Topic: Do not invest in alternate cryptocurrencies or you will lose money! (Read 3309 times)

In terms of profit, only alternative coins can give X. when the coins will be integrated into real life many of them will be in demand and will not disappear from the market

Fiat currency as in money with value only through the use of government force? Such as?

Fiat currencies made of various materials predated using gold & siver as currencies. L2readhistory!

You give merchants very little credit.

Many companies are already multi-nationals operating in multiple currencies, a lot of tourist shops in Europe and even some in the USA accept Euros, Dollars, Pounds + other local currencies. Multi-currency Cash registers are relatively commonplace in airports and accross continental Europe. Most people "get" the concept of multiple currencies and exchange rates and have no problem at all adopting them.

I agree that accepting CryptoCurrency *at all* is a big jump to make for an online retailer, and an even bigger jump for a bricks-and-mortar shop, but once one is in, all can be in.

Back before Fiat, Gold & Silver were two separate metals being widely used worldwide as currency, with various other metals trading around the periphery, Copper, Lead, Tin etc. so I think at the very least there is room for 2 "metals" in the market place, probably more.
It's wrong to say any physical matter can be used as a currency, a coin made from sodium or sulphur would be ridiculously impractical and last about an hour.

Gold and Silver have a number of unique properties which make them perfect for use as currency. A few other metals such as Platinum and Palladium also fit the bill, but realistically you are looking at maybe 8 or 10 metals that could realistically be used as currency.

Not with merged mining. There could be many different block chains each tied together with merged mining, and each with different properties making them useful for different things. Why are you arguing so hard against the possibility of alternate chains complementing Bitcoin (or whatever the most widely used block chain ends up being)?

Much to loose DeathAndTaxes?

Imprecise language.  Maybe not every type of matter but there are dozens of rare stable istopes which could be used as currency.  Gold just happens to be the most popular.


Why?  Today the same could be done with digital fiat currencies and forex accounts, over 200 different currencies are traded.  Yet 99% of merchants don't accept 200+ fiat currencies. We could mint material coins in dozens of rare stable istopes but we don't.  There is no market demand for Xenon or Technetium for example.

You can hide away the fact that all crypto-currencies are equal but they aren't. There is risk in accepting an alternate to the mainstream.  "Auto-swapped" isn't instantaneous, guaranteed, or without risk.  The exchange will require sufficient liquidity and the larger the merchant the less likely an exchange can support them without price volatility.  To hedge merchants would need to increase prices in alternate currencies (to ensure that they will get all of that currencies traded @ rate quoted or better).  That reduces the utility of an alternate. 

Much like gold and silver has gained 99% of precious metal market a single or few crypto-currencies will gain dominance.  Once one currency is "good enough" there is no real interest or demand by merchants to adopt another.
The value/utility of doing that doesn't warrant the cost/risk/complexity.  You can pretend instant conversions have no cost but they do. 

By that logic there is no reason why all matter can't be currency.  Lots of rarer harder to extract materials than gold or silver.

So just as you can have:
Bitcoin
ScamCoin
CrapCoin
JunkCoin
StupidCoin
MyGodArePeopleFallingForItCoin

You can also have:
Gold Coins
Silver Coins
Platnum Coins
Palladium Coins
Helium Coins (He3)
Xenon Coins (Xe126)
....
287 other coins (even excluding radioactive isotopes)
...
Carbon Coins

However just like with Gold it is likely one currency will remain the most desirable and retain the most value/utility.  People are crazy if they think in the future some merchant is going to accept 498439048239403849023 different coins. Hell getting them to accept Bitcoin is difficult (just like getting a merchant to take a Gold coin).  Expecting them to accept ScamCoin or Xenon Coins is just naive.

I smell fear in OP.

This is definitely true, but since there is no basis for any of them besides demand, if demand is significantly split between, they all do lose value. At this point, bitcoin obviously has the most to lose, but it will also be very hard to break in to that market because of its existing popularity.

No, this is not true. Both gold and silver exist in a limited supply on the planet Earth, and both can serve as money. There is no reason why any number of finite supply *coin block chains can not simultaneously exist.

I don't see the problem with it, both chains benefit from the increased security, and if btc really does take off I don't see most transactions happening through the blockchain anyway so I'm not concerned about the bloat.

I will agree (with an old post of MaGNeT) on one thing - mining for the lulz
I've put my name into the coinbase of a block in a lot of them (ix, i0, scv1, gg, tb)
(I guess I'll get around to tb0 and any others I've missed soon)

But I've ignored nmc coz their hack and lies on their web site about the fact they put data into the bitcoin block chain.
... and worse, a pull into the bitcoin git recently ( https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/commit/074d584a04ee80123001728ad63d4fd7e9adb828 ) allows any merged mining coin to put extra data into the BTC block chain using the standard bitcoin interface.

So will the next cryptocurrency also add extra crap into the bitcoin block chain like nmc?
That commit pretty much leaves the way open and says yes go ahead and do it
(I raised an issue on git requesting the commit to be removed due to it being deceptive and not stating the truth behind the reason it exists, but obviously that's not the normal channel to do it that way)

Thanks for the heads up OP, but where the heck were you a month ago??

Why?


What?

Lolcust, I doesn't matter whether it will be on the visible or on the dark side of the Moon. Just announce that your 14 millions of premined coins are going for the space program development. It will sound more fun than the pedestrian faucet or some such. Maybe then they will let you keep your premine?

Per aspera ad astra!

Support the free trade on Earth by banking on the Moon!

The whole Bielarus will be proud of you.

Oh, don't get me wrong.  I love alt chains myself, and hop on each one that comes along like it was the freshest block at a proportional pool.  I have no problems with taking BTC from the ignorant and greedy.

As far as I0C, I think more likely we'll see exchanges re-open.  DoubleC had a great idea -- impose a real time limit on how far back a 51% attack can rewrite the block chain.  3 days should be *more* than plenty.   Hell, 24 hours should be enough.  Then exchanges could have a settlement period of that +1 hour to protect themselves from a double spend, and everything becomes better with the world.  The most secure chains get the highest valuations, the amount available to steal from less secure chains makes the effort not "worth it", and we all sit around the campfire holding hands and singing songs.

In fact, that may be just the gimmick for my scamchain.  Time limits on chain rewrite.  Now, to come up with a catchy name and a premine amount that's egregious while at the same time not being too offensive...

Well, in my opinion, the only useful change was in i0coins and that was copied directly from the bitcoin git beta code:
Wallet encryption.

They have found bugs/issues with making certain changes, but in every case that has been lack of planning and lack of skill, not forethought.
(and I wont even bother to comment on CPU-mining ...)

If people really did understand the reality of the thread title (which I guess many don't) these alt currencies wouldn't really matter and have their use as testing grounds ... that should then be thrown away afterwards

This is precisely correct.   It's very convenient that every shitcoin chain launches almost simultaneously with an exchange to trade them on.  Sure there are "true believers" -- one guy on btce had no idea lolcust had premined 6 years worth of coins and that person had about 20% of the current bids.  Those people are the ones who will always line up to give you and the founders money even if it's only a few thousand $.  Which is why we'll see a shitcoin chain per week until "buy and hold" speculators run out of BTC or dollars or both.

You are racing other people to cash out with alt chains.  Not a single one of them has been anything but a vastly accelerated cash grab pyramid.  Which is too bad, by the time a truly innovative improvement over bitcoin comes along people will write it off because of the horrible press all the alt chains have been getting.

Not impossible, and way worth it due to sheer image bonus. The Darkside Transaction Mixer...mmmmmm... tastes like candy.