Bitcoin Forum

Monero, Dash, Komodo, Zcash, Zclassic, ShadowCoin, Zerocoin, VCash, etc...

2016 was the year of the rise and recognition of the profitability of altcoins and summer of ICOs but people are tiring out.

Most of the altcoin ICOs have gone nowhere and have no real use cases until they actually deliver on their development and it could be a long time until they get a fully working product delivered that is actually used. Even still, with all the money raised by their ICOs, you have to think.... Who will really use them? Why is the ICO's idea worth millions of dollars?

Pumping and dumping was great in 2016 and a lot of people lost and a lot of people won but the amount of money sucked from people willing to lose is growing thin. The pumps are getting weak, people are getting smarter and most newer coin releases after an ICO are sitting close to the ICO value because no one wants to sell because no one wants to buy. Volume on exchanges is decreasing at an alarming rate all across the board.

Bitcoin is the grandfather of the blockchain scene. It is getting outdated in terms of technology, but it is tried and true and works without any bells and whistles. It is a coin that ACTUALLY gets used on a global scale daily by the mass. The largest use case of Bitcoin is online commerce and transfer of value. Most of the time, the simple way of using Bitcoin is perfectly fine on websites but most people do not want to reveal their tracks or hide their balances. This is where people realize crypto's biggest use case is for most people and take it a step further by adding anonymity.

This year (2017), many people will pull their money from worthless alts with lagging development or a fake purpose. The community will finally leave them in the dust. Watching Poloniex this year, the volume of trading on over 50% of the coins listed has gone down to less than 10 BTC a day. Poloniex is full of bots so you can't even rely on those being the true numbers.

Something I have noticed that makes me realize the money is in anonymous coins in that no one ever gets hyped when someone speaks of any other coin's purpose. Everyone flips out when news hits about how development is  happening in anonymous coins. This shows what people really care about and what excites people about blockchain tech. With this potential excitement like a tank of gasoline, it only takes one successful development's spark to ignite the rush of money flowing in. Once use cases start emerging, money will flow in from other altcoins and fiat, pumping the price "To The Moon".

ZCash has had a lot of hype and Monero's development is finally seeing some light. In reality, blockchain technology is fascinating and bulletproof, but for the average Joe (IMPORTANT! Who will spend money on Crypto and bring money in!), the blockchain tech's real use and purpose is TRANSFER OF VALUE. A lot of money came in from the average Joe when the great Bitcoin hype was about how Bitcoin will be fiat's greatest enemy.

The next great hype will come from the succeeding anonymous coin that will work alongside Bitcoin to transfer value across the globe anonymously. Be careful in 2017. Take a long hard look at your positions and really ask yourself if you are being sucked into holding up the value of a coin by holding due to a false purpose of that coin. Blockchain tech is great, but doesn't always beat centralized methods and a lot of coins are creating solutions for problems that don't really exist.

DISCLAIMER:
I am a trader and watch trends and news. This is the sum of all of my experience. It may not be correct, but I wanted to share my thoughts and would like your opinions and feedback on what 2017 may be like for the crypto scene as a whole (NOT trading advice).

My current position is all in Bitcoin in a cold wallet because trading has been slowing down and it is getting harder to make money. My realization is that pumping and dumping has created a false sense of purpose for most coins. With disappointing profits for Q4 2016, it would be interesting to see if most people will be going back to Bitcoin. I sense a great altcoin "winter" coming with only coins with a purpose staying alive because money will flow from worthless coin dumps.

Moreno is the worst coin supported only by many promoters...

Monero is takes too much figuring out. I also tried dash and all it did was freeze up on me. Have not tried zcash although they did say they found a vulnerability in ti.

@CoM1ner. I disagree with you. Anonymous coins have already been hyped before. Do you remember the stealthcoin and shadowcoin pumps that were made 2 or 3 years ago? In 2017 I speculate that we would enter an era of value where the people will finally realize that bitcoin is indeed the only coin worthy as a store of value. If you see it the right way, all these "altcoiners" convert their coins to bitcoins. Most of their altcoins do not leave the exchange. So what does that really make them? Closet bitcoiners?

