rpietila Wall Observer - the Quality TA Thread ;)

[Its About Sharing]

I'm not sure Darkcoin is a pump. The volume is in the thousands of BTC daily.
My first thought/intuition when I saw Darkcoin at .005 a few weeks back was this "Hmmm, I think this coin might be a prime way of laundering stolen bitcoins. It also might attract people who want more anonymity, not to mention it sounds cool."

If this is a pump, it is a pump with LOTS of money behind it. I haven't followed prior pumps before, and am not sure of the BTC volume, but 3,000 or 4,000 bitcoins a day is a fairly large volume. Doable for sure.

My larger question is this:
When Bitcoin went the way of ASIC's, it basically helped to solidify Litcoin as the number 2 coin. But now ASIC's are coming into LTC, and imo this will eventually make it Wall Streets #2 behind bitcoin. (We are so early in, I really think there will be a few taken in by the masses.) Anyway, my question is "Where does all the GPU hashing get pointed at now?" Darkcoin is basically a Quark
clone. I liked that coin but my problem with CPU coins are that they are very open to Bots and though that has it's benefits (lots of hashing!) it also means lots of viruses and such trying to mine it via peoples computers.

There is going to be a clear number 3 coin, which one will it be? If Darkcoin isn't a pump it sure looks like a possibility. I wonder about VTC as well. NXT and Etherium as 2.0 coins are interesting.

If you have limited funds, finding that #3 might be the way to go. And risking a small amount, % wise, might be the way to go.

I'm 80% in Bitcoin, 20% in LTC and think it would be a good decision to put 5% into 2 or 3 alts.

Its about sharing

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[gentlemand]

I'm not sure Darkcoin is a pump. The volume is in the thousands of BTC daily.
My first thought/intuition when I saw Darkcoin at .005 a few weeks back was this "Hmmm, I think this coin might be a prime way of laundering stolen bitcoins. It also might attract people who want more anonymity, not to mention it sounds cool."

If this is a pump, it is a pump with LOTS of money behind it. I haven't followed prior pumps before, and am not sure of the BTC volume, but 3,000 or 4,000 bitcoins a day is a fairly large volume. Doable for sure.

Previous pumps have had similar volumes. Blackcoin volumes on Mintpal were over 8000 BTC at its peak.

[telemaco]

I am going to defend here some alt coins.

First, Is Altcoin the correct name for another different coin? Sure there are many that just replicate some parameters, add some variation and are launched to the market for the next pump and dump, i don't even name that altcoins, i call those shitcoins, but there are coins out there that provide interesting approachs to different problems, Memorycoin brings a vote system in the same wallet that to some extent could be used to decide software development team or some coin "foundation" <hint> decisions, maybe the rest is not interesting. Reddcoin is going to release a Proof of Stake based on money velocity to help itself as a competitor to doge as tipping coin on social companies motivating users money velocity (share coins). Will it succeed? Vertcoin, Myriadcoin and X11 coins have brought differences regarding the mining approachs and the existance of Asics, Dogecoin as ridiculous it might appear brings some fun to teeneagers (nice market niche)? Gridcoin has an interesting approach bringing all the mining power to BOINC Berkley university Software to help research cancer, cells, molecules, etc. Next is a different breed and maybe it can teach some other coins about just the wallet design with messages, p2P exchange, and almost instant money transference. Counterparty brings P2P exchange aswell other approaches the same as Bitshares, Ripple brings the scam of the premining at a corporate level as we have seen a couple days ago and so they should be ashamed ;-)

Second, as Software engineer i could say that is more difficult to apply software patches to a system that has higher risk, has bigger spread and different userbase. You have to test things much more, consequences are way bigger, many more circumstances have to be thought of. It is also not the same to immediately install software update in a bank or in a hospital as immediately install a software update on a shoe shop.

Bitcoin as it grows will probably suffer a little from that. Can Bitcoin be hardforked right now? Will be easily hardforked in the future? That brings some doubts, but as the dinousaurs the bigger it gets the response time might decrease. Just that alone could bring a case for the existance of altcoins as an evolutive sandbox where multiple developers (95% with only a pump and dump objective i agree) bring some ideas to the table.

