Bitcoin Forum

Preamble:
This is not investment advice. People always say that when giving investment advice, so I thought I'd start with it. I guess some guy once did badly and sued some other guy and now nobody advises anybody about anything anymore. If you're a litigious guy, you should stick to T-bills, whatever they are. I hear they are very safe, but don't take my word for it, as this is not, as I have already told you, investment advice.

http://www.dragons.tl/images/bitcoin-logo.png

Bitcoin Hopefully you already know why Bitcoin is great. This article is for people who already understand Bitcoin, so I won't dwell on its strengths. Those are name recognition, network effect and first mover advantage. I'm going to focus on its weaknesses by looking at the questions altcoins need to answer to succeed where Bitcoin is failing.   a) Inflation - How does the coin solve the inflation problem? Don't be fooled by the econ 101 grads who wax on about deflation. Right now Bitcoin is highly inflationary – running at about 9%. That's a huge problem for the 'to the moon' proponents. Here's why -    There are 3,600 new bitcoins mined every day. It requires $3 million (3,600x$800) to enter the market every day just to keep the price where it is.      Let's say you want a modest 100X return on your investment. You need 1BTC to go from $800 to $80,000. The cost to keep BTC at $80,000? Every day $300 million (3,600*$80000) has to enter the market. It's difficult to see how that happens. The exchanges and markets aren't equipped for anything like that.    This problem will ease over the years – the number of coins mined will halve every 4 years, but realistically, who can wait that long to be a billionaire? b) Development - How is ongoing development, promotion and protection funded? Bitcoin currently has a $10 Billion market cap, and there are lots of services and companies hopping on the Bitcoin bandwagon, but how much effort is going into securing the core-technology and making Bitcoin easy to use? A paltry amount. There's the Bitcoin Foundation which relies on donations, and open source developers contributing their time. The Bitcoin millionaires and billionaires should be co-operating to finance huge development of the core-technology. There is no mechanism for them to co-ordinate that, and it doesn't make any sense for any one person to do it individually. Who is going to pay for the legal, lobbying, PR that is going to be needed down the road? Ain't nobody going to do that. c) Decentralization - How is the coin going to stay decentralized? Bitcoin has become centralized in two ways – large pools and specialized hardware. China has worked out what Bitcoin means for capital movement and currency control and they don't like it. One of the first moves was to ban mining hardware – the ASICs – highly specialized computer equipment. Any government that wants to take control of Bitcoin will target this hardware first. Good luck to anyone trying to keep it a secret. The NSA already knows the colour of your underwear.The pools are a problem too – a co-ordinated shutting down of the major pools could cause severe disruption. Bitcoin Verdict : Recommended 10X Possible – Despite these problems, Bitcoin is the market leader and safest cryptocurrency and gives good general exposure to the crypto-currency market. Keep 50% of your allocated crypto-currency holdings here. 10X short-term price increase still possible. Reduced potential for explosive growth in price.

http://i39.tinypic.com/2llokmb.gif

Quark I was recommending Quark way back in July 2013. It's since appreciated 50X. Let's see if the case still stacks up. Q1: Inflation: The inflation problem is solved, most of the coins have already been issued and the inflation rate is now 0.5%. You'll hear people complaining about the 'pre-mine' – that's a really bullish sign. People don't complain about coins with unfair pre-mines, they ignore them. If there are complainers, it means they want in . . . but . . . yesterday. Well done Quark. (3/3) Q2: Development: Community effort based on donations – same problem as Bitcoin (0/3) Q3: Decentralization: Quark attempts to solve the hardware centralization problem through complexity. The proof-of-work algorithm is complex, so it's difficult to program for GPUs and GPUs are poorly suited to that kind of work. It'll slow down FPGA and ASIC development too, but they'll show up once the reward is high enough. Overall, a good effort – (2/4) Quark Verdict (5/10) – There are still possible 100X returns with this coin.

http://i39.tinypic.com/nbcikp.jpg

Primecoin I was very excited about Primecoin from the beginning. I think the hook that the proof-of-work might actually do something useful (finding primes) would be enough to get it a mention in any story about crypto-currency. Let's look at the questions Q1: Inflation: This was the thing that turned me off Primecoin. The inflation formula is 999/(difficulty^2). Difficulty is currently around 10.4 – so approximately 9 coins are issued each block. Difficulty increases by 1 every time computing power increases 30 fold, so you'll have a gradual reduction only with HUGE increase in the network. This coin will remain very inflationary. (0/3) Q2: Development: Community effort based on donations – same problem as Bitcoin but +1 for SunnyKing (1/3) Q3: Decentralization: Similarly to Quark, this has proved to be GPU resistant because of its complexity. Expected to be vulnerable to ASICs with sufficient reward. (2/4) +1 Bonus for newsworthy proof-of-work Primecoin Verdict: (4/10) - Still a buy – 10X returns are possible.

http://i41.tinypic.com/fekm6c.png

ProtoShares This is the first coin that has backing – Invictus Innovations have pledged that all further chains they launch reserve 10% for ProtoShares holders. They seem intent on keeping this promise, so buying into ProtoShares is like buying into an early stage crypto-startup. The CEO, Dan Larimer is something of a genius in my opinion, and has a strong team so it's a good play based on that alone . . . and it works as a plain old altcoin too. Q1: Inflation: – There's a 5% reduction in block rewards every week, so inflation will be down to 10% before the end of this year, and 1% by the end of next year. Solved in time. (2/3) Q2: Development: – The coin is backed by a startup with funding so some level of development and promotion is guaranteed. The team does have higher priorities with their other projects, but ProtoShares owners will get a cut of those, so that is offset somewhat. (1/3) Q3: Decentralization: – It uses a clever new 'momentum' proof-of-work based on the birthday problem. However, GPU miners are operating privately and expected to dominate when they are generally available. The jury is still out on FPGA/ASIC resistance. Pools seem to be a problem with one pool dominating the mining (2/4) +2 Backing by Invictus Innovations Verdict: (7/10) I should mention bias here – I was involved with the launch of this coin. I'm not recommending it because I was involved with it . . . rather the reverse . . . I got involved because it was possible to recommend it. 100X returns possible.

http://i42.tinypic.com/33loza1.jpg

MemoryCoin I should mention bias upfront here - this is the coin I started to address the problems with Bitcoin. Again, I'm recommending this coin not because I started it, rather I started it because it is possible to recommend it. Here's why - Q1: Inflation: – Similar mining schedule as ProtoShares, 5% reduction in block rewards every week, so inflation will be down to 10% before the end of this year, but reduces to a 2% inflation rate rather than 1%. Solved in time. (2/3) Q2: Development: – This is the reason people are excited about this coin. 5% of block rewards are earmarked for development and promotion. Coin owners vote like shareholders as to how the funds are distributed. It has resulted in huge development effort already, within weeks the coin has more services and support than even Litecoin or Quark. (3/3) Q3: Decentralization: – This coin heavily leverages memory and special instructions found in recent CPUs. There's a battle going on now between GPU and CPU developers to see who can make the most efficient algorithms for mining this coin. CPUs have pulled ahead dramatically in the past week. Uniquely, the project has distributed mining as a high priority so it well placed to avoid centralization of mining. The jury is out on FPGAs and ASICs. (3/4) Verdict (8/10)  1000X gains possible. This coin is still in the very early stages with only 30% of coins issued, and not many people understand it yet, but is quickly gaining a large development community and does large volume on the Chinese market already.

https://litecoin.info/skins/common/images/litecoin-logo-135x135.png

Litecoin I didn't want to talk about Litecoin, but I should because it has the second highest market cap. Let's see how it does with the questions. Q1: Inflation: No attempt made to solve inflation problem – it's got the same schedule as Bitcoin. (0/3) Q2: Development:  Community effort based on donations – same problem as Bitcoin (0/3) Q3: Decentralization:  Litecoin was first to try to address the harware centralization problem but failed. Semi-specialized equipment (GPUs) already required, FPGA are here and ASICs on the way. I've relented a little and given 1 point here because it is more de-centralized than Bitcoin for the moment (1/4) Verdict (1/10) – stay away from this one. Remarkably, there are coins worse than Litecoin – those are the coins trying to be the next Litecoin.

http://i42.tinypic.com/jskad5.png

Infinitecoin Infinitecoin is a misnomer. It refers to the number of coins out there (90.6 Billion) which is very high. It's not infinite at all. It's very much limited edition. It was one of the first coins to realize the importance of keeping inflation under control. Q1: Inflation: So far 99% of coins have been issued, and the block rewards keep being halved with no intention to stop, inflation is less than 1% and will be effectively 0% by the end of the year (3/3) Q2: Development:  Community based development, but more difficult to include Bitcoin's improvements because it is a Litecoin based coin (0/3) Q3: Decentralization:  Scrypt (Litecoin) based coin, so same problems. It has a high-cap, but the difficulty for this coin is very low because the block rewards are very low - making a 51% + double spend attack easy. Essentially all the hashing power could be concentrated by a single individual with a handful of powerful GPUs who could re-write a long string of blocks. With the high value of IFC, we might see the first big altcoin heist.(0/4) Verdict (3/10) – I still quite like this coin because of it's hard line on inflation - but it needs to take steps to solve the blockchain security problem, or we'll see a big heist, and that'll be very damaging for it. One to watch, but needs a rescue.

http://dogecoin.com/img/dogecoin-300.png

Dogecoin Someone smart once said that the market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent. He must have been predicting Dogecoin. There's a lot of interest in Doge now from some of the nicest, coolest, funnest people, or as they are known on Wall Street, bagholders. Q1: Inflation: Very high inflation right now as the coin is issued, but with halving block rewards until inflation reaches 5% in about a year. Little bit high for my taste, but could be worse. (2/3) Q2: Development:  Community based development, but more difficult to include Bitcoin's improvements because it is a Litecoin based coin. Lots of talk about projects right now, but these kind of people get bored easily and move on to the next fun thing. Expect to see lots of half-finished, half-working projects.(0/3) Q3: Decentralization:  Same problems as Litecoin (1/4) +1 First big Meme coin (newsworthy) Verdict (4/10) – Over 1 million USD per day needs to flow into Dogecoin to keep it at its current price levels. That doesn't mean it couldn't go up another 2X or 3X, but trading Doge is gambling. One day you'll wake up and there will be zero buyers at any price. Try to imagine how funny and well supported a 'Gangnamcoin' would be today.

http://marketersmedia.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/CryptogenicBullion.png

Cryptogenic Bullion CGB has some very nice qualities that give it a very good shot of making it into the top 10 and staying there. It combines low-inflation with a secure blockchain and interest payments for holders. This is a well conceived coin, on a stable foundation.   Q1: Inflation: 94% of coin already issued, in 10 weeks, inflation will be down to 2% (most of that paid as interest to CGB holders) - effectively 0.5% inflation (3/3) Q2: Development:  Community based development so usually 0 points for this, but currently has 2 effective and committed devs, so 1 point for that (1/3) Q3: Decentralization:  Less than 1K USD per day is required to soak up the new CGB being created. This is similar to other coins like QRK and IFC, but those coins don't solve the problem of blockchain security. CGB does - and in a very clever way. It uses proof-of-stake, effectively paying interest to CGB holders to secure the blockchain. Thus mining can be as decentralized as its ownership  (3/4) Verdict (7/10) – Potential for 500X returns. At the moment, it's a hidden gem. Sometime in the next 10 weeks, as the inflation rate falls to 0.5%, the market is going to pick up this coin in a big way.

