Topic: Bitcoin vs Altcoins (Read 501 times)

I assume that you are not a trader because a trader will not think of making is portfolio 100% bitcoin. Then, bitcoin drives altcoins, if you diversify(which I don't understand the concept), if bitcoin dips there is high tendency that the altcoins will dip too. Bitcoin is the King, yet there will never be a time that it will exist alone again. But she will witness generations of altcoins, some will come and die, others will emerge. So, my advice is 50% of your portfolio should be btc while you use the rest to research other coins that can give you x20, x100 etc in a short while, because bitcoin might not do it any soon.

If you consider yourself a bitcoin maximalist, then you can still benefit from altcoins. And the best solution for you will be trading altcoins paired with bitcoin. Thus, with a successful trade, you will be able to increase your deposit in BTC. Or direct your profit received from altcoin trading to buy bitcoins.

This is what i do, i personally did not jump early onto the bitcoin project so i am not one of the top gainers from btc. So in order not be a latecomer to some other promising altcoins backed by good projects, i have identified them and have a percentage investment in them. Not so many though, so i can keep track. Also, regardless of the fact that btc has good ROI, i consider investing in it alone as "putting all your eggs in one basket".

Imagine wanting to save up money in something that is pegged to the USD in the first place And even if you loved fiat so much, why not just get a couple stacks of fiat money and put them into a vault? There is literally no need or point for getting or using 'USD backed stablecoins'. Just more risk than getting plain actual dollars (breaking of that link).

That's right; people 'diversifying' by buying various altcoins are like people who 'diversify' by buying different properties. Just because you bought a house and 2 flats, doesn't mean you have diversified. If real estate goes down, all properties go down. If BTC goes down, all the altcoins go down with it.

I'd put it another way because it is not about coin preference, it's more about time preference and common sense. Those who are into altcoins love talking about profits, Lambos, and Porsches. They are consumerists. For them, the more money they get after dumping their altcoin, the happier they are because that means they now can afford a better car. If you see a person driving a luxury car, he is probably an altcoiner who recently made a ton of money by converting his favorite coin into fiat. Bitcoiners are opposite to consumerism and instant gratification. They would drive a cheap car that saves gasoline only because it would allow them to buy more bitcoins. They prefer to postpone gratification of their needs and not to consume today so that they can consume a lot more in the future. Hence, if you see a man driving his Prius, that probably means he is a bitcoiner who recently dumped a bag of fiat money again to buy more bitcoin.

I like the allegories used by Lisa N. Edwards who has drown  analogy between   different blockchains and  the roads people drive on and various coins with car they drive on. As she said bitcoin is like a Porshe on that roads while some other alt is like a Prius. Notwithstanding the fact that Prius saves gasoline "more people like Porsches over Prius". So, you are  not "a crazy bitcoin maximalist". You just prefer Porsche over Prius.

It's because of people like you that there are so many scams in the cryptocurrency niche and many people think bad of it. You are using a Bitcoin forum to badmouth Bitcoin and market your own shitcoin. No one smart enough is going to use that to help you make money. Just close the door after you leave. 

Your investment portfolio doesn't have to be crypto only. Bitcoin is a big enough crypto basket. That's one egg. Put another egg in real estate. A third one could be in precious stones, stocks, long-term savings, etc.

Bitcoin could be a better option when filling in your list of coin portfolio and could be give in more returns and certainly has longer durability compared to most altcoins bit have a chain list of other portfolios on your coin list options other than completely dumping them you could reduce the asset of altcoins and share the investment unevenly amongst them making Bitcoin of greater percentage so you don't miss-out on other market capitalization.

Other than a complete dump of your altcoin, why not share your portfolio amongst the two either Bitcoin and other coin so you don't miss on both opportunity. You could choose to make it either an even distribution or odd depending on how you would love to posses both coins. Because some altcoin projects could yield more returnz faster compared to Bitcoin

Isn't the first rule of investing to not put all your eggs into one basket? By going only for BTC you would be doing just that. I am not saying that anything will happen, but the rule 9f thumb is that nothing lasts forever. As with the mentioned ALTs so too with BTC, I doubt it will last forever. But, the good think is that in this day and age, you can just go back and forth with your investments and not cement yourself into one option.

