[ICOs] History Is Repeating Itself

[CoinHoarder]

Let's travel back in time to late 2013, when the the cryptocurrency market's value was rising exponentially. Bitcoin and all of the most popular ALT coins of the day were reaching new all time highs. The popular ALT coins back then were Litecoin, Peercoin, Namecoin, Primecoin, Feathercoin and Digitalcoin (among others). All of them were surely going to the moon.

It was a simpler time back then in ALT coin land. There were no smart contracts. No DEXs. No purely PoS coins. Cryptocurrencies had no features at all really, as they were simply a way to send money from point A to point B. Life was good and simple.

There was a huge influx of new inexperienced cryptocurrency investors that this bubble brought, which sparked a proliferation of IPOs. Maybe this acronym looks familiar to you. It should, as effectively nowadays IPOs are called ICOs. You see, regulatory issues were not a problem 4 years ago. Cryptocurrencies were not to be governed by traditional laws or over regulating governments. (oh, the naivety of simpler times indeed  )

The first IPO (from memory) was Mastercoin. It raised about 5000 Bitcoins, which was a mind boggling amount at the time... around $500,000 USD. There was a lot of excitement for the future, and Mastercoin was the next big thing. It had the ability to issue user issued assets and implemented a long theorized concept coined "colored coins". Nowadays, pretty much every new cryptocurrency has this feature. But it was a big deal back then.

Then more IPOs started to pop up, and they were (at least initially) quite a success. NXT, Bitshares, Supernet, etc... they were all the real deal and made the original investors quite rich at their initial (first months or so) valuations.

Where there is money to be made, people will step up to make it. A proliferation of IPOs occurred for the next couple years. With each one promising to be the latest and greatest, and being a sure bet. You can find most of these IPOs on page 9,999,999,999 of coin market cap.

I personally was never much into IPOs, as they were too risky for my blood, but the victims of the IPO craze still linger around these parts every once and awhile. When you see a Legendary or maybe a Hero status forum member bitterly utter "all ICOs are scams" (or something along those lines,) you can be sure they are referring to the greater history of many IPO scams that have come and gone.

-------------

Well, history is repeating itself. On one hand we have a great and perceivably successful IPO that made all of its original investors super rich such as Ethereum. (Ethereum is the new Mastercoin in this analogy of a history lesson). You see, all cryptocurrencies will be programmable in the future. Smart contracts are akin to Mastercoin's user issued assets. A supposedly "killer feature" that will be quite basic in a few years time.

Then there was a wave of ICOs that did the same to a lesser degree. Stratis, Golem, Waves, Lisk, Augur, etc... (they are all akin to Nxt, Bitshares, Supernet, Etc...) They too will eventually lose their appeal as the latest and greatest cryptocurrencies are incepted in years to come, but they will probably survive... barely (at least until the next bubble).

Next comes the wave of ICOs of which 99% ended very badly. As the flames eventually die down, a new generation of people to reiterate the words "ICOs/IPOs are scams" will be born from the ashes. Yes, Ethereum is a bubble, and yes... the ICO you are investing in will very likely be practically worthless in 5 years time. Don't say I didn't tell you so.

[pushups44]

So are you saying bitcoin will be the lone survivor? Given the speed of technological innovation, it's hard to predict the outcome, other than the common sense observation that most altcoins will go bust or obsolete within the next few years.

[CoinHoarder]

So are you saying bitcoin will be the lone survivor?

Effectively, yes... I have recently come to that realization.

Bitcoin's value does not come from its utility. It sucks at sending money (see the scaling debacle), and it sucks at everything else because it can't do pretty much anything the newer ALT coins can do. It is a store of value, and lives off of its network effect.

The network effect is why it will be the lone survivor. Bitcoin's network effect will reign supreme, and the network effect drops off exponentially as you go down the list of ALT coins. Litecoin's network effect has enabled it to survive among the top coins... for now, but it has not empowered it to stay ahead of the pack. Ethereum's network effect will be much the same.

