Topic: rpietila Altcoin Observer - page 20. (Read 387519 times)

It's going.

I noticed nothing was said in the missives about the database.  I'm just curious as to how it's going - I understand many of you guys work after hours.  I don't see it as either your obligation OR that you're giving me a gift - just working a project you are excited about and may drop at some point.  So please don't yell

How's the database going?

Huge news...surprising to me that the upside has been almost exclusively XCP.  I would have thought other alts would go up more in sympathy.

I like the user interface for that index.  For some reason, though, when I click "all" I still only get about a week of data.  Maybe they just started?  Would be nice to look at a (much) longer timeframe.

Yes, bullish news


ps There's an alt index here which may be useful http://openfxmarket.com/

For what it's worth, Graham and I are working together on this project.  I posted some preliminary stats about the index way upthread and made some weekly posts for a while, but as we got closer to something that could be displayed more easily, and as people stopped asking, I stopped posting. 

We have elected to stick with cap-weighted indexes, as per the S&P (and most other popular indexes, with the exception of Dow Jones) methodology as opposed to a price-weighted approach.  This appears to match Risto's approach.  One thing to keep in mind, however, is that if one is using cap numbers, they are typically priced in fiat, most often USD.  However, alts are most frequently priced in terms of BTC.

When BTC falls, even if the alt price (in BTC terms) held (for example, XMR at, say, .0035 BTC), the cap should fall.  BUT this is somewhat offset by the fact that most alts have some kind of constant emission, so that it is possible for the price in BTC terms to decline AND for BTC to decline, but for the cap to actually increase in the face of all that. 

In other words, it is not completely impossible that all or most of the reason that the alt caps did not decline as much as BTC could be related to emissions.  My guess is that emissions are NOT enough to make up that substantial difference, though. 

That said, it still seems as though using market caps is the most appropriate way of measuring.  The emissions issue vs. priced-in-BTC seems to give a reasonable trade-off that might be as close as one can get to a true index-type value. 

We are choosing our basket of alts (31 currently) using a combination of cap AND volume.  BCN, for example, which makes Risto's list, is not in our basket due to low volume.  We're working on a way to use 30 day volume to normalize the selection process just a little bit.

One other thing I would note is that we think our project is actually fairly important because it will allow a user to avoid sample size issues by choosing longer time periods in addition to the time period that they would like to see.  Risto has chosen a fairly short period of time...less than 3 weeks.  Alts have held up well in that time period.  However, in the 8/14 through 8/18 time period, our basket of alts lost approximately 40% of their cap compared to BTC losing 30%. Why the divergence?  With more data, we might be able to figure these things out.   

Ultimately, we think the work is pretty important, in part, because there just are not accurate analyses out there.  I think the question above is, basically, one about the beta of alts.  In order to really figure out the answer, there has to be some longer-term data crunched.  When that work is done, it will make a LOT more sense to contextualize this data over shorter periods, say, to analyze the impact of the BCX/XMR situation.  To be sure, there have been periods where XMR outperformed the alt basket as a whole by a fairly wide margin. 

There are some other indexes out there.  Many of them include BTC, which makes it fairly useless for judging the beta of alts.  Most of them show that alts, in fact, do have a much higher beta than BTC.  As BTC has declined, alts seem to have declined a whole helluva lot more--looking over the course of several months.  However, we felt like we could not be sure of their methodologies.  We also felt like their user interfaces could use some improvements...for people looking to answer the very questions asked above!

In short, I'm not sure I'd take Risto's numbers as a guarantee that alts are more resilient than BTC...just that they have behaved that way for the last few weeks.  That was decidedly not the case in August.  Overall?  Stay tuned!

No. Some of them use on-demand application level swapping of in-memory data to disk, which is effectively the same as using virtual memory. None of them store the block chain in a database the way Bitcoin and its clones do.

do the other cryptonote coins have database?

Feathercoin is a temporary miracle. That pennystocks do better in times of carnage ... hmyes, but only as a trampoline for hours at most. More a nothing left to loose thing. Exspecting that to falter soonest.

