If one understands the technology and the use case involved, it's less of a coin flip. Still risky yes, but at least more calculated risk-taking.
Bitcoin, to me, doesn't serve as a cryptocurrency, more as a crypto asset, akin to digital gold or art. As for the alt-coins I won't bother with the vast majority of them, but Ethereum/ether has promising use cases, growing institutional adoption and, together with bitcoin, currently command the strongest network effects, as reddevil mentioned upthread.