My take on where Alt Coins have been and where they are going...
-- This alt coin world started off with the "legacy coins" ...the immediate followers of Bitcoin:
--- Litecoin,
--- Peercoin,
--- Namecoin,
--- DevCoin,
--- Digitalcoin.
These were small and early innovations on their big brother BTC. Theses coins were fairly distributed for the most part and they are still around. Compared to the latest innovative offering, there probably looking a bit aged, but some of these still have an active community and are actively working on adoption, like Peercoin and Digitalcoin. Because they virtually had no premine/instamine, investing feels safer with these legacy coins, as they wont be prone to pump and dump. Of course they seem to languish for the most part, like Litecoin. If BTC ever goes ballistic in price again -- like it did Nov 2013 -- these legacy coins will go up too, so in a way you can view investing in them as buying into BTC, but with smaller shares.
-- Nearly every other coin... these are the pump and dump coins. Some have come and gone, too many are still around, and there's more coming out every day ad-nauseum. These coins have huge instamines / premines / questionable IPOs. For the most part, these are really just cloned coins: mined, hyped and pumped and dumped on unwary bagholders. Easy to find these coins: just go to coinmarketcap.com, and look at the price chart for "All" to see the entire life of the coin. If you see a huge spike at the very beginning of a coins launch, and then a quick drop-off or long tapering down, then welcome to the classic lifecycle of your everyday pump and dump coin. These are the bread and butter coins for Devs and Miners. No point in naming these coins, its really just about everything else out there. You might see an occasional 2nd and 3rd pump and dump spike on these charts, but really not much more life than that. Please...don't be an unwary bagholder!
-- Innovative Coins, or attempts at innovation...
--- Ripple / Stellar
--- Bitshares
--- Counterparty
--- Monero
--- MaidSafeCoin
--- NuBits/NuShares
--- Tether
--- A few others...
At the very least these coins are trying something different then your prototypical P&D coin. Whether they ever get adopted, and break out as big as Bitcoin ...unlikely, but who knows.
So, as to the the future of Alt Coins: looks bleak, with ever more scam coins being dumped, and maybe there will be upcoming regulation from Fincen (witness the recent $700K fine on Ripple).
In the meanwhile, while the going is good... if one were to invest in Alt Coins today, I would say diversify:
--- Get a few "Blue Chippers" like Peercoin or Digitalcoin, I personally like them, more honest than most coins.
--- Take a chance on a few innovative coins: i.e. Ripple is going after Financial Tech sector in a big way.
--- You can play the pump & dump coins: go in low and be prepared to hold long, before the next pump.
My 2 Crypto Coins,
H.
Topic: Future of Altcoins (Read 1279 times)
aside from perhaps 5-6 alts, it's crap
I don't think that development is that important. Many coins are putting "fancy" and pretty much useless features instead focusing on the most important part of the "game" - adoption. Currently 95% of them are like a girl who is putting makeup in front of the mirror, but she's not going out of her home.
Great analogy, and I agree fully. I think we will see a move from traditional clones to novel tech and asset backed coins with increased emphasis on marketing roles to promote adoption
I don't think that development is that important. Many coins are putting "fancy" and pretty much useless features instead focusing on the most important part of the "game" - adoption. Currently 95% of them are like a girl who is putting makeup in front of the mirror, but she's not going out of her home.
Honestly, I think a lot of coins have given up on adoption. When they do that however, they become part of the problem rather than the solution.
The prospect for alternates looked pretty dim, years ago, when Coinbase teased but ultimately refused to add NXT and Litecoin (the end result is both coins tanked in value). Alternates are unlikely to see any adoption if the top exchanges refuse to add them.
As it stands most of the 'Bitcoin Industry' is "Bitcoin Maximalist", meaning hostile to alternates. A good example is Coindesk which has a media blackout on many of the leading alternates.
There is a theoretical question if this 'protectionism' will ultimately hurt Bitcoin in the long run. If we consider Doge in the beginning, alternates do have the capacity to bring in new users into crypto and new capital (never mind you need to buy BTC to acquire them) and eventually that spreads back into Bitcoin - so by being hostile to alternates, Bitcoin has inevitably denied itself a lot of capital and users.
Cryptocurrency could look a lot different today if there wasn't protectionism for Bitcoin - like we'ld probably have multiple alternates with 9 figure values (just the rumor of being on CoinBase almost sent NXT to $100+ million) and a lot of outside capital and many brand new users would come into crypto, chasing fortunes no less.
As it stands most of the 'Bitcoin Industry' is "Bitcoin Maximalist", meaning hostile to alternates. A good example is Coindesk which has a media blackout on many of the leading alternates.
There is a theoretical question if this 'protectionism' will ultimately hurt Bitcoin in the long run. If we consider Doge in the beginning, alternates do have the capacity to bring in new users into crypto and new capital (never mind you need to buy BTC to acquire them) and eventually that spreads back into Bitcoin - so by being hostile to alternates, Bitcoin has inevitably denied itself a lot of capital and users.
Cryptocurrency could look a lot different today if there wasn't protectionism for Bitcoin - like we'ld probably have multiple alternates with 9 figure values (just the rumor of being on CoinBase almost sent NXT to $100+ million) and a lot of outside capital and many brand new users would come into crypto, chasing fortunes no less.
Yes I got into cryptos with dogecoin first. Then I realized that bitcoiners don't like shibes.
