Topic: A warning about Alt-Coins - page 112. (Read 901725 times)

coins

goodboy ahahaha
I am new...

After the all the volatility, I would see the future lies on XPM side.

Are there any uses for the alt coins except being traded on exchanges? I get the value of Bitcoins and Namecoins but the rest ....?

Consider, you get a new job, your salary is .000017 bitcoins per hour. umm don't think the average person is going to go for that. That's all I'm saying, regardless of what its true value is. Woohoo I make .0035 bitcoins a year, I'm rich!!

If you want to consider the absolute number of bitcoins, then just change units to satoshis.  There are 10^8 =100,000,000 satoshis per bitcoin, so in your example they would be buying a house for 25,600 satoshis.  And even satoshis could be subdivided into smaller units by changing the code if there became a need for this.  

Already some think the unit of "bitcoin" is too large at about 100USD, so propose mBTC as the base unit.

Why not?

I'm fairly new to all this, and haven't found those discussions. But I guarantee you, that people aren't going to be buying a house with their .000256 bitcoins even if they are valued at $10,000,000,000 each.

This has been addressed a thousand times

The problem I see is that even though Bitcoins are extremely popular, there simply will never be enough of them for this ever to become a true currency, or to be used in any major way for currency exchange. So in order for a crypto currency to actually be used in a major way in the world economy there has to be a coin which has far, far more quantity.

In order for that to occur, the crypto currencies have to evlove, which occurs in the form of alt-coins. Eventually there will be a coin that truly does have the quantities to become a real currency for actual trade between nations, with enough volume to handle the multi-billion dollar exchanges that happen.

So, for now we have our current crop of alt-coins, and they are evolving, which is exciting, and I do in fact forsee a time when we have people using a common crypto currency instead of a fiat currency.

Unfortunately I think we'll see the fiat currencies fail before that really occurs, or maybe that will be what will make it a reality. But we'll need something besides Bitcoins to handle it.

Can you imagine if some future form of Bitcoin becomes the world trade currency instead of the US Dollar?

This could go horribly right. If the coins in question are valuable due to lack of selling pressure,
holders (mostly filthy rich even before that) will lobby for general adoption of it. Dollar will have
a hyperinflationary fit (to convince everyone), mining becomes environmental crime #1, borrowing rates
for the new 1%-coin will be usurious etc 

Theftcoin

I think proof-of-stake, or maybe even proof-of-burn, is a winner in the long run.  But both have problems.

In thinking about an alt-coin suitable for most money-flavored purposes in the long run, I reach a few conclusions;

1.  Ways to originate coins other than mining, tied into main currency economy.  For example, could issue initial coins to holders of savings bonds or stocks or etc, without requiring payment of coins back at savings bond maturity.  So coins become a part of the "interest" paid on a main-currency instrument.   Could do this not even needing cooperation of main entity issuing benchmark instrument; someone who can show that they own N shares of some asset through entirety of some period, gets coins proportional to holding.  But all of those coins count as "pre-mine", I guess.  If you don't come up with a crypto-secure way to show ownership of benchmark asset through the period, ownership of those coins must be awarded via genesis block.   Of course could do crypto-secure in parasitic way; someone shows they owned 150 bitcoin for two year period, gets 15 coin of new issue. 

2.  Proof of stake as main method of creating coins.  Needs some development.  Basic idea as I understand it is transaction outputs slightly greater than transaction inputs, depending on length of coin ownership of coins transacted, in an amount that mimics 'interest' paid over intervening time.  Not a bad idea; very simple.  Current implementations mix proof-of-stake with hashing proof-of-work.  Not sure that's a good idea; not sure how else do it.

3.  Recovery of dead coins.  This is sort of the anti side of proof-of-stake.  Part of the way of the world is that people sometimes lose coins.  Hard drives die, wallets get corrupted, coins are sent to unspendable addresses, etc.  I think any coin not transacted in seven years should be subject to yielding no PoS reward if actually spent.  If coins get ten years old untransacted, they should disappear, say twenty percent at a time, over following five years.  Allows disappeared money to be used to fund Proof-of-stake interest or if other means of mining used, keep positive stake in mining. 

4.  Block chain needs limit.  Much cheaper to keep 'ledger' that records which accounts own how much without recording every transaction.  Scales much better.  Transactions are evidence, not primary information.  Must be able to prove transactions, but once proven, ledger needs 'closed' so transactions don't hang around on chain forever. 

5.  Some way to clear payments faster than waiting for blockchain.  This is necessary for mainstream accept coin as money.  Someone wants to use vending machine, someone wants to pay for beer, etc.  Vendor doesn't want to wait 30 minutes to clear, spender doesn't want to wait 30 minutes to clear.  Need some strategy for issuing quick-clear or offline-clear coins like Chaum's e-cash or something, make place-holder coin until block chain catches up.

6.  In long run coin needs to be slightly inflationary;  Annual 2 or 3 percent growth in coin as units of account allows paying miners and so on without complicated tx fees, also allows economy to proceed, make more advantage by building businesses than just hoarding coins. 

Anyway, just my thoughts.

Edward.

I prefer LTC myself.   Its what I mine.  But the difficulty sucks since all the BTC guys started coming over.  I pretty much use my profit now just to play dice....

As far as I can tell, it is easy to prove that alt-coins were not premined, by including a verifiable timestamp in the genesis block.

The only reason pre-mining can pay off is that so few people do the due diligence, right?

After reading this article :http://www.coindesk.com/alydian-targets-big-ticket-miners-with-terahash-hosting/    I realized that why is good to have a coin like Ltc even with possible price volatility in the future when will be traded on mt gox. I prefer a market where are no big shareholders.This did not worked out with bitcoin .Unfortunatelly.

LTC and FTC have avoided the bitcoin problem of ASIC miners temporarily because of the more difficult algorithm and the lower value and interest in the coins but that won't last for very long.

Only LTC has right to call it self try altcoin, thats my apinion.. Ltc has powerefoll hash rate and its minded all the time.. Coin of the future bisede BTC

FTC, LTC and NVC now that BTC-E Destroyed the premined NVC it should be a good currency.

Not so sure about that........