Important to know: Difference Coin / Token and shady marketing practices

[Learn Bitcoin]

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Thanks for the session, 1miau. Even though sometimes I thought I knew enough about these things, it seems I don't know much yet. I didn't know the difference between tokens and coins. After this whole thread, I began to understand that only a few coins exist on the market. The rest of them are tokens. According to the Coinmarketcap, there are 1.8M cryptos on the market, and I feel like all of them are tokens except for a few dozen or hundreds of coins.

Another thing I should learn is: Can a token be decentralized in any way? The developers of those tokens have all control over their tokens, and it's fully centralized. So, I assume every token is centralized, and developers can control users' money by increasing the supply. Isn't it like that?

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[pooya87]

Although I agree with your points but I'd like to add that the main way of scamming people in the altmarket is not disguising a token as a coin, most people already don't understand the difference or care, it is by telling them the garbage they are buying is "useful" has "potential" or sometimes weird things like "it is replacing bitcoin".

Examples of coins are: ~  Ethereum, Ethereum Classic,~

These are not exactly coins either. The technical term used for ether is "smart contract fuel".

[Upgrade00]

Another thing I should learn is: Can a token be decentralized in any way? The developers of those tokens have all control over their tokens, and it's fully centralized. So, I assume every token is centralized, and developers can control users' money by increasing the supply. Isn't it like that?

I guess there is a small window where a token can be decentralized, if it is built on a decentralized blockchain/platform and the founder designs it in such a way to not have any central authority or control center, even from they the founder, then it is possible to have a decentralized token, but so far all of the tokens in the market are all centralized. They claim to be decentralized and ground breaking in their whitepaper but turn out to be none of these things.

We barely have decentralized coins in the market today.

[Xal0lex]

Although I agree with your points but I'd like to add that the main way of scamming people in the altmarket is not disguising a token as a coin, most people already don't understand the difference or care, it is by telling them the garbage they are buying is "useful" has "potential" or sometimes weird things like "it is replacing bitcoin".

How can this be disguised, can you tell me? The way I see it, a coin is differentiated from a token by having its own blockchain, so if some cryptocurrency is deployed on some another's blockchain, it's definitely not a coin, is it. I would say that most altcoins masquerade as something utilitarian and useful, which can bring some benefit from ownership, although in fact all the usefulness of these shitcoins is reduced to trivial speculation and enrichment of their creator.

[1miau]

False marketing is deceiving buyers

This here 👆👆 seems like a major characteristic of altcoins!!!

You are 100% right here.
Marketing is, where Altcoins are strong but unfortunately, most Altcoin marketing is deceiving costomers by various shady strategies.
Depending on each target group, deceiving tacting have a very wide range and are optimized to attract each target group.

Another thing I should learn is: Can a token be decentralized in any way? The developers of those tokens have all control over their tokens, and it's fully centralized. So, I assume every token is centralized, and developers can control users' money by increasing the supply. Isn't it like that?

Interesting question.
I'm not an Altcoin developer and there might (insert big question mark here) be ways to have a decentralized token but I really don't know 100%.
Possibly, a DAO can be decentralized if it is set up that way and tokens are distributed in a fair (decentralized) way to many people, that voting for such a DAO isn't manipulated by a developer team.
Requirement is as well: for such a token, it would mean that no one can change anything without consent from all token holders. After initially setting the DAO up, code has to be open source and audited.

It's what I can imagine but as I'm not an Altcoin developer / coder, I don't feel qualified to make a final statement here. Maybe it's a question for our coder specialists in Development and Technical Discussion. 

Although I agree with your points but I'd like to add that the main way of scamming people in the altmarket is not disguising a token as a coin, most people already don't understand the difference or care, it is by telling them the garbage they are buying is "useful" has "potential" or sometimes weird things like "it is replacing bitcoin".

