Anyone with any financial stake on the blockchain. Thought this was obvious.

I'd rather be the stupidest of the bitcointards than the smartest altTard on these forums.

At least I won't end up dancing for nickels in the street when the dust settles.

Just bought 3 more BTC for 1k, like a fuckin BOSS

LOL!

Bitcoin was a success the moment more than one person used it to exchange value, because that was the moment it solved the byzantine general's problem.

Holy shit, if I wasn't sure it was a scam before, I AM NOW!

Actually, the peace prize would be perfectly appropriate for bitcoin. All previous forms of worldwide money (government-issued promissory notes) were backed by violence, bitcoin is the first backed instead by mathematics.

Phew, for a moment there I was afraid you might actually try to back up your claims this time! Seriously though, two years from now no one will know what NEM is, no one will know it ever existed (if this theoretical coin ever even does!)

By the way, calling a protocol (a knockoff protocol at that) a "movement" is full retard.

We will see 6 months after it launches, that much is certain. Looking forward to it. Must be some really outstanding technology you've got there, wonder why virtually no one cares?

Liquidity Cannot Be Designed

Liquidity, which is required for anything to be used as a currency, cannot be built into a protocol. It does not matter how brilliantly designed an altcoin is and what cool features it has. Its value depends on a factor that is outside its designer’s control, something more characteristic of the “spontaneous order” of the market than an intrinsic property of the currency.

Bitcoin and the dollar have very different properties, so it is possible to explain Bitcoin’s success in competition with the dollar despite the network effect of the dollar in light of those different properties. However, cryptocurrencies do not have very different properties from one another, so there is very little basis to predict that an altcoin can successfully compete with Bitcoin. In the case of, for example, as Bitcoin and Litecoin, I see no evidence in reality or in my understanding of human psychology that investors should see the difference in their mining algorithms or confirmation times as remotely important. The factor of roughly twenty by which Bitcoin’s market cap outweighs Litecoin’s is by far the biggest difference between them. Right now Bitcoin is growing by supplanting the national currencies, but eventually will absorb the altcoins as well. Bitcoin will gobble up Litecoin at some point, but I do not know if it will be the appetizer or the dessert.

A new altcoin cannot survive with only a fraction of the cryptocurrency pie. It must defeat everything else to succeed, including Bitcoin. Since it begins at an extreme disadvantage with respect to Bitcoin, it cannot succeed with technology that is marginally superior to Bitcoin. It must be as significant an advance over Bitcoin as Bitcoin is over the dollar.

Analogy to Social Networks

For currency investors, the network effect is absolute because it is impossible to buy bitcoins and some altcoin with the same money. This is why analogies to other network effects, such as that between social networks like Facebook and G+, are spurious. It is possible to leverage the benefit of Facebook and G+ at the same time. I can, for example, write a single status update and then post it to both social networks at almost no additional cost.

Furthermore, there is very little long-term investment in the use of a social network. New status updates lose all value in hours. Message boards come and go. All it takes is to ignore Facebook for a few weeks before there is little to draw one back to it. The network effect for social networks is therefore tiny compared to that of currencies.

Intellectually Barren

So far, altcoiners have been able to continue creating and mining altcoins without having to justify themselves very clearly. The responses I have heard to my arguments against them have been terribly inadequate: I get either a non sequitur (“Scrypt is ASIC-resistant”) a misunderstanding of the network effect (as with Vitalik’s piece) or a vapid, inappropriate skepticism (“How can you be absolutely certain that Bitcoin will win?”3).

I have never even heard any positive argument for any altcoin that explains why a majority of Bitcoin investors should sell and buy the new coin, or why enough new investors should reject Bitcoin and invest in the new one, in spite of the enormous advantage that Bitcoin already has.

Altcoin Investment Psychology

The present popularity of altcoins should be explained in terms of foolishness and hubris because it cannot be explained rationally.

As investors look at a new altcoin that has come out, they might think to themselves, “This cryptocurrency network is innovative, perhaps this means it will do well.” They might buy in at that point, or they might think a little harder and continue, “But wait. Bitcoin has the much larger network and is therefore objectively more useful as a currency than this new altcoin, despite its innovative features. If I decide to buy some, I would have to sell some of my bitcoins for it, so there is a real opportunity cost. Furthermore, the only way it can win is if all the other investors also switch. Will they or won’t they?”

At the same time, many of the other investors will be thinking the same thing. They will think about the fact that the rest are thinking it too. They will think, “No reasonable person would expect this coin to have any but a small chance of success. But since it can only succeed if lots of people really believe in it, this ensures that it cannot be successful because if no one buys more than a small gamble, then its failure is virtually guaranteed.” If they stop thinking there, they will stick with Bitcoin.

