Lurker and first time poster here and glad to have read some views of people in the longterm BTC investor circles.
I would like to throw out some of my views as I have mostly played around in the altcoin market and have analysed slightly the conditions of a "successful" altcoin from a miners perspective to a traders one.
The critic is solely mine and opinionated , I dont want to start any kind of troll war of some sorts in a respective thread.
The POS/Anon fad and hype is one of the most common amongst the altcoins with some examples below of why some people invest :
Silk Coin : "Nice" GUI Wallet
XC : Cut Supply During POW - Xnodes Anon Feature - Dev
Crypt : Whitepaper - Mindfox Anon Dev - Low Supply -P2P Anon
*DRK : Longterm Development - Anon - Masternodes - Preannouncements - Fanboyism
BC : Multipool - DEV - Community
Doge : Community
*Monero : Charts - Algo - Well Known Devs Involved - Hero Members - Ringsignatures - New Algo - Non Bitcoin based
Cloak : Logo Contest - Anon
Cinni : Messaging - Anon
Veri : POS Interest - SMS - Promotions - Veribit
Voot :VootMarket - Supply Cut
Minerals : Fair Distribution
Myriad : Multiple Algorithms to mine the coin
RZR : TOR Anon
All the coins have one purpose (as per devs and community) to get to a level or surpass LTC and maybe BTC with their innovations sometime in the future. (Moon as they call it)
Something that is clearly visible in the altcoin world is miners and traders "jumping" from coin to coin from XYZCoin -> BTC -> Fiat.
Everything in the altcoin world evolves around promised features- preannouncements and annoucements (buy on the rumour sell on the news theory for traders)
Pump and dump groups multiply the effect but then leave the coin to die after taking profits. Altcoiners have a very small timeframe for long term investments and are usual emotionally affected by the price.
The current market is slightly different these past few weeks due to the uncertainty of the price of BTC (Silk Road auction) and the summer slow down season.
*DRK is slightly different to other alts due to being one of the first so called anon coins (P&D , preannouncements etc etc are still visible with a slightly higher effect aswell as prolonged timeframe)
*XMR got me fascinated crossposting below from Monero thread
With current mining difficulty anything under 0.005BTC is a bargain, even though the emission curve will have a shortterm effect on the price.
The shortterm affect might rapidly change when the GUI wallet is released causing panic buys after understanding the technology and effort behind Monero with a tenfold difficulty rise and new investors.
Positions : 40% BTC - 30 % XMR - 15% DRK - 15% Altcoins (Or as I call them Shitcoins)
Edited - ringnodes changed to ringsignatures