Altcoins are alternatives to Bitcoin. They are cryptocurrencies that use a technology called blockchain that allows secure peer-to-peer transactions. 1 Altcoins build on the success of Bitcoin by slightly changing the rules to appeal to different users.
While bitcoin's high volatility, transaction times, and fees can cause a barrier for many customers not eager to risk spending more than they need to for small purchases, altcoins can provide cheaper and faster transactions. ... Bitcoin cash and dogecoin are also much lower.
Of course, altcoins have different rules, that's what defines them and I think everybody knows that.
I don't understand your arguments though:
- volatility => altcoins are way more volatile than BTC (except USDT which is supposed to be tied to USD, but then why not just use USD directly)
- transaction times => use Lightning Network. Technologically superior scaling method, because, well, it scales, blockchains don't (by definition).
- fees => some altcoin fees like ETH are even higher than the ones of BTC and through the use of LN you can avoid mining fees altogether.
I find the mention of highly pumped and dumped Dogecoin very ridiculous one sentence after criticizing Bitcoin's volatility, gotta say: it made me chuckle
An anecdote of the on-chain scaling debate I hinted to in above list: I remember a time, where - mostly due to low usage - ETH fees were very low, while in Bitcoin they were quite high; SegWit wasn't in place yet, neither was LN implemented yet, and Ethereum folks told me they would scale much better due to larger blocks and lower block time. Then, Lightning Network started to develop and they laughed it off: why a different layer, it 'just works' for them without it, etc. Now, their fees are higher than Bitcoin tx fees and they seem to develop 2nd layer solutions as well! The other day someone mentioned to me that 'Ethereum was always proponent to off-chain scaling solutions' and that they were even better suited for them due to the turing-completeness of their scripting language. Now, I'm wondering if they always wanted off-chain scaling anyway, why did they ever bother with the <1 min block time at all and didn't just copy Bitcoin's much less storage- and bandwidth- heavy 10 minute, 1MB limits.
Anyway, sorry for me digressing and little bit of rant; it's certainly more suited to a different topic than this, just wanted to say: some altcoins sound great in theory, but once they get the adoption of Bitcoin (or even earlier) they fail at the same or different hurdles on the way. I mean, for example, Bitcoin was also 'cheap & fast on chain' in its infancy, when blocks were empty and even paying 0.1BTC tx fee was nothing since 1BTC was worth pennies.