I’m happy to see a discussion beginning on the branding of this coin. It looks like the discussion here is about whether to continue with BottleCaps as an end-of-world scenario coin catering to enthusiasts of the video game Fallout, or to begin to reach out to the broader audience of crypto enthusiasts with a totally new strategy and positioning.
I don’t want this fundamentally decent coin to just fade away and I’m sure I’m not the only one that’s absolutely frustrated and disgusted with the loss of market value after months of supporting the coin through mining and otherwise.
If we look at the positives of this coin, what we have are fast transaction times, automatic checkpointing, no forking issues, proof of stake that works, the ability to run strictly on proof of stake, and solid development support. If we look at the negatives of this coin, its USD value is down 94% since July; its BTC value down 98%, there have been no recent forum posts from new members, there’s no demonstrated community effort, mining activity is at all time lows, and the trading on Cryptsy consists of mostly bots and autosells.
I don’t deny the BottleCaps theme is a great concept for a coin, however I got involved here not because of that, but because of the technicals of the coin. I remain unconvinced that the BottleCaps theme is one that can be appealing to many people outside of this Fallout enthusiast group. I would really like to see this coin being adopted by a much wider audience, and unfortunately I think the only way we can make that happen is by starting with a name change.
To me, in terms of names, a Classical coin name makes the most sense for broad based adoption. Remember, most of the world hasn’t even heard of BitCoin, and most of those who have aren’t aware of alternative coins. As the terms BitCoin and even LiteCoin become more and more mainstream and part of everyday language, there is a psychological effect of association. Any name that sounds ‘like’ BitCoin instantly triggers a subconscious connection to what BitCoin is, and there is enormous value in that effect.
If you take a look at
http://coinmarketcap.com right now and view the 10 coins with highest market capitalization, you may notice something.
Bitcoin
Litecoin
Peercoin
Namecoin
Novacoin
Feathercoin
Primecoin
WorldCoin
Terracoin
Mincoin
The top ten coins with the highest market value all have what I consider Classical CryptoCurrency names. What I mean by Classical is a name which is most closely identified with BitCoin but not confused with BitCoin.
The main qualities of these names are that 10 of 10 include the word Coin, 7 of 10 have a one-syllable prefix, while the other 3 have a two-syllable prefix.
In my opinion, sticking to Classical Crypto Name for a coin name can have enormous broadband appeal and inherent value for some interesting psychological reasons. Renaming BottleCaps to CapCoin, for example, would follow in that Classical coin naming convention.
I’m not saying there’s anything remarkable about the name CapCoin, but rather that it would be a solid Classical name which could be a starting point for attracting investors, growing a community, and building a brand and infrastructure behind it. My argument here is: Be Classical in naming, but remarkable in everything else.
Again, my reason for supporting a name change is that I think there is enormous potential for this coin, but only by appealing to a wider audience than just Fallout enthusiasts. A change to CapCoin would be minimal but significant as the trading symbol could stay the same and traders could still refer to these as CAPs or CAP in chat. The coin’s origin as BottleCaps and links to Fallout would always be listed in the Wikipedia entry, but a new marketing strategy would have to be devised. Google searches for the coin would be unique and would always come up as the #1 listing.
Obviously a name change on its own won’t do much, and what this coin desperately needs is more of a community effort and organization. It takes an enormous amount of work to support a coin and we can’t expect Mullick to do development and everything else. To be serious, there needs to at least be a website, twitter account, facebook account and private forum. I would hope there would be some interest in a regularly scheduled chat for building this community. The momentum has to start somewhere.
Just my thoughts for consideration.