However, they might also think something along the lines of, “It’s quite possible that this altcoin will have an extra jolt in price during the next Bitcoin mania because some people may buy it either because they were not intelligent enough to follow the same train of thought as me or because they too, like me, realize that it may attract people who can be preyed upon. However, that is a risky proposition because it will be hard to know if I am the one preying upon suckers or if I am a sucker myself.” They will then either buy it or not depending on their own confidence in their ability to predict the behavior of foolish people.

Thus, altcoin investment ends up as a dynamic interplay between people who have not thought very far ahead, and people who think they are taking advantage of other people.

The Bursting of the Bubble

The more that altcoiners are asked for valid self-justifications, and the more they are asked how their new coin will achieve liquidity, the less effective their arguments will become, the less hype they will be able to generate, and the less that people will buy them. To defeat the altcoin movement, keep warning newbies against them and insist upon relevant arguments every time an altcoiner tries to change the subject.

The irrationality that props up the prices of altcoins cannot continue indefinitely. As soon as enough investors learn to think far enough ahead to wonder who the sucker is, the prices of the altcoins will begin to drop inexorably. We can make this happen sooner than later. I would like to see a more concerted effort within the Bitcoin movement to demand valid answers and to denounce as charlatans those who cannot give them.

I don’t think it is right to let the altcoin bubble continue without trying to stop it. Altcoins will cause a lot of people to lose money and for a lot of people to make money who are not adding value. Many who are already invested will lose, but I would prefer at least that there will be no more.

Although I cannot be certain, and I am, like everyone, prone to wishful thinking, I think that there is some indication that the altcoin movement is playing itself out: it is no longer possible to generate any interest in a straight Bitcoin clone like Litecoin. It is now necessary to add either a lot of extra features, as is the case with Mastercoin and Ethereum, or simply to act outrageous, as with Dogecoin. Furthermore, it is ridiculously easy to create altcoins now: Coingen is a service that automatically creates altcoins to any specification, and which, amusingly, only accepts payments in Bitcoin. It was apparently created especially for the purpose of helping to discredit altcoins.

Legitimate Reasons for Altcoins

I don’t object to altcoins in themselves. What I object to are the lies. There are legitimate reasons for altcoins, but none of them allow for real money to be made off of them. Altcoins should have little or no market value, but the distributed system as a whole can have value as an experiment or test of a possible upgrade to Bitcoin.

If you tell me this altcoin implements some cool new idea, then very well. But if you tell me it’s going to be the next big thing and that it’s a great investment, you’re lying. And if you believe it yourself, you’re lying to yourself.

The only reason that an altcoin should have any value at all is as an extreme speculation on the death of Bitcoin. Although it is impossible for an altcoin to beat Bitcoin on its own merits, it is theoretically possible that the Bitcoin community could destroy Bitcoin through its own foolishness. If that possibility should loom, then altcoins can do a valuable service by going up in value, thus alerting the Bitcoin community to reverse whatever it is doing.

Read more here: http://themisescircle.org/blog/2014/03/14/the-coming-demise-of-the-altcoins/

It's in every post you make, because you foolishly left it in your signature.

Smarter trashcoin pushers than you make some effort to hide their affiliations, much like modern christian-recruitment groups do on college campuses.

I don't think it matters. When a tree falls in the forest, the canopy is opened up to more sunlight, which in turns reaches the saplings at the forest floor, which will grow and eventually fill that space.

Ever since Silk Road 1.0 went down, there's been a robust variety of darkweb markets to choose from. Such is the power of decentralization.

That's not true! I know it has a stupid name and at least one total moron pushing it. And I know you think this sophomoric philosophical bullshit actually matters when it comes to the survival of a protocol:
 
"with Philosophies of Financial Freedom, Decentralization, and Equality of Opportunity."

Which by the way is no different from bitcoin or really any other crypto.

No thank you, gambling is for morons who lack strong pattern recognition ability. I went all in on bitcoin when it was in the 100s, so I don't need to gamble to survive (or work for free with the desperate hope my trashcoin get-rich-quick scheme will succeed).

Satoshi Nakamoto watch out! Sounds like a room full of geniuses to me - where do I sign up for this speculatory-sweatshop?

IT HAS ALREADY BEGUN! We've captured 0.00005% of the world's population in our trashcoin scam! The world is ours!

So you admit this non-coin is one big confidence scam? Great, thank you. Saves us a lot of time debating.

