A warning about Alt-Coins

[kaene]

How are your experiences with alt coins that use cpu mining?

is it more profitable than scrypt stuff? i saw that protoshares have quite a vlue in btc even though there just 3 pools. and those 3 pools don't look so sophisticatet by there websites.

I tried protoshares, but just a couple of days ago the difficulty increased and I'm searching for alternatives

[PenAndPaper]

How are your experiences with alt coins that use cpu mining?

is it more profitable than scrypt stuff? i saw that protoshares have quite a vlue in btc even though there just 3 pools. and those 3 pools don't look so sophisticatet by there websites.

My experience is with primecoin and a crappy ald amd. I was making dust per day so i stopped soon after. Always a nice experience to mess around with different miners and coins ofc.

[dantwah]

What do you guys think about all the new currencies? Is it just a hype, or will they all give value?
I think the more Alt-coins that come, the more Alt-coins will go. At the end there will just be a few coins that will be accepted and used.
But what makes the coins valuable?

[Don007]

I share that vision with you 'At the end there will just be a few coins that will be accepted and used'. But until then, mining some new (shit) altcoins and trade them for better altcoins or Bitcoin can be profitable.

"But what makes the coins valuable?" It's possibilities, the team behind it and it's potential in the end. But the normal price is based on question en demand.

[PenAndPaper]

What do you guys think about all the new currencies? Is it just a hype, or will they all give value?
I think the more Alt-coins that come, the more Alt-coins will go. At the end there will just be a few coins that will be accepted and used.
But what makes the coins valuable?

Valuable in the long term it's different than valuable for speculation. For example ppcoin has some potential to be valuable in the long run because of the developers and community behind it and because of proof of stake.
A random crap coin though might have more short term value  if it gets pumped for speculation.

[Cryddit]

I've been looking online and through this thread for a fixed-value digital currency, but cannot seem to find one.  

In theory, any currency should maintain its exact value over time (a day, a month, a year, a decade) in order to serve as both a medium of exchange and a storer of value.  

...
A digital crypto-currency should be the ideal for this, since the servers and exchanges can read various public indicators (prices of precious metals, CPI, PPI, GDP of various countries, price of oil, iron, natural gas, AMS, M2, etc) and adjust the price accordingly but adjusting the growth in the block chain.
...
Ideas?

There is a problem here.  Nobody can "adjust" the value of anything you have.  I mean, how do you feel about owning a house if its market value is going up and down in a real estate bubble?  So, if two people believe that a certain number of coins is worth a certain other thing, they don't have to pay attention to anyone trying to "adjust" the value of a coin.  The one owns the house and decides how much it is worth; the other owns the coins and decides how much they are worth.  

If the servers and exchanges attempt to "adjust" the price against some currency or some commodity, you immediately get Gresham's Law, where whichever one is valued more by people than the official exchange rate allows for, goes wherever it can get an unadjusted price.  

[PeercoinGiveaway]

What do you guys think about all the new currencies? Is it just a hype, or will they all give value?
I think the more Alt-coins that come, the more Alt-coins will go. At the end there will just be a few coins that will be accepted and used.
But what makes the coins valuable?

I agree that there are many coins out there that are nothing but a scam and are gone in an instant. But on the same token, there are a few out there that have true innovations that could end up with big value. It all comes down to doing your research and joining the community to learn more about a specific coin.

[eatrader]

What are the positive characteristics of a new coin?  Or any coin for that matter?

[maxxoccupancy]

In theory, any currency should maintain its exact value over time (a day, a month, a year, a decade) in order to serve as both a medium of exchange and a storer of value.  
...
A digital crypto-currency should be the ideal for this, since the servers and exchanges can read various public indicators (prices of precious metals, CPI, PPI, GDP of various countries, price of oil, iron, natural gas, AMS, M2, etc) and adjust the price accordingly but adjusting the growth in the block chain.

There is a problem here.  Nobody can "adjust" the value of anything you have.  I mean, how do you feel about owning a house if its market value is going up and down in a real estate bubble?  So, if two people believe that a certain number of coins is worth a certain other thing, they don't have to pay attention to anyone trying to "adjust" the value of a coin.  The one owns the house and decides how much it is worth; the other owns the coins and decides how much they are worth.  

If the servers and exchanges attempt to "adjust" the price against some currency or some commodity, you immediately get Gresham's Law, where whichever one is valued more by people than the official exchange rate allows for, goes wherever it can get an unadjusted price.  

When a government overvalues one type of money and undervalues another, the undervalued money will leave the country or disappear from circulation into hoards, while the overvalued money will flood into circulation.

It is commonly stated as:

Bad money drives out good.