Mostly all other ALT coins garner value from their perceived utility, such as Ethereum from its smart contracts. Effectively every new ALT coin worth its salt will incorporate smart contracts, and it will be a basic feature in the near future. Since all ALT coins are judged by their utility, they are doomed because new ALT coins will improve upon previous iterations.

For instance... Ethereum will not scale. We will start to see this soon as long as more and more projects keep building on top of it. It will reach a bottleneck, and consensus as to how to scale will be near to impossible to reach. Miners have different interests than smart contract developers have different interests than whales have different interest than core developers. Evidendenced by the Bitcoin scaling debacle. Thus, scaling needs to be built in from the start, and this dooms all existing ALT coin smart contract platforms from the get go. The next wave of smart contract blockchains will be scalable.

Yet still the new scalable smart contract platforms will have some arbitrary issue, which will be improved upon in later cryptocurrencies. It is a never ending vicious cycle which dooms ALT coins from their inception.

To provide another example... Bitshares and Waves DEXs will be replaced by DEXs that trade real assets via atomic swaps. Not IOUs or derivatives like most DEXs currently trade. The IOU/derivative DEXs will eventually become obsolete.

Same with anonymity. For now, Monero/zCash are the best options, but eventually a better option will be conceived. And then the previous next best things will be eventually retired. For instance, zCash may be made to have a no trust required initial setup, or Monero tech could be improved upon with more scalability (less blockchain bloat) and/or more anonymity.

[Herbert2020]

Bitcoin's value does not come from its utility. It sucks at sending money (see the scaling debacle), and it sucks at everything else because it can't do pretty much anything the newer ALT coins can do. It is a store of value, and lives off of its network effect.

bitcoin has been around for about 8.5 years and in the past 8 years it has been functioning very well without any problems (and it still does only with higher fees and no other problem). transactions have always been instant when transaction propagation through the network takes less than 5 seconds and the confirmation took 10 minutes and have been pretty cheap.

but in the past year or so politics, fight over power and greed was mixed with bitcoin. and users never bothered to educate themselves, run nodes, ... and all this idiocy led to what you see as higher fees and call it "sucking" only in the past couple of months.

and it is exactly because bitcoin is decentralized that we are stuck. if it was not, we would have hard forked a long time ago like other shitcoins do left and right.

which is why i disagree with calling bitcoin a "store of value" only because the value of bitcoin comes from millions of merchants accepting it as payment these days.
and that is also why i disagree when people say no altcoin can replace bitcoin, because no existing altcoin can do it but nothing is stopping anyone from creating a more efficient "peer to peer digital cash". and the fact that it has not yet happened has the same reason why bitcoin is in this mess: greed.

unlike satoshi, the altcoin developers don't give a shit about creating a decent decentralized  cryptocurrency. why do you think Vitalik keeps advertising etehreum to banks and has chats with Putin talking about "blockchain technology". they are mostly building up their resume' for future jobs with banking systems to make real money with job security.

[pushups44]

So are you saying bitcoin will be the lone survivor?

Effectively, yes... I have recently come to that realization.

Bitcoin's value does not come from its utility. It sucks at sending money (see the scaling debacle), and it sucks at everything else because it can't do pretty much anything the newer ALT coins can do. It is a store of value, and lives off of its network effect.

The network effect is why it will be the lone survivor. Bitcoin's network effect will reign supreme, and the network effect drops off exponentially as you go down the list of ALT coins. Litecoin's network effect has enabled it to survive among the top coins... for now, but it has not empowered it to stay ahead of the pack. Ethereum's network effect will be much the same.

Mostly all other ALT coins garner value from their perceived utility, such as Ethereum from its smart contracts. Effectively every new ALT coin worth its salt will incorporate smart contracts, and it will be a basic feature in the near future. Since all ALT coins are judged by their utility, they are doomed because new ALT coins will improve upon previous iterations.