Wail, how you gonna hide yo crypto from the gubmn'ment?  Can't do it too hot with bitcoin.  People sayz Dash is anonymous, but I don't know.  How anyone gonna buy Dash anonymously except in person.  You pay wit PayPal, they know.  You pay with bank account, they know.  You pay some fool at a Starbucks, they got cameras on you da whole time.  Ain't no way in this here crazy world you gon' stay anonymous.

Bitcoin start from 2009 had flagged the anonymous knowledge. In the future, the comprehension of anonymous was getting forward and people start for realizing to call bitcoin is anonymous it was failing.
Let's telling the truth if there is no anonymous hype at the first alt has created and the anonym characteristic already there in itself.

I think that fully anonymous coins are a dead end of crypto evolution and people are soon gonna realize that.
Let's think for a moment, what are the reason coins are created? To be useful, to be used and mass adoption is (or should be) main goal of every coin.
Bitcoin has trouble with legislation because it is perceived as anonymous (in reality it isn't, but that is not the point).
Do you think that any of fully anonymous coins will reach even 1st base of adoption scale?

@maku. You said that "To be useful, to be used and mass adoption is (or should be) main goal of every coin."

I disagree with your statement. It is already being revealed that going after the holy grail that is mass adoption from the mainstream was only used to hype many coins with the development team themselves knowing that it was a long shot and a very ambitious goal. It is time for cryptocoins to get back to the basics and do what it does best. Become a medium of exchange for unregulated and illegal markets. That is the market that credit cards cannot reach and cryptocoins could get into.

Anon coins have their place, maybe 5-10% of crypto tx need to be anon for various reasons...
So you got a very crowded field fighting over a tiny slice of the pie.

Also, ETH will implement zero knowledge anon within 6 months. Who will need "garage" anon coins then?
So avoid Tier 2 players, unless they are doing something unique (not cool "features", but a unique idea).

Unless crypto starts generating REVENUE it's all about trading in and out of Bubbles...
So look for p2p storage, VPN, torrent, prediction markets, poker, games, anything-that-generates revenue...
Most of that is being built on platforms like Ethereum... "garage" networks will not magically grow to 10,000 nodes, ever.

I would mention "social media", but Steemit has fucked that up so bad... avoid x 1000.

So 2017 will be the year of Crypto Revenue... "networks to nowhere" will begin to fade away.

You forgot about some other fact if a lot of coins had been made for snatch the money.
It has gone outside from his first purpose, right?

It's privacy. The legislation has got intervention by them. Speak about legislation like talk about the government's command.

You are all right here..Respect!

If there's one thing I think that bitcoin totally failed, it is what is called here "anonymity".  Bitcoin has a cruel lack of anonymity.  People are not yet feeling it, but it will blow in their face if ever bitcoin gets adopted beyond the circle of a few geeks and a lot of traders.

Now, when one says this, there are always reactions of "true anonymity is impossible" and "do you really think that the government is not watching you" and so on.   It is absolutely true that perfect anonymity cannot be attained, but that's not the point.  The real point is that bitcoin like open ledger currencies are WAY, WAY WAY less anonymous/private than all the payment methods that we've been using up to now, whether it is cash, gold, and *even* bank accounts.

The problem is that people associate "anonymity" with "crime" but that's not the point.  First of all, SOME crime must be possible, because this is the only way for society to evolve, and it is the only way to have hope to overthow dictators.  If law enforcement is perfect, no evolution of society is possible, because the smallest deviation from the norm will immediately and totally be eliminated by that perfect law enforcement.  If the law enforcement against homosexuality in the UK before the 50-ies were perfectly enforced, then there wouldn't have been any homosexuals out of prison that could have plead for the recognition of the rights of homosexuals.  Probably with (soft) drugs, things will go that way too.   So the fact that "anonymity" can help some crime to escape law enforcement is a good thing in itself.

The real problem with open ledgers is that all of your financial history is there for everybody to read, if they obtain some very partial knowledge of your transactions, by chain analysis.  Never in history there has been such a LACK of privacy and anonymity.  Never in history, just any mortal on earth could trace back how a coin got into your hands from its creation.  Even bank accounts don't allow for that.  Every bank only knows part of the history, and keeps it private from others up to a point.  At no point, such a terrible lack in anonymity and privacy occurred for intrinsically private matters relating to financial transactions.

