In April, the TIO exchange platform is expected to launch, plus there will be a liquidity pool which is sort of like an investment fund/instrument you would see in a typical financial services firm (their website will have more detail on exactly how it operates).

Given how far TIO has fallen since the ICO, a doubling in price from its current lows is not unreasonable given their token will actually have a use at that time.

There isn't any detail on this yet, but I'd find it unlikely.

Their first card will likely involve 'loading' money onto it, kind of like a travel money card, and you'd be able to do this by converting some of your crypto to regular cash on the app/card, then spending this money and get some cashback of 1 to 2% in mco tokens (if you have a premium level card).

So based on that, I wouldn't see any need to use Tether, since you'll be able to covert from cash to crypto through the app/card pretty easily, and you would actually prefer cash to Tether since that would be more 'ready to spend' through the card.

Looks like bigger focus on social media over signature campaign. Is this because you think you can get people interested who aren't necessarily the typical cryptocurrency enthusiasts? As in, you're trying to get more regular gym goers involved, and think you'll have more reach through twitter, facebook etc than you would with bitcointalk signatures.

Really looking forward to see how Gym coin develops!

Yeah seriously, if Sia can pull off what it is aiming to do, then fluctuations like we've been experiencing won't matter. It is a coin with a team that has a vision - which is a lot more than what I can say about all the clone coins out there right now.

I think when Monaco release their first working product, whatever that is, it will restore a lot of confidence and interest in the company. They have a few things planned (like a credit line based on your crypto assets) but until there is something to point to and say 'this is something you can get with MCO tokens' people will not necessarily believe the company can deliver.

Yes very good news, and unexpectedly nice of cryptopia to acknowledge it isn't the fault of the coin developers, but any issues with cryptopia being cryptopia.

I think that's part of my point - the altcoin forum is popular, and not enough merit senders are involved in those communities. While like you've said it might be because there is a lot of dud input to get through, it hasn't stopped these forums becoming very popular.

But put another way, what you're suggesting is that to get more merit, people should post on the LESS popular forums because the threads are shorter and there is less stuff to read through? Not all of the altcoin posts are spam and I don't mind skipping through a few lines of pointless input to read something valuable from a user about an altcoin I'm following.

Also I don't think your point on my latest posts being on a certain page like 76, 383 etc really stacks up - these posts are on the latest page of each altcoin I'm posting about when I post them, so the raw page number is not so relevant. Most users skip to the last page of a thread for the latest info on an altcoin (I know I do) so the fact that it is on page 10, 100, 500 or whatever shouldn't matter - it is always on the last page at time of posting. If you had merit senders who followed particular groups of altcoins, they wouldn't be starting from page 1 anyway, they'd be looking at the latest posts and deciding if sending merit is warranted, or if it is just spam. I wouldn't expect a merit sender to trawl through the hundreds of pages on Ethereum, they could just look at the latest page.

Also I wonder if timezones make a difference - ie. since there are 57 main merit senders, would someone in say New Zealand be forever a newbie compared to someone in Europe/USA due to time differences, and no merit senders being online to see their posts before they get buried a few pages back on a thread.

I think for the bitcointalk community to grow across all forums the messaging and how merit is provided needs to shift slightly to provide the same incentives for members to post quality content in 'Altcoin' forums, not just 'Bitcoin' forums - particularly since altcoins are growth areas.

Useful info, but the problem is not altcoin bounty hunters, but the actual distribution of merit on altcoin forums.

I primarily post in altcoin forums (given that is my interest, since I do a bit of GPU mining), and I've seen plenty of pages with valuable posts that just don't attract any merit.

When you look at the top merit receiving threads/posts they are all in bitcoin, meta and apparently some russian threads? Oh and also merit swapping threads.

Think there needs to be more merit/attention on the altcoin forums - bounty hunters who post about spamming their twitter followers about some ICO make up only a small portion of altcoin posts.

I mean based on the current distribution of merit, I would be telling newbies to ignore altcoin forums and post in meta - or learn russian.

My guess is that some people invested too heavily at the ICO stage, on the assumption it would boom post ICO, and now have little remaining to 'average down' their investment when the price is low.

Also the bounty was quite generous at ICO price levels at least, not so much now, so I would assume a few people have been selling their bounty coins.

