How to pick a doomed Altcoin [hint pick FTC, CNC, TRC, BitBar, RUC]

[mem]

OK, it has finally hit the point where we are seeing 1-3 new altcoins every week.  
For any other software project Id argue this is a great thing but for crypto currencies its a terrible thing.

First let me start by showing some good examples of altcoins:

* litecoin - not the first to add scrypt but most successful.
* ppcoin - a genuine innovation on bitcoin protocol.

Now let me show what I consider to be bad altcoins:

* CNC
* RUC
* TRC
* BitBar
* FTC

Russiacoin and Chinacoin are transparent attempts to make money of patriots and nationalists with more money than common sense (most of them). For a coin to be official for a country it needs to be officially endorsed, not made by a script kiddy and supported by a rabbid circle jerk.

TRC & FTC - Mere tweaks of bitcoin and nothing more. The danger with this coins is that the developer/s often do not have the skills required to do more than tweak the settings and compile. Should  they come under attack (as TRC recently did) the devs may find themselves sorely tested until their breaking point. Every issue/ DoS exploit discovered in the bitcoin protocol is likely to be patched before anouncement or within the hour of said announcement. The much smaller dev teams for these altcoins have to race  to apply patches and test them against their tweaked (sometimes modified) bitcoin client resulting in a far greater window for an attacker to abuse.

Bitbar - the most transparent "Read Set Go Mine Mine Mine Mine Mine *FUCK OFF ITS NOT A PREMINE YOU HATER*" altcoin I have ever seen. Same applies to CNC.

Novacoin - to soon to tell, being a PoS system with scrypt does make it unique to the rest at this point, whether its enough to garner serious interest is another thing. The few services that do support have tumbleweeds rolling around. Novacoin did demonstrate the issue with doing a semi private release first.


Tips for creating a viable altcoin:

* Be a competent c++ programmer.
* Innovate - pick an issue bitcoin has and attempt to solve it like PoS.
* co-ordinate the release, dont announce it in your little sub forum and  then a week later to the rest of the world (bad karma).
* Set the initial difficulty very high, lest you want the same fiasco that CNC created with blocks being mined every 10 seconds by the devs. It should take a good sized pool 15min-1h to find your first block. Let the difficulty adjust naturally, dont low ball it for you and your early adopter buddies.
* Pre Announce its release, let people know its coming so they can be ready for it.
* Project MUST BE open source.

[TheSwede75]

While I somewhat agree I have to say that this argument negates your entire post:

"litecoin - not the first to add scrypt but most successful."

How can it then be a 'real' coin according to all your other arguments?

[Caesar V]

Heh, I'd rather make early profits and ignore "imagined" loss than speculate on doomed coins and take advice from anyone.

But, each to their own, good-luck with your profits.

[mem]

While I somewhat agree I have to say that this argument negates your entire post:

"litecoin - not the first to add scrypt but most successful."

How can it then be a 'real' coin according to all your other arguments?

Im not a huge fan of LTC, but in full disclosure I do hold several thousand of them as a long term investment.
The other altcoins to add scrypt were all premined and failed because of it.

It is useful to see the bitcoin protocol using a different encryption, for only this reason litecoin is useful.
That being said, development has ground to a stand still and I feel the fee on ltc are far to high.

Heh, I'd rather make early profits and ignore "imagined" loss than speculate on doomed coins and take advice from anyone.

But, each to their own, good-luck with your profits.

[Balthazar]

RUC is not Russua Coin (formerly). It's "Reserve Under bitCoin" acronym... Anyway, that's not true, because it's a closed-source proprietary project.

[skull88]

While I somewhat agree I have to say that this argument negates your entire post:

"litecoin - not the first to add scrypt but most successful."

How can it then be a 'real' coin according to all your other arguments?

Tenebrix was premined with 7.7milion coins, Fairbrix solved this problem but the dev moved on to Litecoin, nobody picked it up so it died.

[NickCoin]

* Innovate - pick an issue bitcoin has and attempt to solve it like PoS.

Can't agree more. Just like the  internet back in the 1990's, digital decentralized currency is here to stay, but the future is now to build.

[Neverest]

* Innovate - pick an issue bitcoin has and attempt to solve it like PoS.

