Bitcoin Forum

The Alternate Cryptocurrencies sub-forum has been flooded with all these ridiculous novelty coins. I think Alternate Cryptocurrency forum should be dedicated to cryptocurrencies that actually try to be something more than a joke. Moving all novelty coins to their own forum would clean up the place a lot (most posts are about novelty coins or giveaways, pools, etc. for those coins) and leave more room for actual cryptocurrencies (even though a lot of them are scams but that's a bit harder to fix). Alternate cryptocurrencies are going to become an even bigger joke and the whole reputation of bitcoin and the bitcoin community will also suffer from it if the separation between obvious novelty coins and alternate cryptocurrencies is done.

And I feel that all non-bitcoins should be removed from these forums!

Look at your "unread posts since last visit" and see half of the page is Alternate Cryptocurrencies
This is the Bitcointalk forums!

True, but alternate cryptocurrencies don't get in the way of bitcoin discussion in any way since it keeps to its own sub-forum. Novelty coins on the other hand do get in the way of regular cryptocurrencies. As long as everything has its own sub-forum that doesn't leak, it's good to have a single central for all cryptocurrency discussion.

How do you tell the difference between a novelty-coin and an alt-coin?  To me they're pretty much the same thing except for maybe Litecoin and Namecoin.

Well. Even though I'd like to say that most altcoins are either stupid or novelty coins, I think the sub-forum should be enforced on coins that are clearly for novelty purposes. DOGE Dogecoin is a perfect example and it alone is taking so much space in the forum.

That goes back to the question, What makes a coin a novelty coin? Who would be the one to make the decision whether or not a coin is legitimate or not? Thats a position that no one can make, if you think a coin is a novelty coin, great. Others dont.

I agree that that goes to most altcoins, but a coin based off of an internet meme is clearly a novelty coin. I mean. The coin is based entirely on a joke. If that's not novelty, then I don't know what is. Same for Bernankoin. The coin is clearly satire as the dev would admit. Or KittehCoin. Another joke/meme coin. I get that with most coins the line is very unclear but you have to admit that these are very intended for novelty and fun. And ever since DOGE there has been lots of novelty coins popping out. They're taking lots of space from other alternate crypto. Altcoins already have a bad reputation but this is going even as far to make them into an actual joke. The biggest reason why I think a sub-forum is needed for these coins is that they can be seen as separate from other crypto (even though I think most of the "other crypto" is borderline novelty too). Altcoins have been pretty bad this year but now they're even worse and if this continues (which I believe will if nothing is done about it), they'll become even worse. This whole easy-going and fun mentality is also giving lots of room for more scamming and market manipulation. I'm not asking to make a sub-forum for whatever coins I think are bad, but for the coins that anyone can clearly see as novelty. If a coin is purely built around a joke, internet meme or satire then it is for novelty purposes. Even if it expands to getting traded and all, as long as it's main purpose and status remains around the joke, then it's still a non-serious coin, even if it makes serious profit for certain pumpers and lucky bystanders.

You can do that easily by splitting the alt section into 3:

-Namecoin
-Litecoin
-Other.

Why bother separating garbage from junk?

What about a joke coin with a higher market cap than Bitcoin? Someone was messing around and bought fractions of Dogecoins for something like $400 each, so the market caps were showing $3 Trillion USD. Even with that sort of fluke, whether its a joke or not, there is serious money being held in doge, which again brings use back to, how do you completely detirmine if a coin is a novelty or not. If there was Stupidcoin, but it had a new POW system, the coins were $1000 per coin, and had a huge userbase, would it still be considered a novelty coin?

Theres just no way to enforce a split between alt coins and novelty coins. Its completely up to ones own opinion.


That is opinion as well, what makes Litecoin or Namecoin special? Sure they are amongst the oldest alt coins, but the same goes with Solidcoin/Microcash, Peercoin, Freicoin, Yacoin, and a plethera of other slightly newer coins.


