This is funny why?

Zcoin has a working Zerocoin implementation, but PIVX does not. I don't get it.

He also has a point that the anonymous transaction space is crowded. There is... Monero, Dash, Zcash, zCoin, Zclassic, PIVX, etc. (there's too many to list)

That's a lot of coins going after the same market, and it seems to me that there may only be a couple winners (or less.) Whichever sees the most adoption first will probably win out, and at the moment I'd say Monero has the upper hand.

I pretty much agree with this. With the exeption of one threat... the entire Alt coin ecosystem could be undermined by Bitcoin sidechain Alt Coin sidechain implementations. I am still on the fence whether it is a real threat or not. If it is, it will be a long term threat. The Alt bubble might burst soonish, but they will recover and they aren't going anywhere in the near term.

Well, unfortunately I did not have the foresight to hodl all the BTC I have bought/owned throughout the years, so I own very little BTC... so little that it is pretty much "play money" for me. I am also a bit of a gambler. 

I am just having fun really. Maybe I lose a bit, or maybe I won't.... we shall see! One thing's for certain... I refuse to buy back in at a loss, so I am on the sidelines for now.

It looks like all the whales decided to start buying after I sold, lol. Maybe it will correct back down sooner or later.

Bitshares went through a merger in 2014 when it combined the Bitshares X, Vote, and DNS blockchains. Unfortunately is was pretty much a sham, because the Vote and DNS features never came to fruition and the only thing Bitshares X token holders got out of it was diluted shares. But, it is possible nonetheless.

There are also a lot of "dead" coins which transitioned to new blockchains via token swaps. Too many to list really..

I don't think there's really a need for another exchange to come aboard Bitshares at the moment. The market isn't really big enough, and it will hurt market depth by fracturing it off inbetween multiple exchanges' IOUs.

I think Bitshares needs to reconsider sidechains if it wants to stay one step ahead of its competitors. More decentralized DEXs are coming (blocknet), and there are a couple other DEXs that now exist and/or will be here soon. Waves (IOUs like bitshares), Supernet (multi sig), Blocknet (atomic swaps), etc...

At least Bitshares has bitUSD and the like, so even if its DEX ends up not winning the DEX wars bitUSD could be a useful instrument for other DEXs.

It will be interesting to see what technology wins out.

Maybe I am, maybe I am not. I suppose we will find out soon...  

Either way, I think I will be happy with whatever happens. I am not greedy.

Sorry hodlers, but I just sold out to FIAT... I am expecting at least a small correction soon.

Maybe we go back up after a small correction, or maybe there is a large correction looming.

I think I will buy back after the small correction, and curse the gods if there is a large correction.  

It looks like the weak hands are slowly but surely being weeded out. The dumps are becoming less and less (as far as the amount dumped.)

It looks like $2k is a realistic near term possibility?

Where is the link to the code? Screenshot mean nothing to me, as they are easily faked. It is super easy to program a dummy interface too that doesn't actually work.

Why is there so little information available for Lisk smart contract developers? I have been getting back into Javascript programming recently by programming a web app. I thought about maybe trying to make something on Lisk, but the lack of documentation and resources is an immediate turnoff. Considering Javascript has one of the biggest developer userbases, Lisk is not doing itself any favors with the lack of resources that are available.

Massive amounts of blood will be spilled when shit hits the fan across all cryptos. There is no safehaven from a crypto bear market, other than investments/assets outside of cryptocurrencies (FIAT, stocks, savings, FIAT crypto derivatives, etc.) You want to have plenty of liquid FIAT on hand when things get real, because the best survival tactic is buying your portfolio back after the entire market bottoms out as a whole.

1 Month Update:


Analysis:

Cryptocurrency Bull Market:
The cryptocurrency market remained bullish throughout the month. Pretty much any portfolio of any decent cryptocurrencies should of seen decent gains. I expect the rug to be pulled out from under the crypto markets soon. Definitely by the end of the year, more likely in the next few months, and even more likely in one months time or sooner. When the crypto market overall starts to adjust downward, I think you should be hesitant to buy on the way down and wait for it to fully bottom, as prices could go much lower than they are today in a years time.