https://lh6.googleusercontent.com/-f_eSxkpcy7s/UuUlfQo81MI/AAAAAAAAABM/-6bfc2S0w-0/s250-no/maxcoin_256.png

MaxCoin MaxCoin has 30 seconds blocks, block rewards halving every year, a slightly different PoW, and Max Keiser's pumping. So just Max Keiser's pumping really. It'll be interesting to see how far a coin can get with just high profile pumping. This could be the biggest pump'n'dump ever. Q1: Inflation: Blocks rewards halving every year = rampant inflation for the forseeable future. I'm disappointed Max - I thought if anyone would understand the need to keep inflation under control, it would have been you.(0/3) Q2: Development:  Botched launch, same problems as Bitcoin with community development but without even the competent devs (0/3) Q3: Decentralization: GPU and ASIC miners guaranteed. Same centralization problems as Bitcoin. 1 point because Keccak ASIC might take a little while. (1/4) +1 Max Keiser hype Verdict (2/10) – Sorry about the brevity, but this is clearly a pump'n'dump designed to separate fools from their BTC. No long-term potential but who knows how big the bubble could get or when it will pop.

https://i.imgur.com/frWE69T.png&t=537&c=2gg3ezVcaPVJwQ

Zetacoin Zetacoin has 30 seconds blocks, 160 Million coins, 1 Million more added each year. Q1: Inflation: Zetacoin is nearly fully issued and will shortly go into low-inflation mode, with inflation running at 0.625% (3/3) Q2: Development:  Same problems as Bitcoin with community development (0/3) Q3: Decentralization: With fast block times and specialized hardware required, this coin almost looks designed to be centralized - so much so that it could be a feature rather than a drawback. I'm thinking it could be a good micropayments platform when Bitcoin becomes prohibitively expensive for small transactions. As cryptocurrencies proliferate, cryptocurrency as a movement becomes more decentralized and the need for any one cryptocurrency to be decentralized is smaller. (2/4) Verdict (5/10) – 10X Potential. This could be a potential micropayments platform. Attractive right now because it's nearly fully issued and moves to low inflation model shortly. Worth a punt.

FAQ: X Coin has fast confirmation times, why no points for that? I don't think confirmation time is important. When ordering via BitPay with Bitcoin, you'll get immediate confirmation. Retail merchants will offload the risk of double spends to third party processors - much better than asking folks to wait for a confirmation that may come in 30 seconds, or 30 seconds after that or . . .. - I'm more inclined to see very low block times as a negative because it weakens blockchain security for some cheap marketing that only impresses the naive.

-----

This is a living document - bookmark it now - I'll update with new coins, corrections, and as my view and the market changes. I'm also interested to hear what coins you think are good bets for the future - but don't just drop in the name of your coin - tell me, how does it answer the three important questions?

*nb I'll be deleting trolling and inflammatory posts - keep it civil please.

Nice to see a thread with some solid reasoning, and I agree with at least two of your choices.

As for the others, I must do more research.

Great read! Enlightened me

Thank you for this topic, we didn't see something like this, been a while.

On a side note, nice little qrk gif there

Really interesting read, crappy that its in a self moderated topic though :/ I'm sure there wont be any shenanigans with the removing of differing opinions or anything.

I very much welcome differing opinions - you'll see lots of the topics that I mod have opposing opinions and even some very critical of me. I don't mind that at all - just let's keep it as an adult discussion.

Nice fair write up - this should be on a blogg


your 0/3 for development is fair i suppose as long as we can come back and review it in the coming months etc - also can we get a revision as Quark is 6 months old ?

: D

if we pick up 1.5 in development Quarks gets a nice 6.5 out of 10.

quite nice - and everything you wrote is overall correct.

great work.

What do you think of Mastercoin, Datacoin???

Smart move to write a fair and decent article it will get much attention as you are doing the "odd thing out"

- by the way T-Bills ? (not so much)

<insert here various languages saying "no don't do it" >

yes good job

No mention of zetacoin?

I thought this was really well thought out.

I definitely agree with you that Quark and Protoshares look great. I wish you mentioned transaction times as I feel like BTC and LTC are lacking there. It's simply amazing that no one points out that QuarkCoin has 12x faster transactions than BTC and the fastest confirmation in the crypto game at 28-36 seconds. Serious in-store merchant potential.

I'll have to look at memorycoin, and not just because you're part of it, but that is an enticing description. Might be worth it to put half a BTC in there and hold.

Quark is a scamcoin.

Great thread Freetrade!

Concerning Bitcoin's future value, I always like to discuss this article by rick falkvinge: http://falkvinge.net/2013/03/06/the-target-value-for-bitcoin-is-not-some-50-or-100-it-is-100000-to-1000000/

Note, it's written before the first big pricing spike at around 40$/BTC and got some interesting calculations and facts about bitcoin but cryptocoins in general.

My personal current investment recommendation ist Cachecoin, which will be accepted for Scrypt-ASIC-Sales by jasinlee: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=400389.msg4594192#msg4594192

Awesome write-up, here's my biased differing opinion:

BTC / LTC / FTC are all just used for money transmission, except with faster confirmation times for market traders, arbitragers, and front-end merchant sales.  Altcoins with different asset qualities, or with value-added functions for back-end or transparent services, will be the real growth potential. 

MMC is a cpu/gpu coin - easy to mine, large and distributed number of users.  And the goal is stable long-term price near electricity costs.  Miners will sell the price down to whatever they can for a coin, unless the coin develops, provides, or finds services to absorb the new coins.  So, MMC pretty much becomes a "develop services for hire or die" community.  They are research before development, which is the development version of charity.  (They also send 1% of block rewards to a real charity, but capitalism will forgive them.) 

MMC's voting system provides a lot of neat unintended uses...kind of like a warranty begging to be voided. 

A coin for voting and ranking in the blockchain?

Think politics, community self-arrangement, social networking, etc.  Potential incentives for user content generation, ranking, and navigation based on wallet ID and user-community reputation.  Adds another dimension to prisoner's dilemma, betting, bluffing, bidding games.  Then even commercial applications like auctions, proposals, bidding, supply chain traceability, and configuration control. 

Combine with a stable distributed price base, and could lead to cryptoequity services like futures or net 30 invoicing.  Broad wallet ownership could lead to marketing, SEO, and social networking services.  The community is kind of one big "help wanted" sign right now, if anyone has services to volunteer...

Full Disclosure: I'm an MMC fanboy...but, this isn't investment advice, right?  I think the voting system has lots of unintended new uses to play with and develop, and I've been volunteering at MMC.  I'm playing my own game of thrones to campaign against FreeTrade as MMC CEO.  After a few weeks, he gave in and made me a paid assistant.  Then, I turned around and restarted my campaign for CEO.  Out of this, we'll develop models, guides, etc for funding development through community choice..or at least I'll have some fun:

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=2447.0

Great post. Big thank you.

Will be checking out Memorycoin with some urgency!

What about the so called 2nd gen coins - Mastercoin and NXT with explicit decentralised P2P exchange support? (Guess I should include Ripple with these - despite being overtly corporate)

Interesting and informative thread.

 Could you please explain why you think Ltc is a fail, considering it is essentially a shadow coin of Btc - a coin with limited numbers - which most people shall never be able to afford.
 Are you suggesting that any Ltc holders shall lose money or just that it has no stable future?

 
 

Having just traded 1 BTC for MMC and transferred to my wallet - did notice that the transfer took quite a long time - a lot longer than QRK for example. In fact it was about as long as it normally takes with BTC which may hinder MMC uptake for fast transaction applications.

Also the MMC block explorer came up with a 404 error for my address.

That said I do still find MMC interesting and will be studying it more and watching its progress with interest.

Also agree with last post that LTC has a lot of market and notable pundit support (e.g. Max Keiser - best not under estimate his influence) which must be factored in to an analysis of future value besides purely technical merits. QRK too benefits from vocal support by Bill Still for whom I have the greatest respect. Just my opinion of course - others will I'm sure disagree.

Nevertheless thanks again for your post and an interesting ensuing discussion.

everyone is recommending to invest in litecoin because it can get 20x value, i doubt that too, litecoin is nothing for me.. its just still popular because its the coin after bitcoin.. ( and because people are still recommending it )


Freetrade would be cool if you can say something about worldcoin / earthcoin / netcoin / betacoin  too because i hold alot of them...

and the upcoming zerocoin, i think if zerocoin can be included in bitcoin to make it totally anonym then bitcoin will skyrocket and destroy the moon :P

Feel like you forgot Peercoin.

Planning to add thoughts on more coins in the coming days and weeks.

Thanks man every since I discovered altcoins a few weeks ago my head is exploding from hype and information overload. I need to get some reasoning going and figure out what way to proceed. Your post is the first sanity I ran into. Thanks!

so what about Nxt?

http://oi44.tinypic.com/2e67x3q.jpg

this is where everyone is wrong...litecoin isnt just popular cuz its bitcoins number 2...its completely differant than bitcoin with the mining being scrypt...this is what seperates the 2 not OMG ITS BITCOINS NUMBER 2 SO ITS GOOD TO
they are completely different beasts
just like these new coins like memorycoin are differant than all the others, litecoin was the first to differentiate from bitcoin, it isnt just BITCOINS NUMBER 2 ZOMG BUY

I haven't looked into that coin yet - how does it answer the big 3 questions?

All your reasoning is based on one assumption: all coins have the same potential to be accepted by the mainstream. This, however, is far from the reality. To be honest, I think there's only one coin could be accepted by the mainstream and currently that is bitcoin. Therefore, comparing it with all your other listing is meaningless. Bitcoin is never competing with any altcoin, but the fiat system and the governments.

Among other listings, memorycoins is your one-man show. Give it 3/3 for the support is a complete bias. Adding voting for CTO, CFO, ... is just your marketing effort and it does not really give you any real support like a company. Moreover, 1000x ROI means the market cap exceeds LiteCoin, and memorycoin becomes the second largest coin in the world. Really ambitious. :)

Anyway, I wish what you said could be true cause I've mined a block in the early days of memorycoin. :)

dogecoin is a curiousity.
has the potential from pure marketing, and seemingly a very keen community - although i'm unsure how that equates into real development.

and i think that a global sort of dev body could be useful, any potential issues with bitcoin will no doubt be felt by all the other coins..

I know Quark and Litecoin folks think block confirmation time is important. Personally I don't. When ordering via BitPay, you're getting immediate confirmation. Retail merchants will offload the risk of double spends to third party processors - much better than asking folks to wait for a confirmation that may come in 30 seconds, or 30 seconds after that or . . ..
Sorry - no extra points for fast block times - I'm more inclined to see that as a negative because it weakens blockchain security.

Generally agreed , but I'd add that under 30 seconds would need added security and an active development tream but over 60 seconds starts to look redundant based on the evidence that has been presented, and when one takes into account other security measures.

So from 30 to 60 seconds strikes a balance of security and native client speed .

Why there are actually advantages to faster block times (that are also secure) are in the instance where for example there is no trusted long term party, so like for example in a "cash transaction" this is where business can be conducted in a much more efficient manner.