Are Darkcoin/Monero or the like pump and dump scheme? I think like in many situations things are not black and white, where Bitcoin is a pure innovative technology and any alt is just a pump and dump. There are many grayscales. Some bring some interesting ideas to the table and there are medium term investors that appreciate those, some short term and also traders just surfing the waves. If you check Karpelescoin (just an example) probably it will be a pump and dump and unless you are the pump and dump organizer you will be severely hurted there. But if you invest on a coin that is fast, anonymous (it might be interesting for some coins in some countries is even a fundamental right to have some privacy and not publishing your bank movements on your blog), has several security algorithms comparable to SHA-3 (so you don't discover in 10 years that NSA was quite involved on bitcoin or other one) well there might be a lower percent of pump and dumpers and probably many more investors bringing money to the market and making a coin surpass others like peercoin, etc. I have used that example but i think there are interesting approaches on many other coins.

Finally, I cannot recall many companies, technologies that have not had a competitor after some time. Are Mercedes-Benz or Audi alts of Ford? Is the WWW an alt of Gopher? Is Chrome an alt of Mosaic?. Is IBM still the only producer of Personal Computers. Are still compuserve and MySpace the only kings on their respective niche markets.

I am heavily invested on Bitcoin and as "It's about Sharing" has just mentioned, i only invest a very small amount on alts, less than 5% but i think it is scary and even risky to think that Bitcoin is going to be the only cryptocoin in the future. When I invest on Google shares i pay a lot of attention to Oracle, to Apple, to Yahoo because those are competitors and from the competitors you can learn and sometimes you can receive a good lesson, i will not dismiss a good idea just because it comes from a small team or because i want bitcoin to succeed (although some would just not agree on a bitcoin forum).

[gentlemand]

There are many alts out there with huge technical merits. That doesn't count for much when they're consistently ravaged by pumpers though and there's no way they're giving up their habits any time soon. I wonder what it'll take for a real contender to escape that.

[Torque]

I am going to defend here some alt coins.

...but i think it is scary and even risky to think that Bitcoin is going to be the only cryptocoin in the future.

Ok, but can I ask you 2 simple questions that seem to completely befuddle the alt coins lovers? (they never reply with a valid argument, or even reply at all):

1. Since Bitcoin is completely programmable, then in the future can it not take on any new feature of any alt coin out there?  Thus rendering all other alt coins obsolete?

2. How do you know without a doubt that it will be one of the current list of alt coins that will Bitcoin's successor?  Why not some alt coin that hasn't even been invented yet?  And if it is possible it will be an unknown future coin that may not be around next year or even for the next several years, then wouldn't investing in any of the current ones be pretty worthless right now?

[log2exp]

As time goes by, more and more altcoins are eroding away bitcoin shares in the total crypto currency realm. DRK is getting interesting at this moment.

Is it reasonable to have a altcoin factor put into the price forecast algorithm?

Good Point about DRK and something I was about to ask about here.. Someone said only way to buy DRK is with BTC? And there is a BIG Pump and Dump going on right now with DRK..  Could that be a big part of what is driving BTC up right now?? If so, scary and seems pretty thin ice..

1. Altcoins have not really gained relative to BTC in the last months. They still account for only 9% of the total market cap. If this number rises to more than 20%, I would start to consider them. Otherwise no need.

2. A low-risk way to hedge yourself for the risk that an alt would conquer Bitcoin is as follows: buy into every altcoin with the same percentage as you hold Bitcoins. You only need to divest 9% and you are invested in all cryptos and it is completely equal for you whatever happens between them from then on.

2b. To make it sane, employ a lower threshold such as only buy the alts that are minimum $10M marketcap AND rising vs. BTC.

3. DRK is not getting interesting at this moment. It has just undergone a pump with price 20-doubling. It was interesting in the beginning of this, similarly as BlackCoin. I would rather short DRK due to momentum considerations now (although this may change).

4. If BTC is bought to immediately buy DRK, it has no net effect to BTC price.

Thanks for the solution Risto. I followed your strategy and it worked out beautifully so far. Just that it's uneasy for me to see altcoins drafting behind bitcoin vehicle. I sure hope merchants not buying hypes from alts.

[Benjig]

I am going to defend here some alt coins.

...but i think it is scary and even risky to think that Bitcoin is going to be the only cryptocoin in the future.

