There are also losses in holdings if one holds altcoins without holding bitcoins. Because it can be said that Bitcoin will never be a scam but altcoins are constantly being scammed. So if one wants to hold for long term then Bitcoin is better. and holds Bitcoin long term they definitely profit but they have to have a target to hold Bitcoin until they reach their desired profit. A long-term hold does not mean a fixed period of time like a month, two months or a year. A long-term hold means folding until the target is crossed. So if one does not reach his desired profit even after holding for six months or one year then one should not panic then it cannot be called a long term hold either.
I would agree with you that holding any other coin other than bitcoin in long term holding has more chance of loss. All the alternatives I have hod in my life are now many times below the investment price. At the end of the day none of these could show me any profit. I think investing in alternative coins is only good for short term trading. For long-term trading, it is better to choose Bitcoin with your eyes closed. In this case, you don't have to worry much about the security of your fund, just have some fundamental knowledge. But here too it is better to follow a DCA method to avoid risk.
Bitcoin itself also had a fair share of the fall, imagine your asset depreciating about 5 times its ATH value, that is not a good thing as well. Nonetheless, instead for me to condemn the alternative coins for Bitcoin, I would rather advise that one should not just dabble into what they do not know or understand very well, experience is the key here and smartness in investment handling would help the HODLer so well.
But first, one must get acquainted with the project they are dealing with, they must know the history of the coin/token (if not new), the founder, the community base, the objective, the usefulness in the crypto space and many more. Mind you, the project that is positive in most of those points is not a bad project per se. Yet, the person should still proceed to be speculative, and this is applicable to Bitcoin as well. You don't just entirely trust any asset to perform forever as a true investor, you have doubts and you work rightly to outsmart the doubts and what you didn't plan for. This is where speculations come from, you don't just HODL blindly, you speculate and use regular analysis to back it up. Also, you only deal with long-term speculation in this regard since it's not a short-term investment. Now, the moment you see the market deviating from the bullish trend and having a bearish reversal on the larger timeframes of the technical chart, that is the time you know you are overstaying your welcome by continuing to hold that asset.
I repeat, Bitcoin inclusive. But you may buy back when a bullish trend is reactivated.