CH Index Performance
The ALT coin bull market helped push the profitability of the CH index above holding Bitcoin alone, but holding only Litecoin or Ethereum (among others) outperformed the index. It is to be expected that some single coin portfolios will outperform the index with every update, as some are sure to be pumped here or there. I expect this difference to even out as more time goes by, and eventually for the fund to outperform most single coin portfolios.

Biggest Winners:
Bitshares (BTS) +568.21%
Blocknet (BLOCK) +445.03%
Dogecoin (DOGE) +242.78%
Ardor (ARDR) +232.08%
Litecoin (LTC) +195.96%

3 out of the 5 biggest winners (Bitshares, Dogecoin, and Litecoin) are some of the older and more established ALT coins which had not yet been pumped too high in this ALT coin bull market. It was only a matter of time before they caught up with the rest of the ALTs. I would however caution buying at the top of these pumps, as what goes up will eventually go down. Really, the entire market is due for a correction.

Bitshares gained quite a bit of traction after their original developer Dan announced his new project named EOS. Jokingly referred to as Ethereum On Steroids, it is a synchronous smart contract platform which will process smart contracts more efficiently than any other currently existing solution. Details are scarce at this point. Other than that, Bitshares has also matured over the years with more volume on its DEX and more market makers providing market depth. I think the main reason for this is that market maker bots are starting to be publicly released, whereas in the past they have been run privately by individuals. I still remain long term bullish on Bitshares. Although I do not think Bitshares' DEX will end up being the most popular DEX due to it only trading derivatives and exchange-held assets, I still think bitUSD could prove to be its "killer feature". bitUSD's main competitor Tether is slowly losing market confidence and having issues due to its centralized nature. A crypto dollar derivative will become a valuable feature once real DEXs come to fruition and gain in popularity.

Blocknet has been flying under the radar until the past month. It is an older coin which has just recently begun to near the finish line with decentralized cryptocurrency to cryptocurrency exchanges on their test net. At present time, you need to download the full blockchain and wallet of each coin you want to trade and enter the RPC information. This is obviously rudimentary and inconvenient, but it is only a proof of concept. By utilizing SPV wallets and/or multicoin SPV wallets and/or integrating other coins' SPV wallets in with the Blocknet wallet, this inconvenience can be overcome. This project is still a long ways out from being usable enough to be popular enough to gain a decent amount of market depth and liquidity. However, I think this is one of the most undervalued ALT coins out there today and remain very bullish on the coin. I think this is the best DEX project out there, and besides that, Blocknet can empower many other things rather than just a DEX by allowing different blockchains to communicate with eachother.

Dogecoin recently caught up to the rest of the ALT coin bull market this past month. I don't have much to say about it, but I think it is still a decent investment. It reminds me of Litecoin back in the day... it is not super useful, but it has a fair distribution, a huge community, and is well established at this point. It was released during a time of many pump and dump scam coins, and Dogecoin has stood the test of time well. Meanwhile 99% of the other coins that were released during this time period have been dumped to page 9999 of coin market cap. Coins that stick around like this and don't die have a good chance of being more valuable one day (kind of like Litecoin after activating Segwit.) I am not sure what Dogecoin's purpose will be in the future crypto ecosystem, but I think the dog will eventually find its way home and its purpose will be realized sooner or later.

Ardor is a more efficient and scalable reincarnation of the well established Nxt coin. Although Ardor does not yet exist, over the past month Ardor has been extensively tested on its test net and an initial public release seems imminent. To be honest... of the 5 best performing coins in the CH index during the past month, I am least bullish on Ardor. I am not sure scalability alone is a good enough feature to make an ALT coin valuable. Mainly because this space is heavily contested. There are many projects which are working to solve the same issues. Ardor will also have all of the features Nxt has, but these features were not enough to keep Nxt towards the front of the pack either. Most of the features in Nxt are half baked, and it seems to me that they were more interested in adding as many features as possible for marketing purposes rather than focusing on one or a few of those features and doing them exquisitely well. I still think it has potential, but if I had to cull my portfolio by 5 or so coins, then I don't think Ardor would make the cut.

