Authored by Oliver Wasser from www.altcoinspeculation.com

Many people look at the price of Bitcoin (currently around $850 a coin), and instantly shy away from getting involved in crypto currencies. What they don’t see and what is less publicized is the booming number of new Alternative Crypto coins (Altcoins), which are now appearing on a daily basis. These coins, many of which are priced at less than $0.01, may one day be worth thousands of times more in value, and thus represent a high risk, high reward speculation for investors, in a world where most shares, housing and asset prices have reached saturated levels.

Bitcoin is naturally the king of crypto currencies

More and more businesses and services have jumped on board the bandwagon, to receive Bitcoin payments from a growing army of users, both in the online world and offline, as these two recent articles can testify:

In First Day With Bitcoin, Overstock Does $126,000 in Sales:

http://www.wired.com/business/2014/01/overstock-bitcoin-sales/

NYC Newsstand Chooses Bitcoin Over Credit Cards:

http://www.coindesk.com/nyc-newsstand-bitcoin-credit-cards/

Although governments worldwide are still scratching their heads on how to regulate Crypto currency, those who fear that they are a bubble or will soon disappear, do not fully appreciate that those involved in this new field of Internet enabled finance, are some of the cleverest and most knowledgeable techies on the planet. Mixed in with them are political bank reformists, lawyers and financial speculators. Most of these are diehard believers, almost like a new religion, who will continue to work on this new technology, no matter what happens to the price, or what some governments attempt to do. In short, Crypto currencies are here to stay.

For a list of some of the biggest Crypto currencies, with their market caps, and prices, check out: http://coinmarketcap.com/

For the rest of the Alt Coins check: http://com-http.us/ and: https://cryptocointalk.com/forum/358-cryptocoins-cryptocurrencies/

From these lists you will notice some bizarrely named coins, and find all manner of techno-graphic community. Some are large with dedicated developers and ardent followers. Other coins may well have been created yesterday, and punted out into the world in the hopes of making its creator quickly rich.

How did it come to this? Are these coins money, currency, complimentary currency? These questions are debated endlessly in more detail elsewhere. Ultimately the people creating these coins are pretty similar to you or I. They understand that banks create money for nothing, they understand that their cash in the wallet is paper fiat, and they understand that the high finance world of wall street types, is a rigged game where the big players get away with criminal activities, and the small investors often get screwed. So to put it simply, many have decided; ‘well now I to, shall create my own money’, a mathematically certified computer currency, and many more buyers are willing to impart their fiat out of the old banking system and into these new crypto coins.

These crypto coins will not replace cash or national currencies, rather they are complimentary to them. There is room within our societies for such complementary currency, and as they cannot be duplicated they work better than paper notes or sea shells. As well as this, they can also be sent almost instantly worldwide from your computer to another across the planet, with no middleman or fee needed.

Currently navigating these Alt Coins can be a bit of a minefield. As this process of coin creation is naturally decentralized, over time, we could imagine that there will be thousands upon thousands of Crypto Currency Coins. If that proves to pass, the large majority of coins may forever be priced close to $0, however some of these currencies will fetch $0.10, $1, $10, or like Bitcoin much much more.

I won’t profess to know which coins will be worth more in the long run, perhaps picking up a basket of different coins at random, will do you no worse than days of thorough analysis. However as a general guide, if you can find a coin which has a good community of supporters, dedicated developers and perhaps a good niche over some of its competitors then that coin should do well long term.

The Crypto currency scene really is the wild west of finance

Bitcoins is not currently for the feint hearted, however over time, it should become more and more user friendly. The Techies I have spoken to, who work at the heart of this new movement, believe we have just scratched the surface of the cryptographic potential. In time, this decentralized network of users and actors, may well change the face of finance forever. Perhaps not a moment to soon.

I’ll leave you with some comedy by Michael Connell “Why you need to start using Bitcoin”: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKQKEi2-0Ws

You are welcome to download some free reports from my website www.altcoinspeculation.com