So in Summary it's an extra added benefit for private transactions, but for trusted well known third party transactional movements, block times are the same as any other well developed cryptocurrency.

Regards.

Yeah, that's a good article and I was influenced by it early on. However, I don't think he takes inflation into account . . . he's talking about Bitcoin as if they are shares that are 100% issued already . . . but 50% of Bitcoins are still to be mined, so to reach those levels in the short time, trillions of dollars have to flow into Bitcoin . . . if there was 0% inflation already, it could reach those levels much more easily because only small numbers of Bitcoins need to be traded at those high levels.

As ever, Max, you're way ahead of me.

By considering inflation, you just need to divide his number by 2 not 100 or 1000.

Yes, been getting a lot of questions about those - how do you think they address the big 3 questions?

FreeTrade's Anti-Scrypt Guide To Altcoins He's Personally Invested In

+1


Only one Bill Gates - has more money than all mined and not yet mined bitcoins at current price,
so 100x ROI =>  TOP 100 Forbes investing a bit in bitcoin :)


They could wait, and large serious bussiness can wait,

So, coin for fast, easy money...

Why didn't you start with a coin where 90% is mined at first not year but day, 10% second day,
and then also 2% per year.

Seems to be definitely better than Memorycoin v2.0, right?

:)

Yes, this is why it doesn't make a good investment - any gains coming from being the first successful altcoin are already factored in. I don't see it outperforming Bitcoin, but with significant potential to underperform. Sorry, all I see with this one are bag holders.

Your Guide could be treated as impartial.
But you have made one, but reveal misstep...

0/10 for Litecoin
http://www.cryptocoincharts.info/v2/coins/graphicalComparison

Pity, to much litecoin hate between the lines... :)

There must be a hundred coins that I haven't even heard of yet. Ill be adding more to the list soon, but I'm interested if anyone can point to any that address any of the three questions.

OSC is clearly superior altcoin  :D

NXT - Protoshares switched in panic from PoW to PoS when they saw it.
But you prefer not to mention it right? Go figure...

Isn't NXT a centralized scam though?

from an economic stand point PoS is a very touchy issue, I'm not sure I'd be brave enough to say i could design it correctly .

the EQ reward from Quark ensures that new issuance has a chance to always go to new people = new distribution .

digital industry talking out his b-hole again  ::)

Here is an argument I found against Protoshares, which has a unsupported method of a prediction market.  


BitShares is not a prediction market, nor could it support one, as it has numerous practical and theoretical problems.

BitShares is a possible future cryptocurrency which allows users to create collateralized debt- instruments called BitAssets. These BitAssets are automatically re-priced (and even liquidated via margin call) based on their mark-to-market value, as determined solely by the price implied by the most-recent BitAsset-creation. The author claims that arbitrageurs will take advantage of differences between the BitPrice and the True Price and therefore price the asset correctly, and supports this claim by arguing that users are trading in a prediction market, and prediction markets are accurate sources of prices.
The claim that users are trading in a prediction market is false, as is the claim that there are ‘arbitrageurs’ at all. In an ‘index prediction market’, shares are repurchased at the price of an index, for example one share of “Hillary2016ElectoralCollege” may be ultimately repurchased for $255/share, if Hillary Clinton managed 255 Electoral College votes in the 2016 election. The magic of prediction markets is that the Future Payout = Future Repurchase – Today’s Market Price, meaning that traders who perceive a positive expected future payout (ie an incorrect price) can profit by trading on and revealing that information (changing the price). In contrast, on November 9th, 2016, after the votes are counted, the world of BitShares will experience no change in state, no payout at all (!) and the “Hillary2016ElectoralCollege” shares will lack even speculative value. They may go up, down, or sideways without bound.
In fact, although the author claims to be a “self-taught Austrian Economist”, the entire microeconomic foundation of BitShares is incorrect. Fundamentally, BitShares assumes that prices are driven by arbitrageurs, when in fact they are driven by users. Arbitrageurs merely perform the simple service of aggregating and cancelling different price offerings, which prevents users from being ripped off. Speculators absorb and transfer risk, brokers call in the order, and janitors cleans the trading floor to prevent slippage. It is not the employees, but the users, who set prices by expressing supply and demand preferences (While short episodes of speculator-control exist, they are defined by their terminal insanity and a subsequent correction to the user-controlled price level). If the market offers a price which is “too low”, such as a car for $5, people will
buy them to use: to drive, to enjoy the latest car tech, to avoid breakdowns, for their children, or simply because $5 is less than gasoline or oil changes. The homeless could even live in a $5 car. If the market set the price of cars to $5,000,000, people would sell them to use that money to buy other things to use. In BitShares, there is no use, only speculation, and so prices can move without bound.
Even if the BitShares idea were partially valid, the scourge of risk, and well-known effects of Asymmetric Information would iteratively drag the price of all BitAssets to zero, in a phenomenon called ‘The Market for Lemons’. The margin call system only increases the fragility of this mysterious experiment, such that the richest or craziest agents could create and profit from immensely volatile price swings.

Thanks for sharing your advice

Despite being disturbed about some of the pre-mine issues MemoryCoin had, only because it makes it hard to market to friends and others.
Ultimately though it's still far more fair than the way Quark/Next were distributed.

The commitment it makes to decentralised mining and the ability to vote off compromised developers at a later stage are great, 2 definite's the Bitcoin Beating coin will have. So I did actually buy some yesterday

My question is what is the average transaction time? For a transaction that you can be sure is fully confirmed.

Aside from attacking a straw man interpretation of my explanation this critique sounds very familiar to ones which I have debunked many times before.

Lets assume for a second that the prediction market was for an event 5 days in the future most people agree the price would track.  Make it 5 months and the price during that 5 month period would track clear up until the day it closes.   Make it 5 years and the price will track until the day it closes.  Make it 50 years?   Forever?    At what point does the LENGTH of maturity of a prediction market affect present day pricing?  The fact remains that you can only enter or exit positions through voluntary trades and all voluntary trades are based upon a prediction on what future trades are likely to be possible.  In effect, you buy or sell based upon your future prediction of what the market for a particular BitAsset will be.   If his theory that BitUSD will go to 0 is in fact correct then he should short BitUSD.   Unfortunately for him he will have to unwind his position in the future which means buying BitUSD which means a non-0 price.  In fact, the holders of BitUSD would demand as much as they can get away with because they are earning 5% for holding the note.  This reality means BitUSD cannot head toward 0.  

The asymmetric information argument is entirely bogus in this case.  How does someone who holds BTS or BitUSD have more information about what the exchange rate will be in the future than anyone else?    BitAssets cannot move toward 0 because they are all collateralized by 2x their initial value and the short position is paying 5% to avoid covering.   This means that the long position can hold out until the short position agrees to a reasonable valuation.  

At the risk of making an appeal to authority I will point out that BitShares X has been reviewed by Dr. Charles Evans  (http://www.pecuniology.com/who.php) who maintains that my economic model is solid.  I only make this appeal to authority to counter the claims that I have no 'authority' because I am "self-taught".   So lets ignore the appeal to authority or lack of.  

Lets assume we were to create a prediction market for an event that is 100% certain.   Would the price ever deviate?  Any attempts of pushing the price away would be seen as a profit opportunity by all participants.  This is the case with prediction markets based upon HISTORICAL outcomes.   You don't need a judge to make the payout, players will voluntarily settle even when the lose because they have 2x collateral that is tied up.   So they will accept their losses (50%) to avoid 100% loss of their collateral.

Lastly his straw man argument that I see a difference between "users" and "arbitrageurs" is entirely off base.  All individuals are motivated by profit opportunities and thus perform the arbitrage function when profitable to do so.  

So based upon the number of factual errors and misrepresentations I cannot take his economic analysis seriously.

Great analysis. Well presented argument as usual. Mod , you can delete mine with this message if you wish.

I am delighted to find this thread, and will contribute as and when I have something useful to add.

Could you mark the thread with  a ;) or something so when I scroll down the Alt currency topics it's easy to identify. There's so much noise in this forum I find it hard to identify all the threads I want to read.

All 3 factors are part of the technical aspect, the other half is the moral, fairness issues, which is very important to the user community of any viable currency.

Premining is very serious issue in the altcoin world. Bad handling of this will cast a shadow on the currency forever.

Litecoin earns 10/10 in that category IMO.

The prediction market in these instances would inevitably come to behave like Futures Exchange prices, in that their present-day value is heavily dependent on factors such as risk-free interest rate, and perceived volatility of the market price (and interest rate), as well as default risk..... all these because there can be a hold-to-maturity projection for the longest time frames.
The shorter time frames depend more heavily on implied speculative trends.

I've discovered a fatal technical flaw with MemoryCoin.

Mathematical Proof

1. Elephants never forget. Fact! - So elephant's don't need Memorycoin!

2. The biggest land animal in the world is an elephant. Fact!

http://dangerousintersection.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/elephant-lawyer-dreamstime-s100apm.jpg


Therefore the biggest market in the world won't use memorycoin!  :o

I have researched about one hundred alts. as they appeared over the past 9 months. I will certainly look at your questions in relation to the genetics of coins, and comment in due course: however those questions only address the technical structure at the outset.

As we know, the success of a tech project hinges not just on its excellence, but also on esoterics such as marketing/adoption as well as intangibles which appeal (without reference to logic) to the ultimate users : Hence the stellar rise of Dogecoin.

It is important to remember that digital currencies can evolve and change: the larger the community, the greater the resources available for additions redesigns, marketing and so on. Therefore I respectfully suggest that Mass Market Appeal :the speed of growth in the adopting community, will be a dominant factor to gauge, as that will not be apparent at the genesis block.

Question 1. Inflation.

A number of coins have what I would call 'Accelerated reduction in the Mining Subsidy' (related to Bitcoin). 

The rates of reduction in the block reward vary widely .. Some examples:

 Cryptogenic Bullion CGB was 90% mined in 6 months (similar to Quark)...although CGB has no annual inflation from continued mining, but has a PoS of around 1.5%

Tigercoin TGC. Reward halves every 3 months, so it will take a couple of years to mine. There is a small inflation after that.

QuickQuickCoin QQC.  This one is 50% mined in just 24 days.

Proof of Stake coins address the inflation issue as well.  Of the highly inflationary, PHS has 50% pa, HBN has 100% pa. Most others are below 3%.

Exactly as with life forms (DNA) the success or otherwise of currencies depends on a complex interaction between genetics and environment.

The rapid mining of the bulk of coins is one such variation, which may or may not have been intended to enrich early miners . However it has some benefits, which include an increased stability of supply in the medium term, in which sales of freshly mined coins (that will always happen as miners defray their current costs) have a lesser effect on price. The inflation after that is another variable, and PoS a third.


IMO predicting the future of these currencies is well nigh impossible. The cryptocurrency project is one of the most inclusive democratic global events that has ever been seen, with network effects that are surprising.

The degree to which the differences benefit individual coins will only be apparent in the longer run, added to which , the larger communities have the means to change some quite significant aspects, as I mentioned in an earlier post here.

FWIW, I will highlight each currency here, with my own thoughts over the next few weeks.

No argument, only fact. Quarkcoin is a pump and dump scheme, the most egregious ever attempted.

Hey guys, just found this thread about Protoshares. OP, could you comment on it?
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=2362.30
Topic: Why is ypool destroying PTS?