Yes, Altcoins have various strategies to deceive people.
Advertising a token as a coin is just one strategy.
Like you've said, falsely advertising the underlying tech is a big problem here:
- overpromising
- promising "big innovation" / new Bitcoin
- hyping banal / outdated / copied tech
- trying to tell people how the coin / token will be (globally) important

It all boils down to advertising their coin's / token's fundamentals as something, what it's not in reality.
It's part of a big pool of strategies from Altcoins to deceive people
 
Additional strategies are:
- buying hype YouTubers
- spreading misinformation about competitors

Examples of coins are: ~  Ethereum, Ethereum Classic,~

These are not exactly coins either. The technical term used for ether is "smart contract fuel".

Bitcoin is closer to Litecoin or Monero, which could be called "transaction coins".
Ethereum is also a coin but Ethereum is different from Bitcoin because Ethereum is a "platform coin" similar like Tron, Polkadot, Avalanche or similar, where it, like you've said, is needed to send Ethereum tokens, as a part of Ethereum's smart contract.
Bitcoin is more a coin to send in transactions.

They claim to be decentralized and ground breaking in their whitepaper but turn out to be none of these things.

+1
Well said.

[MusaMohamed]

Although I agree with your points but I'd like to add that the main way of scamming people in the altmarket is not disguising a token as a coin, most people already don't understand the difference or care

They do not care what they bought or will spend money to buy, even project names, token tickers are not important with them. They can buy a token without knowing a project website, whitepaper (whitepaper of shitcoin is useless, plagiarism and full of lies), whatever or they even ask for someone to buy it on behalf of them because they don't mind to research and find basic information.

it is by telling them the garbage they are buying is "useful" has "potential" or sometimes weird things like "it is replacing bitcoin".

Shitcoin projects polish their white paper, roadmap with so many attractive words to catch investors as their projects are game-changers, will change the world, blockchain industry, Bitcoin killers, ...

In the market, those projects don't kill anything, are not Bitcoin killers, but investor killers.

Examples of coins are: ~  Ethereum, Ethereum Classic,~

These are not exactly coins either. The technical term used for ether is "smart contract fuel".

Their smart contracts are not smart. Those contracts were hacked many times and they are fuel for scammers to do their jobs. I would prefer to call them as Scam contracts.

[Learn Bitcoin]

Another thing I should learn is: Can a token be decentralized in any way? The developers of those tokens have all control over their tokens, and it's fully centralized. So, I assume every token is centralized, and developers can control users' money by increasing the supply. Isn't it like that?

I guess there is a small window where a token can be decentralized, if it is built on a decentralized blockchain/platform and the founder designs it in such a way to not have any central authority or control center, even from they the founder, then it is possible to have a decentralized token, but so far all of the tokens in the market are all centralized. They claim to be decentralized and ground breaking in their whitepaper but turn out to be none of these things.

We barely have decentralized coins in the market today.

I am not sure about it, and that's why I wanted to learn more about it. You talked about decentralized blockchain., I guess only the decentralized blockchain does not help. We saw the brc-20 tokens craze a few weeks ago, which was developed on the Bitcoin network. The Bitcoin network is decentralized, yet the token developers did not use it to make their tokens decentralized.

I guess it exclusively depends on the developer's will. If they want to make it decentralized somehow, it must be open source so other developers can verify it. But whoever claims their token is decentralized they don't publish the source code because those are centralized.

[1miau]

@1miau You have written very nice details which I like a lot and from here I got to know some unknown information. There is very important information here and that's why I want to translate your post into my language and post it in my local community to let everyone know and easily understand about this. thanks for sharing this important information with us

Hello 

Of course, it's nice to get a translation and a presentation of my topic in your local board. I appreciate it very much. 
Which language are you interested to provide?
I'll add it in my OP to show that your local language is reserved:

Language	translated by	Title
___________________________	_____________________	_______________________________________________________________________
xxx (reserved)	Z_MBFM	reserved

[TravelMug]

Requesting permission as well to translate this to our local board: Pilipinas.

