Which altcoins and why

At the first Bitcoin conference I ever attended, which took place in San Jose in 2013, I encountered Bitcoin bigotry. ASIC mining had begun, and those mining on home computers were switching to Litecoin. Although the altcoin mania was in full bloom, I was at a Bitcoin conference, and it was clear that many long-time bitcoin holders perceived altcoins as a threat. For them, it was all about the network effect, and any service poaching from the Bitcoin user base was not viewed favorably.
Fast forward two years, and I too am weary of most altcoins. Not because I don’t like altcoins, but because there are just too #$@*! many. Spending much of the day just keeping up with Bitcoin developments, I find it difficult to keep track of new altcoins.
Bitcoin is the king, but altcoins deserve credit for three reasons
Altcoins allow for experimentation in proof-of-work mining algorithms, proof-of-stake security algorithms, graphical interfaces, and other network parameters, such as inflation and deflation rates, initial distribution models, premine percentages, distribution schemes, difficulty adjustment algorithms, block sizes, block speeds, API extensions, and decentralized trading platforms. These experiments are wide ranging. Even extreme choices teach us something about where the limits of coin parameters may lie. A diverse exploration of parameter choices now will lead to optimized cryptocurrencies later. I, along with my nation’s founders, believe in financial privacy, and altcoins can help. Bitcoin faces the privacy implications of a fully visible transaction log, existing forever, with transactions and addresses permanently recorded. Several altcoins have sought to address this issue. Without great care, your addresses can be linked together and your privacy lost. The transactions will be permanently recorded like an unfortunately tagged, public Facebook photo.

This post was published at Lets Talk Bitcoin on February 19th, 2015.