Proof please, supporting arguments. This is off topic anyway.

Don't agree with that, many coins have risen x100 or more in value. Qrk is one of those that happens to have a huge community to go along with it's rise in value. It is now a coin that can only go forward.  We should review in 1 year and see who is correct everything else is just guessing and speculation. Nobody knows for sure what will happen. I personally am holding the QRK i have and picked up more in the 7000 range.

the anti thesis to your argument is, what will happen when all the coins are mined?

In QRK, they are never 'all mined'.  (1M per year indefinitely).

If a coin were 'all mined' then it would be a good test of whether the network stands on transaction fees or PoS (or some other).

lol first of all there is no mention for peercoin or namecoin. maybe educate yourself a bit about the big coins.

quark is mined almost entirely, it's the end of mining what are you talking about asics and fpgas joining in the future?
it is so obvious you are a quark holder/drooler

From your post it almost makes it seem like QRK won't be mined at some point. From what I've read, the blocks just keep coming and stop halving after we hit 247,4xx,xxx coins.

What!? Your alt-coin doesn't let you vote? HaHa...

http://i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/05/18/article-2146093-132530F8000005DC-769_634x332.jpg

Should have used Memorycoin!



http://memorycoin.org/manifesto/

I bought litecoin and Primecoin at roughly the same time. Litecoin was worth $3 and Primecoin about $5.

Litecoin went up to $45 before settling at $23 ; Primecoin on the other hand is still under $10. So why do you state that litecoin has 0 chances of making huge gains ??

Interesting article on BTCGeek:
http://www.btcgeek.com/memorycoin-trying-something-brilliant/

Great guide!

Excelent guide, a lot of thanks ;D

Memorycoin is in my opinion the coin with the most potential out there, mainly due to the voting system. It is truly remarkable how much we have achieved because of it - and as freetrade said we already have more services that QRK or LTC.

chinese translation here ::)

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=2493.0

I own memorycoin and I'm an active member of invictus co.munity, but to say memorycoin has more services and infrastructure than litecoin is just a bunch of bullshit.

About the write up, I agree with a lot of it btw but when it came to litecoin, seriously Free trade 0 /10? You have no idea what's in store this year for litecoin development and infrastructure. There are litecoin projects worth millions of dollars in development and most exchanges and ATMs plan yo have litecoin very soon. Sure there are issues with the community but they are already being worked on. Litecoin still has a long way to go up, $700Million market cap won't just go to $0

The real confirmation time is not the time for a transaction be included in a block, it should be the time that the chain is long enough so that the chance of reorganization is very little. For BTC, normally you wait 3 to 6 confirmation, but how many you need to wait for Quark? Maybe 20, 30? Short confirmation time only gives you false safety. Moreover, 36 seconds block generating time will introduce a lot of stale and orphan blocks.

It took me a while, but I came to realize that confirmation time isn't as important as I thought when I first looked into crypto-currencies.
A "good enough" confirmation per transaction can be achieved via other methods so you don't have to wait, for example, the full ~10 minutes per confirmation on BTC.

Nice MMC advertising  ;D

Thank you for this article..

"If you use one PREDICTABLE algo (e.g SHA-256 or Scrypt) and make the block confirmation speed too fast, then your coin would be incredibly insecure (e.g.FastCoin). For instance we know that Bitcoin uses ONLY SHA-256, and Litecoin etc are using ONLY Scrypt algo -- that's predictable! But Quark complements it's fast confirmation times by 9 rounds of hashing using RANDOMLY 6 algorithms, which is unpredictable. So in effect, you have lightning speed combined with unbeatable multi-layered security. Quark is really a unique and ingenious hidden gem of a cryptocurrency.
And whatever Bitcoin enthusiasts may say, at this stage they cannot implement this combination of features into Bitcoin because that would radically alter Bitcoin's DNA."

Yes, I've heard that line . . . that if altcoins come up with any improvements, Bitcoin will simply adopt them. It's tosh. The only way the Bitcoin community will agree to even a minor (forking) change is if there is a clear existential threat like a security problem discovered . . . that will cause a scramble, and there won't be any new features added.

Added my thoughts on Infinitecoin.

I've been playing around with it today - despite having a market cap north of 5M, it was difficult to sync with only one node appearing for the duration of the sync. Difficulty very low and weak network - recommended sell until this coin gets rescued.

Thanks for adding InfiniteCoin.
It looks like it's a dying coin: http://exploretheblocks.com:2750/chain/Infinitecoin
I checked the exchanges and there are very few buy requests compared to other coins...
I'd stay away, as you said.

looking at infinitecoin, never had a chance to play with it.

regarding the confirmation time issue, I don't think it's a big deal but still a plus. It's not all about the merchants, users pleased to see their transactions confirmed fast.

Thanks - I know there is a lot of interest in altcoin investing and especially CPU coins in China.

It would be interesting to hear more about a comparison between GPU and CPU coins.
Who's the most resilient CPU coin out there? Are GPU miners good for CPU coins? etc.

Thanks

Very useful, thanks. Curious current views of the hottest DOGE

DOGE is interesting due to the marketing aspect but I see that they are building agreat infrastructure (ie bounty for tipping app on facebook) and it could be a great "fun" currency in the future.

I think with Doge, you are primarily betting on people rather than on technology.  If you think the herd will follow it, it may succeed.

Thanks for the OP.  Please expand to other coins.

what about 42? i am not sure but it should have less inflation as there are only 42 coins ???

would be interested to hear your views on how ADT can be improved :)

You need glasses, son. Which exchanges did you check? Infinitecoin is in Top 3-5 trading coins on all major exchanges.

Funnily enough you have a thread giving investment advice yet you break the number one rule of trading  ::)

DOGE added now.

With respect to Infinitecoin, the issue of a 51% attack is more apt to happen to bitcoin than anything else. Bitcoin is lucky that CEX.IO is not rogue because they could take over the blockchain easily.

Infinitecoin has already been threatened with 51% attack out of China and they failed. There are more friendlys in China than enemies. The Chinese, for the most part, love this coin and are working with the IFC community to ensure its long term success. That being said, the new client 2.0 will make the 51% attack impossible.

There will be no heist.

Litecoin 1/10? Really?

Why do you throw scyrpt under the bus?

~c

could you add a link in the post to include the spanish and chinese translation ;D

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=2492.0

https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php?topic=2493.0

As I understand it (someone please correct me if I'm wrong) when merchants opt for immediate confirmation with Bitpay, it is the merchant, not Bitpay who accepts the risk. This is viable small amounts and for orders that are revokable (i.e. if you double spend they just cancel your order and don't ship), but not for everything.

Also, even "offloading" the risk means the risk will get priced into processing fees, raising costs.
 
The real reason that fast confirm times are useless is that it means you just need more confirms to guard effectively against orphans and double spends. So in that sense yes, it is a waste of resources in order to impress people who don't really understand the issues.

Wow what a shocker.... MMC the best investment according to wait...... the MMC dev. LOL

I could not have seen that coming at all.  Forget all other crypto MMC is the one you want mofos. Sell you BTC now whilst you still can.

It's simple supply and demand people look to the strongest communities that have no huge inflationary minting. That is it.

Then again NOBODY in this world can tell you what will go up and what will go down. That is a FACT.


Is MMC a good coin? hmmm well it has innovation yes. Is it likely to exceed LTC or DOGE as an investment long term?  Who knows but i would say NO.

You can dress up your future analytics with any fancy shit you want...............nobody knows which coins will make the best investment.

How about some very low minting coins  DMD , CGB , PHS  all very good coins and undervalued right now.

Here's a short story about my first Altcoin Investment

 Back when IFC was new it traded @ 10-20 LTC satoshi for more than a month. It then began trading up to about 100 satoshi and returned back to 10-20. This happened a few times before price stabilized above 100. I purchased 1 BTC worth @ 14 satoshi which was about 100,000,000 IFC at the time. 90% of those coins ended up sold @ or around 100-200 satoshi when btc was still $100/ea. IRL profit was more like 10-20x over 6 months instead of the amazing results shown below. More on the other 10% later.

This is what that $100 investment would be worth now. 100,000,000 IFC = 455 LTC , 12.28 BTC , or about $10,500.

Can these results be duplicated? Will it be possible to make $10,000 on a $100 investment in some unknown new coin that everyone thought was shit 6 months before? Maybe not!

Here's why

1. BTC/USD is worth nearly 10x what it was back in june/july when I purchased 1 bitcoin to exchange for IFC

2. Litecoin has appreciated 8x in terms of dollar equivalent.

3. IFC/LTC appreciated 32x.

All of these factors play a part in massively huge ROI. If bitcoin, litecoin, and other crypto currency pairs do not increase another 10 fold it may not be possible to make 10,000% gains or 100x ROI. However, 32x is still vary possible. Even for shitty clone coins which is exactly what IFC was considered to be back in the day! Read through the original thread all the hate is there.


If BTC and LTC were still trading @ the same prices as in June/July the return would only be 32x or $3,200. Which is still an amazing achievement for 6 months.

The other 10% -

Once again I'd like to mention due to being a newbie I sold 90% of those coins vary early for a quick double/triple up. The remaining 10% I completely forgot about until I got back into the bitcoin scene around November/December. At this time 10,000,000 IFC was worth about $1,200. Did I sell? You'll never know ~evil grin~

Morel of the story? Short term gains are great! Double, triple, or even quadrupling an investment in a relatively short amount of time is satisfying. However, the bread and butter is medium to long term investment. Doesn't matter if your a miner or trader always keep a specific percentage set aside just in case something amazing happens.

Hi freetrade, I am an investor of Infinitecoin and keen to hear if you have any potential solution to improve
the network security. Someone say could increase the transaction to keep the network safe, is this feasible.

Do you also think it would increase the chance of 51% if IFC rise to the same market cap as doge? I personally believe IFC will have a big pump in the near feature as lots of Chinese invest a lot in it. If someone undertake a 51% and success, he only destroy the coin but gain nothing, what the point to do that? Am I right?

Keen to hear your thoughts, thanks.

P S I bought some MMC today and buy more in the future.

Cheers
Kation

Sorry I mean increase the transaction fees to improve the security.

I believe your 100m will worth a lot more than the current price.

I agree - to get the large, fast multipliers, you have to invest in altcoins - and choose the correct ones.

Congrats on choosing IFC - I was recommending it back in July when big gains were to be made . . I'm out of it now though. 

Yes.

You may regret as there is a pump from china soon.

This feature and more will be in the new release version 1.8.6 of IFC shortly. We are not ignoring this issue.

Hi, could you please explain the update on the new version client, particularly on the security side and when it will be released. Many thanks.

Thanks for adding Dogecoin.
I think it should receive 1 points for development as it does have a large community around it... But I guess you're right assuming that we'll see half baked features due to quick loss of interest.

I think it's large, but the interest is shallow - other communities have deeper interest and commitment to their coins.

Yep, I agree.

hi，when mem2.0 will be listed on cryptsy?

You can trade it on Bter:

https://bter.com/trade/MMC_btc

https://bter.com/trade/MMC_cny

For a coin to have a healthy staying power it should be attractive enough to bring in miners but not so lopsided that the block reward plunges down to nothing in a matter of weeks, like Particle for example... block reward that started at 50K coins but weeks later is at just 160 I believe. Pump and dump coins.

