Arguing about altcoin's exchange rates is meaningless - just watch the historic rates of LTC, maybe the oldest altcoin.
For a long time everybody always said it's legitimacy is because when BTC has some trouble LTC would come to replace it

I guess those days are over now, the exchange rate is almost at an ATH

Anyways, alts will soon leave the place to the cryptocurrency with the dominant technology and market cap, so it's useless arguing as you said. Investors, minners, users traders just let the market decide. At the same, as a trader I make money scalping, edging, holding, shorting, longing and whatnot..... but who cares, everyone's doing what he's best at I guess, trying to make money in this business, but then again, who cares?