Ok, but can I ask you 2 simple questions that seem to completely befuddle the alt coins lovers? (they never reply with a valid argument, or even reply at all):

1. Since Bitcoin is completely programmable, then in the future can it not take on any new feature of any alt coin out there?  Thus rendering all other alt coins obsolete?

2. How do you know without a doubt that it will be one of the current list of alt coins that will Bitcoin's successor?  Why not some alt coin that hasn't even been invented yet?  And if it is possible it will be an unknown future coin that may not be around next year or even for the next several years, then wouldn't investing in any of the current ones be pretty worthless right now?

1. Bitcoin will not adapt any "feature" of the alt coins outhere unless if its completely necessary.

2. There must be a really innovative alt coin out there to take the place of bitcoin, and for some years i think it wont happen

[thoughtfan]

...
2. How do you know without a doubt that it will be one of the current list of alt coins that will Bitcoin's successor?  Why not some alt coin that hasn't even been invented yet?  And if it is possible it will be an unknown future coin that may not be around next year or even for the next several years, then wouldn't investing in any of the current ones be pretty worthless right now?

For me the high risk that the 'the one' to dethrone bitcoin (acknowledging of course the reasonable chance there may never be one) is not amongst today's vast offering of altcoins does not only mean it's a waste of money to invest in them, it's also a waste of time trying to keeping up with what is going on with them, which ones actually bring something new to the table etc etc.  It is why I'm liking ideas such as sidechains or spinoffs as a means of providing a space in which to experiment with innovative ideas whilst taking out the pump 'n dump aspect to which all alts are prone irrespective of their potential value meaning that something with a great potential among so many may get dumped to oblivion and the ideas behind it lost.

I am going to defend here some alt coins.

First, Is Altcoin the correct name for another different coin? Sure there are many that just replicate some parameters, add some variation and are launched to the market for the next pump and dump, i don't even name that altcoins, i call those shitcoins, but there are coins out there that provide interesting approachs to different problems, Memorycoin brings a vote system in the same wallet that to some extent could be used to decide software development team or some coin "foundation" <hint> decisions, maybe the rest is not interesting. Reddcoin is going to release a Proof of Stake based on money velocity to help itself as a competitor to doge as tipping coin on social companies motivating users money velocity (share coins). Will it succeed? Vertcoin, Myriadcoin and X11 coins have brought differences regarding the mining approachs and the existance of Asics, Dogecoin as ridiculous it might appear brings some fun to teeneagers (nice market niche)? Gridcoin has an interesting approach bringing all the mining power to BOINC Berkley university Software to help research cancer, cells, molecules, etc. Next is a different breed and maybe it can teach some other coins about just the wallet design with messages, p2P exchange, and almost instant money transference. Counterparty brings P2P exchange aswell other approaches the same as Bitshares, Ripple brings the scam of the premining at a corporate level as we have seen a couple days ago and so they should be ashamed ;-)

Second, as Software engineer i could say that is more difficult to apply software patches to a system that has higher risk, has bigger spread and different userbase. You have to test things much more, consequences are way bigger, many more circumstances have to be thought of. It is also not the same to immediately install software update in a bank or in a hospital as immediately install a software update on a shoe shop.

Bitcoin as it grows will probably suffer a little from that. Can Bitcoin be hardforked right now? Will be easily hardforked in the future? That brings some doubts, but as the dinousaurs the bigger it gets the response time might decrease. Just that alone could bring a case for the existance of altcoins as an evolutive sandbox where multiple developers (95% with only a pump and dump objective i agree) bring some ideas to the table.

Are Darkcoin/Monero or the like pump and dump scheme? I think like in many situations things are not black and white, where Bitcoin is a pure innovative technology and any alt is just a pump and dump. There are many grayscales. Some bring some interesting ideas to the table and there are medium term investors that appreciate those, some short term and also traders just surfing the waves. If you check Karpelescoin (just an example) probably it will be a pump and dump and unless you are the pump and dump organizer you will be severely hurted there. But if you invest on a coin that is fast, anonymous (it might be interesting for some coins in some countries is even a fundamental right to have some privacy and not publishing your bank movements on your blog), has several security algorithms comparable to SHA-3 (so you don't discover in 10 years that NSA was quite involved on bitcoin or other one) well there might be a lower percent of pump and dumpers and probably many more investors bringing money to the market and making a coin surpass others like peercoin, etc. I have used that example but i think there are interesting approaches on many other coins.