The more you come to know about bitcoin the more tou start understanding that bitcoin vs altcoin is never a topic because comparison can de done between two worthy things but bitcoin always tops the chart and all other altcoins are one way of shitcoins in the market.

First of all i was also not aware about this fact and was not having knowledge about it but then i joined this forum and started reading Mastering Bitcoin by Andreas and it opened up new tech doors for me and the rest contribution was made by the forum in enhancing my crypto knowledge or say bitcoin knowledge.I came to know the technical working of transactions, wallets, nodes,mining and everything being conducted in an decentralised manner rather than any centralised shitcoin whose prices can be manipulated easily.There was one meme which i shared on WO thread back some days.


I have been doing DCA from time to time in bitcoin investment and beleive me it is bringing up some future security to me and profits as well in meantime.Last investment was done at $30k and now they are at $48k so i am already up still people claim it's down or will burst so ignore them.

But i would not say beleive me completely as it is not right but DYOR those who think bitcoin is better and other coins can give you more returns in future.Those coins one crashed will not stand above the table but on other side bitcoin can even climb up the mountain with retail and institutional support.Beleive in it and HOLD bitcoin to secure your future.

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.

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.

Let me put out my 2 satoshis out here: 'Diversification' is in my honest opinion a word from the legacy system, which Bitcoin is replacing. Most people that 'diversify' into different cryptocurrencies are still thinking in 'investing $ into crypto to cash out big $ profits' (the idea is: if BTC goes down but XYZ goes up, I am still fine in $ terms), even though it is surely possible to trade alts to maximize your BTC stack.

In essence, altcoins aren't needed, since everything they do is either unnecessary (e.g. decentralized virtual cats? for what?) or can be done in BTC way more intelligently and sophisticatedly (e.g. off-chain scaling via LN compared to just dumbly increasing block size and reducing block times). Even though coins might / do exist that seem objectively better (technological standpoint), financially it's not wise to invest in those long-term.

Also, one big point of Bitcoin is that it's real digital, international money. I can receive it anywhere from anyone and spend it anywhere to anyone, at offline and online merchants. If we instead create a system of dozens of cryptocurrencies for various tasks, we're merely replicating the current situation with $, €, £ etc., where you have to exchange (and pay exchange fees) any time you interact with someone using another currency.

So for holding, I wouldn't say altcoins aren't suitable, since only one coin can really 'make it' (large-scale adoption, legal currency etc.) and trading is of course quite speculative and on the edge of being plain gambling in most coins, esp. with small market caps.

That's why I think if you just want to put cash into a cryptocurrency and 'leave & forget about it' for a bunch of years, BTC is the right choice, even though short-term you might find something that outperforms BTC for a few months.

Reading backwards unto this thread and been curious on why you post such word towards bitcoins then looking at your post history seems you are spreading hate towards this community but I get it you want to promote your project and tell claim something to make it relevant to the one who can read your message but unfortunately we will not buy this kind of tactics since this such of hate words are been used by scammers to promote their scam coin so maybe try another thing and prove that your coin worth something.

Many claim that they are best already but all of them fail or became scam.

We all know that the bitcoin is the mother of all coins and mostly the other coins or the altcoins are just still dependent on the market of the bitcoin as you can see when the bitcoin pumps the altcoin pumps and vice versa but not all the coins are the same with this process. They are both volatile base on my experience I saw already the potential of the bitcoin but the altcoins take a lot of tests if this passes the market to become a trend or not.

Bitcoin vs Altcoin:-

Altcoins have a smaller investment market as compared to Bitcoin.Bitcoin is the most secure network whereas Altcoin is usually a lot more volatile and risky. Bitcoin has high volatility, transaction and fees can problem for many people whereas altcoins can provide cheaper and faster transactions.

this is a report on the crypto market globally and all Altcoins are only 6% ahead


In conclusion, investors are still very interested in bitcoin

Well said, I don't think the community will be so against altcoins if they're actually adding value to the market but that's not what's happening instead we're just seeing duplicates and inferior ones for that matter all over the market. I still believe we haven't seen the best of the altcoin market but it isn't any of the Defi crabs and NFT bullshit flooding the whole market.