[1miau]

Requesting permission as well to translate this to our local board: Pilipinas.

Hello 
Of course, we would be very happy to have a translation from you. 
I've added an entry in my list and reserved it for you:

Language	translated by	Title
___________________________	_____________________	_______________________________________________________________________
Pilipinas (reserved)	TravelMug	reserved

No hurry to provide it because translation quality goes over translation speed. 
Looking forward to it. 

[Broadanbig]

False marketing is deceiving buyers

While the term "Coin" evokes more valuable properties, "Token" sounds rather of low quality. As a result, many projects are advertising their product as a "Coin" while in reality, it is (still) a "Token". One should not be deceived by this because projects are frequently doing this to shill their useless crap project.

Projects doing this, should be avoided as it’s a big red flag.  

In addition, there’s a new strategy from competing projects to trash competing projects. In a misguided effort, the competing coin is labelled as a token, but in reality, it’s a coin because it’s based on its own Blockchain. But competing projects are labelling it as a token to trash it and provide an effort to scare and discourage potential buyers from buying the competing coin.
It might even happen for competing projects to hire "agents" and place such agents in marketing departments of competitors, where in marketing material, these agents are wrongfully changing the term "Coin" into "Token" to make the competitor coin look bad by calling it "Token".  

I am very much happy to have stumbled upon this insightful thread. I must say OP has enlightened members of the platform and crypto community at large by putting up with this article for reading. This has exposed the tricks of most of these shittokens that  claims to be a coin deceiving investors in investing in their project. The truth is that since they know investors are very interested in the name coin as it attracts them they use it to get at them and the greedy investors that wants ten x of their investment go to invest in their project  and sometimes get trapped in the project as they rug pull.

It is pertinent that most investors should properly ask questions to the project developers why they give their token coin instead of calling it the normal name which should be a token because that is what they use in deceiving people. Only a person who is fully knowledgeable about crypto that would understand that but the rest of the others are just good at waiting to take profit from their investment and in some cases they do not see anything but being scammed.

1miau I find this topic to be of great expository and would want to seek your audience to translate it to my local language (Nigeria board) so that they could see it and learn from it as well.

[Z_MBFM]

Of course, it's nice to get a translation and a presentation of my topic in your local board. I appreciate it very much. 
Which language are you interested to provide?
I'll add it in my OP to show that your local language is reserved:

Language	translated by	Title
___________________________	_____________________	_______________________________________________________________________
xxx (reserved)	Z_MBFM	reserved

Here is a Translation in Bangali Language : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=631891.msg62985885#msg62985885

Thanks for your efforts to write such an important topic

Z_MBFM 

[Chilwell]

Requesting permission as well to translate this to our local board: Pilipinas.

Hello 
Of course, we would be very happy to have a translation from you. 
I've added an entry in my list and reserved it for you:

Language	translated by	Title
___________________________	_____________________	_______________________________________________________________________
Pilipinas (reserved)	TravelMug	reserved

No hurry to provide it because translation quality goes over translation speed. 
Looking forward to it. 

Permission to translate this wonderful topic to my local board "naija board" pidgin language

[1miau]

Here is a Translation in Bangali Language : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=631891.msg62985885#msg62985885

Thanks for your efforts to write such an important topic

Nice to have your translation, I've added it to my list.
Your effort is much appreciated to contribute to our forum and to help educating more forum members. 

Permission to translate this wonderful topic to my local board "naija board" pidgin language

Hello 
Of course, you have my permission to translate it. I've reserved it in my list for you:

Language	translated by	Title
___________________________	_____________________	_______________________________________________________________________
Nigeria (Naija) (reserved)	Chilwell	reserved

Please let me know here, when your translation is ready. 

