Looks like Elite and USB were both scams and possibly concealcoin as well. What does this do to the potential of this place? I agree that many new coins are most profitable at their launch but I don't really want to be involved in mining coins that are full on scams designed to profit the devs at the expense of everyone else. Thoughts?
The only thing that makes it possible to earn higher rewards in altcoins than in other industries is the higher risk involved. If there were zero scams, there would be very minimal profit potential. If you're familiar with pink sheets, I view altcoins very similarly - except they have even higher risk/reward potential. You can make literally thousands of percent in profit, or you can also lose 99.9999%, on any given coin in very short amounts of time.
The only real solution on an individual level is to diversify. I've described this as my own personal strategy many times here, but I'll repeat it for those who may have missed it previously: Don't put all your hope/money/hashrate into one coin. Sell some of your position in a coin whenever you can realize some profit to cover your expenses. Try to discipline yourself to stagger any buys and sells - perhaps ~10-30% at a time. You won't get the absolute maximum return on any given coin, but you should be able to increase your average profit and reduce losses by following that strategy.