Those are just distractions with the intentions of stealing your Bitcoin. Basically these projects are just duplicate of each other meaning they're just built for speculation purpose and nothing more. When that altcoins with motive of adding value to the community comes, they'll be welcomed like how the likes of ethereum was welcomed.

There's no doubting ethereum did play an important role in the adoption of the market but its role can't be compared to that of bitcoin. The stablecoin did also playing a role as now there's an alternative to fiats for securing our profit incase of market volatility.

Like ognasty said, diversification is the best if making money is involved, except you @op just wanna hold btc for btc sake, then that's a different topic, many top investors hold a lot of bitcoin and still invest in other altcoins, and this altcoins have brought in great returns just like btc if not more.
The thing is, you @op can invest in good altcoins for the short term and invest in bitcoin for the long term, this way, you benefit from both sides, a good idea is to from time to time put some of your altcoins profit in btc, this way, your btc holding for the long term is growing, you can even make or call it your retirement savings.

If BTC is the only crypto coin available I believe we will have less investors in crypto space today, people making big money from altcoins is why many people are so into altcoins, they know bitcoin is huge but bitcoin is high in price and they want another crypto coin that will be like BTC in future

You are right, there are tons of altcoins in existence but you should only focus on the top 15 of the altcoins that are currently listed on the market. It is too risky if you invest and purchase altcoins from new projects (pump and dump scheme). Try your best to focus on just 1-2 at the moment. Diversifying your portfolio may seem to be a good idea, but in an investment mechanism that is highly volatile, it is better to just focus on less than more.

Just remember that the price history is going to be the biggest factor here. Almost all of the top 15 altcoins increased their prices on the following years.


Obviously a troll, calling BTC useless without providing any concrete data or information on why it is supposed to be useless. The funny thing is, after saying that bitcoin is indeed useless, you subsequently promoted your own project with it.

OP, better avoid investing any coins from their project.

Bitcoin is useless. Nothing more than a tool for speculative idiots. Satshi who?  What is bitcoin backed by.  We are building a new stablecoin that will be 100% backed by dollars. A currency backed by the worlds largest economy. Unlike useless bitcoin. This is the future.  Reply for more info.

I always suggest to people that you don't always have to wait for buying opportunities. Because you don't know which is actually the buying opportunity, and when exactly it will come. The price that seems high to you today, maybe tomorrow that price will seem to be the buying opportunity. So I tell everyone not to wait for buying opportunities, to build the habit of buying bitcoin regularly, this will help you to buy on to the average price and it will be risk-free.


It is good that you love Bitcoin the most. But, sometimes altcoin gives much profit, Investing a portion of your money in altcoin is not a bad practice. But before picking altcoin keep caution, choose those altcoins that have a real-life utility like ETH, NEO, ADA. I don't prefer holding altcoin for long term, but there is no problem to hold a little while and fixed the profit when your target is filled.

You are right to doubt altcois. People are doing "research" by reading altcoin's marketing materials and shilled blogs or videos, instead of pulling some real data. The reality is, no one in real world cares about smart contracts and defi, there is no demand for it and they have too many drawbacks like security, lack of features, scalability, etc.; but this doesn't stop altcoin promoters to tell people that their smart-contract coins are the next big thing that will change the world. It's very easy to buy into this hype for a newbie who knows nothing about crypto, and these newbies tend to very quickly start thinking of themselves as "crypto experts" because a shitcoin that they bought 2 weeks ago is not up 54%. But in the long run it all ends very badly.

Bitcoin lays an important foundation because almost all altcoins price depend on Bitcoin price. VERY GOOD altcoins always get hope when the price of Bitcoin is rising because the market will be good for them all with influence of Bitcoin. But whenever the market is in red sea, Bitcoin drop value also all altcoins dump and keep dumping until bitcoin regain its standard.

