Alt-coins like Litecoin and Feathercoin are finally hitting the mainstream media and it's clear that your average journalist has no idea about the issues involved, leading them to make ridiculous statements like this:
Litecoin is orders of magnitude more secure than Bitcoin, due to its use of a cryptography technique called scrypt,
http://www.wired.co.uk/news/archive/2013-06/16/litecoinFor these clones to gain any attention at all due to the hard work and revolutionary ideas of Satoshi Nakamura is offensive. For them to be hailed as superior for making minor, unproven adjustments is ridiculous. For insta-mined scamcoins like Feathercoin to be given glowing portrayals is scandalous:
When creating Feathercoin, he copied the Litecoin algorithm, but tweaked some technical parameters, including the total number of coins that could be mined.
"I wanted a currency with four times the amount of coins, and to recreate the enthusiasm that we had in the first place," he says.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2013/jun/25/bitcoin-successors-litecoin-freicoinWe must look to the comments on this article to find any semblance of knowledge:
What this article doesn't point out about Feathercoins is that of the 8.3 million Feathercoins that are now in existence, 3 million of them were 'mined' on the first day (as can be verified by consulting the Feathercoin block explorer which logs all coin mining:
http://cryptocoinexplorer.com:5750/). That is an unfair distribution of the coins in my opinion. Whilst not technically a pre-mine I don't see how it's much better.
Unlike Litecoin, PPCoin or other 'serious' cryptocurrencies there was also no warning or pre-announcement of the launch. This means people lucky to be on the forums the hour the coin launched (I speculate amongst them the 'developer'/copy-paster-of-litecoin-code) received an unfair mining advantage and were able to scoop a large amount of those 'super easy' day 1 coins.
Because of this and other contentious issues, Feathercoin has found itself subject to many attacks (which I look down upon naturally). This is well known in the cryptocurrency community and is something an investor should think about before investing since it can significantly impact on the value of the coin.
These are all facts and can be verified independently through research. For example checking the Feathercoin block explorer, or reading bitcointalk forums to read about the Feathercoin attacks.
We also find that the general public has questions that are not being answered by these "journalists", who likely do not know the answers themselves:
"The founders, who plan to make the Ripple network open source but haven't yet, could do very well if the currency gains traction"
I guess this means that Ripples aren't open source, unlike Bitcoin. What about the others? This could have been included in the article.
Does it matter whether a currency is open source? I am certainly no expert, but I suspect that being open source can be a safeguard against scams and hidden commands (because people can detect them in the code).
It is clear that your average journalist is not properly educated enough to inform the public about the "importance" of these alt-coins (which is almost none). From PPCoin (which is actually somewhat innovative) being barely given a mention in favor of discussing Freicoin's silly demurrage scheme, to Feathercoin being discussed more than the coin it shamefully copies from, to the words "Franko" and "WorldCoin" ever being printed in a "respectable" publication, it is obvious that the media is looking to trumpet the story of a "better Bitcoin" or "Bitcoin successor" regardless of the actual facts. They are too used to Apple releasing another iWhatever every six months.
The Bitcoin community must not allow these airheads to take the lead in educating the public about alt-coins. We must make sure that people understand why these coins are slightly interesting from an experimental perspective at best and complete rip-offs at worst. Having dozens of cryptocoins get mainstream attention will harm not only Bitcoin but the entire idea of cryptocurrency by diluting the ecosystem and confusing people.
Bitcoin must establish itself as the "one true brand" and make the public "accept no substitutes" until a truly revolutionary successor comes along. I suggest education along these lines as a task for the Bitcoin Foundation and other community members. The Bitcoin community has held back for far too long against alt-coins in the spirit of "openness" and "competition". Those times should rightfully be over. We now risk more than some forum nerds getting burned by a pump and dump scamcoin, turning into a scandal that harms the entire cryptocurrency community. Even for slightly interesting coins like PPC and LTC, any improvements they make that prove to be useful can be implemented into Bitcoin if necessary. The cryptocurrency community must focus on uniting primarily behind one standard to drive adoption. Some suggestions:
1. Educate journalists about why most alt-coins are scams and clones. Remind them that any innovations they pioneer can easily be ported back to Bitcoin.
2. Boycott services and exchanges that use or promote worthless scamcoins, clonecoins, and pump and dumps.
3. Get some hash power and 51% attack a few of the smaller coins out of the ecosystem. "Developers" need to start thinking about whether their coins are worth releasing.
Any other ideas?
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