that died are not failed experiments, but they're successful scam attempts from those founders, developers. They are richer by developments and launches of these altcoin projects, but investors failed and lost money.

If there are developments with those failed and died projects, it's good, but most altcoins are not experiment, and nearly no developments, just launch to scam money.

I think you underestimate how many altcoins exist.

A few days ago I saw an interesting article by CoinGecko where they show all altcoins that have died in the last years. The number was over 13,000. So these can already be classified as "failed experiments". This number is from January 2024 however, so the real number may be a bit higher.

CoinGecko has currently listed 16,100 coins approximately. Thus there are about 30.000 in total in existence with at least some minimum relevancy (i.e. CoinGecko considered them worthy to list, or have paid to be listed ...), but 13000 of them are of such bad quality that they are not listed anymore. And there are probably much more that were never listed at CoinGecko. CoinMarketCap even lists 2,4 million (!) different coins.

Taking the more conservative CoinGecko number: From the currently 16,100 "listed" coins, being honest, who's talking about >15,500 of them? Okay, at least 3000 are memecoins (I don't know if Coingecko's category system covers all coins), so somebody is perhaps talking about some of them for some time (1 per 15 minutes, perhaps). But we have for example almost 650 "Smart Contract Platforms". We normally talk about 10 of them as a maximum. The rest (98%) could be also classified as "failed experiments" because nobody is using them.

In general I think that of the existing altcoins, at most 500 or 1000 have some value or are doing something interesting. That's 2-3% of all those which were listed at CoinGecko and less than 0,001% of those listed at CoinMarketCap. Perhaps the number HideYourKeys is talking about is "only" 97%, but not much lower

Not everyone can accept that Altcoins are the worst way to spend money, while many ignorantly lose their funds some people also make fortunes from them and it will be very difficult to confront  anyone who has made profits from these Altcoins. Bitcoin is far ahead other cryptocurrencies, in market cap, ability to serve different purpose while retaining it's value, decentralized nature, a consistent kind of investment that is solid expected to last for many decades without the quest of being abolished.

Since Bitcoin is not controlled by any individual, there is no expectations of Bitcoin passing through any imaginable phase of team behind to rug the project unlike we see in several Altcoins, no team behind Bitcoin and yet we are still opportune to continue making profits as long we hold. This is enough reason why your friend should invest, his funds in Bitcoins remains valued no matter how the price might turn out in the bear season and if he is willing to hold for the long run then he will be assured of making more in number of what he invested. In some Altcoins, once the price go below or half way the initial price then every team behind begins to vanish and being unable to manage the project means their investment funds are lost and can never be returned.

I used to explain it to people in a very simple way. Imagine that every investment comes with a risk and you can make a very safe bet by putting your money in the bank and let them pay you interest, but it also comes with a small degree of risk, or you can bet it all on red in a casino. So, if we assume that the risk factor of investing in bitcoin is a bit higher than what you're facing when your money is in a bank, investing in altcoins doesn't just double it. It makes it many times higher. You're almost moving from investing to gambling. If you're fine with that, take that risk, make that bet, but be aware of what you're doing.

You are not sincere about it, how can 99% of altcoins be scams, where did you get your statistics from?

You would have had a valid argument if you said they are manipulatable, but being a scam is just a misrepresentation. Most of them are not poor experiments and neither are they Ponzi schemes. If we remove the meme coins, most of them have real value and the developers are trying their best to make them work.

This is why we should differentiate altcoins from shitcoins, but it seems you are generalising them now. Altcoins have blessed me tremendously in the past 2 years+, I wonder why the many of them I invested in turned out to be a success if truly they are scams.

I think it's more of quick profits than huge money cause they can still make huge money if they invest in Bitcoin, hold and DCA for a full circle and more, they'll sure make huge money, much more profits than what they expected, just that they're not too patient to hold, not willing to wait is one of the reasons why they focus on other coins that would give them huge and quicker profits.

 Well, though some people understand the consequences and are still willing to take the risk and invest with their spare cash but their are people who are not aware of the risk factor and would go in with lots of cash and end up losing everything, I'm not really against people investing on Alts cause everyone has the choice to do whatsoever they want but I'll only advice that they should priotise a more better and safer Cryptocurrency investment option which is Bitcoin.

 Alts can huge profits no doubt but at the same time investors can lose everything due to a rug pull or so which makes it a highly risky choice of investment than Bitcoin that's more and safer like I said earlier. Therefore instead of priotising a 50/50 chance of making money, I'll advice that people should rather buy and hold Bitcoin for long all it just takes is being patient.

People invest in alts because they want profit, they want huge growth, which was once. And now it will not happen again.
It's just that before there was some kind of alt season - alts were x'd so that if it was less than 4x, then it was considered that this was lousy growth. There were also x10-30 alts, I think everyone can give their own examples.
And now alts have been made: x2 Ethereum, x2.5 BNB, x3 was made by some Tezos, well, this is from my field of observation.
And I think that this is the alt season, and it has been quite successful, if someone expects that it will be like before, then I think we will not see this in the near future.
Better to invest in BTC with DCA.