Hi All,
Wrote a detailed blog spelling out the case for investing in FST. Constructive criticism of course welcome, hopefully i have my details correct.
Also. This is only the 3rd post I've done on Steem. I'd be excited to connect with other Fast fans who have Steem accounts. Connect with me, I'll be happy to follow you!
https://steemit.com/fastcoin/@remistevens/the-case-for-fastcoin-fstIf you don't want to go to my Steem. No worries. Here is the text from the post:
The Case for Fastcoin FSTDeepest Blockchain. Always.Fastcoin’s block time is the fastest. So it generates new blocks more frequently than any other coin. This means its blockchain grows faster than others. It also means that it has the most comprehensive record of states of its network, every 12 seconds a block is added and the network is updated. Bitcoin is older, sure, but bitcoin only adds a new block every 10 mins. Very quickly in Fastcoin’s evolution, it surpassed bitcoin and other old alt coins in regards to total amount of blocks added. Fastcoin also confirms at breakneck speed, if you tried to create a fully decentralized coin with faster confirmations, it probably just wouldn’t work technologically. Fastcoin also launched 4 years ago. At this point launching a new coin based on Bitcoin code with faster confirmations isn’t going to happen. No one launches bitcoin clones anymore, and faster confirmations wouldn’t work anyways. So Fastcoin, already having the deepest blockchain, will hold that title indefinitely. 100 years from now when the world economy only knows cryptos, Fastcoin will still have the deepest blockchain.
An analogy could help. Consider mankind’s first radio transmissions. They travel at the speed of light, nothing can move faster. The first transmission, will forever and always be ahead of any later transmissions. Its impossible for anything done later to ever catch up to something that already moves at the fastest speed possible. Forever and always, Fastcoin will be mankind’s deepest venture into the great crypto frontier. It can’t be caught.
Crypto value comes from scarcity. Bitcoin is valuable simple because there are only so many, and they can’t be reproduced. Alt coins that were the first at something innovative (anonymous, multi-algo, smart contracts…) retain their value. Coins disappear all the time, but those with something unique never die (as long as they’re functional of course). Fastcoin’s unique nature is in itself something rare. The first anonymous coin for instance must contend with other coins who perfect their method, or tout a new methodology toward anonymous that is the first “real” anonymous. Same thing with smart contracts. Someone can make the case that being the first of an even smarter smart contract will be superior. Fastcoin has no such competitors, no argument. Its unique nature is directly measurable and without question. It has the most blocks.
OK. So now a bit about everything else concerning Fastcoin. The good and the bad. I’ve been following this coin for its deepest blockchain for years, but of course as with all cryptos, no one feature is going to make it work out.
I think its important to address obvious criticisms. Here goes:
“Fastcoin is a clone, its code isn’t anything spectacular. All they did here essentially was take the code from litecoin and adjust the parameters so that blocks are generated faster. Today, you could do this kind of thing on a free website in minutes.”.
Although this is true, again Fastcoin’s value doesn’t come from it having a brilliant code. Bitcoin’s code, by today's crypto standards, is very simplistic. Functionally, its not the best coin. It gets its value from being the first. People trust Bitcoin as its history is the longest and its rarity guaranteed- there can only be 1 first coin. Fastcoin also has a long history both in terms of launch date and blocks recorded. For perspective, Litecoin is also just a clone of bitcoin, its not a whole lot different. Litecoin is worth about 2000X more than Fastcoin for comparison.
“There were a lot of coins in Fastcoin’s launch era that simply changed a few parameters and tried to call it innovation, they failed and no longer exist. This could happen to FST, people finally just give up on it”
Absolutely possible, but I’d say highly unlikely and less likely all the time. Many coins of FST era have died, no question, but FST didn’t die. Old coins have become a rarity in themselves, these days its very hard to find a scandal free coin with original devs from 2013.
“Fastcoin having the fastest confirmation times generates a lot of orphaned coins. So different parts of the network don’t initially agree and many miners find blocks that aren’t ultimately accepted into the chain”.
Also true, and initially this was a huge concern for Fastcoin. It confirms at a rate almost too fast for it to work properly. Ultimately if confirmations are too quick, there isn’t time for the entire network to come into agreement and potentially forks could occur as confusion about which blocks are real develops in the network. To this criticism though I think a look at the history can dispel this fear- if it hasn’t forked on this risk by now its even less likely as the network grows. The amount of orphaned blocks a miner might find is also a measurable quantity. No different than measuring the success rate of finding blocks. If you can find Fastcoin blocks at a somewhat reliable rate, and can sell them on the open market, that’s all a coin needs for the mining to be measurable and functional toward securing the network. The system works. 4 years of existence proves it.
