The Altcoins boom is there for anyone to see. There are now hundreds of known altcoins, and this number is ever increasing. This phenomenon is even being compared to the tulip mania that happened in 17th century Netherlands, when contract prices for tulip bulbs reached extraordinarily high levels, creating a bubble that suddenly collapsed. For this reason, some people are worried and are trying to understand if it is a good thing for the cryptocurrencies in general and, more specifically, if it is a good thing for Bitcoin itself.
In an (utopic) ideal situation there would only be a single honest currency in circulation, a unit of account standard adopted everywhere to translate the values of services and goods for the convenience of worldwide trades. This is because it is believed that the utility of a medium of exchange would decrease with the competition of other media of exchange, for being mutually exclusive. But the thing is that the world has never been able to achieve such a perfect single currency system. Since men discovered money and was able to overcome direct barter, there were always different coexisting means of exchange. Once we had gold as the standard to all the different national currencies. The gold standard seem to have given some integrity to the world economy, but it limited the State so much that the politicians have simply decided to abandon it. So the fiat, legal tender currency has become a rule, leaving governments free to create money out of thin air in a wide adoption of Gresham's Law according to which bad money drives out good.
But now we have got this very elegant solution of the cryptocurrencies. A new technology bringing good money back to the competition. And this is exactly another aspect that is very important to be taken into account here: more than just a currency, Bitcoin is also a technology, and just like in any technological progress, free competition is necessary, and a "natural selection" is more than healthy. After all, technologies come and go at a rapid pace, and the eventual artificial imposition of any exclusivity, ignoring and excluding all other solutions, would certainly lead to an impairment, a weakening of the whole system. Such an act of over protection would be no more than an irrational and blind restriction to new and different ideas that otherwise, in a free environment, would flourish and develop for the benefit of all.
No one can deny that it is impossible to completely avoid risks. A blockchain and network can eventually fail. It can receive attacks for example, and having some kind of "backup" is a wise decision. In this situation it is clearly convenient to have three or four main cryptocurrencies, with their different blockchains running in paralel, in order to "spread" the risk of eventual failures. So, instead of having all the investments in a single blockchain, one would hold two or three different cryptocoins in his portfolio.
And the fact that a couple of main cryptocurrencies will be dominant does not exclude eventual specialised minor altcoins to exist, because different groups or communities may still use their own altcoins in their own internal transactions, and only use the main dominant cryptocurrencies when dealing with other groups, or with people from outside the community.
There's a brave new world being born. Free use will be enough to filter the good Altcoins by its qualities, and to promote the necessary evolutions. This selection is under the responsibility of each one of us.
There remains no doubt that Bitcoin has brought a new paradigm. It was built with freedom, and it should never waive freedom. That's the only way for the cryptocurrencies to become increasingly stronger for worldwide benefits.
Let's welcome technology with freedom and responsibility.
