I am responding to the comment that stated "almost all altcoins are a waste of time". I think that statement is ill informed and I am not sure what the motivation is to make a statement like that. There was a time in this very country (USA) when there were over 1800 currencies. Banks and businesses and individuals could issue currency. Some was backed by gold and others were backed by the honesty and integrity of the person issuing or the reputation of the person issuing.
There are many currencies in the world right now, both centrally controlled by governments and controlled by companies like Starbucks. When I first started using the Starbucks card they had accumulated over 1 billion dollars on deposit through the use of their card. People, like me, foolishly perhaps, traded our fiat currency for Star-bucks. I ran a trade exchange 30 years ago which used a barter currency we called "trade dollars".
Since December of 2003, I have used a currency for purchasing stock in private and public companies called Troptions. I literally traded millions of dollars in Troptions for millions of dollars in cash and stock. Here is a clip from an article that is still online regarding Troptions used for a $10,000,000 funding from Fountain Capital Fund, Inc. and Global Trading Partners Corp., companies I am/was president of, to New Dynamic Marketing, Inc., a company in which Bitcointalk memeber: "ezview" was the CEO.
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http://globenewswire.com/news-release/2006/01/27/338708/92973/en/New-Dynamic-Marketing-Inc-Receives-First-1-Million-of-Its-10-Million-Private-Placement.htmlFT. LAUDERDALE, Fla., Jan. 27, 2006 (PRIMEZONE) -- New Dynamic Marketing Inc. (NDYM) (Pink Sheets:NDYM) has raised $1 million of its $10 million private placement from Fountain Capital Fund Inc., a Pittsburgh-based private equity fund.
The funds were raised in a specialized financial instrument called a "troption". A "troption" or "trade option" is a derivative which derives its value from the underlying goods, services or currency it represents. "Troptions" were developed by Global Trading Partners Corp. a Florida-based company.
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Now thanks to ezview, Troptions: TRP is a crypto currency. As a barter currency it predates Bitcoin by 6 years but it was announced in this very forum last month and people are mining the "s--t out of it" as one of the members says.
Troptions, if you look it up on youtube has many videos explaining different ways of using them. I spent ten years of my life developing the idea.
Was it a "waste of time"?
Maybe.
But I sure would appreciate the chance to prove you wrong.
(Full disclosure: I developed the non-crypto version of Troptions (TroptionTrading.com) and Ezview developed the crypto version of Troptions "TRP" (Troptions.org). We have teamed up to make Troptions catch up to Bitcoins...We can dream can't we?")
Thanks,
Garland