Finally, I cannot recall many companies, technologies that have not had a competitor after some time. Are Mercedes-Benz or Audi alts of Ford? Is the WWW an alt of Gopher? Is Chrome an alt of Mosaic?. Is IBM still the only producer of Personal Computers. Are still compuserve and MySpace the only kings on their respective niche markets.

I am heavily invested on Bitcoin and as "It's about Sharing" has just mentioned, i only invest a very small amount on alts, less than 5% but i think it is scary and even risky to think that Bitcoin is going to be the only cryptocoin in the future. When I invest on Google shares i pay a lot of attention to Oracle, to Apple, to Yahoo because those are competitors and from the competitors you can learn and sometimes you can receive a good lesson, i will not dismiss a good idea just because it comes from a small team or because i want bitcoin to succeed (although some would just not agree on a bitcoin forum).

I'll also quote this for those who missed it last page because I take my hat off to you telemaco for doing the vast amount of research you must be doing to keep on top of this and am grateful to you for summing it up thus.  I am not generally anti-speculation but I think it causes severe problems in the altcoin space and masks potential real value that may be hiding in there (and though I get your point I will keep calling them altcoins for now) and look forward to a means (whether it's spinoffs or whatever) of bringing new ideas into the arena coming into being which takes out the destructive pump 'n dump element.

[rpietila]

As Bitcoin proponents, is it not a little hypocritical for us to criticize "pump and dump" as something only applicable to alts and not Our Coin? 

[inca]

As Bitcoin proponents, is it not a little hypocritical for us to criticize "pump and dump" as something only applicable to alts and not Our Coin?  

A pump and dump for an alt is usually a single and final act before that altcoin disappears from internet prominence.  Bitcoin has bubbled several times over the last five years, but each time the price settles higher than its previous rise (2011 excluded). This is different to the altcoin sphere in general.

So no i don't think it is hypocritical!

You never know darkcoin could be around in five years though, lets see!

[Its About Sharing]

As Bitcoin proponents, is it not a little hypocritical for us to criticize "pump and dump" as something only applicable to alts and not Our Coin? 

I wonder if there is a way, by looking at the volume (patterns, times, etc.), to see if e.g. Darkcoin is actually seeing "real" money come in or if it is a pump and dump?
I'm truly interested in finding where all the hashing power is going to point to once the LTC ASIC's are in full swing. I think that will be our number 3, but perhaps it
will be divided initially...

[thoughtfan]

As Bitcoin proponents, is it not a little hypocritical for us to criticize "pump and dump" as something only applicable to alts and not Our Coin?  

Of course Bitcoin was and still is vulnerable to pump 'n dump.  However, the numbers of players in a big enough league to have a significant influence is decreasing by as the volume increases whereas for the newer alts anybody who has done OK from bitcoins or is coming into this game with a reasonable amount of money can play the game, the bigger the stake, the lesser the odds of a bigger fish trumping your pump 'n dump game and catching you out.

The fact the central and private banks (as nicely illustrated by the revelations about Barclays) are doing it with gold shows us nothing is entirely safe from pump 'n dump.  My point was that with so many alts come into being with the express purpose of being used as a pump 'n dump vehicle, of course posing as something new and interesting, and with those playing to ride the waves up and down not caring which are potential contributors to advancing the technology and which are not, it just makes the whole scene very difficult to guage for so many that potentially valuable technologies may inadvertently get left unnoticed by the wayside.

For me, the ideas around bootstrapping bitcoins seem such a no-brainer.  It clears the flack out of the picture so we can more easily see what is there.  There may of course be an element of my being lazy, wanting to have the advantage of playing with and exploring alts without having to risk any of my bitcoins!  But at the moment I do think ideas such as spinoffs have some validity.  And I'm preferring treechains to sidechains.  Also, just so y'all know, I've never bought nor mined an altcoin.

[Torque]

As Bitcoin proponents, is it not a little hypocritical for us to criticize "pump and dump" as something only applicable to alts and not Our Coin?  

