I would like just to get something out of my chest. Just speak some words about the current state of the crypto currencies, the projects, and some things more. Probably many (possibly the majority of the active users in the "Altcoins" section) would feel struck by these words, many would not agree, many could refute with other arguments, but whatever, it's just a personal appeal for everyone, even if nobody agrees/cares.
We see that most of the thousands of crypto projects there have some kind of "self-funding" way. It can be a premine (sometimes really large ones), a governance/developer fee (a considerable high percentage in almost all the cases), even something called "founders rewards" in some cases. All of this with the excuse to "cover the costs" of the project... right? But let's think... Are those costs so expensive a the point that they need such high percentage of all the supply just to fund themselves and maintain their project? Or it's just an excuse to retain such value to themselves? And why are there few community projects able to maintain themselves without such self-funding ways, but with voluntary work and donations, like Bitcoin has been doing for a decade? I understant it was the first mover, the pioneer, but it survived for all those long 10 years without needing any of this. Now, imagine if Bitcoin had some developer fee like 10% of all what is mined. Seems ridiculous, an unjustifiably high value, right? But many altcoins have values like that, or even higher. But anyway, how about some (few) altcoins that are doing very well without any of this for years already?
So, I really can't see a reason for it. Is self-funding REALLY necessary? I don't think so. But wait, now, there's an even better way: Make an ICO. Just issue millions, dozens of millions of tokens without any utility at all, sell half of it (or even less) with lots of promises, lots of "forced" use cases, and, of course, a shiny "white paper" (which is, in most of the cases, just a slides show compressed to a PDF file with promises, lots of "blah blah blah", a fancy style and some specifications, not what a TRUE white paper is intended to be: a strictly and rigorously formatted document with a solution for a true problem or proposing a new protocol, scientifically proving it).
That's what most of the projects are today. That's what crypto has become. Sometimes it seems that it was completely diverted from its initial objectives. Few legit and good projects are an exception of this, and they keep doing very well (obviously I'll not mention any other project there besides Bitcoin, the most legit of all in my honest opinion); but, unfortunately, I've just described the majority of the altcoins. And this thing only keeps happening because others support them. Others invest on them. And some consequences come with this, specially regarding the exchanges (I'll explain that later).
Please, don't take me bad, I can't just generalize and say that EVERY altcoin that can be related to what I've said is like that. I know that few (really few ones) have some good intentions (maybe), and had some kind of pre sale, or even a really small percentage of funding to cover real costs, like huge development teams working and dedicating full-time at it. But they are really few ones, so, I'll speak about the other ones, the majority.
Finally, there are some appeals I would like to make to specific groups...
An appeal to the investors
I know that most of the people actually are in the game just for the money. Understandable. They're investors after all. But unfortunately, it means that most of them don't care about the project itself at all, neither it's philosophy, the principles behind it, the community, how the project started, who's behind it... and many other important aspects. They just throw their money at something, and expect the huge profits that crypto can sometimes provide without making any research, not about the project itself, neither on how crypto works, or for what crypto was made in the first place. Zero research. Zero understanding of the philosophy behind the cryptocurrencies. And in this proccess, many of those projects get pumped, and then, their teams (some intentional scammers) fill their pockets with their really huge "share" of their project. Sometimes the investor even gets scammed in the end.
Nothing against the project's creators and devs having some coins that they legitimately mined/bought, but not if they earned it "from nothing" or from forced means. If investors want to get some returns, it's possible to have them with good and legit projects. It's possible at the same time you help crypto with what it was intended to be. Stop pumping shit and easily enriching possible scammers. A little of research and knowledge about the philosophy behind cryptocurrencies is welcome.
An appeal to the exchanges
We see that most of the exchanges today are always charging fees (some really large ones, depending on the exchange) to list any new coin in their trading system. Is understandable that exchanges have expenses, it's normal. Expenses with servers, expenses with technicians, expenses with maintenance, expenses with security (something very critical and crucial in crypto), and whatever else what costs resources to maintain. But this practice is a major influencer for the state that crypto is today (if not the biggest one). THAT is maybe the biggest excuse that teams behind projects give when adopting a self-funding way and retaining a huge percentage of their coin supplies, or making an ICO to raise funds. Also, in most of the cases, I just don't see a reason for such high listing fees for any projects. Exchanges are a fundamental part of the Bitcoin/Altcoin ecosystem (for now), and are intended to make profits and maintain themselves with trading/withdrawal/deposit fees, and nothing more. I see many exchanges that have NEVER charged ANY listing fee, and are working well for a long time (some for years without any security issue or decreased performance and efficiency). But now, they are a minority part of all the existing exchanges.
By charging such huge listing fees (in my opinion, just for profits largely, not just to cover costs), it creates the sentiment that it's impossible for new coins, the "legit" and good intentioned ones without any self-funding, to have one place to be bought or traded. It creates the sentiment that you MUST have a self-funding way to be able to have a decent working project with enought liquidity in the market.
You can think: But if a project is good enough and legit, it certainly will be able to maintain itself by community engagement, donations and voluntary work, right? I agree. But this take a really long time. Maybe years in the current state of crypto, while we keep seeing scams and not so legit projects "succeeding" in the markets, something facilitated and catalyzed by all what I said so far. If things regarding this aspect were better, the good projects that wants to keep existing according to the initial concepts of a cryptocurrency wouldn't take so long to reach a legit and decent self-sustaining state that doesn't defy the philosophy behind crypto. So, maybe it's time to start to look better at what the exchanges list in their trading systems, and give a chance for the truly good projects.
And finally, an appeal to the community
If you're in the game, either just for the money or not only for the money, if you're willing to give your time to support other projects than Bitcoin, do it fairly at least. Don't spend your time with projects on which is obvious the intention of not providing anything useful but uniquely enriching their creators. This only harms crypto in general, damages all the ecosystem and completely detract the initial puproses of why crypto was made for. Crypto was made FROM the community FOR the community. Crypto wasn't made to have a centralising team of few ones behind it retaining and controlling such big amounts for no reason at all.
Stop wasting your time with them.
Stop supporting them.
Stop enriching them.
Stop f*****g up crypto.
I hope everybody understands my points at least, even if I'm wrong at some parts, and sorry if I was disrespectful in any way.
Peace.