There's more to a coin than having it surge in price... having a healthy trading volume and strong community is enough to start with, the big profits can come later on. There's nothing wrong with some coin inflation, especially at low market caps if it helps spread the coin around to users other than the ones with huge mining operations. "big money" resistant coins that can provide everyone with a reasonable reward such as a proof of stake coin that gives all accounts with any balance in them at all fixed amount of coin I think would be popular and attract a broader user-base than ones that reward people who have the money with more money. Of course people could just create more wallets then but it's another idea. In any case what's more important is the functionality of the coin.. useful features like NXT proposes, or datacoin storing data in the blockchain, namecoin for registering .bit domain names, or whatever.

I knew, I bought 10k from bter, but prefer to do business with cryptsy.

Yes, I'm interested in hearing more about this - 'Advanced Checkpoints' sounds like a plan to centralize . . I think higher transaction fees would secure the network in a more de-centralized way.

Great analysis.

But I think that because many of the coins are not traded heavily, the effects of inflation will be slower.

There will be higher optional default tx fees, and higher fees for smaller transactions. Advanced check pointing is a temporary measure until 2.0 when we can implement a more permanent solution.

https://twitter.com/MemoryCoinMMC2/status/428097857262866432
Looks like MemoryCoin is indeed a good coin to hold :)

Nice!

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/BfDou6eCUAAOS2n.jpg:large

Good read, but you ignored rising of second gen. cryptos, if they will chatch up, in few months first gen. coins will be seen as boring, and i dont think that newbies will be interested in "old" stuff...and crypto industry count on newcomers.

+1

I think it is foolish to hold any of these coins beyond short term speculation.

Bitcoin and possibly Litecoin. The rest are on a short or long trip to zero.

i have been hearing a few good things about CGB the last few weeks also wouldn't mined to hear what you think should be improved on ADT

Yep - added CGB - it has very good potential.

Interested to hear more about ADT - how does it answer the 3 questions?

( I am currently working with mullick to make a new blockchain that we can swap to due to huge issues with the code

( the founder of the coin got shake to make it and it was cloned from starcoin )


Androids tokens
it was the first proof of stake high volume coin

i believe it will be the first coin to completely swap to a new blockchain without a blockchain reset ( nobody should lose any coins )

it will also be the first POS coin that doesn't destroy TX fees

Q1: Inflation: – script POW/POS

There's currently 66,800,000,000 coins in circulation that were POW mined ( no more POW mined coins )  

on the new blockchain the POS will be 0.05% every 15 days ( approx 1.2% / year )

Q2: Development: – is currently funded by me and work is done by users or paid contractors
 
there is a lot of stuff being worked on right now to improve ADT by everyone involved

Q3: Decentralization: – the only centralised parts will be the swap over to the new blockchain and the cheackpointing server


happy to answer any questions :)

ANN thread > https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=276884.0

my repair thread > https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=372734.0

right now the coin is not in the best of shape but i am putting in all the work needed to get everything running 110% :)

Really good post/thread FreeTrade - thank-you for putting it together :)

FR

Bookmarked and will be watching. Very good analysis and logical approach.

Ok - probably best to make sure everything is running smoothly before trying to draw attention to your coin.

What are your thoughts on Digitalcoin, Securecoin, Frankos and Zetacoin?

At your analysis you should add price at which you made calculations, not only possible growth of 100x, 500x, 3x and so on.

Very interesting thread...a good read.  Thanks for the positive comments. 

No thoughts yet - there are hundreds of coins out there - takes a few hours to really research one properly - any reason I should be curious about any of these . . . how do they address the 3 questions?

Yes, your research is appreciated. I am not an economist, nor an professional trader, which is one of the reasons I was seeking 3rd party opinion.

I believe these coins are very interesting simply because they are established and have very active communities. The developers also seem to be on the ball and are always willing to further the cause for their coins. I will try to address the 3 questions as best I can and I will also send a message to baritus, defaced and Giskard to elaborate on them as they will likely be able to answer the questions better than I can.

Digitalcoin:
Q1: Inflation: Much like the Bitcoin/Litecoin model there will be a total of 144.5 Million coins. Rewards started at 20, then down to 15 and they will half every 3 years until the hard cap is reached. 40 second blocks with 15 DGC reward and a difficulty retarget every 108 blocks.

Q2: Development: This is what sets DGC apart from the rest. I would say that apart from BTC and LTC, Digitalcoin has the most active development out of any other alt coin out there. They are the first alt to have a working lightweight java client (similar to electrum) where you do not need to download the entire blockchain. This client will also directly integrate with coinmart (a brand new marketplace website). http://blockr.io offers a full set of tools to explore the digitalcoin block chain. It visualizes the transaction data, mining information, and price trends to provide useful charts and data aggregates that update live. You also have access to an extensive API. The CryptoAve exchange is in it's final stages of beta with public released scheduled this week. This exchange will allow for users to trade DGC/SRC/ARG/PPC/BTC/LTC directly to USD. An option that not many coins can have. CryptoAve will also feature a payment processor so merchants can easily accept Digitalcoin. They also an android app and multiple services and places to spend DGC. So right off the bat, it is set apart from a standard pump and dump coin that only has a wallet and is listed on an exchange.

Q3: Decentralization: It is a scrypt coin. However, Digitalcoin has also never been 51% attacked in the 8.5 months since release. This is a stat that only a select few coins can claim. Digitalcoin also uses random checkpoint blocks to ensure the validity of the blockchain (Baritus can elaborate on this).


Securecoin:
Q1: Inflation: Securecoin is a CPU only coin (much like Quark). However with a similar distribution model as Bitcoin and a fair launch. 1 minute blocks with 5 SRC rewards. Rewards half every 2.1 million blocks until the maxium of 21 million SRC are minted. It is also feature on multiple exchanges including btc38.

Q2: Development: SRC is part of the Digitalcoin family so all developments that is being done for Digitalcoin will surely be implemented to SRC shortly after. It will be a part of the CryptoAve service mentioned above, meaning conversion to fiat and payment processor.

Q3: Decentralization: Uses 6 algorithms to secure the blockchain (Grøstl, Skein, BLAKE, BLUE MIDNIGHT WISH, JH, SHA-3). Meaning you cannot currently mine with with your standard GPU, ASIC. It is strictly a CPU coin.



Franko:
Q1: Inflation: Rare coin with 0.25 block rewards occuring every 30 seconds. Block rewards half every 2.25 million blocks until a total of 11.2 million coins are minted. The kimoto gravity well has just been implemented to address difficulty adjustment.

Q2: Development: Franko has one of the most dedicated developers out there behind the coin (defaced). He is constantly promoting his coins growth and acceptance and is heavily involved with almost everything crypto related. His coin is actually supported by a few local businesses in his area. The coin is supported by multiple online merchants and gaming sites as well as local pawn shops in Atlanta. I am very impressed with development and community efforts for this coin. They also have nifty tools such as an Android wallet.

Q3: Decentralization: Scrypt Algorithm using kimoto gravity well to adjust difficulty dynamically to help secure the network and prevent abuse.


Zetacoin:
Q1: Inflation: SHA-256 coin with 30 second blocks with difficulty retargetting every 4 blocks based on the last 90 blocks. Block rewards are 1000 ZET halving every month and not dropping below 1 ZET/block. The system is inflationary, meaning that once the rewards go down to 1 ZET, they will be 1 ZET forever. So after 1 year 160 million will be mined with approx 1 million new ZET being minted every year thereafter. I'd also like to point out that at the current value, ZET has a very low daily maintenance cost for approx $250/day.

Q2: Development: Zeta also seems to have a rather active development team. They have an Android wallet and an exchange in the works. They also have the support of the NOBS community. They are currently in an acceptance phase with many merchants coming on board and starting to accept Zeta.

Q3: Decentralization: SHA-256 algorithm so would follow the same as Bitcoin I would imaging.



I'd also like to point out that none of these coins had any form of premine or instamining upon launch. They were all fair launches as far as I can tell.

I'll also ask the coin devs to toss in their input in this thread.

If you have anything to add, then be my guest ;)

Infinitecoin deserves much better score.

I'm continuing to watch it closely to see the devs clear up the security problem.

bookmarking this thread :)

Thanks for putting in the effort to answer the 3 questions but it seems like none of these coins would get a good score (except maybe zeta), because they all have high inflation (0/3) and community development (0/3). I'm looking for coins that solve these problems.

very informative, care to give your thoughts on Digibyte and Lottocoin?

and EAC too if you have time.

Thanks

Hey dannydisco, Franko halves every 22.5 million blocks which on a time span that is about every 22 and a half years. This gives everyone in the world a more equal opportunity to adopt a new system.

Also, our rate of inflation is lower then most of the other coins. We produce on average 720 FRK per day, this has done wonders for keeping the price stable as you can tell by the charts on cryptsy.

Franko dynamically changes difficulty each time a block is found with the Kimoto Gravity Well first introduced by Megacoin. This turns the table on multipools. Before multipools were getting tons of the blocks on low difficulty while the dedicated miners had the burden of "unsticking" the network. Since the update, dedicated miners get the majority of blocks and when multipools mine, they must mine at a difficulty equal to their hashrate. As a result, our average hashrate has jumped 400% and the price of a franko over $3.40

When it comes to adoption we focus primarily on real world application. We dont belive its in our best interest to preach to the already converted but rather new people who have never even heard of Bitcoin, let alone Franko. We are an active sponsoring member of 2 chamber of commerce and as a result we are accepted at about 20 brick and mortar stores, 10 of which are well known pawnshops in atlanta georgia.

2014 is going to be a great year for Franko.

Congrats on the thread!
Would you please add:
NXT
Emunie
Ethereum

 :)

Many IFC projects going on at the moment. Join the official Infinitecoin forum if you haven't already :)

I really wonder why i read this, there is nothing interesting in there and i feel like i lost my time :
it is just advertizing for your MemoryCrap

It seems that you don't really keep a pace with the market. In near future only second generation coins will mean something and all these you mentioned above will be undeveloped and retarded. Look closely at counterparty [XCP], ethereum, mastercoin [msc] and those that don't exist yet: zerocoin, mc2

edit: ahh i forgot to mention NXT and its clones: NEM, NEX etc..

I liked the addition to your post! I was reading about CGB earlier and thought it looked like a solid medium-term investment.

Agree and Memory coin holds a 0/10 in that category. You just don't import an abandoned block chain into a new coin.

Good analysis. I own a variety of coins, but Cryptographic bullion I think is undervalued. I'm looking forward to later developments with CGB. Cryptocurrencies are still in their infancy in terms of their potential, so the next couple of years will be interesting.

i like your thread freetrade and im about to buy myself some cgb because i trust your judgement after reading this, if you have time it would be great if you did a write up on DMD like peercoin but rare

lol 2nd generation, you mean 2nd generation 50% to 100% pre mined and desperately trying hard to get rich

I think Mooncoin is fun!

What does that even mean?

just discovered this nice community myself, come have a look!

What about noble coin what do you think?

It means that I think Mooncoin is fun! I have fun aquiring and trading Mooncoin. It's great!