Never mind, now I still invest most of my money and time on dogecoin 
I've been into alts from the beginning (LTC etc) but just recently I've decided to pack it in. I still think there's a bright future for *some* alt coins, but for me the issue is time. I don't fancy keeping coins on exchanges, but updating & syncing 50+ coins has become way too time consuming now. Plus 50+ coins is a lot of potential for downloading a bogey like a trogan. IMO alts are just too time consuming now, so I'm rationalizing my stack down to 10 coins or less. I'm going to use the liberated funds to buy shares in the new coinomat index fund, that way I'm still investing in the top 20 alts, but don't have to spend time messing about with wallets and syncing, and being paranoid about trogans.
http://coinoindex.com/
http://coinoindex.com/
The pretty "features" are aimed at adoption usually.
The flaw in using cosmetics to try to drive adoption is that you are then basically putting lipstick on a pig. If your primary skill/feature is user-interface, making it easy and pretty and fun for users to run the program, then you might as well put all that fancy user-facing stuff onto a real coin like bitcoin, instead of wasting it on yet another garbage/scam coin.
Such "developers" are basically trying to scam people with illusion/appearance instead of applying their artistic skills to making something real and useful more attractive.
If they really think their cosmetics will cause massive adoption they should go long on bitcoin and release a wonderful easy to use pretty fun bitcoin client and rake in a fortune from the resultuing increase in bitcoin price...
That they prefer to create a whole scam to put their lipstick on kind of shows a lot about them...
-MarkM-
The flaw in using cosmetics to try to drive adoption is that you are then basically putting lipstick on a pig. If your primary skill/feature is user-interface, making it easy and pretty and fun for users to run the program, then you might as well put all that fancy user-facing stuff onto a real coin like bitcoin, instead of wasting it on yet another garbage/scam coin.
Such "developers" are basically trying to scam people with illusion/appearance instead of applying their artistic skills to making something real and useful more attractive.
If they really think their cosmetics will cause massive adoption they should go long on bitcoin and release a wonderful easy to use pretty fun bitcoin client and rake in a fortune from the resultuing increase in bitcoin price...
That they prefer to create a whole scam to put their lipstick on kind of shows a lot about them...
-MarkM-
I don't think that development is that important. Many coins are putting "fancy" and pretty much useless features instead focusing on the most important part of the "game" - adoption. Currently 95% of them are like a girl who is putting makeup in front of the mirror, but she's not going out of her home.
If the bolded part is true, then the second part doesn't matter, because you might as well just be developing a Bitcoin app instead of designing a cryptosystem. There are coins working on fixing fungibility, scalability and privacy. If it were easy, Bitcoin (or anyone else for that matter) would have already done it.
The bolded part is true. Let use not forget it says many coins not all coins.
That's why I didn't bold that part.
I don't think that development is that important. Many coins are putting "fancy" and pretty much useless features instead focusing on the most important part of the "game" - adoption. Currently 95% of them are like a girl who is putting makeup in front of the mirror, but she's not going out of her home.
If the bolded part is true, then the second part doesn't matter, because you might as well just be developing a Bitcoin app instead of designing a cryptosystem. There are coins working on fixing fungibility, scalability and privacy. If it were easy, Bitcoin (or anyone else for that matter) would have already done it.
The bolded part is true. Let use not forget it says many coins not all coins.
I don't think that development is that important. Many coins are putting "fancy" and pretty much useless features instead focusing on the most important part of the "game" - adoption. Currently 95% of them are like a girl who is putting makeup in front of the mirror, but she's not going out of her home.
If the bolded part is true, then the second part doesn't matter, because you might as well just be developing a Bitcoin app instead of designing a cryptosystem. There are coins working on fixing fungibility, scalability and privacy. If it were easy, Bitcoin (or anyone else for that matter) would have already done it.
I don't think that development is that important. Many coins are putting "fancy" and pretty much useless features instead focusing on the most important part of the "game" - adoption. Currently 95% of them are like a girl who is putting makeup in front of the mirror, but she's not going out of her home.
Exchanges are not really picking up any of the new mined coins, focus is now on development. Coin developers are getting more lazy with new releases which is sad.
If the launch or specs look like something from The Wolf of Wallstreet, then you are in for a ride down.
Short ride: You have the Aerotynes (more hype than development) that a crafty salesman can pitch successfully to naive or greed-blind investors and make some money by way of a P&D commission.
Long ride: Then you have the Steve Madden IPO where the brokerage (Dev team) has a large initial holding (not on the books of course) and dumps it when they've had a significant enough gain or when one of the major holders starts dumping.
If a coin's community is pitching itself as way earn income through investment, then you better believe that that is their main strategy. This kind of "you want to make money and I want to make money, so let's make money together" arrangement is why pyramid schemes are so successful at fleecing money from less savvy investors.
Short ride: You have the Aerotynes (more hype than development) that a crafty salesman can pitch successfully to naive or greed-blind investors and make some money by way of a P&D commission.
Long ride: Then you have the Steve Madden IPO where the brokerage (Dev team) has a large initial holding (not on the books of course) and dumps it when they've had a significant enough gain or when one of the major holders starts dumping.
If a coin's community is pitching itself as way earn income through investment, then you better believe that that is their main strategy. This kind of "you want to make money and I want to make money, so let's make money together" arrangement is why pyramid schemes are so successful at fleecing money from less savvy investors.
New altcoins are releasing day by day ,which makes it difficult to decide which altcoin to use or mine,so what happens to the majority of coins which are not used what is future of such altcoins??
good altcoins and devs already out in the game long ago. all new altcoins are get rich quick scam coins, just don't get caught holding bag. with these many new coins each day and unbelievable nonsense promises chance is soon you will fall into one of the traps, simple as that.
...which makes it difficult to decide...
It's not difficult if you're smart about it....so what happens to the majority of coins which are not used what is future of such altcoins??
Devs create.Traders profit.
Bagholders become butthurt complainers
New altcoins are releasing day by day ,which makes it difficult to decide which altcoin to use or mine,so what happens to the majority of coins which are not used what is future of such altcoins??
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