Maybe that will work for some people, but we will have our own consideration to still hold or sell all of alt.
Maybe if you are not too late to sell your altcoin at a high price, that will be good for you as you can make a big profit and have bitcoin as your hold.
But I guess this time will be different than a few years ago since the bitcoin price increase so high and that can make altcoins will not get down too deep if the correction for bitcoin price comes.
The altcoin will have the chance to increase higher, so maybe that is why waiting can be a good solution for some people.

It is your money, OP. I had sold my Ethereum after I traded back then and just decided to do what you are planning to do which is go all-in solely in BTC and never regretted it since. This isn't an investment advice, and it just came from my experience. It play out differently into your side.

Though if you're really asking for a feedback, maybe keep something for yourself unless those altcoins you dumped aren't really needed immediately.

Bitcoin is king. Bitcoin is more stable than alt coins, the prices of alts are dependent on Bitcoin a crash in btc price results in crashes in alts and if bitcoin rises so those alts. But it's also a good idea to diversify one's portfolio for example I made more gains holding eth. Most alts are only good for scalping for short term gains 

Ethereum follows Bitcoin's movements look at the history of Bitcoin and Ethereum and you will see that when Bitcoin increases in price so does Ethereum and the same for the opposite market direction. All other altcoins are not worth investing in the only one that is the exception is Ethereum and like I say that follows the ups and downs of Bitcoin.

As what the above keep telling, OP should not dump all of the altcoins because diversification is still important. It is to minimize the risk of losing everything in one go. So it's better to hodl the remaining altcoins that you think has a better chance to gain profit in the future like Ethereum or BNB.

But it's not bad just to hold Bitcoin if that's what you wish for although, holding only one crypto won't be sustainable I think because what if Bitcoin price goes down then the altcoins price rises where do you think you would trade when you are only holding Bitcoin at the moment.

Keep DCAing with BTC but don't dump all altcoins you already have. I would probably keep ADA since I believe Cardano will beat Ethereum in the battle for smart contracts supremacy in a few years time. At least they are not rushing the deployment and then patch up problems with band aid solutions.

The problem with altcoins that go up in value (aka get pumped but smaller dumps) is that they are only increasing the size of their bubbles because none of them have any utilities in the real world we live in. Take the biggest pumped shitcoin called ETH for example. What problem does it solve in real world? What utility does it have? Nothing. It has been going up simply because it is easy to create "tokens" on this platform and then sell those tokens to idiots to raise money. This is not a real utility. ICO, IEO, STO, DEFI, ... these are the alternative names of the same scam and this kind of things won't last forever.
The longer these schemes last and the bigger their bubbles become, the worse their demise is going to affect the entire market. At some point it will simply be a catastrophe in the altcoin world that could set it back a decade.

OgNasty posted the right comment about this, just make sure you do not do with cryptocurrencies that have low marketcap, dealing with the ones like ETH and BNB is not a bad idea. It will be good to do your own research very well and know the best altcoins. I like bitcoin maximalists, but your most holdings can be in Bitcoin while only few on altcoins.

We all get it 😉 BTC can't do it alone and that's why many ALT keeps popping up, some are good and some are bad and we have top 10 ALTs too each and everyone of these projects have their own use cases

The fact is many newbies want something new, they don't look into top altcoins instead the hunt for the next ETH or next BNB which makes things more risky, diversity and doing research is the only tool they have left, also it's wise and smarter to invest only what you can afford to lose, for me BTC is the king still.

I worry for the future of crypto if there is no future with ALTs. BTC can't and won't hold all of crypto on its back. It just wasn't built up that way. That's where ALTs come in. Crypto started to get mass appeal when ETH and the likes came into the space a brought more variety of uses to the table.  I don't think every ALT is valuable, but I do think there is a place for those types of projects and if they are pushing the boundaries of crypto space then that's a good thing in the long run.

Waiting for better times doesn't always end up well and more often than not you will end up with having less if you stick to altcoins, at least in the long run. Back in 2018 I decided to do something similar to what OP is doing; I sold all my alts except ETH and put everything into BTC which proved to be a great decision. Majority of them I sold with the loss, but I would be at even bigger loss now if I decided to wait.


During bull everything looks great, but once we hit the bear, true nature of altcoins will be shown. If you want to sleep better and worry less, going all BTC is a pretty good idea. I did something similar few years ago, and I haven't regretted so far.