What "anonymous" coins try to do, is to make it simply somewhat more difficult and to return partly to the usual situation where not everybody has access to all financial motions of everybody.  That's on a totally different level than trying to be absolutely anonymous when financing a covert terrorist organisation trying to develop secretly a new nuclear or biological weapon (which will indeed be very difficult to do - and happily so).

There is a huge NEED for somewhat more anonymity, fungibility and privacy in "block chain money" because the way bitcoin is doing it, is totally an open book for everyone to see, which is terrible.

I don't think all these Anonymous hype will be sustainable and I can see the hype die down in 2017, what we need is a decentralised exchange, once we have one that can sustain large volume all the hype about decentralise token will be off. Just look at it, how many one us have actually use these tokens for any transaction if not Bitcoin

I believe the hype will start in 2017, interesting to watch which coins will suceed.

Agree with this, take a look to Ebitz (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1681965.0), I think will be the big surprise of the next year.

Also had big interesting on this coin,this coin is a game changer,I'm not hyping this coin or whatever I've been looking for a zcash clone that can solve all of it's weakness with equal distribution and it seems this coin will be a stand out in the anonymous coins ..

I disagree with you that 2017 will be the year of anonymous coins. This is not new anymore, most cryptos already have some degree of privacy implemented in their core as you mentioned. But if you look at the current state of Bitcoin and most altcoins, what is missing?  ::)

Fast transactions from wallet to wallet and wallets that sync fast on mobile devices are missing! There is almost no coin that implements fast transactions in a secure and descentralized way, and those who claim that can do it...actually if you research deeper you will find that they actually have some centralized parties involved.

Causally, you mentioned one coin where the development is focused on performing fast transactions on blockchain (zerotime technology), syncs fast (zeroledger technology) and thus not relying in centralized parties. Plus, it does not lose it's anonymous feature (chainblender technology). This coin is https://v.cash/ (https://v.cash/) (XVC), and you will probably see people talk a lot about it next year.

My argument is reinforced by the fact that SegWit will not activate any soon which is a result of the undefined blocksize debate (Bitcoin Unlimited getting traction), and so Lightning Network will not activate next year as it depends on SegWit. This opens the doors for altcoins like https://v.cash/ (https://v.cash/) (XVC) get a share of this market.

2017 has to be the year of useful coins, people tire of alts because they really have no use for them, most of them offer nothing new under the sun.
It's always the same re-branded ideas with new techno babble, and the same suckers running from shitcoin to shitcoin to make some money off the hype.
 But at the end of the day they're still completely useless besides trading them, and no one wants to get caught holding the bag of useless shitcoins.

But (to lesser extend) that's even true for bitcoin.  The part of "real use" of crypto is minuscule as compared to the market cap, mainly sustained by traders on exchanges.

I wish to see that. I wish too see only useful new coins released, no more clones just because it can be done...

OP said that 2017 will not be Year of ICOs, but also mentioned Komodo that is an ICO. Also DASH, ZCash and ZCoin that have a ,however you want to call it, premine.  I dont know much of other mentioned coins.

About anonymous coins and about a  Year 2017 i could say this.   I think 2017 year will be year of Bitcoin 2.0 so all those platforms that was made in last few years need to flourish in 2017. Counterparty, Omni, Bitshares, Ethereum, ...  I am sure i missed more then half. Each of this platforms will have almost weekly announcements of new users using their platforms. If not, they failed in last years.


I can go on to Year 2018.  In year 2018 all those ICOs started in 2016 should start showing profit. Only the ones that will survive 2017. So year 2018 will be Year of the ICOs.


To return to anonymous coins. Anonymity is really not important right now. Rare realy care of it. Most care just to transact as cheap as posible. But that will change when next financial crisis hit and banks close their doors and decide to take all savings to those that have to much. One or 2 years after next financial crisis hits in will be The Year of Anonymous Coins. When will that be? 2019, 2020, 2020 or even latter. Who knows?

I for one truly hope that 2017 will be the year that pump and dump alts and ICOs stop plying their trade (and hopefully the Average Joe wisens up).

I also hope it is the year that the big guns in bitcoin come out a bit more publicly with gentler and simpler tones - more people globally have to be brought into the fold. The technical experts cannot continue to look upon the rest with disdain, while taking advantage of them for profit.