For instance... Ethereum will not scale. We will start to see this soon as long as more and more projects keep building on top of it. It will reach a bottleneck, and consensus as to how to scale will be near to impossible to reach. Miners have different interests than smart contract developers have different interests than whales have different interest than core developers. Evidendenced by the Bitcoin scaling debacle. Thus, scaling needs to be built in from the start, and this dooms all existing ALT coin smart contract platforms from the get go. The next wave of smart contract blockchains will be scalable.

Yet still the new scalable smart contract platforms will have some arbitrary issue, which will be improved upon in later cryptocurrencies. It is a never ending vicious cycle which dooms ALT coins from their inception.

To provide another example... Bitshares and Waves DEXs will be replaced by DEXs that trade real assets via atomic swaps. Not IOUs or derivatives like most DEXs currently trade. The IOU/derivative DEXs will eventually become obsolete.

Same with anonymity. For now, Monero/zCash are the best options, but eventually a better option will be conceived. And then the previous next best things will be eventually retired. For instance, zCash may be made to have a no trust required initial setup, or Monero tech could be improved upon with more scalability (less blockchain bloat) and/or more anonymity.

Interesting contrarian perspective. I highly doubt there will be a lone survivor, but this scenario is not necessarily a bad thing for those who have saved some bitcoin - it suggests bitcoin will be worth up to a trillion dollars or more, given that blockchain technology is the future according to experts.

[benthach]

the dumping of this toxic freak scam show of eth will start soon, i think it will set back sometime for altcoins as a whole after everything settled.

the clock is ticking waiting for the sign. this could be the moment when eth have more marketcap than bitcoin, at this rate it could happen this week or next one then the bloodbath will start. all these hardcore scammers want is to proved bitcoin is wrong by having more marketcap.

[ethersphere]

So are you saying bitcoin will be the lone survivor?

Effectively, yes... I have recently come to that realization.

Bitcoin's value does not come from its utility. It sucks at sending money (see the scaling debacle), and it sucks at everything else because it can't do pretty much anything the newer ALT coins can do. It is a store of value, and lives off of its network effect.

The network effect is why it will be the lone survivor. Bitcoin's network effect will reign supreme, and the network effect drops off exponentially as you go down the list of ALT coins. Litecoin's network effect has enabled it to survive among the top coins... for now, but it has not empowered it to stay ahead of the pack. Ethereum's network effect will be much the same.

Mostly all other ALT coins garner value from their perceived utility, such as Ethereum from its smart contracts. Effectively every new ALT coin worth its salt will incorporate smart contracts, and it will be a basic feature in the near future. Since all ALT coins are judged by their utility, they are doomed because new ALT coins will improve upon previous iterations.

For instance... Ethereum will not scale. We will start to see this soon as long as more and more projects keep building on top of it. It will reach a bottleneck, and consensus as to how to scale will be near to impossible to reach. Miners have different interests than smart contract developers have different interests than whales have different interest than core developers. Evidendenced by the Bitcoin scaling debacle. Thus, scaling needs to be built in from the start, and this dooms all existing ALT coin smart contract platforms from the get go. The next wave of smart contract blockchains will be scalable.

Yet still the new scalable smart contract platforms will have some arbitrary issue, which will be improved upon in later cryptocurrencies. It is a never ending vicious cycle which dooms ALT coins from their inception.

To provide another example... Bitshares and Waves DEXs will be replaced by DEXs that trade real assets via atomic swaps. Not IOUs or derivatives like most DEXs currently trade. The IOU/derivative DEXs will eventually become obsolete.

Same with anonymity. For now, Monero/zCash are the best options, but eventually a better option will be conceived. And then the previous next best things will be eventually retired. For instance, zCash may be made to have a no trust required initial setup, or Monero tech could be improved upon with more scalability (less blockchain bloat) and/or more anonymity.

Interesting point of view, but that's assuming Ethereum remains static for every one else to take over. It has a huge community ranging from people developing real world dAPPs to core developers finding ways to scale the system, improving on Swarm, enhancing Solidity compilers/IDEs, building Casper (PoS).

