All you need to know is one coin: Bitcoin

Ignore the rest

Good question. There are a few main things that make so many cryptos different from Bitcoin.

1. Network Influence: many of the coins out there (ether, doge, solona, etc.) have a small group of developers that can change the protocol in dramatic ways whenever they want. For example, in Ethereum, there is a set of developers that have regularly changed the chain history and consencous rules in dramatic ways to reverse hacks and push certain agendas. None of this is possible with Bitcoin, as there is no central group of devs.

2. ICOs: many coins have an initial coin offering that gives a large portion of the coins to an initial set of VC funders, giving them great control over the network. This did not happen with Bitcoin.

3. Developer subsidies: there are a lot of coins that give devs, marketers, etc. a built in on chain reward. This gives an inside group of people an income stream that no one else is even open to accessing, meaning the network does not possess equality of permission. Again, Bitcoin does not have this trait.

Here are the articles I've already written to explain the difference between Bitcoin and crypto so far already. After reading all of that, do you still have a question?

Roblox thought experiment Bitcoin vs Crypto

If I'm trading in gold and thousands of other people are trading in seashells, do I care?

To me, altcoins are trying to pretend to be a combination of a local fiat currency, building a community around them that is their tax base, but sell it to people as if they are equity holders in a protocol that can achieve a certain case case and if that use case if valuable that value will accrue into the token and the distribute to the community

Its the same with fiat currencies, my government tells me they know how best to deploy the capital they take from me with the promise of future value generation

The issue with these alts are they are overfunded projects that have rewarded vcs and builders before they even built anything so what is the incentive to build something valubale? You already got paid, sure you can drag it out a little longer, but the vast majority of your profits come in the early dumping of your premine token

Even if an altcoin does have a valuable use case, it doesn't have the network effect, liquidity and user base of bitcoin, all their users are astroturfed through marketing and unsustainable incentives. Also their use case could eventually get ported to a Bitcoin app or an L2 if the market really wants it

Altcoins are expensive testnets and more people will figure this out as time goes on

Conventional currency does have inflation caused by printing money.

Gold has less inflation than conventional currency because it's not created as fast. If we included fools gold in with actual gold, then gold would be inflating much faster. But we dont include fools gold in with actual gold, cause we're smart and we aren't easily fooled.

Bitcoin has less inflation than conventional currency because its' not created as fast. If we included crypto currency in with actual bitcoin, then bitcoin would be inflating much faster. But we dont include cryptocurrency in with actual bitcoin, cause we're smart and we aren't easily fooled.

Fiat currencies are shitcoins backed up by a powerful network effect (the government gun). Shitcoins will always exist where there is a local network effect to back them up (government, Twitter, Apple, Meta, etc), but the free market will still prefer bitcoin in the long term.

boom! now you are almost getting the bitcoin maximalism! keep going to that direction.

The difference is the answer to this question:

If I change a few lines in the bitcoin code and thus create a new coin, would you buy my coin instead of just bitcoin?

All of them are experimenting with different technologies, principles, and models of decentralization that crumble in comparison to the standard Bitcoin sets.

Those other currencies will probably be as good as monopoly money is for storing value over the long term.