A lot has been said about mining and about the electricity consumption of the activities related to bitcoin mining. However, I have thought of the alternatives and how other systems produce not just energy waste, but also plenty of useless work and "human waste".

To have a network that can ensure the completeness of transactions, the global accessibility and all the features that bitcoins, and many alts, have at the moment, would probable produce a huge carbon footprint. Just think of the VISA system or the banking system... the amount of people working on it, the waste of commuting to works, the infrastructure.

Thinking of all that, would you still say Bitcoin is bad for the environment?

You can make money from money, but you can´t make money JUST with money. Eventually you need to put talent, wisdom and plenty of work if you really want to obtain something worth.

As an advice, you should always DYOR (do your own research) but, in order to focus a little bit where to do that research, you may want to look a which signatures are the more senior members of the forum wearing. That will give you an initial hint of what may be good out there.

Then, you can check if there is much difference between the stakes for senior and juniors, particularly if you are a junior, because no matter how good is the bounty, it won´t be good for you if a "Hero" is making x12 times what you make (they will get all the bounty).

Check how much is going to be given in real terms, that is, how much USD does the bounty represent. That can be tricky because many scammy bounties will tell you their tokens are worth a lot when they are not.

An finally, learn from your own mistakes.

In theory, everything out there can be hacked. If you had sufficient computing power and sufficient time you could potentially break the keys for the bitcoin accounts by mere brute force. That might happen with quantum computing.

LOL, I just could not help to smile at your poll. Most of the people in this forum would need a scale from 0.1 to 10 ETH rather than thinking of bitcoins and all that.

There are not that many people that go into ICOs as whales, and those that do are not wandering around your post.

You have to be kidding... One thing is to say that your utility token is worth x2 or x5 the ammount you intend to rise on an ICO. Here we are talking about x 1 000 000 000 .... Can´t you really see the difference, or is just that you did not read.

BTW, if you think BTC is a scam .. why are you here?

The thing with WAVES, of which I do hodl some, is that it makes creating a token a child´s game. So it is much more easy to use it to produce worthless crap that other, that at least require a minimum programming ability.

Follow exactly the same steps as you would if you were investing in the project, because you are effectively investing your time and effort, or at least you hard earned signature space.

There are many threads commenting on basic precautions to follow on ICOs, just search a bit.

Deep onion is a cool coin, but what they call an airdrop is a signature campaign. I think it is a bit hype prone and misleading to use the term for anything that is not just absolutely free tokens or coins with no action required to get them other than filling a form or similar.

Yep, that is pretty much as good as it gets. Join as many telegram groups as you can and follow twitter accounts that offer airdrops. If the airdrop´s good or not, that if for you to judge.

Oh definitely, bitcoin cannot ruin your life, only you can ruin your life. It takes certain character to hodl when you have lost 30% of your investment. In other words, if you can´t take the heat, don´t go into the oven.

I am very glad these two are around at the same time. To have a porfolio that is more resistant to invidivual coin or tokens value, playing with Ethereum, Bitcoin, NEO and XEM is really marvellous. NEO is technically superior to Ethereum, but ethereum has more acceptance.

That is only a limited part of the possibilities of ICOs. They may be offering coins, tokens and sometimes it is for a new coin, but many times is to fund a new company or service. Profit long or short term are not really guaranteed ever.

May I ask why this user got merit for a post that had to be deleted?

Merit summary for PinkCrypto
Merit: 1

Sent in the last 120 days
Received in the last 120 days
January 25, 2018, 12:42:48 AM: 1 from junoreactor for (Deleted/Off-limits/Ignored)

Provide a link. Just judging from the name it sound really awful, but just link it and I will have a quick read to see if I can help you.

I am not making an accusation here, these business could potentially be legitimate but I would like to know your comments:

A proposal for a lottery

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2827625.msg28975672#msg28975672

A project that mixes social networks, payment and every buzzword out there. This is all over the forum with various ANN threads.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2748393.0


What is wrong with these projects?

They want to have a market cap of 100 million and more than 7 BILLION respectively right from the start.

How?

Launching lots of tokens and selling only a few for a relatively high price.