With Gresham's Law restated for the layman, I should ask this (of everyone who would like to chime in):
1. Is it impossible to maintain such a currency?
2. Is it impractical to maintain such a currency?
3. Is it desirable to maintain such a currency?
4. Would such an alternative really be an alternative to Bitcoin?

What do you do with the money that you can't afford to lose?  In 30 years, a 2013 dollar could be worth 75 cents, 50 cents, 25 cents, or nothing.  It won't be worth a dollar.  You can buy gold, silver, platinum, etc, but those historically fluctuate by a factor of two over time, so you might end up with $1.50, or you may be left with 50 cents for your dollar.  You could buy into a Dow Index fund, but Dow drops loser stocks over time, so you never get the same performance.  Corrections have seen 30% drops compared to the dollar, which also loses up to 10% of its value in a year.

Where do I put the money that I can't afford to lose?  In the old days, dollars.  Dollars were backed by both gold and silver until almost WWI.  Inflation stayed at 0-2% year after year.  Detached from widely used currencies, silver fluctuates from about $8 to $45.  Gold swings just as wildly.

[ak84]

Hey guys, anyone know about worldcoin or next coin?

I'm trying to figure out what new ALTs actually have innovative features and good support teams. Actually the support/founding team is really important as well.

Bascially I want to avoid scams.

[snorky]

Definitely worth watching. Sure it's a matter of time. If Bitcoin goes up, so will the top few alt coins. Made a little bit off trading alt coins already

[cornuto]

What are the positive characteristics of a new coin?  Or any coin for that matter?

Fast mining, no need of expensive GPU-s

[darkstaticfire]

I've been mining infinitecoin with my laptop GPU and CPU. My GPU is getting 82 KH/s oced (Nvidia on cudaminer) and my CPU is getting 17 KH/s. I'm able to get approx. 10k infinitecoins overnight with this hashrate. I'm not sure that IFC will retain it's value, how about you guys?

[maxxoccupancy]

So, I'm not a get-rich-quicker.  I just want a digital currency that maintains its value over time.  They can track the market prices of all of these currencies, but they are constantly in flux.  Is there one that simply maintains its value over time?

http://coinmarketcap.com/

[Cryddit]

Maintains its value over time compared to what?  Something that can always buy the same number of pairs of Alpaca Socks?  Something that can always buy the same number of Houses?  Something that can always buy the same number of pounds of rice? 

No.

All of these coins fluctuate.  So does the price of everything else, including gold and Swiss francs.  There is no such thing as absolutely staying the same value. 

[ollijo]

Hello. Total newb here. I just recently started mining coin called Quark. I Only have my desktop computer, so i'm only getting like 20 QRK/day. I'm starting to doubt if that's even worth the trouble... Anyone have any experiences/advice on Quark? 

[fartbags]

I think any alt coin that was released after about june 2013 is most likely a waste of power and time.

I would only suggest mining an alt coin if it has a distinct upgrade compared to LTC. I would not mine any sha256 coins as they are old technology compared to scrypt.

I look at these alt coins. It just seems like they get mined to death, dumped onto an exchange after 3 months, then no one wants to buy them any more and they become worthless.

I know everyone wants to make the 10,000x profit but it just isn't going to happen. If there is a new amazing coin invented, it will be mined so hard and fast that you wont be making $1,000,000 off of it because so many other people will be mining it.

[maxxoccupancy]

Maintains its value over time compared to what?  Something that can always buy the same number of pairs of Alpaca Socks?  Something that can always buy the same number of Houses?  Something that can always buy the same number of pounds of rice? 

No.

All of these coins fluctuate.  So does the price of everything else, including gold and Swiss francs.  There is no such thing as absolutely staying the same value. 

Goods and services. "A dollar today should be a dollar tomorrow and five years from now." Currencies must serve both as a medium of exchange and a storer of value.  The reason that gold, silver, and even copper have been used for centuries as currency is that they maintain their value in real terms over time.  CPI and PPI aren't fair measures of inflation over time, but there are better measures out there.  Using a basket of international prices (semi-precious metals, oil, etc), one can get a pretty good idea of what value is.  As long as the altcoin can be prevented from going through any sudden drops (by suppressing the production of coins and other means until the value recovers), one can maximize market capitalization of the coins being held.

There is a lot of money out there that is not very risk averse.  That is to say, some small investors have savings that can risk a complete loss, and savings that should be exposed to much less risk.

[bassnectar13]

I think PPC is definitely the best Altcoin and maybe the best coin in the future. Great Developer and will be at the very least a long term coin for the holding of money.

[lif3]

I think PPC is definitely the best Altcoin and maybe the best coin in the future. Great Developer and will be at the very least a long term coin for the holding of money.

what about litecoin?