I've noticed that there seems to be a lot of experienced miners who trawl the altcoin announcements looking for promising new coins to 'pump & dump'. Is this something that's worth a newbie having a go at?
As I understand it, these vultures
apply a ton of hashing power to the new coin from the minute it launches, to get a pile of coins in a short amount of time, before the difficulty goes up. As soon as another interesting coin launches they switch to that one. They then keep an eye on Cryptsy etc in the hope that one or more of these new coins will get listed. If so they sell their coins off as quick as possible, on the assumption that most of these 'crapcoins' will go downhill rapidly and are probably not worth holding.
As a noob with a very modest amount of power is this something that could be worth my while? Any tips on how to do it effectively?
Personally I'm less inclined to dump coins; I'd rather hold on to them and see if they develop into something substantial. If I end up with a few of my wallets being full of worthless dust that's fine - I didn't invest huge sums in GPUs and KWh!