Example:

The lottery project issues 100 million tokens and sells a small amount for 1 USD. The theoretical Marketcap is 100 Million. The sad reality is that every dollar you put into it is basically lost, because that is unlikely to be true.

The other project is even worse. They intend to have a market cap of more than a Billion USD. Investing on these gives you exactly the same result: loss of all investment unless they became the next Facebook.


The only unlikely possibility is that these business were actually worth 100 million and 7 billion. Do you think they are?

This post intends to explain what is dilution and why you should care about it. I write it because I think that many people are just throwing their hard earned money away on certain ICOs and that makes scammers come in mass to the crypto space.

Dilution is the effect of distributing your money (or ether or whatever you invest with) across all the tokens issued. With an example:

a) ICO IAreGood will issue 100 tokens. 40 of them will be sold and 60 kept. Each token will cost 1 dollar.

We will end up with 100 tokens of market cap backed up by 40 dollars of investment. The objective fundamental value of the token would be 40/100 -> 40 cents.

b) ICO MeUrBad will issue 100 tokens. 10 of them will be sold and 90 kept. Each token will cost 1 dollar.

We will end up with 100 tokens of market cap backed up by 10 dollars of investment. The objective fundamental value of the token would be 10/100 -> 10 cents.

What does this mean for you: If you invest in (A) you are paying a extra of 60 cents per token. If you invest in (B) you are paying 90 cents extra per token.


This is a fundamental valuation, this is independent of how good the project or team. Your valuation may be much higher because the project is great, etc... Mabe MeUrBad could even be a good investment if they have, I don't know, Elon Musk in the team.

When does dilution affect your earnings? The moment the company starts selling their tokens to finance their operations. More offer, less price for you.

IN PRACTICAL TERMS

AVOID PROJECTS THAT DON'T BURN REMAINING TOKENS

- Unsold tokens must always be burned. Alternatively, they would have to be airdropped to investors pro-rata (proportionally to the investment they have made). If not, dilution increases further and you will not know by how much until the ICO is finished.
If not, the ICO team are keeping the tokens and that increases the dilution of your investment.

CONSIDER VERY CAREFULLY PROJECTS THAT SELL A LITTLE PERCENTAGE OF THE TOKENS

- The dilution is enormously increased if they only sell 10% or 20% of the tokens. The project would need to be extremely good to give you profit.

Please, let me know your views and how to improve this explanation.

This post intends to explain what is a hard cap and a soft cap on an ICO and why you should care about it. I write it because I think that many people are just throwing their hard earned money away on certain ICOs

- Soft Cap: If the ICO does not rise at least this amount the project will not go ahead. You should get reimbursed in that case.

- Hard Cap: If the ICO rises this amount, it will stop accepting funds.

What should you understand to make sense of this and avoid throwing your money away:

A project must have a maximum and a minimum viable budget. If it is too low the project is at risk because there are not enough funds for it, so if the Soft Cap is not achieved is better not to start.
 
You may think that there is no need for a "hard cap" that is, the more money they rise the better. There are two reasons why this is not correct. First. if a project has much more money that needed it is likely to mismanage the funds and waste money in unnecessary activities. Also the team size and ability will not be adequate. Second, the dilution and the possibility of growth. I will write a post on it later on.

IN PRACTICAL TERMS

Do not invest on a project that:

a) Does not even have a soft and hard cap.

b) Is asking for too little money. Use your judgement and see if they will have enough to finish with their soft cap.

c) Is asking for too much money. Use your judgement and see if they are asking for much more that they need or more than the tokens are really worth.

d) Hard Cap is much more than Soft Cap. Again, use your judgement, but normally a hard cap should not be more than 2x or 3x the soft cap.

Let us know about other criteria you have to validate Hard and Soft Cap.

I agree, if I make a decent amount I would most likely start to donate to projects that improve the general well being of people. I like money as much as anyone else, but I don´t need a lot to live and despise expensive goods as a sign of a personality disorder.

Yep, that would be the main idea. A general index and then sectorial indexes. That way you could get a quick feeling of the market and also of the different main sectors. As today, sectors could be:
- Chains and chain cross talking
- Identity services
- Wallets and exchanges.
- Financial and credit
- AI
- Trading
- Network services (data storage, distributed computing, ...)
- etc...