Can't agree more. Just like the  internet back in the 1990's, digital decentralized currency is here to stay, but the future is now to build.

Yep, I am still waiting for the currency that you can actually use to pay services. Imagine standing at the supermarket check-out: I initiated the transfer, you should see 6 confirmations in the next hour! No time for that.

Ah, the good time of eCash, true instant anonymous micropayments!

[sterob]

i was about to take your post seriously then i see

Bitbar - the most transparent "Read Set Go Mine Mine Mine Mine Mine *FUCK OFF ITS NOT A PREMINE YOU HATER*" altcoin I have ever seen. Same applies to CNC.

when i see a post with nothing but ad hominem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem) i know the author have some hidden agenda.

[Wilderness]

i was about to take your post seriously then i see

Bitbar - the most transparent "Read Set Go Mine Mine Mine Mine Mine *FUCK OFF ITS NOT A PREMINE YOU HATER*" altcoin I have ever seen. Same applies to CNC.

when i see a post with nothing but ad hominem (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem) i know the author have some hidden agenda.

He does have an agenda; to point out that people might be releasing coins purely to make a profit from people's fear and greed rather than from any motivation to truly innovate.

[SRoulette]

Tips for creating a viable altcoin:

* Be a competent c++ programmer.
* Innovate - pick an issue bitcoin has and attempt to solve it like PoS.
* co-ordinate the release, dont announce it in your little sub forum and  then a week later to the rest of the world (bad karma).
* Set the initial difficulty very high, lest you want the same fiasco that CNC created with blocks being mined every 10 seconds by the devs. It should take a good sized pool 15min-1h to find your first block. Let the difficulty adjust naturally, dont low ball it for you and your early adopter buddies.
* Pre Announce its release, let people know its coming so they can be ready for it.

* ask satoshiroulette and btc-e to add it, we both seem to have soft spots for new currencies 

[daytrader420]

Bitbar - the most transparent "Read Set Go Mine Mine Mine Mine Mine *FUCK OFF ITS NOT A PREMINE YOU HATER*" altcoin I have ever seen. Same applies to CNC.

Novacoin - to soon to tell, being a PoS system with scrypt does make it unique to the rest at this point, whether its enough to garner serious interest is another thing. The few services that do support have tumbleweeds rolling around. Novacoin did demonstrate the issue with doing a semi private release first.

BitBar was publicly announced, I got in after the moneysupply hit 2,000. It's still early for this coin, but I didn't call out premine and all this other wack stuff. It kinda just sounds like a lame excuse when I hear people starting to whine about it now.

It sounds lovely how you put NVC there and described it, however they were the true pre-mine of 110k coins.
Not a public announcement/release. And too soon to tell? NovaCoin is still established even with their 'premine', and btc-e destroyed the pre-mined coins.

It's super amusing to me how much people want to mislead others.

[riku2015]

OK, it has finally hit the point where we are seeing 1-3 new altcoins every week.  

Lol, not 1-3 per week, about every day new coin or every second day.. ppl doing profits on those minig first days thousands coins then selling... thats will happen on Yetanother coin what is about to announce today, 2 days ago was junkcoin, and few days ago bitbar chn etc... this is totally out of control, soon or later bitcoin will go down becouse there is too much alternate currency available and coins on market..

but almost every day a new coin? i repeat, this is out of control..

[markm]

Tenebrix was premined with 7.7milion coins, Fairbrix solved this problem but the dev moved on to Litecoin, nobody picked it up so it died.

Actually I fired up Fairbrix recently. it is a very inconvenient coin because it has no daemon, so I have to keep a connection to my server 24/7 for it to open a GUI on my desktop while actually running on the server, which is a really stupid way of running.

Turns out it was still out there, quietly humming along like BBQcoin had been, serving just like BBQcoin had been as a haven for CPU miners where they can quietly rake in coins day in and day out without GPU-wielding bullies driving the difficulty too high.

Once we get a daemon built for it and newer code for the QT GUI client it should be following in BBQcoin's footsteps.

First though we are still in the process of getting BBQcoin launched onto exchanges, Cyclos servers and Open Transactions servers.