There is a lot of interest in the so-called 'second-generation' alts, but they are much harder to evaluate. They all look very technologically ambitious.  That means more risk and more potential reward.
The technology is very hard to evaluate, usually the spec is still fluid, impossible to know how easily the technology will be adopted, how long it will take to perfect, if there will be any late breaking showstoppers. Unless you have a particular insight into the technology being developed, I suggest completely ignoring it and looking at the team,

The questions I'm asking about for 2nd generation altcoin teams -

1. Aligned interests - Are investors' interests aligned with the founders? They should be.
2. Team pedigree - have the founders been in the community for a long time, or did they just float in on the last bubble? They should have history of seeing the potential of Bitcoin before it reached $1000, or $100, or even $10.
3. Jobs program - are the founders just trying to create well-paid jobs for themselves. That's a red flag.
4. Technical leadership - are technical people in charge? They should be.

1, 2, and 4 aren't as big a deal IMO, but #3 is the reason why I don't invest in these currencies. Yeah, its true that a centralized group of developers who hold most of the coin can probably develop it more efficiently than our decentralized communities...but I don't like the principle.

So how about a group of developers that do not hold most of the coin but get a "salary" to develop it efficiently + can be replaced anytime by a more efficient group?
Wait, that's MemoryCoin! :)
That's why I believe in MMC

I'd like to see the verdict for worldcoin,goldcoin and diamond coin that would be great thanks.

+1

Author nowhere mentioned it does not really matter how much coins are added because for as long as there is equilibrium of supply
and demand the price will stay stable. If X coins are added to total supply and 0 of those coins hit exchanges (miners decide to hold
them) but at the same time demand for cryptocoin in question increases then what happens? Yes, price will go up.


Those mentioned are not 2nd gen cryptocoins, don't be a fool! They are either minor variations on already existing cryptocoins (NXT
and clones are PPC + NMC done with Java) or totally depend on existing cryptocoins which they actually make more cool (MSC and all
others). eMunie? Nothing new. You need to analyse things a bit more for yourself and not fall so easily on sale pitches and propaganda.

Thanks, i had a feeling that it have nothing common with this thread.

And you need to stop spreading utter nonsense. Even if you don't like them cryptos like NXT do bring new things to the table. Progress is good.

nice analysis. thanks

can we keep this awesome thread to minimal promotion, and more analysis basis. break downs of the three main subjects the OP started with or futures suitable to brag.


enough with the "my coin has bigger pennies"  ;)

kthnxbuy

This might be the most ridiculous view of the proof of work system I've ever seen.  If you're running a proof of work coin with no reward for mining it, you have 0 security for your blockchain.  Who cares if it doesn't have inflation when nobody is going to keep the block chain up.  No distributed  block chain security = no acceptance.  

You criticize Dogecoin about coin count, yet Dogecoin is one of the FEW coins going with a system that makes sense for PoW.  They're changing to two minute block times and 2.5% inflation per year.  That number is a little high and I would personally use something like 1%, but this means people will always be mining it and keeping the network distributed and secure.  Please don't tell me your solution to this problem is checkpoints....

Yes - there's a balance between too little going to miners (no block chain security) and too much going to miners (rampant inflation) - you want something in the middle.

Yeah, those are better values. Are they planning a fork? I based my commentary on the published values.

I completely agree with your analysis on Cryptogenic Bullion. I think that coin is terribly undervalued with the scarcity and advantages.

why not peer coin? It is currently on 4th at the list, should worth a mention.

This suffers from exactly the problem you describe in your first paragraph. The market cap of DOGE is about $50m. With 2.5% inflation that's only $1.25m per year in mining costs. Ignoring ASICs, that's only 6000 250W GPUs at $0.10/kWh. At $300 each that's only $1.8 million worth of GPUs to run a 51% attack. At some point soon there might be 6000 GPUs on Amazon Web Services available for well under a dollar an hour. Someone who wants to vandalize the network for whatever reason could do it for under $1000.

Not going to work.

Low inflation rate can only work if the coin has such an enormous market cap that transaction fees can support the network. That might be BTC in some hypothetical future. It will not work for any of the altcoins, other than perhaps by defining "work" to mean limited supply and rapid short term speculative gains. I won't use the cliche three-word phrase, but that's really what you're talking about here.

Really, that's all I need to attack Dogecoin is $1.8 million dollars in r9 290 video cards?

How much did the 9/11 attacks, or alleged government patsy attacks (pick your choice), cost again that destroyed several financial institutions at the same time?  $5 for a box cutter?

I wonder if the neighbors will notice $1.8 million of r9 290 fans running in my house.

Freetrade

What is your definition of inflation and how did you work out the inflation rate for each coin?

Money supply inflation.

how did you work out the inflation rate for each coin?

I buy some MMC,CGB,QRK at today, waiting 100X~

thats just simple math; coins produced per day * coin value

then you only have to look at run time of total coins; example BTC ~ 2040 for last mined blocks.

if you then count that (money needed per day * 365 * running years) you get an estimate of money needed to keep up with the coin value.

The inflation rate is even simpler than that, it is just coins produced divided by coins outstanding. You don't even need to know the value.

sometimes..... keep it simple stupid ;)

well i got me self  over 5k of CGB and im happy because the community is alive with great ideas, and innovations and the DEV's are very impressive, i have a lot of quark already so no need to worry about them, some others to keep your eyes on are DMD and BTG i hold both and i have been watching the community's behind these coins and the devs and they are really dedicated and in it to win it. big things to come for BTG, CBG,DMD, and QRK and  not just saying that because i hold these coins in large amounts, i have many coins in large amounts i have never mined a single coin, every one i bought, i'm currently the largest holder of DMD and one of the largest holders of BTG, CGB and top 100 wallets of QRK and i bought all these because i saw the potential, don't miss out on these, not bragging, but i have already made a considerable amount of money, and i hope that everyone here can, but your not going to make it in dogecoin, im sorry doge supporters, but it's a fad, it's like beanie baby's it is not going to stick around, and no serious business is going to use them, we are coming up to a time in this world, where people will be struggling to keep a roof over there heads, doge is going to loose it's funny appeal very quickly, and the only crypto's that will survive are ones that can be a store of wealth like gold and silver, and maybe, maybe a few that can be used as an actual currency, my advice get out of doge while you still can, and if you don't, don't say you were not warned....

Yeah, that's a great indicator for a coin - maybe the best . . . long term interest of community and devs.

I don't understand why you said that Cryptogenic Bullion is reliable coin !
Seriously, it have the worst name of all, and this coin is quite the same than many other cryptocurrency.

it's not really it is designed as a store of wealth like gold or silver instead of a currency, and you really think it has a worse name then things like dogecoin, catcoin, kittycoin, junkcoin.....junkcoin probably is a good coin haven't really checked it out, but if it is the name hurts it in my opinion

I actually think it's a pretty good name. It doesn't have "coin" which is a big plus in my opinion. Also, the "bullion" aspect of it suggests a hedging mechanism for longer-term storage of funds. Sure you can do this with BTC or any coin, really, but the Proof of Stake is a plus. Then there's PPC. Terrible name, "PeePee Coin". "PeerCoin" is better but relatively nondescript. when you start getting the interest of folks not familiar with crypto currencies, the "bullion" bit will likely make them say "hm, what's this?"

Still 3/10 for Infinitecoin?  Hmmm

i know what your saying, i often wonder what goes the developers heads when they create a crypto.

there was a lot of coins he could of chose, and ifc was one of them, not bad really, i have around 30mil ifc and he gave it a good wrap in my opinion

I was expecting more.

MaxCoin added

Good analysis on maxcoin free trade, if they only went the way of memorycoin and had a built in pool 1 click miner.

What do u think of the price? Don't u think its crazy maxcoin is priced at $10/coin (was $40,at some point) given the fact the total supply is 250million and the high inflation model? How much longer can he sustain the price, on Twitter he is calling for ppl to buy at the current prices, isn't that suicide for investors?

I am actually disappointed in max kesier, i thought he had some decency in him but he is pumping his coin on twitter every minute, despite knowing the illogical price of the coin and the launch mess up

Y only 1 point for MAX Hype and 3 point for MMC Developers?

The points in that category aren't for the quality of the developer team . . . but rather if there is a system in place to ensure sustained development. For MMC, the devs are actually hired by the blockchain - some of the mining rewards are allocated directly to the dev team. That ensures there will always be funds to pay devs to continue development. No other coin has that.

Maybe he's cashing out.

 Very interesting, for a geek, or a mathematician, or an engineer, this thread.

 But fact is no one here in this community will be dictating what the MARKETPLACE accepts or rejects, and much to their horror.

 Nor is hardly anyone that is mainly focused on which coins offer superior fundamentals and inovations also trying to strongly determine what is going on behind the scenes to thrust certain crypto's into the marketplace next.

 I am forced to run with this hobby at the same speed rookie interns are thrashed into the health care system when their finished with medical school (90 to 110 hour weeks). But even that's not enough for myself to stay abreast of even 1/4 of what's occurring day by day in this revolution.


 As for who wins:

 It certainly wont be internally developed, micro focused Crypto-Exchanges that mostly just internally promote their own Crypto's going anywhere soon, or at all. At least not without massive media attention, and extremely strong marketplace demand, or massive funding for advertizing and promotions, and all that goes with those all too forgotten winning secrets.

btc:

Bitcoin - it blazed the trail into the mainstream for all Crypto's. It's the defacto RESERVE Crypto already. The one that all others are now measured by, even fiat too is suddenly being measured in bitcoins.

 Fact is Bitcoin has already sealed 1st place. And to claim it doesn't have it's act together in this tread is pure heresy. And to claim Bitcoin isn't suddenly working on scores of projects to further solidify it's stranglehold merely proves the OP hasn't paid anywhere near enough attention to the BIG PICTURE behind Bitcoin's success.

 But he certainly get's an A+ for suggesting to have at least 50% of one's Crypto Portfolio in Bitcoin. I myself have 2/3's now. And that is what I estimate will be Bitcoin's overall marketshare, of the entire world. Or more, unless others fast get their race faces on and get into maximum overdrive, with no fear to push forward and near light speed. That is what it will likely take to keep Bitcoin from grabbing at least 2/3's the entire marketplace, all to it's self. It and all the other things that are being designed and built ON TOP of the Bitcoin Protocol.


 Fact is EVERY other Crypto is so far behind Bitcoin in every last respect it's truly laughable.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
 

 Toss in that a new, extremely well marketed Crypto named DOGE came out of nowhere and captured such demand and support that it's leaped into the forefront of all Crypto's except for just Bitcoin fully deminstrates my premise here.


 Where am I going with this?
 

Well I laid out the foundation of that above.

 I began a new thread this week:  
   
**2014 is THE RACE to the Mainstream Marketplace**
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=450232.msg4954269#msg4954269

Best review that long and winded opening post that isn't very popular, but vital for the winners to seek guidance from.


 The very reason I did start that thread was because the overwhelming majority of alternatives and competitors to Bitcoin are all half asleep, with precious few exceptions.

 Sure some have communities actively trying to get their coins thrust into the mainstream, and their all failing so far. Horribly.


The Winners:

 Toss in that whom ever gets there 1st seals the deal, and locks up market share for themselves, and the point is this: You snooze, you lose. Once 2, 3, or 4, maybe a few more, grab marketshare, it's almost all gone. And I for one am not convinced any more than 2 or 3 at most will ultimately grab much market share. I will leave out why here. READ the other thread.

btc:

 Bitcoin is the 1st Crypto that breakthrough. It may not be the most technically wonderful, but it's plenty sound enough to seal the deal with the marketplace, and of course it's an evolving technology itself. After all it's the revolutionary wonderkind. The first of it's kind. What started it all. And has an enormous lead over all my other favorite Crypto's.