Number of Ethereum mining nodes has steadily increased month after month, more people are supporting the network (average network hashrate used to be about 20TH/s 1.5 months ago, now it's 42TH/s).

Countries/banks/tech companies are also looking to build systems from the smart contracts/tokens provided by Ethereum. (ie Ethereum Alliance) Soon, I believe countries will start creating currency-backed tokens that can be used in tandem with smart contracts.

IMO, unlike many other cryptos, Ethereum continues to evolve aggressively, and it is backed by many talented developers/leaders.

[riskthebiscuit]

I think your on to something here. Although, I do not fully agree with you, I do somewhat agree. I think bitcoin is the mac daddy of all the coins and will be around until the end. That being said, all these smaller coins are certainly replaceable if they do not add new features and a new coin comes along and is the bigger, badder version of it. That is why I really do not have much faith in altcoins, but they are fun for trading and trying to obtain more bitcoins. As for their purpose, I could certainly see them being no good come the future

[Esphere.in]

So are you saying bitcoin will be the lone survivor? Given the speed of technological innovation, it's hard to predict the outcome, other than the common sense observation that most altcoins will go bust or obsolete within the next few years.

That is going to be the truth,bitcoin will be the lone survivor if they could make some changes to the network and clear the bottle neck situation we have at the moment,as it is tiring to wait for a long time to get your tokens around and with IPO coming up on a daily basis it will be hard to monitor everything and it is hard for every ICO to be successful.I would like to see the status five years from now as i am sure many of the promising new ICO will be dead and buried.

[Spoetnik]

I agree with you for the most part but you skipped over a glaring tantamount critical point.

How ICO/IPO's work.

How can you talk about them and not even bring that up ?

And then the secondary point being.. these losers don't care (how they work)
Nor do they care if the coin is rigged (scammy) and the dev makes millions.
As long as the hoards of profiteers make a bit of change off the "scheme" they are fine with a lack of morality etc.

Take BlockNET for example.
He didn't need *ANY* Bitcoin to dump to pay for making the coin.
The main dev could have done it all with his own funds.
I know this because he told us all he had 75% of the code written before he launched his short and quick tiny little jpeg based ANN topic with no text (which was of course fodder for editing at will and leaving no trace/record of what the topic said) ..and self moderated of course. LOL

But the BlockNET douche said he wanted 1 *MILLION* dollars in Bitcoin.. because.
And in his mind that was acceptable..
The rest of you apparently were quick to defend him and support it too.
So it was fine with all of you also.

Retarded right ?

1 example of THOUSANDS.

You forgot to mention OP that when i got here in mid-2013 this was a laughing stock.
Altcoins were a dirty word and frowned on heavily.
The Bitcoin crowd would snicker at laugh at this forum section basically.

But in time they all clued in that this is a profit making machine.. and popularity took off.
And now it's 10000000000x more scammy and far more of a retard pathetic joke.

@OP
Your history is off a bit though.
The stop gap between the start and mass IPO's was a *HUGE* trend where SCRYPT cloning became the next big thing.. it started with the Doge coin period of time.
There was sites that made coins and auto added them and auto delisted them to auto changing scrypt coin pools.. i even tried them so i know they existed !
BigVern from Cryptsy even got in on it running one.

But you missed the point bud.. the word "IPO's" was destroyed by me
Check your talk history and you will see i badgered the shit out of them until they stopped using the word.
They tried many too.. switching occasionally to ITO and other catch phrases like "Angel Investing" or "Crowd Funding" etc etc
All of them the exact same bullshit like.. Maidsafe.
I pounded them all with FUD about IPO's and they stopped using the word and kept switching terms.

And you are also excluding from your history a 2 year period where they were *NOT* accepted either.
You all act like this shit is acceptable but it wasn't.
The new guys showing up lowered the bar.
Be my guest and go look at any old IPO / ICO topics and you will see they were all flamed off the board and effectively dead with no popularity.. See: Ripple or Ethereum for example.


