I enjoy reading studies such as this. And thanks for making it easy enough to understand for laymen such as myself. Who needs fancy numbers and graphs? They just confuse people with facts.

So the OP's bankroll went from $6 to $120, and with this mighty $120, he plans to organize pumps? Or am I reading this incorrectly?

I use Cryptorush for coins like this. It's basically an exchange for sort of lesser coins... or oddballs. I usually just use it for giveaways, sell all the junk, and then buy something a tad less junky and store it on a more reliable exchange.

Besides the 3rd party issue, I also question whether anonymous transactions are actually a big deal to begin with. Sure, it's nice, but for a currency meant to be used for micro-transactions, is it really a big deal for someone to know (or not know) who sent 1/10th of a penny? Due to so many billions of coins out there, it's also not like Tips will ever be worth much, so from an investor standpoint, it's sort of... bleh...

I really, really doubt that anyone buying amazon coins are getting them confused with cryptocurrency. Nor expect 99.9% of their customers even know what bitcoins are.

As for why people buy these coins, you answered your own question. They save money on apps using the coins.

Yeah, as stated, it's meant as a form of a gift card, not an actual currency. It's simply used to buy apps with on their webstore -- and I should add, it's usually cheaper to use their coins than actual money (assuming they still have a coin discount going on).

They also have giveaways and usually provide free coins with app purchases, and on occasion have even given away coins with free app purchases. I got like $15 worth just due to promotions. It's hardly a scam, unless some oddball person here tries to buy them thinking they will increase in value or they can sell them on some market.

Threads like this are both amusing and irritating after a while. Dogecoin, Earthcoin, Litecoin, Goldcoin, or 'whatever coin someone is invested in' is what people will reply with. There is no logic behind any of their answers. Maybe Beecoin, Fckcoin and Sexcoin will overtake Bitcoin too? 

A better thread, IF people could answer honestly, would be a discussion of what coin could surpass litecoin as the 2d most popular crypto? That is doable. Surpassing bitcoin at this stage seems unlikely by any existing coin.

I do find it odd how so many coins want to copy doge and go for the meme stuff and silliness. I'd think the opposite approach would work better in the longrun at this point. Maybe set up a ways of how to use Tips, get sites to use them, and promote the coin by showing ways it can be useful, instead of trying for a meme?

The thing about Etherium is... the masses don't need to understand it now. Ideally they wouldn't, until after the fundraising thing. That is when marketing comes into play. And those who bought early can cash out, if they so choose.

Thanks for the followup info. That explains the opensource reasoning.

And that may also explain why other coins didn't accept zerocoin's previous offer of sharing the tech for use in an existing coin. If I remember right, their initial goal wasn't to be a coin by itself, but to be incorporated into an already existing coin.

And yeah, Darkcoin does sound better.

I have also wondered if Fedora Tips could be considered a competitor, in regard to anonymous sending. But I then wondered if a coin has billions and billions out there and is used primarily for tiny, tiny tip transactions, why do you need to be anonymous to begin with? I don't think people sending 1/10th of a penny would really care if anyone knows who sent it.

If a coin overtakes bitcoin, I don't think it's been released yet. It's also very possible no coin ever overtakes bitcoin ... being first has its advantages.

Coins could easily overtake litecoin, however. I find Darkcoin/Zerocoin interesting.

Etherium is another possibility... it could bomb out, or be really, really big. Usually with threads like this, we get people hawking junk coins that they invested in, so whatever anyone answers... well, they have no idea.

I admit I am new to cryptos, but I do find the pump and dump mindset a bit too prevalent here in general. I realize that almost all alt coins could be considered garbage, or their whole selling point is based on a logo or name of the coin ... but for coins with unique code, like Darkcoin, wouldn't it make more sense to simply hold it longterm? Not every single coin is garbage meant to be dumped.

I have mined this coin a little bit and do like the fundamentals, but have a general question or two.

I may be wrong, but didn't the developers say they plan to opensource the 'darksend' tech? If so, wouldn't that seem counter-intuitive to making this coin unique?

How does Darkcoin differ from Zerocoin? Well, besides the obvious, that Zerocoin hasn't been released yet.

Yep, I was just checking first if the lottery pool was working correctly, since it does have quite a bit of invalids. And if GPUs make CPU mining (or cloudmining) not worth doing anymore. I didn't start cloudmining that long ago, but difficulty has about tripled from when I started (maybe 1-2 weeks ago).  I have about three days left on my Azure, so suppose I'll leave it pointed at the lottery pool and hope they find something eventually. I just noticed that the past day or two that the pool hasn't found much, and that the hash rates on the main pool went up a ton (due to GPU mining).

I plan to just hold onto my coins and see how they do. Again, it's found money for me, and actually quite nice, as up until now I was just playing with freebie giveaways and such. Maybe in a year, my 110 or so coins may be worth a decent amount.

I have some newbie mining questions.

I started with cryptos about a month or so ago, and tried some cloud mining recently (my PC is way too wimpy to mine with) and tried the Azure trial/CPU mining with darkcoin. The last couple of days it's slowed down, a lot... and I see in the lottery pool a block hasn't been found in a long time now.

Anyway, is this because of the GPU miner? Has it basically destroyed CPU mining on this coin completely? Or is the lottery pool messed up?

My Azure trial is winding down (maybe a couple of days left, if I stretch it out), so just wonder if I should point it at something else before it conks out completely. On the plus side, I did get in some mining between the whale and before GPU mining took off, so mined about 110 coins out of it, for free, so I can't really complain.

How many of those specifically ban mining, or will disable your account if they find out?

Elephant: What is your secret to becoming so popular, Doge?
Dog: Much kindness. Good Karma.

If anything, they seem more accurate now, and my payout has increased a bit. Not that it's much, but it's moving more than it was before.

The numbers simply being way off is certainly an explanation I considered. I would have thought they wouldn't be quite as off as they are though.

The guide for DRK coin is the easiest way to go for this, and pair it up with Putty, and it's really easy to do. I tried quark/frozen/doge on a different cloud service as a trial, and the payouts were really, really lousy. I just started up Azure/DRK last night, and it does appear to be chugging along somewhat nicely now -- won't get a ton out of it, but for free, why not? I'm curious if there are other freebie cloud services to try. I did try signing up for 2 others (HP, Joyent) ... but had issues with each.

There is also Riecoin coming out tomorrow, which may be good to point some cloudmining at, since it's a cpu coin -- although I am not aware of a guide for it.

I'm doing the same thing, at about $13/day, it looks like. I would think this should last a lot longer than 3 days. I'm not sure why it ran out so fast for the other poster, unless he had a bunch of cores not running longer than that, and it ate up his credit? I'm doing the 8/8/4 cpu setup to get to 20. Is this the best way to go, or should we break it all up into 4s?

One odd thing I noticed is that in my pools it may say something like my hash should get 25-30 DRK/Day, yet my actual DRK received is much less than that. I am new to this sort of thing, so am I reading that wrong? Although with this recent change, I do see more coins coming in now... so maybe it will catch up somewhat.