“Fastcoin’s price has gone up over 2000% in only a few months. It can’t go up much farther”.
Fastcoin’s recent rise has been incredible, but in regards to market cap this is still a very cheap coin. Fastcoin is still around 1 million in market cap. Other coins relevant to its launch era are priced much higher in market cap. LTC is in the billions. Coins like FTC and VTC are in the 10-30 million range. Fastcoin being old and having a great unique character, is poised to go much higher in market cap. Its currently the 300th most valuable coin. Many coins with little history and nothing to offer are well above it in value. The low market cap makes it enticing to the many new comers to crypto as well. A newbie who wants to be a big player in a coin with potential can acquire a sizeable chunk of FST total supply without too much of an investment. This is impossible in bigger coins these days unless you’re quite rich.
“There are other cryptos who confirm faster”
This is probably true, sorry too many coins to know. It would have to be a newer coin using master nodes, or some type of centralization though from my understanding. There was no way to do it faster in 2013 and no way to do it faster now if you’re using the old style open launch, bitcoin type code (which in my opinion is truest toward decentralization).
Some needs not wants. Every crypto has to fulfill some basic requirements to persist. Just going to go through those positives now that Fastcoin checks out on.
Developers
Check. They were quiet for quite a few years, but seem very active now. If I had to guess, and apologies to them for the intrusion, they were probably quiet because they wanted to buy up more coin while it was cheap. Given that they are now being very attentive to all needs, its safe to assume that one way or another they have a good supply of FST of their own. This is not a bad thing! The original devs having a sizeable chunk of supply through their own investment in a free market is great. It shows commitment to the project. Also, this coin was very low value for very long, no doubt its network was very small at times. Someone was a good steward of the coin and kept it going faithfully. You don’t nurture a project through the tough times and then abandon it when its getting positive traction again. The devs are on board, clearly spending some money and lots of effort. We should hope they are able to pull some profit as the price rises and put that toward further development. That is a natural evolution to hope for. Original devs who are stakeholders and have proven their commitment are a great thing.
Community
OK, its pretty slow on their forum. Bitcointalk has picked up a lot though and new people seem to be around much more often. Many old names, myself included, are back into the conversation. There is certainly a core of people who have followed this coin and it can be trusted that they’ll be there in the future as well. If we haven’t left in 4 years, why would we now? Also, given the success of alt coins this spring, you can probably expect a lot of old time alt coin enthusiasts who have recently made a lot of money and are now wanting to expand into other coins they remember from 2013. This spring seems evidence of a lot of new money in alt coins as well. Fastcoin’s marketing and value seems pretty straight forward and easy to understand for newbies. Fastcoin is enticing to both old and new investors for various reasons and could expand its core community quite quickly.
Functioning
4 years functioning perfectly. I do transactions with friends using FST. Works perfectly every time, way faster than bitcoin to have it fully transacted. Even deposits on exchanges are way faster than BTC in my experience. They’ll require more confirmations than BTC does before calling it a legit deposit, but those confirmations will happen faster. End result: You always get your FST very quickly, whatever you’re doing. About the only thing slow about it is syncing the blockchain. Its is a big chain after all. Once you’re up and running though it works great.
Scam Alerts
No premine, no centralization, no scandals, open launch. The only risk here is that something nefarious happened while the network was very small. The block explorer seems reliable to me, although I’m no coder to verify that sort of thing. One thing I do trust however is the recent attention which has surely drawn greater scrutiny. If any funny business has occurred while the network was very small, hopefully someone smarter than myself is able to point that out. And anyone smart enough is probably invested in other coins and has an incentive to point out flaws in the competition- (or sell all their fastcoin, then point out the scam). If there was a scam here, we’d probably have heard about it by now with the recent price rise.
Name
“Fastcoin”. Tell me this isn’t one of the best crypto names out there.
OK, there you have it. All of my many reasons for supporting this crypto. Full disclosure, obviously I own some Fastcoin! You should too! Check out the bitcointalk thread or their dedicated forum fastcointalk.org for more info (where to buy, how to mine, wallets).