I agree, will probably be like cryptokitties where the number is technically infinite, but some are more 'desirable' than others, or would be so common there would be little point in creating more of the same given there will probably be a transaction fee in using the ethereum network. The value would probably be higher for earlier generation unicorns, given they will be more rare or perhaps better in some other way.

Think of it a pyramid (funnily enough) with the most valuable early generation unicorns at the top, then everything else flowing down, with exceptions for super rare or interesting features having increased value.

Maybe - but I can't think of a coin that has successfully transitioned starting as a PoW coin, to PoS with increasing masternode rewards.

Seems like interest/price of coins often drops once the miners PoW rewards justify moving elsewhere, and coins struggle from there to maintain community interest relying on masternodes and PoS.

Even Ethereum held off PoS until this year so they could get it right and ensure interest/functionality improves to the point where interest from miners doesn't help hold up the price and community involvement.

Definitely - lots of new exchanges expected for 2018 so hopefully listing prices will come down and they'll be more competition for altcoin listings. Cobinhood, coin lion and trade token are a few exchanges that come to mind (although Cobinhood is having difficulty getting sufficient traffic).

In the short term this doesn't help, but hopefully won't be too much longer.

My understanding is that their first card will actually be more like a travel card, where you 'load' fiat currency onto it based the exchange rate at the time for the crypto you're swapping, and then whittle that away and 'reload' the card when you think exchange rates for crypto are favourable/you run out of money.

Also a later product alluded to by Monaco is a more traditional credit card, where you get a credit line based on the value of crypto you hold, and you can pay that back as you would a normal credit card.

It is also possible this credit card could instead reduce your crypto value by the equivalent of your purchase on your account/app - I recall they mentioned (I think in a Q and A) that under this system it won't actually convert crypto to fiat at the payment terminal every time you swipe your card. Instead, it will be 'off chain' and only be recorded on Monaco systems, and only be put 'on-chain' when you want to withdraw your money from your Monaco account/app. Part of the reason for this is converting crypto to fiat everytime you want to buy a coffee would lead to substantial fees (think of the bitcoin fees for example).

I'm pretty sure large exchanges do something similar, so you don't get charged huge fees every time you trade some random altcoin for bitcoin as long as the coins stay on the exchange. You only get slugged the large fees when you withdraw your crypto to your personal wallet as this is where the crypto definitely has to be put back 'on-chain' to your personal address.

Glad I could help! If the idea works out I hope you'll remember where it came from!

Depending on the country/state you are thinking of launching in I think there are different rules around if a health insurer can provide discounts to consumers for taking preventative action to improve their health, thereby reducing their risk profile for insurance.

I think the fact that Gluon allows conversion of other currencies to Stratis for ICO participants that, for whatever reason, don't want to hold Stratis, is a good idea. Should mean that ICO's like Gluon won't be impacted if someone prefers to hold crypto in a different currency.

I really like the Gluon ICO and will be supporting.

Yeah I think the Sia project is great but as a GPU miner, I'm obviously not a fan of the decision to introduce ASIC miners into the mix that can only mine Sia.

When you're looking to decentralise data storage through Sia, it doesn't really make sense to me that you would look to centralise mining through ASICs - but that's just my opinion.

If Monaco actually releases a product to market, we should hopefully see Monaco stay above Tenx. There will actually be a product to drive MCO token purchases if they release to the market.

Hopefully tomorrow's Q and A will shed some more light than 'we are working on it' for timings of card release.

Maybe. But what's the alternative?

You can sell now and lose most of your investment, or wait until April to see what the team can deliver and hopefully the price will increase if they can deliver on their commitments.

No more swaps available! Unfortunately you're stuck with signatum. I think sigt still sells on yobit if you can get anything for it. Think the sigt project is pretty much done.

This is a really cool idea. I wonder how token value will increase? Is the idea that people with a certain number of gym tokens will get discounts at their local gym? Cheaper equipment that kind of thing?

I mean, it sounds like a token that is more akin to a loyalty program for the gym.

Also, any thought in using the data collected for health insurance purposes? Like you can show your insurer how much you're exercising, so the cost of insurance drops. Something like that - might be longer term idea.