Great point Risto. Now that I've witnessed and felt the full lifecycle of a true bitcoin bubble (aka "rally") I know now that a pump and dump is exactly what a bitcoin rally truly is.  Supply greatly contracts while demand goes through the roof, but it's only temporary.  Do the bitcoin fundamentals really change in that one 3-4 week span that happens every 6-8 months or so?  No, only the perception of the adopters.  Luckily we have btc holders and thus network growth (otherwise btc bubbles would just collapse completely), a new higher exchange rate settles in and takes hold, and everyone adjusts to the new "normal".  Wash, rinse, repeat.

[thoughtfan]

As Bitcoin proponents, is it not a little hypocritical for us to criticize "pump and dump" as something only applicable to alts and not Our Coin?  

Great point Risto. Now that I've witnessed and felt the full lifecycle of a true bitcoin bubble (aka "rally") I know now that a pump and dump is exactly what a bitcoin rally truly is.  Supply greatly contracts while demand goes through the roof, but it's only temporary.  Do the bitcoin fundamentals really change in that one 3-4 week span that happens every 6-8 months or so?  No, only the perception of the adopters.  Luckily we have btc holders and thus network growth (otherwise btc bubbles would just collapse completely), a new higher exchange rate settles in and takes hold, and everyone adjusts to the new "normal".  Wash, rinse, repeat.

I disagree.  A rally may temporarily takes us above what the market will sustain prior to it falling again.  This includes successfully executed pump and dump schemes but is not limited to pump and dump schemes.  But what you described above is an aggregate demand caused by buying which could be for all kinds of reasons; for many it will simply be panic buying by people who have no intention of selling fearing they may miss the boat.  Again, a pump and dump has a rally but not all rallies that consequently correct are pump and dumps.  If you look up 'pump and dump' you'll find they are commonly described as frauds (spreading rumours/fud to manipulate the price) in conjunction with pumping the market by buying and in regulated markets are illegal.  Even a whale buying (bitcoins, altcoins or a stock etc) with the express purpose of driving up the price to draw in the sheep and then sell at the top is not by that definition pumping and dumping if there is no fraudulent element (such as spreading misinformation etc.) let alone a market that shoots up and corrects with no collusion or manipulation, such as what you were describing.

Of course there's no shortage of conspiracy theorists here claiming every big move to be a manipulation e.g. many here would swear PBOC used FUD to drive the price down to buy in but that's another matter!

[Bagatell]

Of course there's no shortage of conspiracy theorists here claiming every big move to be a manipulation e.g. many here would swear PBOC used FUD to drive the price down to buy in but that's another matter!

I hear it's the ICIC who are to blame, rather than PBOC . /tinfoil

[rpietila]

My take on altcoins

As my readers have noticed, I am not a big fan of altcoins. I have a distaste for the concept that enriches quacks and dumpers, I have never seen much long-term viability in them, and I have little time compared to money, and following the pump-and-dumps that all altcoins (as well as Bitcoin!) are prone to, would take far too much time compared to the meager gains achievable in the illiquid markets. I don't even trade Bitcoin except the major swings, and those only with a fraction of my holdings.

It has not gone unnoticed in the altcoin circles that I would be a great marketing asset, but I have declined all offers until now. The reason is that the coins have been bad, obvious pump and dumps, and even though I would have made some gains participating in them, my readers would have likely made a loss, and not only is that an unrighteous way to make money, I don't even need it, since I believe in the long-term success of crypto, and of Bitcoin, and have enough of them to take care of all my needs in the future.

The classical altcoins do not offer anything relative to Bitcoin, except maybe a different hashing algorithm. An important thing to remember is that there is no long-term market niche for two coins with the same algo. The hashing power of the larger coin is constantly threatening to destroy the smaller one. Even if that does not happen, there are network effects in play that favor the larger coin and suppress the smaller.

The 2.0 coins are in development and offer interesting new features. These coins tend to be fully premined, though. It would be more prudent to call them "shares". I have started many companies so that in the beginning I own all the shares, and I try to raise money and enlarge the ownership by offering them to the public. There is nothing wrong with that, but it is not a way to distribute these wide enough for them to ever function as a currency. It is akin to monetizing your ideas, generating value out of nothing, and I believe these coins are doomed to fail for this reason alone, not to mention that as startups, their failure rate is anyway 70-90%.