 Point being those here everyone here can hash it out why this or that is so wonderful, and argue over scores of things, or spread fud, or claim why xyz is better than abc, but all that is mere distraction to reality. This is 2014, not 2012, or early 2013. Suddenly this is HAPPENING.


The next 4 to 6 months:


 The next several months seals up the majority of the mainstream marketplace for the ultimate winners going forward for at least the next generation (18 to 21 years). If not many generations to come.

 And while many here are wasting precious time Bitcoin grows ever stronger.

 And Coins such as DOGE is also eating everyone's lunch and dinner too.


The Marketplace:


 Like it or not it's BRANDING, MARKETING, PROMOTION, and FORCING one's Crypto into the mainstream is exactly what will determine the Winner(s), and the rest are merely going to all be Losers that painfully wither and fade away.

 Maybe that's not fair, that the "best structured crypto(s) wont win. Too bad. That's life. Fact is hardly anyone understands just how huge the force behind Bitcoin truly is. What with lobbying teams, legal teams, full time employees, scores of dedicated volunteers, and the fact is their finally working triple time to make Bitcoin ultra easy for everyone to very soon utilize, for anything, anywhere.

 I read a lot of misinformation in this thread concerning Bitcoin. Likely it's because their not burning both ends of the candle analyzing the Big Picture, and since their perspective is absolutely warped in favor of their own favorites their seeing many things through foggy lenses.


 Bitcoin has SEALED THE DEAL:

The entire Crypto-Community owes an enormous amount of thanks to Bitcoin. Bitcoin did it all by itself. With help from no other Crypto.

 And if any alternative cares to compete in this race to the winners circle they had best realize they had better get a real new grip on reality, or they too are going to lose. Because anyone not already in the race by this coming summer is almost certain to be a loser.


 Peercoin:

 It's shameful it wasn't reviewed here.

 It's arguably the 1st alternative to Bitcoin, or maybe even it's sucessor for particular economic fundamental needs. Simply put it's a better Medium of Exchange, where as Bitcoin is arguably a better Store of Value. I wont discuss economic theory with Engineers and Mathematicians here, I wont waste my time or theirs. Nor others. Your all far too late to that game to try and wrestle sense in that arena, and have likely been led astray there already. Suffice to say it's going to be the Marketplace and Policy Makers, along with the most wealthy and powerful forces, and not any of us here deciding all the major victories, or what is utilized for what.



 Bitcoin has already won 1st place: and lapped the entire field at least a few times. And is only growing ever stronger, and pulling further ahead of the entire field. Like it or not this is a competition. This is real Capitalism. Something not practiced hardly at all, except by real, true, small businesses, in the Private Sector.


 Best read my thoughts and re-focus to spring board your favorite Crypto's into the mainstream, darn fast, or those that do, even the Litecoin knockoff Doge will surely end up blowing away all the rest of the competition. Watch with shock and horror as it does just that if the rest wont directly race DOGE.



 The reader will just have to suffer through a long winded thread I created at the link above to fully grasp why I state what I have here, and why I responded here (I desire for the better Crypto's to win).


 But all I can do is inspire communities to put the required efforts in to make that happen.

 So far it's just like there is no pit crew chiefs, there is no strong marketing and promotions. Their are no coordinators, no front line key employees. No Management worthy.


No one else but DOGE is making enough music, that us old dogs thought was static and mere noisy attitude.


 By default Bitcoin has won the race.


 And by default #2, #3, and any other winners, if there are any other bigger winners, will likely all end up winning simply because the other communities couldn't get their acts together fast enough.


 In others words too little, too late. And not retaining the required Marketing experts to make faster progress than anyone else.

 It's laughable how the endless debates are all about who's better, and why, and who's a scam and why. And how this one it this, that one is that, bla bla bla. While giving away at least 1/2 of the entire mainstream marketplace to Bitcoin, already.

 Get a grip. Get it together.


 Winners don't make up excuses.

 And real class never relentlessly displays no class at all.

 It's been a major disappointment to realize that suddenly a new phase is upon this Decentralized Crypto Revolution, yet the main actors can't see the forest for the trees. Nor the road ahead. I just summed it up here. The other directions and reasons are at the link.

 Tread carefully. And wisely, and best get your race faces on, if you have one.


 Otherwise, just put it almost all in Bitcoin instead, because anything else will likely end up an act of futility at the rate things are crawling ahead in almost every crypto community, save just a handful.

 And I already know none here can even rattle off more than two or three of the 5 or 6 that are dead set on winning, at all costs, much to their surprise, if they knew who was really who!


 There was a lot of good info here.

And a lot of wasted efforts and data.

Thankfully I learned to read and skim through damn fast when required.


 So after another 24+ hour nonstop day, I am retiring for shut eye. It's been 24 to 60 hour nonstop days for myself, at least half the time, for many months now, just to keep up with this revolution as best as is required for my own future, just to get out of the deep hole the banksters and wall street stuck myself in. Aong of course with myself. But no matter what, I will win again. Just like I did when I beat all of them from 2008 through 2009. Right before they retroactively broke all the rules, and stole it all away, and then of course rewarded their very own failures, and everyone elses, except of course making those like myself whole again.

 I can't stand to lose. And I absolutely live to win.


Sadly I don't see hardly any Capitalists around anymore. What a pity.
===========================================


Caveat emptor (for all the good that will do).

can you cover SXC ?

Nice review, I couldn't agree more!
I am really disgusted at what this Max dose, I can't imagine how many people are going to lose a big chunk of there money on this scam :(
If I would be him and wanted to make a quick money, I would have chosen CGB buy up a couple 10k and then recommend it as investment. That way he would have made a whole load of money and its a coin with a good potential, so people following would actually not lose there money and actually make profit...

Finally an intelligent post.

There's a lot of coins to get to. I'm positively disposed to Peercoin, but want to do more thorough research before calling it.

...that was the longest string of random thoughts with no substance I have ever read. Can't believe I wasted time skimming through it...not once does it actually say anything beyond "Bitcoin was 1st, so it will win". Why did that take so many words?? My head hurts... ???

Thanks for doing Maxcoin in such a timely manner!

I'm just gonna quote this, cause I did the same and it made me laugh.  ;D

But MAX has Max continuing the quality media hype as well! You're not addressing the main Q.

Really, I do wonder if he will keep pumping this. It's really hurting his credibility.

He will while he owns them. ;)

Great read.

Would love to hear your current and future forecasts on vertcoin.  Lot of hype around it, but I find that interesting considering it's not even the first n-algo jane scrypt coin.  But I guess it did market that fact better than any of the other ones.

Interesting analysis ... I agree with some of it, but I'm curious why you haven't included the top market cap coins like NXT and Ripple over some of the smaller, less significant market cap coins like MemoryCoin.

Full disclosure I am invested in MemoryCoin, NXT and Ripple, so no bias there.

I'd also like to see your thoughts on Vertcoin which has the innovative adaptive n-factor.

Again, along the same vein of innovation, I'd like to know your thoughts on the upcoming Ethereum launch, and hear your thoughts on Mastercoin.

Another interesting launch is Counterparty which just netted me a 10X on my proof of burn.

I think you also need to include sentiment as one of the main factors for long term investing ... sentiment is more important than development, as is the case with Protoshares which doesn't really have much of a development team behind it at all as far as I know... it's been nearly 3 months since PTS was released yet they've not been able to launch a DAC that honors the 10%.

I think the ProtoShares returns are based on sentiment moreso than development... similarly with DOGE.

I have always been very cautious in switching to alts. I bought my first alt Litecoin at $1.35 and made some good profit on that, but i wouldn't invest in it anymore, because there are some serious alts which i believe that can give me the same return as Litecoin. Right now i'm going with Bitcoin, Quark and some Litecoins left.

http://i973.photobucket.com/albums/ae214/promethium00/Quark-Rotating-160x120_zps6171c597.gif

FreeTrade, could you please provide me with a formula for calculating inflation of a coin? The same one you use in your analysis.
Thank you.

by smooth

The above comment is Bullcrap.

Zetacoin added.

Great post, thank you!

Yes, good marketing for Vertcoin - essentially I think they are telling GPU owners what they want to hear and they're lapping it up.

 
The industry needs more micro-payment options.  Interesting addition.

Hi freetrade, could you please add a timeframe to these prediction if possible.

Infinitecoin wallet updated. Also, extras added. Time for score change :)

Thanks for quoting the entire post again... Dick.

What about those "Second Generation chains" like Nxt, Ethereum, Mastercoin, etc.? I think they really provide short term as well as long term (at least 2-3 years) potential. Also Zerocoin is on my watchlist with their expected launch sometime around May.

One important thing you may wanna add to your results as a criteria is "Features" I guess as many people value new chains because of their desired features that are promised to be implemented by them, such as in Protoshares or Infinity coin (not to mention the 2. generation coins). I would be happy if you could consider those as well.

No. What I've found in investment is that I nearly always predict the direction correctly, but never the timing. That's why I invest and not trade. I can't tell you what's going to double tomorrow - no-one can. I'm calling what has good medium term prospects.

There's an investment strategy that venture capitalist use to 10X their investment . . . invest in 10 companies that have 100X potential and expect 9 to fail, and 1 to succeed. That's the way to think about investing (not trading) in alts.

Unless you remove your own coin this thread have zero integrity.

Zerocoin as far i know it is not "Coin" just protocol implemented inside coin.
BTW Fedora lunched 1st coin mixing feature all others i think wait till they will copy it or Zerocoin protocool.

Some of second generation will succeed i think.
NXT for being thirst next gen not copied coin with unique 100% POS not mined.
If you look at NXT community(look at their forum eg.) its huge.
Emunie have unique approach to altcoins too.

What's your opinion about nxt coin?

I had a nice short-term profit on MaxCoin.
Thank god I got out of it when I did :) The bubble is starting to burst.
I assume Mr. Keiser will get a few more spikes going but the general down direction is obvious.

I like your analysis.  There are a few other aspects that determine my views of a coin.  Mainly, mining.

I do not think that 100% POS coins are viable.  Whoever owns them at the start, becomes "rich".  The only way for the currency to spread is for the original owners to spend/trade it.  These coins become sort of a cartel; closely held by a few key players, none of whom can really trust each other not to devalue their holdings by selling them all off.  So they all have to slowly dispense their coins in order to maintain their "value" but not too slowly, because the market could crash at any time if one of the cartel members decides to liquidate.  A classic Mexican Standoff.  With no new coins being generated by outside parties, any "new blood" has to buy into it by trading something that has an extrinsic value, i.e. a value which is not determined by a cartel.  NXT falls into this category.

I think that a POS/POW combination system such as Peercoin is really interesting, and could have a viable place in the future crypto marketplace; or perhaps POS would simply be adopted by Bitcoin and others as an extra way of generating coins once mining income falls away.

