Not just any fairly launched coin using Cryptonote. A Cryptonote coin without a tail emission is very vulnerable to becoming insecure when the block subsidy runs out or becomes very small. Cryptonote scales the blocksize by imposing a penalty that is dependent on the block subsidy. Make the block subsidy zero or insignificant and there is no penalty. This creates an effective infinite blocksize. My take is that Bytecoin will provide an early warning of this precisely because of the pre-mine / ninja-mine. Instead of the classic "canary in the coal mine",  one can think here of the "canary in the pre-mine / ninja-mine".

There is a reason why Monero has a tail emission.

Edit: On the related issue in Bitcoin the "small blocksize crowd" in Bitcoin also make a very valid point because of the above issue, since Bitcoin, without a tail emission, needs to create a fee market, likely by restricting the blocksize, in order to ensure the long term viability of Bitcoin.

... but did they connect the dots between Bitcoin's in ability to scale and Monero? The small block crowd also have a very valid point, when the block subsidy ends the coin becomes insecure. Bytecoin with its adaptive blocksize limit and no tail emission may well prove the small block crowd right. 

It will, but it will take some time. Bitcoin has stagnation in the form of a fixed blocksize limit hard coded into the protocol, so any significant growth in the demand for crypto - currency transactions (over say the 2-3 TPS or around 7 TPS being proposed) will have to be provided by another coin or coins. I have yet to have seen a solution the addresses both the need for an adaptive blocksize limit (the concern of the "large block" group) and maintaining security after the block subsidy runs out (the concern of the "small block" group).


Interesting choice for the coin that will not replace Bitcoin. It just so happens that this particular coin does address both the issues above since it has an adaptive blocksize limit and avoids the problem of security after the block subsidy runs out, by having the block subsidy never run out with a tail emission.

Edit: A first mover advantage is useless if the coin cannot scale to meet demand.

The greater issue I see here is Facebook not the EU. There are many websites that force people to log in with Facebook, and we must keep in mind that Facebook is a member of the PRISM US government surveillance program. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%29

Avoiding the companies on this slide is a simple way to significantly reduce the risk of being spied upon. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PRISM_%28surveillance_program%29#/media/File:Prism_slide_5.jpg

Not 100%. Some of us actually do care if the coin actually has a future and are prepared to wait for the fundamental value of a coin to materialize. I see the value of a crypto currency as ultimately determined by people using it in commerce, where those people have no interest in speculating on its value, with the more people using the currency in commerce, the more valuable it becomes. The likelihood of this occurring in the future is the risk vs return analysis one makes. Market timing is primarily about getting a fair price as opposed to the best possible price, and cost averaging strategies become part of the buying process.

A similar approach with stocks is to look at the long term earnings and growth potential of a company over the long term based upon fundamental factors. Among the most famous and successful investors who use fundamental analysis is Warren Buffett and his 9 rules for choosing stocks http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/12/05/9-rules-that-helped-warren-buffett-produce-a-18261.aspx. One set of rules that are not present is: Buy high hoping to sell higher and my favorite bear equivalent of sell low hoping to buy lower. This set of rules are known as the greater fool theory.

My take is that many of the same principles of fundamental analysis for stocks can also be applied to crypto - currencies.

When considering an alt-coin, I would first ask the following questions:
1) What problems / issues does Bitcoin currently face?
2) Does the alt-coin address these issues, and if so how?

Bitcoin currently faces two main issues that prevent its widespread use as money:

a) Bitcoin cannot scale at the protocol level, otherwise known as the blocksize issue. The current Bitcoin blockchain is limited theoretically to 7 transactions per second and in practice to around 2-3 transactions per second. For comparison VISA can peak at well over 40,000 transactions per second. Furthermore this limitation in Bitcoin will not be overcome by technological improvements in processor power, network bandwidth, digital storage, etc since they are baked right into the protocol. As of this point I have not seen a solution for Bitcoin that addresses both the scaling of the blocksize and the security of the network once the emission runs out.

b) Fungibility. As more and more companies are getting into "Bitcoin blockchain analytics" and selling their proprietary "solutions" to industry participants there is no guarantee that one's Bitcoin are going to be accepted in a transaction because some proprietary algorithm alleges that one's Bitcoins were used in say an illegal transaction N transactions ago. This is not an issue with cash and a digital cash equivalent needs to have at least the same level of fungibility as cash.

