This is why bitcoin should be used for online shopping but supermarket shopping should fall to an alt coin like Zetacoin
zetacoin really is lightning fast... confirmations in seconds
Following up on my other reply as well: If the "Zetacoin" thread is any indication of real-world averages, mining "Zetacoin" results in at least 99% orphaned blocks, which is to be expected for such an idiotic idea as a 30-second interval (which isn't "seconds" anyway). That's how it works. The more you decrease that interval, the more you take from the Bitcoin, "one CPU one vote" concept, and start bottlenecking it with a huge caveat of, "if your internet connection is stable and fast, and if the majority of the network's connections are stable and fast" which makes it not nearly so useful. Never mind that with ASICs already in existence, they can easily attack or just take over the network at whim, since it's a SHA256 coin. Basically, this is one of the worst alt-coin implementations I've ever seen.
i have seen people talking about lots of orphaned blocks but this is not something I have come across when mining myself. What alt coin would you recommend?
Either none, or maybe LTC and/or PPC. A little diversification is good and was always inevitable.
PPC has some unique non-stupid features, notably Proof-of-Stake, which is interesting. It is "inflationary" which I
would dislike, but the inflation is pegged to attempt only to replace transaction fees, which are actually destroyed in PPC, not relayed to miners. In the end it would appear not to be inflationary. It also has a 10-minute block interval, because the PPC dev actually understands probability theory, I assume.
LTC has value because it uses Scrypt for hashing rather than SHA256, which has gotten some criticism because the NSA was highly involved in creating it, and the NSA makes everyone uneasy these days. The concern is they may have a backdoor or some secret knowledge of that particular function that enables them to take control or do something nefarious. Certainly within the realm of possibility, knowing how they operate. Who knows. (I wish Snowden would issue a statement positively indicating he was unaware of its compromise, or better yet that he is confident it is not.) PPC also uses SHA256, btw.
The 2.5-min interval of LTC isn't so short that it's downright stupid, like Zeta, but it's a bit shorter than necessary. 10 may be a touch long, maybe 5 is good, idk, but again, shorter intervals without some new innovation that makes it matter are useless, because it's time that matters, not confirmations themselves. Everyone just got brainwashed into "6-confirmations" without realizing the number 6 was a derivative calculation starting with probabilities vs. time, where Satoshi and the devs suggested 6 as an acceptable border for where confirmations can be considered "statistically improbable to reverse".
The rest of the alts offer no appreciable benefits, really. Jury's out on Ripple, it has some big backers, but I haven't analyzed it, and there seems to be a lot of money possibly skimmed to devs and people, not staying in-network. Not certain. It's an interesting idea, but until the day it's fully open source, I distrust it, and especially with it presenting itself with a name like "OpenCoin" when it is not (they now go by Ripple Labs, but still own the opencoin.com domain). I'd review this:
http://ripplescam.org/ and vet things yourself before looking at Ripple. My gut doesn't trust it.
Conveniently, BTC, LTC, and PPC are the top-capitalized cryptos (if you ignore NMC). So the market knows best, too.
