Cryptocurency: What Is The End Game?

[JollyGood]

if you want my opinion, i say ICOs are all bad, and there is no reason for anyone to even want to invest in them. but not that many people share my view and some even say the developers deserve the money they get for the "development" they are doing!

there is also another view that i also share which is saying if these developers believe in their project and think it is good, then they should invest in it themselves. it can be mining it or even buying it. and then improving the project means a bigger profit for them. and that is a big difference in my opinion.
someone who got paid during ICO to do something in the future.
or someone who is invested and making any money will depend on him doing some actual work.

I have a similar mindset to yours. I am not a fan of ICOs.

Keeping that in mind (ahem), in my opinion there has to be something exceptional on offer for me to consider investing in an ICO as there can be exceptions to the rule. All project managers claim to have something "unique" or claim their coin has a "USP" but when you look at the detail it seems they are more or less doppelgangers of each other.

Exactly what input developers and project manager may put in pre and post ICO depends on them as they will have significant options. On one hand the changce to exchange over inflated priced coins for bitcoins and cut and run, or stay and try to develop the project. The temptation for many a few years ago that had fancy logos and catchphrases was the former. There have been several successes with the latter but I am not highly sceptical of ICOs.

[ppc.pt]

Quote: If you can't explain it simple you can't really understand it

Not sure if I understand it fully and I'm sorry if I'm saying something wrong (I'm a newbie please correct me) but I'll try to give you my point of view based on others opinions mixed with my own.

My guess is that unless a new superior technology to blockchain shows up, this is here to stay. I'll tell you why:

• You can call them coins, or tokens, that you can trade in a free open market. Between other tokens, or fiat currencies (dollar, euro, etc).
• They have value because they are limited supply and no-one can add more (before this was not possible to be transparent in any type of currency, even gold).

Ex: Let's say you have FIFA coins (from the EA game). If they (FIFA) create their own blockchain of "Fifacoin", limit their supply, and make them available in the exchanges... That's it. It will rise and fall depending on the people wanting them or not.

• I'm not sure that the old model of buying stocks will not change as well. If every stock is transformed into blockchain coins, it would be more transparent, easy to use, unregulated (free from politics and governments putting their hand).
• It's also a new and best way for crowdfunding
• I don't think you can be as anonymous with blockchain as you would with paper dollars. That's a minus. But it can also indicate why people will have tens of coins in their portfolio, and different wallets, in different phones perhaps. And with this diversification I think there is nothing left for fiat

P.S.: I do think is important to maintain some kind of paper currency and I never hear people defending that. You should defend that, as much as you love this technology
 

[dinofelis]

There is no fundamental difference between bitcoin and alt coins.  They are all of similar principles, and they have all similar behaviour.  The sole difference is that bitcoin was first, and has a huge first mover advantage, which is slowly eroding away, but will not be gone for a while.

The fundamental nature of all of these tokens is this:
1) huge initial seigniorage (if you are amongst the first adopters, including being its dev, you get coins for much, much less value than potentially later)
2) artificial scarcity supposed to induce value increase
3) power games in order to decide about coin creation (and eventual seigniorage), consensus decisions, fees, and most importantly, the power to change the rules of the game later on (devs/miners/whales...)
4) megalomania stories that go with it, like "being the money of the world" / "being the legal system of the world" / "bringing perfect anonymity to payments" / "being the world's decentralized storage" / "being the world's social medium" / "being the world's super computer" .... to create some hype.

As such, they are designed to be speculative assets in a big zero sum greater fool game, where initial seigniorage of coins can be converted into value received from the latest layer of greater fools, inducing "get rich quickly" schemes, hence attracting loads of "greater fools" hoping to get in early enough to not be the last layer of fools paying for the joke.   They are ideal speculative assets for financial institutions, once these will have the legal possibility to play the games too, who will most probably be the professionals reaping in a lot of money from the amateur gamblers (like they do on the stock market, but with much more leverage and much less rules).  Bitcoin is no exception, it even started the game, but the existence of many tokens instead of one makes the game much more interesting for gamblers.

Of course, next to their main function which is "being a speculative asset", some coins DO have some minor real world usage, like bitcoin, that is somewhat used to buy stuff, ethereum that is somewhat used to make gambling applications, and things like monero that can hide payments, but this usage has neglible effect on the market.

The end game will most probably be a spectacular failure, but it is not clear whether this will simply be a crash, or whether this will be a world-wide financial crisis provoked by financial institutions having gambled too much on crypto, like they gambled too much on complex derivatives.

[NaXxow]

No one knows the end game, what really matters is, every ICOs or any ups and downs with crypto creates opportunity to some people. More projects means more opportunity to grow and make profit, no emotional attached. For me, I will just enjoy the waves until the end of time.

[JollyGood]

@ dinofelis
True. Where in the real world can a person go to exchange their RubyCoin, PutinCoin, SuperCoin, TittieCoin and all the rest of them? What is the point of them would be the next question but you listed them so aptly in your post


@ NaXxow
Point taken, in majority of cases it seems all about profit or ego (or both), there is nothing or very with regards to emotional attachment from the developers. There are exceptions to the rule, of course.

[nicolas1979]

There are currently 853 cryptocurrencies listed on coinmarketcap.com

A few years ago it was a simple case of people launching coins with fancy names, doodles and catchphrases. The owners pre-mined for their own benefit, then using pumping and dumping techniques exchanged them for bitcoins for a quick profit. Sadly, later adopters lost out significantly as they watched the newly launched coin decline in to obscurity. I see on the forum here that people are still making announcements about soon to launch coins, again mostly with some percentage of pre-mining.

The sheer number of outlets online and in the real world that use Bitcoin makes it clear there is space for using it as currency in a FIAT based world but what exactly is the end game for the other coins out there? There is more than enough information available to make a case for Bitcoin to be king of the field based on historical records. Other than that only Stellar and XRP have a different approach to the coins listed on CoinMarketCap therefore have potential uses. Stripe and Google respectively back them.

Bottom of the pile at number #853 on the CoinMarketCap list (as of today 12.30pm UK time 1st June 2017) is a certain coin called "bitRUBLE"

I remember a time when Quark was promoting its secure format as the future and was listed in the top 10 at coinmarketcap, now at #171. Primecoin, Namecoin were chasing Bitcoin but they are #126 and #57 respectively. I hear the same chants and cheering about Ethereum that I heard about various others, all drifted away. The list can go but Bitcoin remains top.

There are Bitcoin ATMs and many retail outlets that accept it by using a QR code. I doubt there will ever be an ATM for the other cryptocurrencies. Bitcoin is the base currency for exchanges, it has many uses.

In your opinion, what is the point of the majority of these cryptocurrencies? Why do people continue to launch them when they are doppelgangers of earlier coins even if they point out things they claim are different.

They seem to have no function at all apart from being listed at coincapmarket.com. So many such as CENT/Pennies, Noodlyappendagecoin and Billioncoin have died and no longer listed.

So what is the end game of the coins that are out there?

The coins end when there's no supply and demand, only that. For me, coins just like currency but the different thing is another coin will replace the other. Currency, usually never change name but only change value. That's why I never saving my coin for a long time, after getting profit I'll exchange become currency. I always do that because currency is more saver than coins. That's my opinion & have a nice day.