[NEW: WAR OF LIFE GAME!] The Real Altcoin [SHA-256]

[Rival]

I tend to think those who mined early are more likely to hold for some extended time, at least until there are some pools and exchange trading.  Picking them up on the "cheap" this early on may not be quite as easy as it sounds.

But best of luck to those trying, I could be wrong.

[1713502873]

1713502873

[1713502873]

1713502873

[1713502873]

1713502873

[1713502873]

1713502873

[unbalanced]

Reminds me, TAT quoted me over on #bitcoin-assets...

Since it's a SHA-256 coin, this is an interesting one to follow because the same equipment can mine it.

I'm not sure if he was making fun of me or not -- I know he's not a fan of altcoins in general. I'm not sure I am either. But I think I can learn something from them.

The reason quoted above is just one aspect of my interest in ATC... I know it's not the only SHA-256 cryptocoin after BTC, and that thanks to coingen there will be plenty more. But I'm trying to figure out what happens to, say, 10PH/s of equipment currently pointed at Bitcoin when newer gear renders it obsolete. IIRC, Litecoin and the other scrypt alts were all born out of people trying to wring value from obsoleted graphics cards. That is going to happen with the first gen ASICs too, and then it is all going to be about branding in the SHA-256 alt space.

To be clear, because I took this as a given in previous posts: as far as I'm concerned, Bitcoin is the One True Cryptocurrency. It's the Honey Badger -- it don't care about any of the alts... it don't need to. I've never been interested in any alts until Altcoin popped on the radar. Sure, a big pool could wreck it as you would swat a bug.  But until then, it looks like a nice little lab, a safer playground to really explore the Bitcoin source and try out ideas:

"Hrm, let's see... It doesn't have a pool. How would someone even make a pool? If I was going to hire that financial programmer I know to make an altcoin exchange that didn't suck, where would I start? What does it take to make a block explorer site?"

Bitcoin is an investment and a tool and a teacher (mostly of regret, amirite?). I want Altcoin so I can experiment and have things blow up in my face without actual damage, without the stress of losing Real Money (Bitcoin). Playing with Altcoin would be a safer kiddie pool to learn to swim in.

It's like being around for the early days of Bitcoin, only:

• it's a Groundhog Day version where you've seen it all unfold before,
• you don't have to explain it to Unbelievers,
• pools, dice sites, and wallets have already been invented,
• you're hearing about it in the first week.

I see this as a do-over. What do you do differently this time? (Hint: figure out how to mine and Do It Already since no one is selling yet.)

Sure, I could head over to coingen and whip out Altcoin2. Anyone could. (Pro tip: pay up for the source code next time, for crying out loud. TAT: How's that coming, anyway?)

But I know from experience that some of the most solid services in Bitcoin have sprung from the mad whims of the crew of the good ship #bitcoin-assets, and even an alt they start as a joke will likely be the start of something more useful than any alt to date.

If "useful" one day turns into "valuable", then awesome, yay us. If it doesn't, the reset button is always within reach. But I intend to learn a lot from this sim before I press it.

[unbalanced]

I tend to think those who mined early are more likely to hold for some extended time, at least until there are some pools and exchange trading.  Picking them up on the "cheap" this early on may not be quite as easy as it sounds.

But best of luck to those trying, I could be wrong.

Thanks Rival, good luck to you too.

If you hear of any pools / exchanges / news, I guess this is the place we post 'em for those not on IRC.

[MPOE-PR]

Doge was the first coin to capture the imagination of people not in the core Bitcoin demographic

That's the best euphemism for "fucktarded kids with no money and no clue" I ever did hear!

Doge is roughly speaking the filter in the fish tank: it sucks in all the shit&scum - the people stupid enough to fall for scams after they've been worked out of their last penny; the wanna-be "daytraders" living with their parents & assorted ten dollar dreamers; the coffee shop ideologues and armchair strategists plus all the rest of the useless internet population - the kids being parented by the web because their parents don't care enough and/or can't afford anything better; the sort of autistic savants that spend their time updating wikipedia, voting on reddit and so forth.

Keeping Bitcoin clear of all this is a great service, for which a group of marketeer wanna-be entrepreneurs is graciously paying. Their burn rate sadly means they'll run out of money to pay for all the shilling, which means this attempt's getting shelved soon enough. Fortunately however, there'll be legions more idiots who have no idea how to math, and have no data upon which to math, who'll start over trying to be "as successful as Doge". How are they to know that a few months in the aggregate ROI was barely 60%, and otherwise a monotonous degressive function. Spam works pretty much the same way - no one's actually seeing green, but there's no shortage of people who imagine that they will, and so it keeps going on. A torch always carried by new people is still moving, after all.

It has 750+ comments in four hours... jeebus!

And those comments aren't worth a satoshi per.

II. This month is interesting in a very general perspective because it offers a solid data point.

The substance of the matter is that one user sent a late bet, of the sort that ends up in the feared “generous donations” rubric. This is a recurring problem, albeit in general users are more inclined to take responsibility. This particular user had a lot of trouble coming to terms with reality however, and instead spent his time creating multiple bitcointalk threads, plus lots of reddit and twitter spam. To quote a relevant tidbit,

i’ve spent a lot of time spamming reddit and the forums telling people about bitbet scammers so i’ve already done damage to their brand, which they deserve for being theives

While the forum voting function collecting the anonymous opinions of uninvolved third parties came out 70 - 29 (out of 99 votes cast) in favour of his nonsensical demands, expectations and misrepresentations of fact and while the various other social media venues showed very similar consensus, BitBet nevertheless saw significant BTC inflows : more than triple the volume of last month, making November the best month in its history.

There are two possible constructions that may perhaps explain this seemingly anomalous result. One is that the aggitation exposed BitBet to people who having never afore heard of it, took the time to consider its workings, found them sensible and began using it. The other is that the aggitation proved to users already more or less familiar with BitBet that the management is firmly and unwaveringly decided to apply contracts exactly, which in turn encouraged them to take larger positions than they would have otherwise entered. It may be said this latter theory is weak, seeing how BitBet quite famously broke the Josh Zerlan betting con and so if anything would assure people that, rather than this, would have been it. Further it may be said that the two considerations are purely coincidental, and the evolution of BitBet incoming bets has exactly nothing to do with the aggitation of forums and other social media sites.

In either event, the moral I see in this adventure is that entrepreneurs are well advised to disregard the “wisdom” of crowds - they seem to go a lot on gut feeling and apparently guts are mostly full of shit. At the very most “public opinion” as represented on the Internet is completely unrelated to reality, and clearly there exists a distance - perhaps a quite large distance - between what a brand actually is and what  Interneteers think, or claim to think on the topic. Perhaps all the money spent to “influence” social media users, and to “measure” web engagement and so on and so forth could be better applied elsewhere. Just a thought.

(from BitBet's November report)

For the price of a few satoshis I can relive what I missed in the first year of Bitcoin

Fun fact: at the time of the 10k BTC for a pizza deal, Bitcoin was worth ~100 satoshi per (ie, 1,000,000 of those BTC = 1 of today's BTC).

[unbalanced]

No argument on any of that. Doge and the other *alts act as a nice holding pen for noobs of varying experience / ability / insight who want to own a billion of something (however worthless) rather than 0.0123 of something (however valuable). We are all served by, and deserve, the tech we choose.

I choose BTC for real life, where I'd rather not learn by trial and error, and ATC as well, a school, a place where I can screw up and have a do-over. As someone well aware that he is absolutely not qualified to host yet another Bitcoin exchange or other high-value, high-risk site, ATC seems a fine lab environment to write code around a tiny blockchain, create wallets, sites, services that maybe no one will ever use... Or rather, tools that I may never even start, let alone finish.

I'll come out of it knowing more than I did before, and be that much closer to creating something useful down the line for Bitcoin users. Or not, who knows? That's entrepreneurship right there:

1) Try something, 2) See what happens, 3) Repeat.

For the price of a few satoshis I can relive what I missed in the first year of Bitcoin

Fun fact: at the time of the 10k BTC for a pizza deal, Bitcoin was worth ~100 satoshi per (ie, 1,000,000 of those BTC = 1 of today's BTC).

Exactly! I want to buy a pizza with 10k ATC and regret it later. I'm even willing to throw away a fraction of a Bitcoin (and regret that later too) for the experience.

[Rival]

The experiment with crytocurrencies for those currently involved provides a unique opportunity to experience a slice of history. Some missed the computer revolution in the 70's/80's, others were still in diapers. Some missed the internet, others were still in elementary school.

Those of us here and now cannot know where it will end, or even if it will end. But we do have a feeling that we are smack in the middle of it, like standing in Berlin the day the wall came down. What we do collectively will be taught in history books.

We may all make mistakes and piss away our coins, be they bit, or lite, or alt. But the most important result is to proudly proclaim: "we were part of it, and we created it".

[Chris_Sabian]

The experiment with crytocurrencies for those currently involved provides a unique opportunity to experience a slice of history. Some missed the computer revolution in the 70's/80's, others were still in diapers. Some missed the internet, others were still in elementary school.

Those of us here and now cannot know where it will end, or even if it will end. But we do have a feeling that we are smack in the middle of it, like standing in Berlin the day the wall came down. What we do collectively will be taught in history books.

We may all make mistakes and piss away our coins, be they bit, or lite, or alt. But the most important result is to proudly proclaim: "we were part of it, and we created it".

Well said.  No one knows how or where this will end, but this protocol of peer to peer payment is revolutionary.

[MPOE-PR]

Doge and the other *alts act as a nice holding pen for noobs of varying experience / ability / insight who want to own a billion of something (however worthless) rather than 0.0123 of something (however valuable).

Speaking of which, allow me to link you to #bitcoin-assets' bash #1 entry: http://bash.bitcoin-assets.com/?quote=1

But generally: you sound a lot more balanced than the people here. I guess that explains your handle.

[ThickAsThieves]

The experiment with crytocurrencies for those currently involved provides a unique opportunity to experience a slice of history. Some missed the computer revolution in the 70's/80's, others were still in diapers. Some missed the internet, others were still in elementary school.

Those of us here and now cannot know where it will end, or even if it will end. But we do have a feeling that we are smack in the middle of it, like standing in Berlin the day the wall came down. What we do collectively will be taught in history books.

We may all make mistakes and piss away our coins, be they bit, or lite, or alt. But the most important result is to proudly proclaim: "we were part of it, and we created it".

This guy gets it.

Life is but a photograph, smile or hold the camera.

[unbalanced]

Doge and the other *alts act as a nice holding pen for noobs of varying experience / ability / insight who want to own a billion of something (however worthless) rather than 0.0123 of something (however valuable).

Speaking of which, allow me to link you to #bitcoin-assets' bash #1 entry: http://bash.bitcoin-assets.com/?quote=1

But generally: you sound a lot more balanced than the people here. I guess that explains your handle.

Oh that is classic, I remember that exchange. And thank you... I was sure you were going to rip into us for "wanting to be part of something" that "doesn't need us". I know it doesn't... I just want to enjoy the show, and maybe come up with one useful idea before I die. Even if that is just making crypto 1% approachable for people don't even deserve it, I'll count that as a win.

[unbalanced]

So... ThickAsThieves, is source code going to happen or was it too late to get it from the guy after the fact?

If not available, should we rev-eng or regen it? I can ante up for that if needed, let me know.

[ThickAsThieves]

So... ThickAsThieves, is source code going to happen or was it too late to get it from the guy after the fact?

If not available, should we rev-eng or regen it? I can ante up for that if needed, let me know.

I think if it doesn't happen today, we should move forward with reverse-engineering.

Anyone know how to do this? What kind of bounty is appropriate?

[Chris_Sabian]

5120 ATC @ 300 satoshi sold.

300 satoshi each or 300 satoshi total?

[MPOE-PR]

Oh that is classic, I remember that exchange. And thank you... I was sure you were going to rip into us for "wanting to be part of something" that "doesn't need us". I know it doesn't... I just want to enjoy the show, and maybe come up with one useful idea before I die. Even if that is just making crypto 1% approachable for people don't even deserve it, I'll count that as a win.

You have me figured out all wrong. And besides...how could ALT possibly not need you.

[unbalanced]

5120 ATC @ 300 satoshi sold.

300 satoshi each or 300 satoshi total?

Each This is serious bizness.

Yes, I got tired of waiting and it was a small buy. I'm halfway to that pizza, I can taste it already. Now who's The Greater Fool, people? Enh? Enh? Wait a minute... aw, never mind. I accept my fate.

I'll offer 300 satoshi per ATC for the rest of today (GMT), any takers?

I wonder, were we the first non-mining transaction on this chain? Embarrassed that I don't know how to tell without a Bootstrap-formatted web site to tell me. See, this is why I'm here, to get schooled.

Thanks Pankkake!

[ThickAsThieves]

5120 ATC @ 300 satoshi sold.

300 satoshi each or 300 satoshi total?

Each This is serious bizness.

Yes, I got tired of waiting and it was a small buy. I'm halfway to that pizza, I can taste it already. Now who's The Greater Fool, people? Enh? Enh? Wait a minute... aw, never mind. I accept my fate.

I'll offer 300 satoshi per ATC for the rest of today (GMT), any takers?

I wonder, were we the first non-mining transaction on this chain? Embarrassed that I don't know how to tell without a Bootstrap-formatted web site to tell me. See, this is why I'm here, to get schooled.

Thanks Pankkake!

I'll offer 303!

[unbalanced]

I'll offer 300 satoshi per ATC for the rest of today (GMT), any takers?

I'll offer 303!

Sir, I will cut you down where you stand, so help me Satoshi!

Dammit. The only rapier I have is my wit. Um... let's see... never bring a knife to a gunfight?

[unbalanced]

Oh that is classic, I remember that exchange. And thank you... I was sure you were going to rip into us for "wanting to be part of something" that "doesn't need us". I know it doesn't... I just want to enjoy the show, and maybe come up with one useful idea before I die. Even if that is just making crypto 1% approachable for people don't even deserve it, I'll count that as a win.

You have me figured out all wrong. And besides...how could ALT possibly not need you.

As long as I know I can trust you to remember to punch me in the throat as soon as I do/say something stupid, all is well.

the sort of autistic savants that spend their time updating wikipedia, voting on reddit and so forth.

Great XKCD link, btw... since that's your full time job, you really should tell MP it's time for a raise. The tide of newbies is rising, and I hear he had a good year last year. We're not all going to educate ourselves.

Speaking of which, TAT, should we be saying ALT or ATC or ALC? I think the home page says ATC. That seems to go well with BTC, just one step ahead, like HAL was to IBM.

[minerpumpkin]

I'll offer 303!

Do you pay in AM100 shares, as well?

[ThickAsThieves]

I'll offer 303!

Do you pay in AM100 shares, as well?

Why would we go using shares as currency, when we have TWO great currencies now?!