I decided a long time ago that I would not be the judge of a coins validity. If its a good idea, people will use it, if its a stupid coin, it will die. No more fair way than that. As long as the creator isn't putting malware into the wallet, I don't care if someone decides to make SUPERULTRABESTCOIN or anything else.

Namecoin has the alternative dns thingy behind , so it has something special compared to any other coin.

Until somebody comes with something totally new rather than messing with block reward/time and it proves it works , I consider all the alts as day trading activity.

Namecoin has the alternative dns thing which is incredibly difficult to set up, and rather impractical, so no one uses them to buy .bit addresses.  A lot of coins have special features, Litecoin was the first to use Scrypt, Solidcoin I believe was the earliest alt coin including a few different features, such as block signing nodes (didn't go over so well). Peercoin was the first Proof of Stake coin iirc, Primecoin uses a completely different algorithm based on prime number chains. Rucoin used a dual blockchain system, allowing you to mine Scrypt or Sha, other coins tinkered with the feasibility of faster confirmations, different block sizes, etc. Whether people believe that Alt Coins have a future vs Bitcoin, or whether they will all be supersceded, its undeniable that Alt Coins have done tremendously in terms of research and exploring the bounds of Crypto Currencies.

Thats why I find that no alt coins are stupid, or novelty coins. Dogecoin in particular will test whether Crypto Currencies derive their value solely by being a mathmatically secure form of barter, or whether people can make coins with buzzwords in them for advertising, and gain popularity, value, and therefor usefulness from there.

If I will ever try to teach my mom about how to use a wallet , I'll end up in a mental facility before I manage to teach her.
So , from my point of view you can't really consider something being difficult unless you also take into account what drives you to use that thing.

Isn't bitcoin 10 times harder to use than PP ? But there is some incentive to do that , and with tpb(piratebay) domains falling one after other .... I think you get my point.It won't be as harder in the future to set the the .bit dns up , considering the benefits.

Also , I specifically said in my post "prove that it works" regarding to alt coins. Because when speaking about their features , you have used past tense for most of them.

Very true, I've had nothing but resistance trying to teach people about Bitcoin, I agree it has a pretty steep learning curve, and if you aren't technically savvy coming in, you have little to no hope. However, its gotten a lot more user friendly in the last years.

Using a .bit domain requires even technically savvy people to jump through hoops, so I'd say it will be a while before they are used. As far as my use of past tense, some it it may have been unintentional, as I was speaking out how they were made in the past. Rucoin has kind of disappeared, as well as Solidcoin, but Litecoin's use of Scrypt has been rather important, Primecoin's use of other hashing algorithms has also been important, as it provides options should any of the existing hashing algorithms be cracked, making it necessary for existing coins to jump to a different hashing algorithm. The proof of stake concept is an interesting one as well with real applications possible, and I believe the concept of Colored Coins was thought of during Alt Coin research, which has been debated thoroughly whether or not it should or could be implemented into the Bitcoin protocol.

It's time create Altcoin-Subforum for "Giveaways".
Even for in altcoins interested people its impossible to read, because of 100.000 giveaway-threads.


I think you can ignore subforums (in your case the altcoin forum) from this view/list.
Its in your forum settings, look around.

On this note, though, perhaps having some sort of a breakdown based on PoW/PoS would be a decent way to categorize them?

Alternate Cryptocurrencies
* Proof-of-Work only
** SHA256-based
** Scrypt-based
** Other
* Proof-of-Stake also
** SHA256-based
** Scrypt-based
** Other

Would this be a determinative classification system? I don't even know if there are Proof-of-Stake Scrypt-based coins, but this would be a way to categorize them without classifying them or strictly picking winners or losers...

As others have said, who decides what a novelty or shitcoin etc is?. This is a Bitcoin forum, and the alt currency section is fine for all the others. Yeah, it's a mess, but you don't have to go in there if you don't want, or only have to subscribe or check threads of coins that you're interested in.