Litecoin was boosted quite a bit by the successful activation of Segwit. Before Segwit activation, market sentiment and the community's expectations for Litecoin was nearing an all time low, but I think Segwit activation has really solidified Litecoin's place as a top contender for one of the best ALT coins. I think interest from buyers will continue once Segwit and the Lightning Network are active on the Litecoin main net, and remain overall bullish on the long term prospect of Litecoin. LN/Segwit also allow for a lot of cool features that will spark more interest in Litecoin as they are released into the wild.

Biggest Losers:
Noblecoin (NOBL) -68.96%
Nushares (NSR) -58.35%

Both of these coins were highly affected by the recent Poloniex delistings. I think they both would have performed around the median of all the coins in the index if they both had not been affected in this way. Even in this crazy bull market there were two losers in my portfolio, which I think highlights the necessity of diversifying an ALT coin portfolio. Putting all your eggs in one basket can end up disastrous for your crypto investment. I think it is important to have a stop loss on coins in your portfolio also, and these two have reached mine. I am now bearish on the longterm prospect of Noblecoin and Nushares.

Coins I Am Reconsidering:
Pepecash (PEPE):

I initially saw value in Pepecash due to two factors. I saw a resemblance of Dogecoin in Pepecash, and I like that it is deflationary due to coins being burned when people buy rare pepes. I am starting to reconsider my position on Pepecash though, as I think the Pepe meme is not nearly as popular or widespread as the Doge meme. Due to that, even with a deflationary supply, I am not sure that long term demand will remain for Pepecash. A cryptocurrency simply being deflationary is not enough for it to rise in value. Cryptocurrencies must sustain demand to increase in value (deflationary or not), and I'm not sure if demand for Pepecash is sustainable. Consider me bearish on Pepecash at the moment, but I haven't completely made up my mind one way or the other on it.

Nexus (NXS):

The idea of providing free internet which runs via cube satellites in space and mesh networks is novel and a great idea. And tying Nexus into that equation could prove to be lucrative. However, the idea itself seems a little far fetched and I am not sure it will ever come to fruition the way it is advertised. Even still, if it does actually come to fruition then I think it will be one of the biggest successes of the crypto industry. It will either moonshot or fall on its face and lose all of its value. Right now I am leaning towards the latter, but who knows what will happen. I think it is an OK coin to have in your portfolio, but I would only consider having it as a very small percentage of your portfolio. I am near term bearish until this project starts showing signs that it can deliver on its road map.

PIVX

I am starting to become more and more convinced that this was a pump and dump. There were many people speaking its praises on its rise up after the ICO, but most of those people seem to have disappeared by now. Furthermore, Dash tech is not really the creme of the crop anyways. At least it is much more fairer than Dash, so we will see what happens. I will remain bearish on PIVX in the meantime.

vTorrent

Although it is a good idea, I am not fully convinced that the developer of vTorrent has the shareholder's best interests in mind. There is very little communication and proof that he has actually developed what he claims to have developed thus far. All he has provided are a few screenshot here and there, and screenshots and/or dummy interfaces are quite easy to create. It is possible that he does not have any innovative developments implemented at all, and is just stringing along the community so he can sell tokens at a higher value. Until open source software is released I will remain bearish on this project.

More info here: https://www.stellar.org/blog/bitcoin-claim-lumens-2/

On June 27th, 2017, 16 billion lumens will be given away to Bitcoin holders. This amounts to $856,464,000 USD worth of lumens at today's market value.

https://www.stellar.org/blog/bitcoin-claim-lumens-2/

I speculate that one or more Bitcoin whales are pumping Stellar in advance of this giveaway.

They have incentive to pump Stellar so that their portion of the giveaway coins will be worth much more when the time comes.

It is hard to believe these will not be dumped on greater fools once they are given their unproportionally large amount of Lumens for free.

I mean really... Stellar is pretty much Ripple minus the large amount of banking partnerships. How much value is really there, and how could that perceived value reasonably cover the recent price surge?

IMO- buyer beware.

Apparently, Bitfinex owns at least some of Tether Ltd. I speculate that they are the ones that started Tether, but they needed to gather investors in order to put up the huge buy and sell walls close to the $1 peg. So, probably miscellaneous private investors hold the rest. This information has never been made public.