But still, if you dump your altcoin right now, your profit will not be too big because almost the altcoins price is down a lot and it is waiting for the next bull run that can happen this year or next year.
My advice is just waiting for more until the bull run comes and give you the chance to sell your altcoin at the highest price and, of course, sell your bitcoin to take profit and then you can wait for the other bear run that will comes after the bull run.
That will be better to do because you can make a big profit from the market situations and you can buy back bitcoin at a low price and invest your money in altcoin for a short term investment.
While I am sure, you still have the other money from the previous profit.

In the end, it really just comes down to your risk appetite. A good number of altcoins has a lot of room to grow price wise, while a huge majority of them is just going to go up temporarily and end up just failing miserably. Whereas bitcoin, probably lower potential price increase compared to other cryptocurrencies, but has the best risk:reward ratio in my opinion.

Focusing only on Bitcoin is a good option, especially if you think Bitcoin is the only coin that would survive after some time. If you are into long-term crypto investment, no doubt Bitcoin is the best coin you can DCA with. But if you are not that busy to do research and study fundamentals and have interest in acquiring trading skills, I guess it is not that bad to make use of top altcoins to increase your Bitcoin holdings. There's risk, though.

My investment method is to hold Bitcoin for a long time. I will also choose some altcoins (I will not put eggs in a basket). For the choice of altcoins, I prefer the DEFI sector, and I will not touch contracts , Use leverage, etc. My method is very simple. The profit rule I set is to rise 10 points to meet my psychological expectations, and then sell.

I wouldn't say it's prudent to dump altcoins and invest only in BTC.  Diversification is important always in investing.  Bitcoin is the King though, and if you are holding over the long term I can't think of a better coin to put your money in.  That being said, a little exposure to coins like ETH & BNB that can provide revenue through staking isn't a bad idea.  Coins that offer exposure to liquidity pools like CAKE & UNI are another great way to provide some revenue for your portfolio.  Additionally, you can use platforms like CoinEx to provide your own liquidity pair of coins you choose to deposit.

I guess my point is that crypto is full of cool stuff if you look around for it.  Holding is great, but remember to keep some coins to actually use as well.  If you're buying altcoins and not using them, that's when I'd be worried about their value going to zero.

Greetings,

I just finished reading the Bitcoin Standard and am seriously considering restructuring my crypto portfolio as a result (not solely as a result of the text, but due in large part to it--I have other reasons which revolve around a fear of the effects of gov't regulation on the market). Since late 2017 I have been faithfully DCAing into BTC and 5 other projects that I have been able to research and understand as best I can. I've always been somewhat troubled by the centralized nature of some of these ALTs (ETH, ADA, LINK, DOT, ATOM) relative to BTC, but I invested anyway believing that these particular projects will have a strong role to play in the spheres of smart contracts, DeFi and overall blockchain tech adoption in the economy, generally.

So my thinking is to dump my altcoin holdings for BTC and continue DCAing into BTC only; (also feeling a srong desire to become a node operator in order to do my small part to protect and nurture the network as an aside). Bitcoin was my first love in the world of cryptocurrencies back in 2017 when my brother told me about a somewhat obscure digital form of money trading for a price in the low 4-figures; I dove in immediately based off of his brief description of it to me and a few articles that I had read. Immediately I was drawn in because in my mind it represented an alternative (and a giant FU) to the only real game in town, namely the almighty US dollar which has been in a state of decay for decades as a result of mismanagement. Over the years I have researched further which has only served to reinforce my belief in BTC and what the network stands for. Truly, we are all privileged to be living in a time where such a revolutionary concept has been gifted to humanity.

As for the plethora of altcoins out there, and, in particular, the few that I own, I worry about the long-term future of their viability. At the time of this writing, it seems as if the sky is the limit and these projects are not only growing, but here to stay. However, things aren't always as they seem and I'm starting to wonder if it may be more prudent to dump and invest solely in BTC which I feel provides the most benefit to society and potentially has the most durability.

 Anyways, any feedback is appreciated. Call me a crazy bitcoin maximalist, tell me I'm making the best decision possible or anything in between