altcoins are all dying

[lynn_402]

That's a good point. At some point they lose viability and mining drops to nothing and the coin dies. This will accelerate once ASICs (like the Titan) hit, concentrating mining among a much smaller pool of miners as thousands of GPU miners (like myself) drop out. A small number of miners, with a more intense interest in good financial decisions because of their capital investment, means a pretty strong reduction in the number of altcoins. Still dozens, maybe more than a hundred, and still room for good quality rollouts of new coins with some real innovation. But I expect the list of active cryptocurrencies to be smaller by the end of the year - with a ton of them lying dead along the way.

I'm looking forward to it, because I'm invested in a few of the more viable ones (Blackcoin, Mintcoin, Pesetacoin, etc.), and their value is diluted amidst the flood.

Indeed, anyone with a big scrypt asic or two will easily be able to 51% a huge amount of those new coins, making them worthless.
Darwin predicted it; natural selection will play its part

[jacob019]

Altcoins remind me of baseball cards and beanie babies.  They're fun to play with and I want to collect them all.

[percocet]

While I agree that all crapcoins will eventually die off, there are a number of decent altcoins coming out that have some real potential (as they are more than just Litecoin clones).

eXocoin, NEM, NXT and NXT-L for example. All of these coins have potential and I don't think they will ever die completely like most of the Scrypt copy and paste jobs out there.

[spankyminer]

Altcoins remind me of baseball cards and beanie babies.

And worthless too! 

Its actually sad, people collect baseball cards etc for the value itself. Altcoins are only a way to get bitcoin.

Of course not everyone but the majority. I, for one, have a long altcoin portfolio. Once I started to mine a promising altcoin I grow fond of it and refuse to dump. A big mistake in hindsight though

[lynn_402]

Altcoins remind me of baseball cards and beanie babies.

And worthless too! 

Its actually sad, people collect baseball cards etc for the value itself. Altcoins are only a way to get bitcoin.

Of course not everyone but the majority. I, for one, have a long altcoin portfolio. Once I started to mine a promising altcoin I grow fond of it and refuse to dump. A big mistake in hindsight though

I don't agree. There's no reason why there should be only one big cryptocurrency, a lot of them have different advantages, different communities. That's the same thing with e-mail. Many use g-mail, but there still is a considerable percentage of people who use hotmail, the address provided by their ISP or company, TORmail or other anonymous services, some communicate by facebook messages with the e-mail address associated to it, etc.

There's enough place in the market for many cryptos, and there's definitely a place for those with PoS, ie. to use as a saving account.

[voluntarist500]

the good thing is: the more coins are out already the less the diluting impact of new ones will be. If you have 100 coins and 10 new come in it may be an issue but if you have 1500 coins and 10 new come in you will not notice it so much.
So the flood will hurt less and less. Everything will be fine.

Unless the flood grows exponentially. It sure seems to me like more shitcoins are coming out now than ever before. Keep in mind a lot of people have invested in hardware to run mining farms, pools, multipools, etc and they have a vested interest in new coins coming out to keep mining alive.

eventually stupid capital will flow torwards inteligent capital.
Meaning: those people that were supporting the shitcoins of the last wave are broke now and can't afford to support more shitcoins while those who have the ability to see what is a really good coin and what not will not be broke and can continue to support good coins. Makes sense?

[bgade]

I don't agree. There's no reason why there should be only one big cryptocurrency, a lot of them have different advantages, different communities. That's the same thing with e-mail. Many use g-mail, but there still is a considerable percentage of people who use hotmail, the address provided by their ISP or company, TORmail or other anonymous services, some communicate by facebook messages with the e-mail address associated to it, etc.

There's enough place in the market for many cryptos, and there's definitely a place for those with PoS, ie. to use as a saving account.

Well said - over time there should be a huge contraction to a few viable coins.  Will any of the current ones still be around then?  Tough to say. 

I think the better comparison is search engines - look back to the 90s and see how many there were and how bad some worked.  Over time, that market has contracted to a big few.  There are still lots out there and some come and go, but for the most part they are making enough to pay the bills.  There just aren't millions anymore and a very few got very good at what they do.

Something needs to appeal to the masses. 

If I had to bet, I would think it will be currencies that dump the idea of being anonymous and start to have some central control.  I would far rather use a coin that has names, pictures and real world information about who maintains it.  And, I suspect a lot of others would too. 

I'm not talking about making a coin that prevents users from being anonymous - but rather the people who make the coin work being well known and "dependable". 

I've been working with the Coino group for a bit - and its a perfect example of how bad things can go when a coin has a single anonymous developer.  Since the community started rebuilding it, good things are starting to happen.  The price is even up a few percent.  To me, thats better than hoping for the price to skyrocket.  Things that go up too fast are just fads.

[lynn_402]

I don't agree. There's no reason why there should be only one big cryptocurrency, a lot of them have different advantages, different communities. That's the same thing with e-mail. Many use g-mail, but there still is a considerable percentage of people who use hotmail, the address provided by their ISP or company, TORmail or other anonymous services, some communicate by facebook messages with the e-mail address associated to it, etc.

There's enough place in the market for many cryptos, and there's definitely a place for those with PoS, ie. to use as a saving account.

Well said - over time there should be a huge contraction to a few viable coins.  Will any of the current ones still be around then?  Tough to say.  

I think the better comparison is search engines - look back to the 90s and see how many there were and how bad some worked.  Over time, that market has contracted to a big few.  There are still lots out there and some come and go, but for the most part they are making enough to pay the bills.  There just aren't millions anymore and a very few got very good at what they do.