I think that coins with alternative uses such as DNS (Namecoin) also carve out a viable niche.  Apparently this is the kind of thing that BitShares is going to get into, so I am excited to see where they go with their ideas.  Proof of ownership in general becomes an interesting idea.  I read an article suggesting that copyright and licensing could be integrated into a coin-like, peer-to-peer structure.  It would certainly be interesting if, for example, a computer game's DRM could be based on peer-to-peer software, and licenses for games could simply be "coins" traded in a marketplace; whoever shows up in the ledger as the "owner" of that game gets to play it.  But that ledger is not held by the developer, and is not subject to a single point of failure, e.g. Sony's servers go down and nobody gets to play their games for a few hours.

Of course this idea can be generalized to forms of tangible property as well; the idea of a public ledger denoting all transactions is found in every County Courthouse in the US, and the only way to determine 100% ownership of a piece of real property is to follow the ledger from the founding of the county, to the present day.  This is how title companies make their money, by maintaining their own ledgers (and researching from the public ledger when necessary) in order to provide a guarantee to a buyer that the seller actually owns the property.  It's kind of hilarious to me now that I've made this connection; Bitcoin is based on a centuries-old idea for proving ownership.

Other alternative uses include scientific computing enterprises such as Primecoin and Riecoin.  Hopefully this will be expanded to things such as Folding@Home and other similar endeavors.  People are already volunteering their computing resources for these purposes; it would only be fair to give them something in return, and it would be almost trivial to adapt an existing scientific computing platform into a coin "skin".

Now getting back to the mining bit... I think that the way that Bitcoin was/is mined/inflated is really a great model.  Maybe the most perfect implementation that we have.  Popular acceptance of a coin is to some extent based on the idea that it is "fair", that it is not extremely concentrated in the hands of a few individuals.  And I think that we have to face the fact that the first "popularity" that needs to be gained is within the cryptocoin community itself, which has a large proportion of miners.  And a "fair" coin has a lot greater chance of becoming popular among miners.

So, what determines "fairness"? 

(1) Choosing an algorithm that ideally is not CPU-only (which just gives botnets and AWS farmers a leg-up) but is also not tied to existing ASICs (so, at this point, not SHA256).  GPU-targeted mining is the way to win the hearts and minds of small miners, who IMHO are the "long tail" of the crypto community.... they may not have as much hashing power as the big guys; they aren't millionaires, and they know they're not going to become millionaires by mining (but they are non-trivially supplementing their normal incomes); but they are extremely numerous, fairly well-informed, and vocal.  These are the folks who form the initial community around a coin, and they can help or hinder the marketing aspects of the coin to a large degree.

(2) No or extremely small pre-mine. 

(3) Little chance of an "insta-mine", where difficulty is absurdly low for the beginning period and so much power comes to bear on the network that blocks are being generated every half-second, with tons of orphaned blocks.  Setting an appropriate initial difficulty level, and an appropriate block reward, and an appropriate difficulty-scaling algorithm are all very important here.   

(4) A fair and open launch, meaning: wallet, mining, and pooling software that functions properly at launch.

(5) A chance to mine over a fairly long period of time.  If 90% of coins are mined within the first 3 months after a coin's launch, you are going to have a hard time persuading miners to support the coin over the years to come.  A community can take some time to develop, and I think that a fairly high mining-inflation rate over the first several years is perfectly reasonable.  Again, I think that the BTC model is pretty darn good.

Riecoin did something interesting in its recent launch; the block reward for the first 500 or so blocks was 0.  This allowed all interested miners the chance to get up to speed, to make sure their wallet and mining software was working, etc.  The difficulty scaled normally during those first 500 blocks, so by the time actual coins started being produced, the difficulty was at an appropriate level for the network hashrate.

Bitcoin went through all the stages; CPU mining, GPU mining, FPGA's, now ASICs.  It had first-mover advantage, which is huge.  At this point, with the fiat investments put into BTC, I don't see it ever losing its lead.  We have "real-world" investment instruments based on BTC (private funds already exist, with the Winklevoss ETF supposedly coming soon), so I don't think there's any way to stop it now.

However, I do see there being a permanent place in the marketplace for niche coins, as explained above (such as Peercoin, Namecoin, etc.) and for different "denominations" of plain-jane coins (which is what I call coins with no notable added features).  So if BTC is the hundred dollar bills, LTC is the singles, and DOGE is the pennies.  Theoretically, this should not happen; after all, BTC is just some digits in a ledger, and it can always be sub-divided into smaller and smaller amounts. 

But at the moment, the BTC transaction fee is a show-stopper for microtransactions, where DOGE seems to have found a good foothold.  Nobody wants to pay a $0.06 transaction fee in order to send another person $0.10.  But that is where BTC stands today.  (And for good reason; preventing spam in the blockchain is, of course, a necessary step.)  But as long as there is some demand for a level of payment which would be considered spam in the BTC blockchain, there will be a place for a plain-jane, much-lower-valued cryptocurrency such as DOGE.

ADT is now fixed :) > https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=440353.0

It would be awesome to here what you have to say about it and what you think should be improved :)

I like you're analysis, and I'm interested in creating some type of rubric and/or analytical model for ranking newer altcoins, specifically. While I think I'll use some form of your 3 q's for the financial part of my rank model, do you have recommendations for any of the other areas? (Or other recommended posts).

1) Developers- Is there a strong development team? Are they active on the forums and present? What is their track record with previous projects? Can they compile a windows and os x wallet?

2) Financials- Inflation? Decentralization? Will this be listed on exchanges? Are there any vendors (or a target audience) that plans to use and exchange this coin? Does it have a viable chance of being used for internet tipping, game development, apps, environmentally-friendly research, etc.?

3) Community- Are people excited about the coin? Do people actually post on the reddit page for the coin?

4) Uniqueness- Does the coin offer anything new or novel? Does it correctly implement Kimoto Gravity Well? Does it have special block rewards? Is it the next Ethereum or crypto 2.0? OR... is it copypasta salad?

Interesting analysis, thanks for some new thoughts! While investing in most altcoins is like a gamble, and you are right that bitcoins should be the main part of the portfolio, I will suggest also to take a closer look into next generation of coins - NXT, new protocols over bitcoin like MSC and XCP, and few coming projects.

And by the way, what do you think about Darkcoin?

Seconded. I've been watching Darkcoin for some time from afar... would be interested to read an educated assessment of it.

+1

I would also like to know your opinion about Darkcoin.

I follow this thread some time ago because I seemed that way to expose was professional, follow some "tips" of investment and have only lost money, which to me confirms me "the great rule"

"Nobody knows anything, this is a casino, if you can... enjoy"

This is not investment advice. People always say that when giving investment advice, so I thought I'd start with it. I guess some guy once did badly and sued some other guy and now nobody advises anybody about anything anymore. If you're a litigious guy, you should stick to T-bills, whatever they are. I hear they are very safe, but don't take my word for it, as this is not, as I have already told you, investment advice.

I find it funny that people put so much blind faith in the words of others. I trust no one on the internet, and when I have to trust them, I do everything I can to confirm their story. Your opening words say "don't take this as investment advice" and then of course, someone bitches about the bad investment advice... I guess they don't realize that there's a chance you're a 13 year old who grabbed a random guy's picture off the internet.
(obviously this is not an accusation, just an example of why not to trust someone on the internet)

People need to do their own research as well as read others.

Are you still updating this?

FreeTrade: are you still updating this?
How you consider the MMC value going down? I've mined for months them because my considerations about that coin was the very same as yours :)
Only one negative point you've not listed: the pools are not at all distributed. 1GH.com and mmcpool.com represent mote than 95% hashpower between pools. I don't believe there are many solo miners so this is a problem now. This is due to the fact, I believe, that the only GPU miner is not open source, it's compiled and owned by 1GH.com. This must be solved for the future of the coin.
My only fear is that MMC could go in oblivion like many other alt coin  :-[

The GPU miner is really not a factor since GPU mining is very bad with this coin (it was good for about a week or two until yvg1900 released his Yam Miner for MMC which eliminated this advantage).
I think it is safe to say that MMC is the most (or one of very few) GPU resistant coin existing today.

As for the pools - The coin's CNO is working on a (already in beta) p2pool to solve this issue...
This should hopefully move many people to use the official pool with far lower fees (1%) and will create a better hash power distribution.

I was hoping to see ADT on the list as its been all fixed and sorted for a couple weeks now
 

I believe GPU is still viable and interesting. I've mined MMC for some time with two of the R290 of my mining rig with 41 HPM and it was profitable (now it isn't at electicity price here in Italy). As a comparison with my i7 with AES-NI on and hugepage working I achieve an 8 HPM. To obtain the same result the only way I had was to mine on my company server CPUs but... this was not an option :)
Yes, cpu wattage is less but the watt per hash ratio, I believe, is still pointing to GPU mining.


This would be interesting. I'll go read about it.

This is still a fairly sound analysis in my opinion, interesting to come back and see how it's going.

where is mmc now???

On the date of  the OP-  1 mmc= 0.00030083
Today.......................   1 mmc= 0.00001530

this is the life in altcoins

Memorycoin 8/10, Litecoin 1/10

No guesses that Freetrade released and holds a lot of Memorycoins.

uhm..just to fix this-->"Almost Nobody knows anything, this is a casino, if you can... enjoy"

Great advice.

Right now one of the most powerful Cryptocurrencies to invest in would be radium it already has a market capitalization of $1.21 million the technology is relatively simple to understand and it is about file sharing the verification process is linked to a theory that may prevent any malicious tempting to downloadable file as cybersecurity is a big concern for the future.

Emergency help! About infinitecoin strange extensions

Infinitecoin referred to as IFC

September 23, 2019 IFC had a strange event at block height 5529600

clue
1 IFC has had many strange events since the establishment of the community in China in 2017.

2 IFC development in China has been continuously undermined. It has been reported that two QQ groups have been blocked.

3 Attackers continue to attack At the peak, 600 L3+ attacks were used.

4 No power attack was found before this incident. It has not been discovered for a long time.

5 It is often found that the blockchain explorer shows more computing power than the community's three mining pools.

6 Test network can not be opened Tips Expression: block.GetHash0 == hashGenesisBlock




IFC was born on June 5, 2013
 
The IFC block mechanism is exactly the same as BTC and LTC. They are all fixed cryptocurrencies.

IFC algorithm scrypt total fixed 90.6 billion

IFC is a block of 30 seconds, 24 hours out of 2880

IFC initial block rewards 524,288 blocks for each generation of 86,400 blocks (about 30 days)

IFC was born on June 5, 2013. Block height 1

IFC halved for the first time on July 5, 2013, block height 86400

The second halving of IFC was on August 4, 2013. Block height 172,800

IFC's last block reward is 0.00000001. The time is March 27, 2018. Block height 3974399

IFC has no block rewards since the block height of 3974400

Infinitecoin Blockchain Explorer
https://chainz.cryptoid.info/ifc/

Infinitecoin Source Code
https://github.com/infinitecoin/infinitecoin ( 1.8.8.0 )
http://infinitecoin.com/ ( 1.8.8.0 )

Branch version
https://github.com/withu2018/infinitecoin ( 1.9.1.0 and 1.9.1.4 )

Branch version
https://github.com/WilliamXuu/infinitecoin ( 1.9.1.8 Remove internal links based on 1910)

Infinitecoin BitcoinTalk
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=356065.0

Infinitecoin chainnode ( Created on August 1, 2019 ）
https://www.chainnode.com/forum/372