Bitcoin vs Altcoin: Where to Invest? – Guide For Beginners

Knowing where to invest your money is more important than investing it. Bitcoin is one of the famous cryptocurrency which most of them have heard about. Apart from Bitcoin, you can also invest in Alternative coins such as Litecoin, Feathercoin, Dogecoin, Novacoin, Ethereum, Factom, and Ripple etc. Altcoin use the blockchain technology and solves a lot of problems faced in the real world.

The cryptocurrency exchanges use to show the value of Altcoin in Bitcoin, but the actual value of them happens in dollars. So if you buy a Bitcoin at $2700 and invest it in an Altcoin, you’ll get Altcoin worth $2700 and not worth 1 BTC. If in future even if the value of Bitcoin falls or increase, you don’t have to worry, because the actual value of Altcoin happens in dollars.

To get an Altcoin, you should first buy a Bitcoin and then get the BTC converted into an Altcoin of your choice. Since we use Bitcoins to buy Altcoin, a lot of people are worried, what if BTC falls down tomorrow? Will the value of the coins also fall? The answer to such questions is “NO”. The price of BTC won’t affect the value of the altcoins, it is because BTC is just a medium of purchase, while the real value is in USD.

Bitcoin vs Altcoin

Note: When you invest in Cryptocurrencies, always invest the amount you are ready to lose. There is a huge fluctuation on daily basis. One day you might be the King and the other day you won’t be near to a beggar, yes that happens. Bitcoin fell from $34 to $1 to reach $100 in 2011. You must invest only if you are ready to lose the money. On the other hand, you can make 2 times, 5 times, 100 times profit for the risk you bear.

Coming to Bitcoin vs Altcoin, Investing in Bitcoin is a safer option, but the growth in Altcoin is tremendous and quick. There are many Altcoin which grew around 1000% in 8 months. With such profit, risk follows. While Altcoin is riskier when compared to Bitcoin. Bitcoin has a stable growth & drop, but Altcoin growth and drop is exponential.

Real Life Instance Based on Statistics

Just for an instance, the current value of Bitcoin is $2700 in July 2017, after investing for a year the value of Bitcoin may increase up to $10000 (which is just 400%). While the value of Ethereum (Altcoin) was just $10 in Feb 2017 and has reached whopping $380 in June 2017 (which is 3500%). In the case of Altcoin, the wait time would be less and there are chances of higher profits. After reaching the heights at $380, ETH as on 30th July 2017 is $195 (which is falling by 50%), such falls won’t be seen with BTC.

If you had invested on Bitcoins then it would give good returns but after some waiting. But other crypto currencies can find a better growth in a short duration. When you invest on invest on other crypto currency you can prefer more quantity of it at a lesser price.

Our Catch on Bitcoin vs Altcoin Investment

For example, For $2500 you can purchase 1 Bitcoin, while for $2500 you invest on 12 Ethereum. If the price of 1 Ethereum hikes by $25 dollars you would be making $250 easily. If you invest on other crypto currency the profit margin can be higher when compared to Bitcoin. An Altcoin costing $2 may rise by just $1 in a week, imagine you had a quantity of 10000, you would be making such huge profit.

While you invest $10k on Bitcoin it would rise by $300 after a year, BTC has a better stability rate when compared to other crypto currencies. On BTC you can invest and leave it for a while, which does not require day to day monitoring while the value of Altcoin change every single hour, day. The market may go upside down in just a week. You need to analyze very well in you are going to invest on Altcoin. While waiting with patience also counts many a time, most of the instance the price picks up and you may be profitable.

Whichever crypto currency you invest there is risk involved. You can make an analysis looking at the growth and fall graph which would help you predict the best time for investment or encashment. This analysis from your side matters a lot but at the end, either you would make hefty benefit or end up losing everything. Apart from this luck should be on your side, even great economists and analysts go wrong sometimes.

Why People Buy Altcoins Instead of Bitcoins

Mostly, people get into altcoins as a way to hedge against Bitcoin. Here are some common reasons for someone to hedge with altcoins:

Bitcoin may have some catastrophic failing that the altcoin is not subject to.
An altcoin may have some future utility that is significantly better than Bitcoin allowing the altcoin to overtake Bitcoin.
Even if Bitcoin continues to be the most valuable cryptocurrency, there may be room for altcoins to serve some other niche and hence may not be bad bets in their own right.

What Makes Bitcoin Different From AltCoin

The main advantages of Bitcoin are network effect and proven security. Both are nearly insurmountable advantages.

• Bitcoin has a proven usage case as a store of value. It’s instructive that most coins try to carve out some differentiation based on much smaller use cases, such as prediction markets, buying things completely anonymously or adding a decentralized name server.
• Bitcoin has a large lead as a store of value over every altcoin in having existed 8 years without failure. The security of Bitcoin has been proven far more than its much younger counterparts with usage by almost every metric exceeding that of altcoins.
• Further, Bitcoin is more accessible, with more exchanges, more merchants, more software and more hardware that support it. Bitcoin is far more liquid, with much larger volumes than every altcoin. Bitcoin has the largest developer ecosystem with more software and more implementations than any altcoin. Bitcoin has the most entrepreneurs creating companies around it with a lot of intellect, dedication and creativity going toward making it more useful.
• When you compete with Bitcoin, not only are you competing with its much larger user base, development team and mining operation, but you’re also competing against the very large ecosystem of startups, open source projects and entrepreneurs.

Conclusion : 

You need to plan and decide properly before you go for such investments. As I said earlier you can invest on Bitcoin which is less risky and long waiting time, or you can prefer Altcoin with high risks, less waiting time and high profits. Stocks, Shares, Crypto currencies, margin trading are the best ways to make a profit but it’s not guaranteed every time. If you are ready to face loses or can recover back then invest on them. Else find a better way of investment such as mutual funds, fixed deposits etc.