Something needs to appeal to the masses.  

If I had to bet, I would think it will be currencies that dump the idea of being anonymous and start to have some central control.  I would far rather use a coin that has names, pictures and real world information about who maintains it.  And, I suspect a lot of others would too.  

I'm not talking about making a coin that prevents users from being anonymous - but rather the people who make the coin work being well known and "dependable".  

I've been working with the Coino group for a bit - and its a perfect example of how bad things can go when a coin has a single anonymous developer.  Since the community started rebuilding it, good things are starting to happen.  The price is even up a few percent.  To me, thats better than hoping for the price to skyrocket.  Things that go up too fast are just fads.

Different coins for different folks

I, for one, would never put money in a coin controlled by a central entithy; that's the reason I invested in crypto-currencies in the first place. Being controlled by a single anonymous developer is another type of centralization - the only viable way, imo, is with open-source cryptos where everyone can verify and potentially contribute to the code. The main problem with identifyable developpers, is that they could be in danger from any organization opposed to the coin, wether for economic or political reason. He could very well receive threats to add an exploit to the program, for the benefit of the NSA, or a concurrent currency, or whatever.

I think peercoin has a good developpement system, where all is open source, but there still is a genius pseudonymous developper deeply involved with the project since a long time.

Also, personally, I don't mind if masses never get into cryptos. Wether there's one million users or one billion, they still efficiently serve the same purposes. The only difference is that in the second option, I'll be rich

Let's have a toast to long and sustainable growth over short-lived fads.

[cisahasa]

Horrible choice , Peercoin is a dying coin look at the 24 hour volume.

Hodl btc and ltc and stop trying to become a overnight millionaire with crappy scam coins .

You think Peercoin is a "crappy scam" coin ?

This is an extremely clueless remark in my opinion.

Whatever volume statistics say, Peercoin is one of the very few alts that actually has a degree of originality behind it that would put it head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to contemplating a future cryptocurrency economy.

NXT is also trading on low volume and low price, but it's about the only alt I wouldn't even contemplate ditching right now - I don't care how low it goes. It's already justified it's marketcap simply in network services - never mind the fact that their potential is only starting to be realised by client software under development.

I agree about BTC and LTC on the basis of adoption, but jeez, if any coin justifies inheriting Bitcoin's legacy, it's definitely Peercoin, not Litecoin.

Peercoin is a scam that makes the rich richer by doing nothing .

Anyways I don't need to further explain how shit peercoin  and it's anonymous dev is , go look at the 24 hour volume.

scam is clear now

[samson]

DGC seems to have been around 1 US Cent for a long time now. I see stability here.

[smith coins]

99% altcoins is just to pump and dump, all the killing trust in crypto

[tokeweed]

just convert some to USD now, bargain hunt later. 

[fox19891989]

In 2015, maybe most of altcoin will be dead, but some awesome coins won't die, like SJCX, MAID, XRP, STR, DOGE.

[Trouble821]

In 2015, maybe most of altcoin will be dead, but some awesome coins won't die, like SJCX, MAID, XRP, STR, DOGE.

It's surprising how fast some alts die after being delisted from Bittrex.

[gramen]

Sure, some alt-coins must die the slow death. But there are many that can become the new internet of money in the future!

Projects like SuperNet and Internet of Coins are going to make it happen, and I think we should see many new integrations of blockchain tech coming in 2015..

[unusualfacts30]

In 2015, maybe most of altcoin will be dead, but some awesome coins won't die, like SJCX, MAID, XRP, STR, DOGE.

I think 2014 has been great year for crypto. Lot of new crypto with unique features and use. Lot of scams too but I think scams will decline in 2015

MangoCoinz, BitBay, BC, Gems, URO, CANN, DRK, VTC are few others that have seen good progress overtime.

[sdersdf3]

... 546 coins indexed on http://crypto-coins-table.com today ...

115 coins over the last 30 days

http://crypto-coins-table.com/index.php?var_action=filter_set&var_filter=new30d

115 coins over the last 30 days is not sustainable.
How soon will it slow down?

It is slowing down
Two months ago, the less popular coins easily had market caps nearing 100000$. Now, if you look at http://coinmarketcap.com/2.html, you can see there's a lot of them with market caps in the thousands of $ and some even less. And it lists only the 250 most popular ones.

And the drop in 24-hour volume is even more dramatic.

[bram_vnl]

In 2015, maybe most of altcoin will be dead, but some awesome coins won't die, like SJCX, MAID, XRP, STR, DOGE.

and guldencoin!

[Nxtblg]

In 2015, maybe most of altcoin will be dead, but some awesome coins won't die, like SJCX, MAID, XRP, STR, DOGE.

I think 2014 has been great year for crypto. Lot of new crypto with unique features and use. Lot of scams too but I think scams will decline in 2015

Yeah...the scammers will see less scambux to be 'made' & take off for elsewhere.

Curveball: The hackers among them might take the skills they've "learned" and go after fiat portals like banks. If so, then cryptos will look less bad by comparison...

[bitcoin carpenter]

In 2015, maybe most of altcoin will be dead, but some awesome coins won't die, like SJCX, MAID, XRP, STR, DOGE.

and guldencoin!

no one knows how to make money like the dutch...

also viorcoin!!!
new appcoins that accept bitcoin, and have a real use will grow.

all other bitcoin wannabees will die.