[Chilwell]

Here is a Translation in Bangali Language : https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=631891.msg62985885#msg62985885

Thanks for your efforts to write such an important topic

Nice to have your translation, I've added it to my list.
Your effort is much appreciated to contribute to our forum and to help educating more forum members.  

Permission to translate this wonderful topic to my local board "naija board" pidgin language

Hello  
Of course, you have my permission to translate it. I've reserved it in my list for you:

Language	translated by	Title
___________________________	_____________________	_______________________________________________________________________
Nigeria (Naija) (reserved)	Chilwell	reserved

Please let me know here, when your translation is ready.  

Am done with the translation to my local board naija board "pidgin language" here is the link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5471236.new#new

Thank for the time you spended in preparing this wonderful topic

[TravelMug]

Requesting permission as well to translate this to our local board: Pilipinas.

Hello 
Of course, we would be very happy to have a translation from you. 
I've added an entry in my list and reserved it for you:

Language	translated by	Title
___________________________	_____________________	_______________________________________________________________________
Pilipinas (reserved)	TravelMug	reserved

No hurry to provide it because translation quality goes over translation speed. 
Looking forward to it. 

Here is the translation: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5471357.0

Thanks for the opportunity to translate this great topic of yours to our local board.

[Chilwell]

Please let me know here, when your translation is ready. 

Am so sorry if what I have done is wrong.
I just want to remind you that this two translations are ready so that you can add them to you list.
Thanks

Here is the translation: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5471357.0

Thanks for the opportunity to translate this great topic of yours to our local board.

Am done with the translation to my local board naija board "pidgin language" here is the link: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5471236.new#new

Thank for the time you spended in preparing this wonderful topic

[1miau]

Here is the translation: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5471357.0

Am so sorry if what I have done is wrong.
I just want to remind you that this two translations are ready so that you can add them to you list.

Hello, you two.  
Sorry for delay, I've been very busy recently.
Your translations are now added to my list. Good job, all of them have been approved.

Language	translated by	Title
___________________________	_____________________	_______________________________________________________________________
Pilipinas	TravelMug	Mahalagang malaman: Pagkakaiba ng Coin / Token at malilim na gawi sa marketing
Nigeria (Naija)	Chilwell	Things wey dey Important to know: Difference Coin / Token and shady marketing

But @TravelMug, could you please add the disclaimer above the translated topic, like Chilwell did? It's easier to read, that it's a translation and where it's from.  

Thanks for the opportunity to translate this great topic of yours to our local board.

Of course, it's a pleasure that nice people like you two are interested to translate my topics.  

[TravelMug]

Here is the translation: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5471357.0

Am so sorry if what I have done is wrong.
I just want to remind you that this two translations are ready so that you can add them to you list.

Hello, you two.  
Sorry for delay, I've been very busy recently.
Your translations are now added to my list. Good job, all of them have been approved.

Language	translated by	Title
___________________________	_____________________	_______________________________________________________________________
Pilipinas	TravelMug	Mahalagang malaman: Pagkakaiba ng Coin / Token at malilim na gawi sa marketing
Nigeria (Naija)	Chilwell	Things wey dey Important to know: Difference Coin / Token and shady marketing

But @TravelMug, could you please add the disclaimer above the translated topic, like Chilwell did? It's easier to read, that it's a translation and where it's from.  

Thanks for the opportunity to translate this great topic of yours to our local board.

Of course, it's a pleasure that nice people like you two are interested to translate my topics.  

I already edited and put in to the top as you have requested.

And it's a pleasure to translate this to our local boards to help others understand the difference between a coin and token because they could also fall for the shady marketing by many projects. Specially that we are approaching the bitcoin block halving next year and for sure there will be a explosion of shady projects.

[ThemePen]

Dear 1miau,

I am submitting a request to reserve my seat to translate this topic in my local language Urdu. I really seem this topic helpful therefore I decided to translate this topic. Let me know if you approve my application to translate this topic and then I will start my work on translation I will wait for your kind reply.

Thanks.