That is difficult to answer, but from what I can gather there are several reasons:

1. There was a big FUD campaign when Bitshares first came out saying Smartcoins (then named bitAssets) would never work and their value would collapse, and that scared a lot of people away. Google Preston Byrne and bitUSD... his set of three articles were the most quoted "evidence" that bitAssets would collapse. But really those articles were just speculation, and after three years of Bitshares holding its Smartcoin pegs these detractors have pretty much gone silent. I guess they are starting to realize they may have been wrong (if they haven't already).

2. bitUSD had two competitors in the space. Tether and Nubits. Tether and Nubits had much more volume and market depth closer to the $1 pegs than bitUSD. They both put huge buy and sell walls close to the $1 peg. Nubits paid people to do so by use of inflation, and I guess Tether raised investment capital to do so. Up until very recently, there were not many market makers for bitUSD and the spread was much higher than it is today and there was less market depth. Because of the bigger market depth and smaller spreads, Nubits and Tether killed bitUSD as far as usage.

Then Nubits had a big collapse during the summer of 2016 where it went as low as $0.22, and ever since then Nubits has seen much less usage/volume. At this point, Tether is easily the most popular and liquid USD pegged asset. However, recently even Tether is showing some cracks in its armor. There is evidence that they are closely associated with Bitfinex, both of which are having monetary issues. It is showing in Tether's value which is currently $0.968, and has recently gone as low as $0.921. bitUSD has held a tighter peg than Tether for two weeks running. If Tether collapses just like Nubits did, then I think everyone will finally understand that bitUSD is the best solution.

Nubits, Tether, and Bitfinex's issues highlight that they may not be the best solutions, and they are both subject to many issues that bitUSD is not.

Nubits is like a "decentralized" federal reserve, which is still pretty centralized, prone to errors in judgement from Nushare holders, and more vulnerable to exchange default (among other issues.)

Tether is completely centralized, and subject to all of the downfalls that brings... subject to the Tether company not honoring the $1 peg (it is held only by a promise from Tether to do so, and if you read the excerpts from the ToS it is not a promise at all), subject to seizure by governments, and it is also more prone to exchange default (among other things).

bitUSD is completely decentralized and runs on free market principles. Also, recently due to market maker bots being made easier to use (such as https://btsbots.com/), bitUSD is slowly closing the gap as far as liquidity and market depth. Before market maker bots were only ran by a few individuals who kept the source code private, so there was not much market making going on.

Instead of typing up a long post of how it works, which I admit is difficult to grasp at first, I think this answer from Bitcoin's Stack Exchange is a good description. There are a ton of articles and videos on it. Bytemaster released this video in 2013 before starting Bitshares explaining how bitUSD would work, and it helped me understand. I still think it is one of the best descriptions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-8ZJ3xTDwbI



Bitshares was one of (if not THE) first working smart contracts. The decentralized exchange and shorting/covering/defaulting of Smartcoins like bitUSD is all done autonomously by the Bitshares decentralized network and blockchain.

All the claims that Monero havent been pumped are BS. Look at the one year chart and decide for yourself. Same with a lot of the other coins people are saying "havent been pumped yet".

FWIW- Steem doesn't have transaction fees either.

Is Iota even on any exchanges? It is not on Coin Market Cap.

@OP - It is hard to find undervalued coins these days seeing as though so many of them have already been pumped so much. I would wait for an ALT coin market correction before buying too much.

But then people end up categorizing him a scammer anyways because of premine/dev funds. It is a bit of a lose/lose situation.


This is the main reason that I don't mind ICOs and premines. People need to be compensated for their time and effort. Otherwise, it would be a better idea to simply get a job. ICOs push blockchain technology forward at a more advanced rate by allowing developers to focus on development. We have seen some really neat things come from ICOs... Ethereum, Bitshares, Nxt, Waves, etc... all of which are innovative in their own ways.

You also touched on another important thing is that there is no "best" way to fund development. Someone will always complain. Even with PoW distributed coins... if the coin becomes big enough, people will eventually complain about centralized ASIC mining due to economies of scale. It is a lose/lose proposition. At the end of the day, no matter how a coin was released or distributed, it matters more that they deliver on their vision.

I am in no way connected or affiliated with EOS or block.one. This has kind of become the thread for EOS on Bitcointalk, so I thought I would edit the OP with links and information. OP May 6, 2017: