Do not invest in alternate cryptocurrencies or you will lose money!

[ThomasV]

I just wanted to issue another big fat warning: do not invest in alternate cryptocurrencies or you will lose money!

A fundamental aspect of Bitcoin is that there is a limited amount of currency.

Any alternate currency that tries to copy this "finite supply" principle is doomed, no matter what technical advantages are claimed by the creators of these currencies.

It is like saying that you are a monotheist, but you also want to believe in another God than the pre-existing one, because the new God looks better.

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[bulanula]

Quick, get the exchange set up so we can cash out.

At least these alternate coins have been pretty good sources of entertainment for me.

7.7 million premined coins is just LOL  

[Lolcust]

Any alternate currency that tries to copy this "finite supply" principle is doomed, no matter what technical advantages are claimed by the creators of these currencies.

I suspect you have a typo there :-P

[freequant]

Zortiflex. I like that name. It must be a nice currency.
Where is the pool? What miner? Where can I buy?
Come on, give the info!

[Lolcust]

You don't get it.

The premise of Zorti is that value increases due to upper limit on mining.

Thus, there will only be a single Zortiflex unit mined.

And it has already been premined.

[beckspace]

Thus, there will only be a single Zortiflex unit mined.

Theoretically, the Bitcoin protocol allows just one coin for the whole economy, doesn't it?

An alternate cryptocurrency with just one coin, and sixteen decimal places.

Onecoin, for all!

[Lolcust]

One PREMINED coin

[Bobnova]

Gotta disagree with you there.
Namecoin, ixcoin, i0coin, SC,  and tenebrix have all made me money.
It's more of a question of how long to invest in them.

[kano]

Gotta disagree with you there.
Namecoin, ixcoin, i0coin, SC,  and tenebrix have all made me money.
It's more of a question of how long to invest in them.

... and lost other people that amount of money you have made
(I also made about 1BTC on i0coin)
Yeah it is quite simple and obvious and yet many people who lose don't see it.
I guess that is also due to the fact that many who lose don't lose a lot but it does all add up for those few who gain a lot.

Anyway, the actual reason for me commenting here is that there is a more fundamentally obvious problem with all these crypto-currencies.
How many of them have been long term planned, setup properly and managed well?
None.
They do not exist for the same reason as bitcoin does, if they did then a lot more effort would have gone into their creation.
Half the time someone hasn't even bothered to spend 5 minutes on the code to change all the name/comments/file references from "bitcoin" to "scamcoin".

They all start with: quick make a copy of the bitcoin/xyzcoin git and then sometimes add a few changes and sometimes change the names to the new name
Start it up and hopefully it will work
Find out next all the problems and maybe fix some of them
Make money on an exchange
Watch it slowly die

This is how ixcoin, i0coin, SC, gg, tb and whatever else: are or will be.

They have all been made to make someone money and/or make an illegal (in many countries) laundering service.

And anyone who brings up SC2.0 - well think about it - it was done that way the first version - that should answer any questions

Yes you can lose not much money and possibly make a small amount of money.
But remember, all the mining and exchanging, for most people, is really just pocket money for a lot of effort.
The exchanges are trading what? 10's, 100's of dollars of coins? Wow that's like ... nothing.

[Lolcust]

Gotta disagree with you there.
Namecoin, ixcoin, i0coin, SC,  and tenebrix have all made me money.
It's more of a question of how long to invest in them.

Half the time someone hasn't even bothered to spend 5 minutes on the code to change all the name/comments/file references from "bitcoin" to "scamcoin".

Okay, okay, files will be renamed in next release, I pwomis !

They have all been made to make someone money and/or make an illegal (in many countries) laundering service.

Now, with all due respect, this is just FUD / slightly dramatic advertising (whichever you like more, though something can be both ~__^)

There is currently no jurisdiction that would recognize x-coins and/or WoW gold and/or exotic postage stamps as valid money, and there is not a single case where an operator of a "ephemeral un-backed token transaction mixing system" was convicted (FFS, bitcoinlaundry is run by an American in the open, IIRC, so what?)

So calling it a "laundry" is the same as calling bicoins "money" - a fairly inaccurate oversimplification done to ease communication.
 

[MaGNeT]

I stopped thinking in profit or loss.
I'm now mining for the lulz, no coin is profitable for me as one kWh is 0,32 US$ over here.

New currencies come and fail, some may survive.

But every new currency has some improvements (or at least changes) over the last one, that could lead to the ultimate currency in the end.

[racerguy]

 Alternate cryptocurrencies subforum = THE GATHERING

THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE

[2112]

There is currently no jurisdiction that would recognize x-coins and/or WoW gold and/or exotic postage stamps as valid money, and there is not a single case where an operator of a "ephemeral un-backed token transaction mixing system" was convicted (FFS, bitcoinlaundry is run by an American in the open, IIRC, so what?)

I'm not Lupus_Youndeboy nor do I agree with him. But to successfully prosecute for money laundering doesn't require any official recognition of the "token". Those prosecutions do take time to build up the case and the evidence.

Years ago the favorite "token" for money laundering were the prepaid long-distance telephone calling cards. When the prosecutions started they had several years of invoices worth high six figure sums and boxes full of VHS surveilance tapes. Some really small-time prepaid calling card dealers were prosecuted while some big-time distributors got off scott-free. For the first ones this was a major source of income, for the later it was just a few percent of the total.

I don't think that authorities in any country would waste time prosecuting joke money laundry web sites or illegal gambling dens with the total turnover in three figures.

Remember that the Anglo-Saxon legal tradition is adversarial, unlike most of the European ones which are inquisitorial.

Personally, I would think that for your coins the best long term plan is to plan setting up your laundries either on the orbit or on the visible side of the moon.

[Lolcust]

Personally, I would think that for your coins the best long term plan is to plan setting up your laundries either on the orbit or on the visible side of the moon.

Why not the dark side of the moon ? Methinks that getting comm signals there is not impossible ,and it's so much more stylish ^__^

I'll keep visible side of the moon for ads.

[Bobnova]

Communicating with the far side is somewhat difficult.

[Lolcust]

Not impossible, and way worth it due to sheer image bonus. The Darkside Transaction Mixer...mmmmmm... tastes like candy.

[grod]

There is a very small window to turning a profit on new alt chains. Snooze or lose.

This is precisely correct.   It's very convenient that every shitcoin chain launches almost simultaneously with an exchange to trade them on.  Sure there are "true believers" -- one guy on btce had no idea lolcust had premined 6 years worth of coins and that person had about 20% of the current bids.  Those people are the ones who will always line up to give you and the founders money even if it's only a few thousand $.  Which is why we'll see a shitcoin chain per week until "buy and hold" speculators run out of BTC or dollars or both.

You are racing other people to cash out with alt chains.  Not a single one of them has been anything but a vastly accelerated cash grab pyramid.  Which is too bad, by the time a truly innovative improvement over bitcoin comes along people will write it off because of the horrible press all the alt chains have been getting.

[kano]

Well, in my opinion, the only useful change was in i0coins and that was copied directly from the bitcoin git beta code:
Wallet encryption.

They have found bugs/issues with making certain changes, but in every case that has been lack of planning and lack of skill, not forethought.
(and I wont even bother to comment on CPU-mining ...)

If people really did understand the reality of the thread title (which I guess many don't) these alt currencies wouldn't really matter and have their use as testing grounds ... that should then be thrown away afterwards

[grod]

Keep mining I0C, another exchange will open soon.

I love alt coins, they're a lotta fun  

Oh, don't get me wrong.  I love alt chains myself, and hop on each one that comes along like it was the freshest block at a proportional pool.  I have no problems with taking BTC from the ignorant and greedy.

As far as I0C, I think more likely we'll see exchanges re-open.  DoubleC had a great idea -- impose a real time limit on how far back a 51% attack can rewrite the block chain.  3 days should be *more* than plenty.   Hell, 24 hours should be enough.  Then exchanges could have a settlement period of that +1 hour to protect themselves from a double spend, and everything becomes better with the world.  The most secure chains get the highest valuations, the amount available to steal from less secure chains makes the effort not "worth it", and we all sit around the campfire holding hands and singing songs.

In fact, that may be just the gimmick for my scamchain.  Time limits on chain rewrite.  Now, to come up with a catchy name and a premine amount that's egregious while at the same time not being too offensive...

[2112]

Not impossible, and way worth it due to sheer image bonus. The Darkside Transaction Mixer...mmmmmm... tastes like candy.

Lolcust, I doesn't matter whether it will be on the visible or on the dark side of the Moon. Just announce that your 14 millions of premined coins are going for the space program development. It will sound more fun than the pedestrian faucet or some such. Maybe then they will let you keep your premine?

Per aspera ad astra!

Support the free trade on Earth by banking on the Moon!

The whole Bielarus will be proud of you.