A new category that has just surfaced in 2014, are the privacy-enhanced coins. Although these are new, and much development is needed and is going on, the value proposal is appealing: unlike Bitcoin, which I believe is already well analyzed so that the enemies of privacy can attribute a name to most of the large addresses, these coins can offer true privacy and anonymous holdings and transactions. Not all of them, and not perhaps yet, but the potential is there. They are also seeing some price action.

Please consult the Cryptocurrency market cap when reading on. Note that I am comparing the prices relative to BTC only, so most of the coins may make gains in dollar terms even though I am bearish on them in BTC terms, once the next BTC bubble comes.

LTC
is the leading scrypt coin. On the one hand, the emergence of scrypt ASICs may provide a support to LTC's stagnating price (like SHA256 ASIC's did to Bitcoin in early 2013), on the other, it may be that they are just used to mine whatever is the most profitable coin to sell, and the proceeds are used to buy BTC. Typically LTC shoots up at the late stage of a BTC bubble. Therefore I am bearish on LTC just now, but it might be a buy when it hits 0.01, in anticipation of a leveraged rally with BTC.

DRK
This coin is centralized to be mined by masternodes. I have also heard that the developer of this coin is misrepresenting the truth concerning premine, and that he holds 2 million coins (out of 4.3M). This is a reason to be very cautious. Also DRK is in no way cheap, and there is not yet much use for it, so it is all marketing and speculation. I would not buy it now, as I did not when it was 10 times cheaper.

NXT
is 100% premined to a few executives in the beginning. It is a startup, and not a currency, and I don't believe it will ever be. Invest accordingly.

DOGE
is one of the 2 coins (other was AUR) where I saw some merit. This was when it had just come, at 35s. Now I believe it is in a terminal decline, since there are no markets for all-around coins except BTC. A further threat is that DOGE's inflation is quickly slowing, making its network very vulnerable. I advice to sell out on this one.

XRP
is pronounced crooked by a few of its developers, who have recently left the company. Even though there never was any reason to buy those, selling them is my advice if you have any.

MSC
100% premine. I have to admit that I don't know much that they are doing, but I have little belief that this coin can beat BTC in value appreciation, and there is a high risk that it will just fail. If you ever need MSC for any purpose, just buy it then.

BC
is designed a 100% premined pump&dump get-rich-quickly coin, which I did not touch when it was introduced to me in the early days of the first pump. Stay out (unless you like to be on the receiving end).

QRK
is also a secretly premined coin, which I believe is already in a terminal decline after the original pump was successful.

XPM
is surprisingly pricey still. Don't buy it.

AUR
Even though I was interested in this before the great pump in March (and would have made up to 100x gains if I had bought), now it is in a "following" mode after crashing back. If I moved to Iceland, I would probably start using it. Not an unconditional "sell" though.

MRO (Monero)
Okay, there was a reason why I wrote on alts. Cause I have just made my first altcoin investment ever! Monero has a trait which pretty much all other alts lack: slow and geometrically decreasing issuance. At present, only 5% of MRO is mined, and even after 4 years there will still be 20% left to be mined. There is no premine, and the community consists of several people Furthermore, it is at least currently a CPU coin, since the hashing algorithm is designed to make it difficult to implement for GPU let alone ASIC. These things make it "fair" so that there is no way to amass large stashes except by working for them in the competitive mining or buying in the open market.

The market for the coin is very active and extremely liquid. There was an OTC market in the beginning. MRO was listed in Poloniex 5 days ago and the reception has been good. It has been the most traded coin ever since despite having a market cap of only 1-3 M$! Up to 10% of the outstanding MRO changes hands daily in Poloniex, mitigating the extreme volatility that is plaguing many alts with concentrated ownership.

And now comes the main point: The coin has a feature, which is not implementable in Bitcoin - privacy! It is called CryptoNote, and means that all transactions are mixed in a protocol level. This is imo the most advanced privacy that is currently found in crypto universe, although I am sure that some disagree and let them teach me how I am wrong

The coin is probably circulating quite widely already. New mining is about 30kMRO per day (BTC180), which is about $100k (!) and the price is rising (despite that). This is not a pump and dump coin, because the inflation takes care that new coins are constantly coming to the market. A word of warning though - the market cap may seem lucratively small, but the total issuance of MRO is 20 times the current, which is a little less than that of BTC. Therefore it is easy to compare the relative valuations by just comparing the prices. At 0.006 BTC currently, MRO is not the cheapest coin around (1:166 of BTC). I would advice to not buy hastily, and not participate in bubbles (if any). Mining is also an option.