Tenebrix, of course, has always been well known to be a CPU-miner haven that is always there waiting for any CPU miners to pop in for a few days or weeks or months, however long it takes them to accumulate as many of them as they feel they might like to have in hand when Lolcust finishes working out all the details of the re-launch and re-launches it.

He did not fail to observe Novacoin's approach to dealing with "the pre-mine problem"; it is a pity the primary project which those coins were created to enable is not wanted enough by the masses but que sera sera, if the people do not want massively mixed coins let them do without massively mixed coins.

Remember that no coin is dead while there remain two people who have the blockchain, the code and the technology to run it on...

-MarkM-

[furuknap]

Remember that no coin is dead while there remain two people who have the blockchain, the code and the technology to run it on...

You probably want three people who violently disagree with each other on everything to prevent a 51% attack :-)

.b

[furuknap]

OK, it has finally hit the point where we are seeing 1-3 new altcoins every week.  

Lol, not 1-3 per week, about every day new coin or every second day.. ppl doing profits on those minig first days thousands coins then selling... thats will happen on Yetanother coin what is about to announce today, 2 days ago was junkcoin, and few days ago bitbar chn etc... this is totally out of control, soon or later bitcoin will go down becouse there is too much alternate currency available and coins on market..

but almost every day a new coin? i repeat, this is out of control..

Quite the opposite, it is the cryptocurrency community learning how to launch new ideas and coins. It's evolution, and I'll take it any day over centrally mandated updates like the one Gavin implemented (not saying it's a bad update, just saying it's a bad process).

Sure, people will get burned, and eventually, if this is a fad, it will go away after a sufficient amount of people have been burned enough to recognize what works and what doesn't. If it turns out that the YAC or BUL or CML or whatever animal pops up next survives, then the community will try to repeat the process by baselining a new standard for how coins should launch, and we'll have more evolution.

In the end, more coins (to a certain extent) will strengthen Bitcoin and any other coin that survives, not weaken it.

.b

[GSnak]

Altcoins need something to the effect of:

- Instant transfers
- Something that can handle global volume

Bitcoin has 300 transactions every five minutes and the blocks are 150k. Visa has 25,000 transactions per second which would be equivalent to 3GB per five minutes. In order for a cryptocoin to go into global, everyday use these issues need to be addressed. First coin to do so could be the first to go mainstream. Everything else is just a copy.

[TheSwede75]

Tenebrix was premined with 7.7milion coins, Fairbrix solved this problem but the dev moved on to Litecoin, nobody picked it up so it died.

Actually I fired up Fairbrix recently. it is a very inconvenient coin because it has no daemon, so I have to keep a connection to my server 24/7 for it to open a GUI on my desktop while actually running on the server, which is a really stupid way of running.

Turns out it was still out there, quietly humming along like BBQcoin had been, serving just like BBQcoin had been as a haven for CPU miners where they can quietly rake in coins day in and day out without GPU-wielding bullies driving the difficulty too high.

Once we get a daemon built for it and newer code for the QT GUI client it should be following in BBQcoin's footsteps.

First though we are still in the process of getting BBQcoin launched onto exchanges, Cyclos servers and Open Transactions servers.

Tenebrix, of course, has always been well known to be a CPU-miner haven that is always there waiting for any CPU miners to pop in for a few days or weeks or months, however long it takes them to accumulate as many of them as they feel they might like to have in hand when Lolcust finishes working out all the details of the re-launch and re-launches it.

He did not fail to observe Novacoin's approach to dealing with "the pre-mine problem"; it is a pity the primary project which those coins were created to enable is not wanted enough by the masses but que sera sera, if the people do not want massively mixed coins let them do without massively mixed coins.

Remember that no coin is dead while there remain two people who have the blockchain, the code and the technology to run it on...

-MarkM-

Though you have to admit. Keeping a coin alive so it can 'follow BBQcoin's footsteps' is a little like hoping for a car-crash.

[Barnacle_Ed]

Obligatory "hey what about Devcoin, it's an awesome altchain" comment.



Also, every time someone defends Bitbar by declaring it didn't premine, I die of laughter. Kills me every time.

[gabbynot]

Thanks OP for the tips...but I'm curious about your thoughts on FRC?