I guess you people are right. But I still believe a separation of some kind would be good to clean up the forum. Like a sub-forum for coin promotion and services. Most posts on alternate cryptocurrencies is about services for a specific altcoin (or a set of altcoins) instead of discussion of an altcoin or altcoins in general. If all the pool threads and giveaway threads were moved to another sub-forum, it would clear up space in the forum for discussion about altcoins and announcement threads. Even bitcoin is cut into several sub-forums based on what kind of discussion it is, so why not altcoins? The forum is getting pretty filled with mostly generic giveaways and service promotion. I still think novelty coins should be separated, but I guess the biggest practical problem right now on the forum and why I would suggest cleaning it is because it's getting filled with generic promotion threads, leaving little room for other altcoin discussion. Imagine if bitcoin was all in one sub-forum.

That is entirely the point of having a single altcoin section. If it's sufficiently inconvienient to discuss altcoins here maybe they'll move to their own forum.

Tenebrix was the first to use scrypt, then Fairbrix, and then Litecoin.

I think bothering to create their own forum is too much work for some of these altcoin developers. And all these altcoin forums are usually dead anyway. Even Litcoin's forum gets hardly any activity. 

I consider that most of them are coming here because of the already established forum ,with lots of members looking for some quick cash from mining , targeted customers I would say.
If they start their own forum , it will take them a few years to gain the popularity they can achieve here with 10 shills and 2 giveaways from their premined coins.

Even though Dogecoin has its own site and apparently "incredible active community", I think the main development or help is dished out via the Dogecoin thread in Alt Currencies here, so that's why we get all these stupid newbs posting their nonsense to get out of newbie jail so they can ask their stupid questions in that forum.

Are you sure? I remember mining Tenebrix in terms of Megahash.

*Edit* Nope, you are right, Tenebrix was Sept 25th 2011, Fairbrix was Oct 2nd 2011, and Litecoin was Oct 9th 2011, and yes they are all scrypt.


Anyway, yeah subforums would be lovely, but I don't think we are going to get them. I've lost count of how many times its been asked for.


And yes,


That is the point of not adding features to the Alt Coin section. If you want a place to discuss your coin in depth, to its own forum you should go.

Maybe when new users create an account on this forum the altcoin area should be added to their ignore board list by default, so they have to opt in to see it.

Nope, their most active spot is /r/dogecoin with user count exceeding /r/litecoin.



...In the end, everyone will subconsciously find flaws in the coin they don't hold in large numbers.


It's like a newbie (student) to the world of crypto, comes to BTCtalk (head university) and it opens a whole world in front of them, they can choose their own coin (subject). Unlike coin specific forums.

That's the beauty of Bitcointalk, it's the epicentre of crypto world.

I second that.  Maybe another subforum for Altcoin services too.

I trade 1 Satoshi for all the posters in r/dogecoin.
Sometimes quality is needed before quantity.

Only namecoin should be allowed period

Sorry, I should have used this topic instead of created my own --

I think, even though this is a bitcoin forum first, we have to recognize two things:
1) Altcoins MUST start and maintain a thread here, or they are considered shady
2) Altcoins need Bitcoin, and Bitcoin needs altcoins. Altcoins are worthless without bitcoin, and Bitcoin's growth is stunted without altcoins.

Right now the altcoin area is a complete cesspool disaster, and I feel somewhat responsible (sorry...), so I think it would be good to at least have a subforum for, say, giveaways. And maybe speculation or something like that.

Please explain?

Did you have a personal discussion with mister Bitcoin and he told you that?
The only argument I have ever seen about the alt is that they increase popularity of cryptos in general. But this sometimes is a double edge sword.

From being called a ponzi scheme by a few to being called a joke by half of the world , I prefer the ponzi label for cryptos.

That's what's called a wish fulfilment fantasy.

No
Be thankful for even having an altcoin forum

http://th683.photobucket.com/albums/vv195/killervirus57/th_wutthefamireading.jpg

I'm sad to say it but dogcoin did bring Bitcoin to the attention of many many new people

To whose Bitcoin is a joke now
Great, Bitcoin really needed that

Or switched from dog because dog was the joke

I may be wrong (I'd like to) but I don't think it's what happens

A lot of them have now moved on to Catcoin and Kittehcoin. Why? I have no idea.