If one looks at the top 20 crypto currencies, that are both proof of work and whose primary purpose is their use as money, Monero is the only one that fully addresses both of the above issues in Bitcoin.

Monero addresses (a) above by using both an adaptive blocksize limit combined with a tail emission. A tail emission would break a critical social covenant in Bitcoin making this solution impossible in Bitcoin and taking the tail emission out will make the coin insecure as the emission runs out. This is the fundamental problem with the design of Bytecoin for example. Dodgcoin does have a tail emission and could add Monero style adaptive blocksize limit with a comparably minor change in the social covenant but at this point has not done so.

Monero addresses (b) above by using a very elegant mixing method using ring signature that allows instant mixing with existing transactions on the blockchain. This avoids the need to use a second level of mixing servers (Coinjoin in Bitcoin, Dash masternodes) that introduce both delays (it can take hours or even days to mix Dash) and a very significant regulatory risk associated with the operators of the mixing servers.

To get the real picture on how the market has valued Monero over the last 2 years I would suggest taking a look at the historical market capitalization https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/monero/#charts rather than just the price. This will account for the fast falling emission rate in Monero.

https://www.coingecko.com/buzz/gavin-andresen-ethereum-rise-warning-to-bitcoin

Very interesting comments on the part of Gavin Andresen on the maximum  blocksize issue and Ethereum. Of course Monero does not have a maximum blocksize issue.

An analysis of the change in capitalization rate since Monero's launch rather than just price indicates the exact opposite. The steep emission curve has allowed the market to absorb large increases in market capitalization (market capitalization is the measure on what value the market places on the coin and project overall) while keeping prices affordable.

As the emission curves flattens this will no longer be the case so further increases in market capitalization that are comparable to those in the past will require much higher prices.

Are you kidding. At these prices it is not even close. The one mistake I made with Bitcoin was selling a portion way too soon. I am not prepared to make the same mistake with Monero which, by the way, has way stronger fundamentals.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bz61YQWZuYU

A 300 XBT buy wall at 0.00165. Fake or real?

While very true for Bitcoin, this article is even more relevant for Monero. https://news.bitcoin.com/bitcoins-market-cap-not-think/

Edit: Here is the main reference https://vinnylingham.com/deconstructing-the-bitcoin-market-cap-ce52b0d87035#.mh02k5qj9

Yes my disagreement is with your first sentence. I do agree that the appeal of MyMonero is strongest for low memory, storage, bandwidth etc. situations.

I have to disagree here. People over the age of 55 were raised on cash and in many cases are very distrustful of third party payment providers and are very fearful of identity theft. They are also very privacy conscious. Furthermore they are far more likely to adopt the technology of their grand children than the technology of their children. For a senior the strongest appeal of crypto currency is likely its cash like properties, (cash one can use on the Internet) since that is their comfort level.  If they adopt a crypto currency it is highly unlikely that they will then turn it into the very thing they are trying to avoid.

As a baby boomer, my take is that the baby boomers can be a very receptive demographic for Monero, but I doubt we will buy in if we are sold the same technology we rejected 20 years ago.

I do not hold Ethereum or Lisk, but I am very much interested in scalability issues. So my question is why is Lisk more scalable than Ethereum?

I will focus on those alt-coins that use POW for consensus and whose primary function is their use as money. The only solution I have seen to this issue requires both an adaptive blocksize limit and a tail emission. Bitcoin's problems with blocksize can be traced to the need to create scarcity in the blocksize in order to have fees rise to provide an incentive miners when the emission runs out.