You know what the difference between being in "11th place" (lol, because it's a race?) and 1,111th place is in the altcoin world? Nothing. 3 million is as irrelevant as 3 dollars when you're comparing yourself to currencies with market caps measured in the billions.

As someone in bitcoin I'm not a total retard who doesn't understand the concept of network effect. And no, your shitty theoretical non-coin scam will never approach anything even close to Litecoin, let alone Bitcoin.

Yep, it's a bad knockoff of bitcoin, like every other shitcoin.

3 million dollars LOL your "new economy" is smaller than many brick and mortar small businesses in my city. Get real, your trashcoin is an irrelevant joke that will be swiftly forgotten. You will be dancing for satoshis in the street.

And just what the fuck does "community-oriented" even mean? Is Bitcoin somehow NOT "community-oriented"?

"So for the benefit of all the derps derping about “cryptocurrencies” : there is no such thing. There’s Bitcoin and that’s it, because there can only be one. All the rest of the crap exists only inasmuch as a) it stays theoretical or b) it stays small enough nobody cares. Where a) and b) are only distinct in the derp point of view, otherwise they’re the same thing. But good luck with all the community[-of-retards] driven, super-duper-innovative, ultra-mega-creative, asic-resistant, future-of-revolution-and-everything altcoins.

Meanwhile back at Reality Ranch, there can only be one"

http://trilema.com/2014/the-woes-of-altcoin-or-why-there-is-no-such-thing-as-cryptocurrencies/

I mean really though, look at this shit: Experience Coin: the altcoin for gamers. How is anyone supposed to take any of this shit seriously?

Be gone with ye, back to your altcoin ghetto where you and your desperately-jealous-peasant-retard friends belong: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=67.0

Shame we can't see which shitcoins each jealous hater in this thread is huckstering. Oh well, not like it really matters.

This thread is full of people who arrived late to the party, or with too little money to buy any appreciable amount of bitcoin.

So what did they do? Bought into some "affordable" altcoin scheme and now they're desperately trying to push it, not realizing there is absolutely no hope for them.

Face it, altcoiners, your imitation-money is worthless and nobody cares. The people who created Doge and Litecoin, they're a lot smarter than you are. You're subsidizing their wealth with your stupidity.

"NEM" New Economy Movement (lol!) is this particular altTard's trashcoin of choice. Honestly I'm not sure whether to laugh or to cry for you.

"A Community-Oriented 2nd-Generation Cryptocurrency, With Philosophies of Financial Freedom, Decentralization, and Equality of Opportunity."

Now class, today I'm going to demonstrate how to use logic and public debate to discern who the real retards in this thread are.

How many internet protocols are out there competing with HTTP on a similar scale? The fact of the matter is that no altcoin to date has added ANYTHING meaningful or necessary over bitcoin. Even if they did, it wouldn't matter. Bitcoin is organic, it would adapt and swallow those changes if they were truly a make/break situation for the currency.

99.9%? Bitcoin will have 99.99% or more of crypto market cap within 10 years.  

Let's start with the name "Litecoin", this is a blatant attack on bitcoin, as the implication is that bitcoin is "heavy", AKA "not green", AKA "bad for the environment". It's a clever political assault used to make the creator of this knockoff currency very, very wealthy.

Reality: Bitcoin's energy use is completely negligible in the context of global industrial civilization. Miniscule, even. What does Litecoin add, from a technical perspective, to the protocol? Oh right, NOTHING. Litecoin (and Doge) are about as important and relevant as IPoAC.

Harsh reality: Advent of cryptocurrency makes no difference one way or the other, this planet is fucked. With regards to climate change, we're on a speeding train heading off a cliff, and we're too busy counting our money to notice.



I don't hate gold or metals any more than I hate the horse and buggy. I just tend to recognize when something is about to become obsolete (as a store of value, in this case), because I possess exceptionally strong pattern recognition ability.


There are no alternative protocols. Their very existence is an extremely temporary illusion, visible only from the myopia of the present moment. Historically speaking they will be invisible and largely forgotten, just like any of the myriad alternatives to HTTP were.

Feel free to learn before you speak next time.

QFT, and only valid indicator in the thread.

Dogecoin has an unlimited supply and is therefore worthless, long term, for the same reason fiat money is. What I do love about Doge is that a form of money based on an internet meme could very well outlive the US dollar.

http://trilema.com/2014/why-dogecoin-is-a-scam-why-the-people-pushing-it-are-assholes-why-business-insider-is-a-contemptible-piece-of-shit-why-anyone-who-ever-worked-for-it-will-be-dancing-in-the-street-for-nickels-and-wh/