A currency not used by people is NOT a currency.
We had looked at encouraging people to spend altcoins by offering discounts in certain coins. CoinPayments.net gave us a price for what we wanted, to add and accept a group of new coins, and we were going to offer a 25% discount on digital downloads at our online store when people paid with those coins. We figured any crypto user could easily exchange bitcoins for altcoins, then send them to the store for a purchase, and that would create volume and attract new users. These coins might finally become real currency instead of online speculation tokens for teenaged daytraders.
The idea was to sell e-books and music downloads. If we got even a minor hit song, a brief internet craze, a viral video featuring our song, or anything like that, it could mean 100,000 people coming to buy the song for 99 cents. While they were there, maybe some of them would buy a book or an album for $8.99. When they saw a 25% discount offered to pay with altcoins, maybe 1% of them would take the time to find out how to get Bitcoin and exchange it for our accepted altcoins. That could be 1000 new people trading these market pairs, which is probably 20 times more people than have traded them this month.
It's definitely a reach to imagine that happening, but at the same time other people could start accepting these altcoins too since they'd be added at CoinPayments.net. It wouldn't necessarily depend upon our one online store, and it would give the coins a little boost and hype.
So, even though the price for adding payment acceptance at coinpayments was enough to buy the entire supply of some of these coins, we decided there was no point in buying all the coins if they were worthless and had no real-world use. So we worked out the entire deal with coinpayments, told them to go ahead and set it up, and we were ready to pay the bill. We have the website live with a sample e-book, and we've tested the automated checkout through CoinPayments (with Bitcoin, but ready to add the other coins too.) We're writing short story collections and novels, and we're recording singles and albums.
But we wanted to pay Coinpayments with credit card or PayPal, and they don't accept credit cards or PayPal. All our cash is tied up in these altcoins that nobody will buy, and we're broke. We spent all our money - and it wasn't that much - on altcoins. So right when the deal was almost complete, the deal was off because we couldn't come up with the money in crypto that they already accept. Localbitcoins could sell us maybe .2btc through paypal or credit card, so we were out of options.
Maybe you think we're too small-time, and that's why we couldn't make it work. You're right, we're very small-time. But we're still bigger than 99% of people in altcoins. Our pathetic failed efforts represent the best that anyone is willing to do for altcoins. Rich people don't want to lose their money, so they're staying away. That leaves it to us, and we can't do anything.
We used to think that there was a chance of holding these altcoins for 5 years and they would steadily increase in value as difficulty and adoption went up. The problem is that these coins won't exist 5 years from now, because they don't have the development like Bitcoin did. Will your coin run on Windows 10? What about Windows 11? And who's going to code a new wallet, if it doesn't? Can Google Chrome download your wallet, or does it refuse to let you keep the file because it's "dangerous"? What if Internet Explorer and Firefox change their virus definitions, and then nobody can download the wallet with any browser?
Go to CoinMarketCap.com. Click "see all", and start from the bottom. There are over 600 coins listed, and these are the cream of the crop. These aren't all the coins, just the "best ones" that haven't been delisted from even the smallest exchanges. How many of these coins don't have a website and/or a block explorer? Do you think it's less than 75% of them? Just go up the list and see for yourself.
If there's not even a website, that means there's not 1 user of this coin who is willing to pay $8.99 a year to host a website. Nobody cares about these coins - not even the people who made them. These coins have no reason to exist, and nobody would even notice if they disappeared.
Sadly, it's become a race against time. For most altcoins, the main question is whether you will be able to get rid of them before they are completely dead and can't even be sent.