If we go down the Marketcap list with a mineable and no premine filter turned on https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/views/filter-non-mineable-and-premined/

1. Bitcoin

2. Ethereum N/A

Note: Primary purpose is not use as money. Has a different problem: Currently the price of Ethereum is tied to the price of computing power https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1480613.msg14924308#msg14924308

3. Litecoin: Same problem as Bitcoin: Fixed blocksize and Fixed maximum number of coins

4. Dash: The POW has the same problem as Bitcoin: Fixed blocksize and Fixed maximum number of coins.

Note: The Masternode network is also dependent on a falling emission curve; however it maybe possible to use the masternode network voting mechanism to set fees.

5. Dogecoin: POW has only one of the BItcoin problems namely a fixed blocksize. Dogecoin has a tail emission so it could be possible to add a Cryptonote style adaptive blocksize limit via a hard fork. (see Monero and Bytecoin below)

6. Steem: N/A

Note: The primary purpose is a social network.

7. Monero: Does not have this issue. This because it uses an adaptive blocksize limit (Cryptonote) and a tail emission. The adaptive blocksize limit uses a penalty function that is based on the emission and fees are set to overcome this penalty in order to scale the blocksize. This works only because there is a minimum tail emission since if there were no emission there would be no penalty and adaptive blocksize limit would fail.

8. FedoraCoin: Could not verify since the links to Fedoraco.in fail. Maybe someone from the Fedoracoin community can provide answers as to blocksize, tail emission etc.

9. Peercoin: Proof of Stake and has the same fixed blocksize issue as Bitcoin. The POS could provide an effective tail emission. (See Dogecoin above)

10. Bytecoin. Has the same type of adaptive blocksize limit as Monero but no tail emission. The problem with this is that as the emission runs out there is no way to secure the coin since the blocksize can increase with no effective penalty.

Note: Bytecoin had a very large premine/ninjamine which will accelerate the time frame when the emission runs out and could provide an early warning of what can go wrong if one uses an adaptive blocksize limit with no tail emission.

Edit: Many of the above coins fail because there were forked from BItcoin or Litecoin and inherited this problem.

I take this prediction is based upon the DAO.

I am far from convinced that Ethereum has addressed the issue of scalability. What we have at this point is a fixed transaction cost (fixed gas cost for a given computation) in terms of Ether, and a scalable blocksize. I can easily see a situation where Ethereum will simply price itself out of the market if the price of Ethereum does not fall as fast the cost of distributed computing. Of course some will say that a solution is in the works, much as the idea of scalability in Bitcoin was left "to the future" say in 2011.

Developing a market that can scale with a radical fall in computing cost, without centralized intervention, is the real challenge here.

Edit 1: Please prove me wrong: A long position on Ethereum looks  to me a lot like a short position on Moore's Law (betting that the price of computing will increase in real terms over time).

Edit 2: If the cost of computing power is fixed in terms of Ethereum, is not purchasing Ethereum in effect purchasing computing power. I know past performance in not an indicator of future results, but really computing power as a long term investment?

If the price remains constant, then the difficulty will fall as those mining operations with marginal operating costs drop out. Price could remain limited by the blocksize debate or even fall if the post halving boom fails to materialize.

Fake walls can backfire big time when a whale who is a long term player decides to buy or sell against the wall with minimal slippage.

Take a look at market cap rather than price over the last two years to see what is really going on. https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/monero/#charts.

Market Cap measures the valuation the market places on the whole project. For a stock price is an excellent proxy for market cap. For an ICO coin such as Ethereum, or a massive premine/ninjamine such as Bytecoin  price is a reasonable proxy for market cap since the the subsequent POW emission is small when compared to the initial number of coins. Even for a significant instamine such as Dash it is questionable at best.

For a POW coin that is mined from the Genesis block with an emission curve comparable to that of Bitcoin or Monero price fails completely as a proxy for market cap during the first years. Let us say when the annualized inflation rate is above 10%. This is something one should keep in mind when considering technical analysis.

Bitcoin Bull Bear: I respect your work a lot; however the technical analysis for Monero, Dash and Ethereum are fundamentally different for the above reason.