A warning about Alt-Coins

[wetroof]

I would like someone to explain the new YACoin. it uses a new hashing algorithm - a variation on scrypt, which is claimed to be less friendly to GPU's. It make the n parameter dynamic. n increases over time. the n parameter has to do with memory allocation I believe, and as n increases, then memory requirement increases. I don't know how large n will grow, but it seems to be GPU's are not at a disadvantage. they have comparable cache memory and huge amounts of Dram.

The only reason it is a "CPU" coin that I can tell is because at its release since it used new algo. And there was not a OpenCl / CUDA miner available with the new algorithm implemented so that only people could mine with cpus.

Also it got off to a bad start because difficulty was low and it was abused by FPGA... so it is basically a premine situation which might make adopters wary.

GPUs work with many parallel cores and threads. The memory consumption of each thread increases as N increases. There will be a point when GPU computing hits a memory bound for mining YAC such that you cannot saturate all threads anymore. Alternatively you would have to tweak scrypt to use more compute cycles instead of memory and get less hashes per clock. I doubt we have reached this point yet, though.

The premine is unfortunate, but less of a problem than the general decline in credibility altcoins have suffered from lately. Why would you buy or trade an altcoin if there is a new release every day? I fear this might even be a plot by BTC-fundamentalists to harm LTC. Most releases were done by totally new forum members.

I thought about this more. I have faith. why did he make n change though? instead of settling for 1 value.

[dobarskyy]

Does any mature exchange accept Alt-Coins?

[netCoins]

btc-e.com

[itod]

Alt coins are just a way for people who can't mine properly to try to get some BTC.

[RobinHood27]

i think that people should stick to BTC and LTC, all other alt's are to semi fraud

[Celegrom]

Will litecoin be the new silver, as bitcoin the new gold internet standard?

[focusforever]

i think that people should stick to BTC and LTC, all other alt's are to semi fraud

no one use the alt coin, they only use btc and ltc

[f4k1e]

alt-coins have potential to become popular

[Phant727]

anyone using NVC?

[Lachy]

Isnt possible for one man to create ne coin which will be more interesting for all? Is there any other possibility for BTc than to sell it on MTgox/btce or buy drugs?

[Lenovo]

99% of altcoins are just attempts from their developers to get some bitcoins for free. They just want to dump their easily mined crap-coins for bitcoins.
Only litecoin has big chance to survive , other altcoins are useless.
Stick to bitcoin and litecoin.

I've added bitbars to my list of cryptos.

[timeofmind]

I think alt-coins are great. They are the source for innovation in the crypto coin market. It is kind of ironic that people who are willing to embrace something as innovative as bitcoin, fail to see the importance and innovative potential for Alt coins. As Bitcoin network matures, and bitcoin miners become invested in certain ways of doing things, there grows a substantial resistance to fundamental forms of innovation in the bitcoin network.

[deadweasel]

I think alt-coins are great. They are the source for innovation in the crypto coin market. It is kind of ironic that people who are willing to embrace something as innovative as bitcoin, fail to see the importance and innovative potential for Alt coins. As Bitcoin network matures, and bitcoin miners become invested in certain ways of doing things, there grows a substantial resistance to fundamental forms of innovation in the bitcoin network.

Slightly modifying an open source application like QT and slapping a stupid name on it does not make it innovation.

[timeofmind]

There are also many technical hurdles to overcome when trying to implement fundamental changes in the bitcoin protocol that all clients would be required to adapt to, or even the legacy block chain itself. It is sometimes much simpler to achieve innovation by starting up a new currency.

[timeofmind]

What I find very interesting about alt-coins, is that they almost directly derive their value relative to bitcoin from the potential earnings that could be obtained from bitcoin network through mining with equivalent hardware that is required to mine the alt-coin. ie. if I can get 5 altcoins in equivilent amount of time as 1 bitcoin with same hardware, then value of altcoin will be 1/5th the value of bitcoin on the exchange, meaning that many of them are really priced identical to bitcoin, and are only cheaper due to the ease of obtaining them through mining since they are newer and hence have lower difficulty levels. ie. price of an altcoin is basically, price it costs to mine or price that mining hardware loses by not chosing to mine bitcoin, but instead the altcoin

[timeofmind]

what this means for the future is that in fact, if all the worlds wealth is held in crypto-currencies, it will not be held exclusively in bitcoin. It will be distributed accross many currencies. Which is in fact a good thing, because if one crypto currency fails, this does not completely crash the world markets.

[deadweasel]

what this means for the future is that in fact, if all the worlds wealth is held in crypto-currencies, it will not be held exclusively in bitcoin. It will be distributed accross many currencies. Which is in fact a good thing, because if one crypto currency fails, this does not completely crash the world markets.

I agree with this.  I think it's too early though -- Bitcoin is still a BETA program and people are forking it into new code that will NOT be supported.

This is too soon, especially with the glut of spamcoins being created just for the initial pump and dump. 

There is a happy balance, but we are not anywhere close.

[timeofmind]

It also helps for scalability, since the clients of one currency do not have to worry about tracking all the transactions of another currency, so by splitting up the worlds wealth into multiple currencies, it makes the entire flow of wealth throughout the world more efficient. wealth can be transferred between currencies on the exchanges, without the need for any one currency to handle all the data transmissions of any other currency.

[timeofmind]

It won't be long and someone will come out with a protocol that allows us to run a global decentralized exchange, so that we can all run a client on our computers in order to exchange between any of the crypto currencies in existence. When that happens, it will become incredibly easy to shift our money between currencies, and for the price of currencies relative to one another to be reliable tracked and not subject to manipulation due to DDOS and dishonest exchange operators (of course, pump and dump will always exist for illiquid currencies).

[timeofmind]

Of course, such a decentralized exchange would be a currency built with an exchange protocol, similar to ripple, but without all this "trust" stuff. It would be very simple to implement. When a seller is matched with a buyer on the entire network, based on most reasonable offers on both sides, each side of that transaction would send their obligated amounts to the decentralized exchange network itself (ie. global address of the network itself, like having a special bitcoin address for the entire bitcoin network), which would then be distributed by the network out to the person only when both sides have submitted their obligatory amounts as part of the initial agreement. If both sides do not submit within a configured period of time, than any one sided transaction is reversed and the rate at which exchange was agreed at is ignored.