So you are acting like this shit was always acceptable.. which is not true.
What happened is the scene got more greedy and corrupt.
There is a reason no one gave a shit about Maidsafe or Master coin or what ever way back in the old days.
The users here had integrity and would NOT support a shitcoin with a rigged scammy design.
Hell the crowd here would bitch if a coin had a 2% premine.. let alone a 100% premine. (AKA: an ICO)
See AUR with it's 50% premine / airdrop shenanigans.


meh.. what ever.. i should write the shitcoin history book.
I was here way before Bitcoin reached $50 a coin and i was here when there was less than 50 "coins" total in history.
I watched this moronic shit go to hell.
I've been here watching 24/7 the whole time.. probably posting more than anyone else in Altcoin history here.
Who else do you see non stop permanently forever ?

The reality is..
This started out with good intentions.
It changed long ago..
Now these hoards of greedy corrupt losers want money and they are not going to let a silly thing like morality or ideology get in there way.. or.... if they ruin crypto's future in the process.
As long as they can get a few cents ASAP! they will plow on supporting shit they shouldn't.

Crypto is a toilet and it was flushed in 2013.

Like when there is so much scammy bullshit going on that a scam doesn't even get noticed you'd think people would stop and rethink this shit and the scammy ways we are running these so called "coins"
But nope.. they all simply ignore shit and push on.. because i got mah mouth to feed dammit !

In 2013 something like LEO coin would have been a big deal.
Now ? Doesn't even get noticed.
How long was Torcoin out before it was exposed and how many of you *EVEN* know it is ?
You all don't care.. you are busy buying gay bullshit fer teh ROI's.

You all simply yammer on "some coins are scams" ignoring anything but your bags.

There is a reason the guys here *USE* to chant "Free Market" all the fucking time.
It was during the SCRYPT cloning hey day when it got big.. they would not stop using it as their defense for supporting clones.
Notice anything ?
They have not mentioned it once since !

The defense was an "ideology" based defense guys.
Something that is long dead & gone.

What i have tried to teach you idiots here is there is consequences in life.
And you act like little brats and predators and push on.
You reap what you sow.

Think I'm "mad" ?
I come here to laugh at idiots.. and scream point blank in their face "I Told You So !"
And i have been able to do it all along over & over.. i am always right and predicted this shit every step of the way.

Idiots here think Ethereum the ICO scam is going to 10k per coin.
Nope.. what is happening is these idiots are forcing the law to come after them.
Which is why i predicted and was right about AML / KYC laws being employed.
Told ya

..you'd think they would listen to me when i am always right but noooooooope.
The lippy greedy immoral kidiot investards know better HAHAHHAHAH

You know you all act like this crap is legit and safe and you are entitled to run scheme's for profit.
Who told you that was ok ?

And shitcoin aficionado's i wrote the dictionary on Altcoins.
I made up half the terms we use..
I am the one who first started calling it an Altcoin "Scene" and i got flamed for it heavily too.
People kept saying "it's not a scene" so quit calling it that all mad.
Back in 2013 that was the first term i invented you all still use today.

Bruno gets credit for Investard though.. i love that one.. simply brilliant ROFL

PS:
Don't like my rant ?
Maybe go create 1 million accounts about it and post 10,000 ANN topics
..and cry FUD for your ROI's profiteers <-- another term i made up myself.

[bitcoinvestor]

Scam coin will be scam. ICOs that scam coins made seem good but in the end the scammer will be identified and will make less succesful in ICO or IPO. WHen there is a new tech of application of crypto or token, one who invest in ICO will not say scam when the coin fails in the market. It means that the coin isn;t succesful and the investor will make lost. That's the simple Investing is taking risk. Etherium succes is example of ICO that amazingly profitable but some others which are not succesful  can't say that a coin is scam, in case it is proved that the coin is scam like onecoin.