This is the first altcoin I bought, and I did it during the time when it had been listed in the exchange. My relative position is less than in BTC though, so if only one remains, I would still do better if it is BTC

ADD: Relative position means: (my holding)/(total issuance).

[Ultros]

Damn. Rpietila buying MRO two weeks after me. I suddenly feel a little smarter... and probably way too bullish.

Out of curiosity, which exchange did you choose to buy them, Poloniex? Still trying to find the most secure place.

[drawingthesun]

MRO (Monero)
Okay, there was a reason why I wrote on alts. Cause I have just made my first altcoin investment ever! Monero has a trait which pretty much all other alts lack: slow and geometrically decreasing issuance. At present, only 5% of MRO is mined, and even after 4 years there will still be 20% left to be mined. There is no premine, and the community consists of several people Furthermore, it is currently a CPU coin, since the 11 hashing algorithms make it difficult to implement for GPU let alone ASIC. These things make it "fair" so that there is no way to amass large stashes except by working for them in the competitive mining or buying in the open market.

The market for the coin is very active and extremely liquid. There was an OTC market in the beginning. MRO was listed in Poloniex 5 days ago and the reception has been good. It has been the most traded coin ever since despite having a market cap of only 1-3 M$! Up to 10% of the outstanding MRO changes hands daily in Poloniex, mitigating the extreme volatility that is plaguing many alts with concentrated ownership.

And now comes the main point: The coin has a feature, which is not implementable in Bitcoin - privacy! It is called CryptoNote, and means that all transactions are mixed in a protocol level. This is imo the most advanced privacy that is currently found in crypto universe, although I am sure that some disagree and let them teach me how I am wrong

The coin is probably circulating quite widely already. New mining is about 30kMRO per day (BTC180), which is about $100k (!) and the price is rising (despite that). This is not a pump and dump coin, because the inflation takes care that new coins are constantly coming to the market. A word of warning though - the market cap may seem lucratively small, but the total issuance of MRO is 20 times the current, which is a little less than that of BTC. Therefore it is easy to compare the relative valuations by just comparing the prices. At 0.006 BTC currently, MRO is not the cheapest coin around (1:166 of BTC). I would advice to not buy hastily, and not participate in bubbles (if any). Mining is also an option.

This is the first altcoin I bought, and I did it during the time when it had been listed in the exchange. My relative position is less than in BTC though, so if only one remains, I would still do better if it is BTC

This is the reason I bought some MRO, I wanted to contribute by mining but don't have the resources to do so.

MRO offers quite a lot to the Crypto world and it's a shame a lot of people are against it.

gmaxwell says the ring sig tech is very good, and I have talked a lot with the MRO developers and they are very capable people and know what they are doing.

[sdersdf2]

This is the reason I bought some MRO, I wanted to contribute by mining but don't have the resources to do so.

MRO offers quite a lot to the Crypto world and it's a shame a lot of people are against it.

gmaxwell says the ring sig tech is very good, and I have talked a lot with the MRO developers and they are very capable people and know what they are doing.

Is there any sense of when they're likely to come out with a GUI wallet and improve exchange transferability. What are their current priorities as far as development of the coin and the ecosystem around it?

[dreamspark]

This is the reason I bought some MRO, I wanted to contribute by mining but don't have the resources to do so.

MRO offers quite a lot to the Crypto world and it's a shame a lot of people are against it.

gmaxwell says the ring sig tech is very good, and I have talked a lot with the MRO developers and they are very capable people and know what they are doing.

Is there any sense of when they're likely to come out with a GUI wallet and improve exchange transferability. What are their current priorities as far as development of the coin and the ecosystem around it?

Perhaps these questions would be better addressed in the MRO thread where the devs will be able to answer. Alternatively join freenode #monero or #monero-otc and ask in there.

But the short answer to the GUI question is there is still a bounty for it and also there is a sort of GUI wallet already.