2017 maybe people will jump to TBC

2017 could certainly be all about Vcash.  Look into Zerotime, Zeroledger, and Vcash's scalability.

ok NOOB...  :D

In 2017, more altcoins will be well established. It is more difficult to create a new scam coin and then pump.

Anon coins is so 2014 dark pump, 2017 will be the year of real development and ease of use, aka NO wallet with huge blockchains, No waiting time for transaction and it has to be light (the smallest hardware must be able to handle it).
As today all i see around me is ppl that want instantaneous stuff, no more slow computers or we get mad.
It goes the same way for everything else, it gotta be easy, light and fast. I want to send transactions with 40mb not 8gb...
Anon blockchain is great for dark web when you can wait hours for a transactions but you gotta stay audible or who can prove me someone is not making Zcrash coins out of thin air.

So on this, Watch out for Vcash
Its fast -Zerotime (insta transaction)
Light - Zeroledger (the only decentralized spv client at the core 40mb ram client & downloads in 1.5min)
Anon & audible - Chainblender (mixing at the core clients side)
Simple and easy to use wallet client.

Get your self some of that.

It's clear that the anonymous coin thing is very tending nowadays, my question is: has any coin a real option at all against bitcoin? if people want to be anonymous, they will soon have confidential transactions and mumble jump, which should be enough... so who will use those coins?

But why would the establishment of more altcoins make it more difficult to create new pump and dumps? The market is bursting at the seams but saturation still seems many altcoins away.

But I hope you're right, for whatever rationale.

I am @AnonyMint (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=400235.msg16925985#msg16925985), the guy who first pointed out to @gmaxwell in 2013 (or was it 2014?) that his idea for blacklists to prevent jamming of CoinJoin wouldn't work, because (or unless the anonymity doesn't work) the participant's identities can't be tracked.

I was the first one who pointed this out to Evan the creator of DarkCoin (Dash), which prompted him to invent the masternodes concept, and Dash went on to become the highest market cap anonymity coin (with the ostensibly worst technology, lol).

I also invented the never fully published Zero Knowledge Transactions (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1211093.0) at about (but I claim before) when Shen-noether merged Cryptonote's ring signatures with Blockstream's Confidential Transactions homomorphic hiding of values. I claim I achieved the same but with the much more efficient Compact Confidential Transactions (wherein I think I showed how to remove the proof-of-square that made it lose some of its efficiency, but I am not a mathematician so I may be incorrect). I still haven't published this white paper because it needs some edits. Will get around to it someday I hope.

Since then I have also privately invented some new technology for offchain anonymity, which I have yet to fully document and formalize.

---

Anonymity will never be perfect. Your anonymity will always be subject to possible foiling by hackers, National Security Agencies (e.g. the NSA), and large corporations.

More important than anonymity is privacy. We don't want your average Joe to be able to see every thing we do.

For large valued transactions, I believe Zcash's technology will ultimately win. It has the largest anonymity set which can't be practically spammed, because the anonymity set is every coin and every transaction that can ever be done.

For smaller valued microtransactions, I believe my offchain technology will win. The NSA can foil it, so the governments shouldn't be concerned. But your average Joe can't foil it.

Additionally I don't think Proof-of-Work block chains will win (but their failure may be some years from now), especially those which don't leverage Bitcoin's SHA-256 ASICs security such as Zcash's EquiHash and Monero's CPU/GPU hash PoW (which btw Komodo does do correctly (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1662871.msg16947435#msg16947435) and it also claims to have Zcash's anonymity technology). "ASIC resistant" proof-of-work will be subject to rented hashrate attacks double-spending (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1558366.msg16929306#msg16929306).

About the impending death of Proof-of-Work, I know a secret (soon to be released that I believe will forever change our ecosystem).

Stay tuned...

i would like to know your secret. any eta  ;D

estimated ETA January or February.

2017 will be the year of Waves.I'm sure it will be a game changer  8)

bitcoin is the king? yes.
that doesn't mean other coins don't have market... and who said bitcoin will be king forever? to me it's just a matter of time to other coin take it place.

There is a lot more to Monero than just anonymity.