That's easy. People in the Internet love cats more than dogs.

I'm a person on the internet and I prefer dogs.

There's a Ron Paul coin now: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=389070.0

http://static2.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20120818015903/masseffect/images/7/7e/I-dont-want-to-live-on-this-planet-anymore.jpg

If it were me, I'd go for:

Alternate Cryptocurrencies
/ New Coin Launches
/ Giveaways
/ Other Discussion

Since those seem to be the main varieties of topic and it would put them all in the same place. 

If a thread I replied to 4 hours ago is already on page 6, then it's an incredibly busy forum and could do with being spread out a bit.

Like to completely separate forums?  ;D

Who's to say what's a novelty coin and what isn't though?

Who's to separate bitcoin general, politics/society, and off-topic? It would be a judgment call. Coins that are obviousl wrong would be moved, those that are somewhat in between would remain as-is unless there's a consensus by the community to move it.

e.g. Dogecoin is obviously novelty, Litecoin really isn't. CrystalCoin could be an example of what is questionable.

In a way, the organization reflects what the author believes the coin's goal is and not necessarily what the admins' belief of the goal is.

Gah, but what makes Dogecoin a novelty? It had a higher market cap than Bitcoin for a very very short period of time. What makes Litecoin not a novelty coin, its price, its age? And Crystalcoin isn't out yet, what makes it questionable?

Besides the fact that there will be no subforums for Alt Currencies, and the entire thread is moot, there is also no descrimination positive or negative against any alt coins. There would be no judgement call regarding what is a novelty coin or not, because there are no obvious "wrong" coins. Having a funny name doesn't make a coin a novelty, and having a serious name doesn't make it not a novelty. They are all Alt Coins.

Then take what I followed with from the second part of my post. Whether the creator, as a judgment call, decides that their coin's goal is to be novelty. Though I'm not sure if te honor system really works here well. I do have to agree, the volume in the existing forum is too much for easy handling. At least coin releases should be moved off to a sub-forum and discussion remains.

You really need to accept it. This is a forum about Bitcoin not altcoins. In my opinion most altcoins are novelty coins because they don't interest me and I'm sure others think this too. So, you have your precious novelty forum it's called "alternative cryptocurrencies".

And this is why it's best to keep them all together. All you'd get was people bitching that their Dogecoin isn't a novelty and bitching about others that made it into the non-novelty section.

I can certainly understand why people feel that way, but like it or not, this place is a victim of it's own success.  Of all the places on the internet where people talk about cryptocurrency, this place is #1.

So you have to ask yourself what's best for the future of cryptocurrencies.  Obviously you feel it's best if scam coins and novelty coins aren't posted about here, since it tarnishes the reputation of Bitcoin.  But I'd argue that it's better they're discussed here, where veterans can tell the newbs that it's a scam or a waste of time.  If you pack the newbs off to some dark and dirty corner of the net to talk about the next insert-meme-here-coin, they're going to get ripped off and assume that all cryptos are a con.  I'd say that will lead to more people being given a bad impression and would lead to less adoption of Bitcoin overall.

Keep the discussion here, where people can keep watch and prevent scams.  Even if you feel Bitcoin doesn't "need" alts to succeed, that fact is that they're here and it's better you don't try to sweep them under the carpet and pretend they don't exist, otherwise their reputation could drag yours down with it.

This doesn't look too bad, but I'd still scrap "Other" or just make it "General Discussion". I'm not a regular user of the Alt CC subforum, so you'd probably have better insight than I would on this. I do see a lot of Giveaway threads and the New Coin Launches would probably be a good subforum as well.

I agree with most of the mods, too, though. Once an alt coin has gotten to be as big as LTC or PPC, it's probably better served by having its own forum set up entirely.