If he really believes that 2017 is the time for those coins then let us already presume that next year will be a time for scams all over again for him. We all know ICO's are mostly created with the developers' self serving agenda behind them. The same with the premine and zcash's new twist on the premine. The worst is Dash's ninja mine. They are all serving and profit seeking with the outward facade of a "pro community" project. I will appreciate it more if they became honest and find a way to generate dividends for the holders of their coins.

There are always 'anon' for pump and dump

Not only this year

That would have been true if ZEC didn't screw it up and made anonymous transactions compulsory, instead of an option.

I underlined "technology", not any specific coin's implementation (and its design choices). Meaning I think the technology will win. I have no opinion about which implementation of the technology will win.

Afair, there are some issues around a view key in Zcash's technology which apparently Cryptonote/Monero may have some advantage in some cases if that feature is needed. But I haven't studied that issue in depth, especially not lately. I do not know if that is what you are referring to. Any way, I don't want to go off on that tangential discussion at this time. It isn't important to me right now.

IMO anonymity is just pretty unimportant these days since 80% of the people owning a coin, keep their funds on exchanges and never uses the anon transaction feature

That's true, but that is because these people are also not "users" of the coin, but just gamblers, eh, investors in the coin.  In other words, they don't use the coin as a currency (like bitcoin) or to set up a genuine contract, say, renting a bike (like ethereum), they are only interested in the coin increasing its market price (or in it decreasing its market price when shortable).
These gamblers (most of the crypto volume and market cap actually) don't even need a block chain: they only need IOU on the web sites of exchanges.

To anyone who doubts:

Download Client Node (No Ledger) from https://v.cash/wallets.php

You'll see the chain will download in under 2 minutes and you'll be able to test out Zerotime.

Notwithstanding my opinion on whether governments are going to tax and attempt to fragment crypto-currency, higher valued transactions are more at risk than microtransactions. I just can't fathom the government attempting to ask people to report and pay taxes on every $0.0001 transaction they do on social networking. So since I am mostly focused on scaling out crypto-currency for social networking and apps gamification (think small payments for in game upgrades, etc), then i don't view anonymity as a crucial issue for fungibility in my targeted priority area.

My opinion is that governments are going to be forced to reduce regulation of crypto-currencies not increase. Because it is a global phenomenon that they don't have jurisdiction over. One-by-one they will fall like dominoes into this reality, especially as crypto-currency becomes more and more popular.

Additionally I believe there is a global monetary reset coming 2019-2024ish, in which we will have a global financial governance established with the World Bank, IMF, and SDRs. Thus the nations will turn to this new institutional regulatory power to regulate the global crypto-currencies without impacting fungibility. (See my posts in the Martin Armstrong thread of the Economics forum on why I believe this will come)

Privacy is I think a stronger argument for why we need some form of anonymity sets in our crypto-currency. I plan to do something low overhead with offchain mixing (with a new invention I have for that) to achieve a commensurate level of privacy for the market I am targeting. For every high valued finance, I am thinking Zcash's technology may be the best. The trusted key setup does not impact anonymity, only could allow hidden debasement (inflation). I think they will figure out a way to make these private keys in a way that corporations trust the veracity. I am not sure if I still see a need for Monero's form of anonymity. Maybe, I and I need to spend more time analyzing that. Haven't had time lately to focus on anonymity. There was an issue with Monero's viewkey being superior, etc...

In the past I dreamed of a perfect e-gold wherein our anonymity was absolute. I now realize that is not feasible and would violate the fundamental laws of physics. Analogous to we can't do anything in real life without some risk of it being known to someone else, the same will be true online. It will be impossible to have perfect assurance of anonymity. So we shouldn't be modeling fungibility on the assumption of perfect anonymity. Fungibility can be I think modeled on the assumption that the people-at-large will demand that their Internet money be globally fungible. It will be considered a basic human right that Internet money and access be without borders/barriers. The globalists want this. I believe the elite created Bitcoin as a Trojan horse against nation-state and banking interests selfishness. They are using us to force a wedge between nation-states and banks, and the global village reality of the Internet. We are the partners of the global elite, not their enemy. This is why we see Richard Branson offering his private island to Bitfury group's conference:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rep37R3l3_4

This is why we see Nicholas Negroponte at the Montreal Scaling Bitcoin conference talking about Internet access and money as a basic human right:

https://scalingbitcoin.org/presentations
https://youtu.be/0SnjrdQtf8Y?t=537