Peercoin was always a top marketcap Altcoin with innovation, and there recently has been some more movement out there. They do deliver.

XMR usually never delivers, but let's place that on "delayed, pending". They make a good job on surviving recently. Was woundering if opensource code of other CN coins could get included there. For database stuff, perhaps.


Clearly "oversold" if such a term exists. The slingback is due once BTC just stops sneezing for a day.

CounterParty remains one of the most under-appreciated projects in crypto currently, still very much flying under the radar. Stock issuance is just one facet of the protocol. It's benefits to p2p betting (Gambling,feeds,derivatives) are already immense. Physical -> blockckain representation asset trading (precious metals, commodities etc) is another element counterparty already has shown signs of enhancing.

overstock wants to build a new kind of wall street on top of counterparty / xcp

byrne wants to invest a single digit millions' amount to get the stuff started

https://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2iho5p/counterparty_founder_robby_dermody_hired_by/

maybe today I feel a little like the early adopter guys felt when bitcoin started, since I am one of the burners of xcp back in january (at the same time disclaimer ).

Thanks for you opinion ,  It is very appreciated . Now I would like a little analysis from @rpietila if is it possible. Thanks and have a nice day .

Yes over a three week period this there will be divergences but over a year or more the overall trend does follow across many altcoins. Here are some examples:

Bitcoin, XBT/USD:  1 year BTC-E (For reference) http://www.cryptocoincharts.info/pair/btc/usd/btc-e/1-year
Litecoin, LTC/XBT:  1 year BTC-E http://www.cryptocoincharts.info/pair/ltc/btc/btc-e/1-year
Peercoin, PPC/XBT: 1 year BTC-E http://www.cryptocoincharts.info/pair/ppc/btc/btc-e/1-year
Namecoin, NMC/XBT: 1 year BTC-E http://www.cryptocoincharts.info/pair/nmc/btc/btc-e/1-year
AnonCoin, ANC/XBT: 1 year Cryptsy http://www.cryptocoincharts.info/pair/anc/btc/cryptsy/1-year
Freicoin, FRC/XBT: 1 year Cryptsy http://www.cryptocoincharts.info/pair/frc/btc/cryptsy/1-year

Now over a shorter period there are all sorts of divergences. It is also possible that the altcoin market is even anticipating an XBT/USD bull run. Then there are coin specific questions. It is no secret for example that XMR took a beating due to the BCX affair when was then followed by uncertainty regarding the emission rate. One also needs an alt-coin with a valid alternative to Bitcoin and with a community willing to support the coin over the long term. The merit of the alternative may even be less important than the community commitment. Freicoin may be an example of the latter.

Well since I published this, XMR is creeping up...

Also, perhaps with XMR was a self fulfilling prophecy with regard to the recent decline. From what I can tell XMR seems to attract many people such as yourself who have no interest in alts other than XMR itself. So perhaps all these XMR holders were under the impression that alts nose dived along with Bitcoin(I would have expected this as well for the most part I think) and sold off in anticipation of that.

Only blind BTC fanatics (not your case) could not see this - I made a BTC fortune from alts.

Some are here for the long term (as BTC) whether anybody likes it or not.

You didn't ask me, but I keep seeing these catch phrases applied to that coin:

"Designing Profit"

and

"The Profit Network"

Reading those lines make me want to never touch it in a million years. Sounds like something that you would find in an MLM scam.

What's interesting though is that the opposite I'm pretty sure is true though: that alts make big gains when Bitcoin does. Perhaps due to all these new holders of BTC seeking some leverage.

If BTC starts making a come back things could get pretty interesting. Especially because as you've shown, not much has happened to alts since Sept. 15th.

@rpietila what about for the new altcoin ARCHcoin ? Can you give to the community an opinion  .


Have a nice day .

Sometimes it's good to do primary research. The thing I took for granted - that altcoins are shattered when BTC sneezes - has proven to be a myth of highest order:


I selected Sept 15 to be the start of data due to that being the start of BTC fall (admittedly, it was selected to give a bad picture about BTC). My intention was to show that alts fall in sympathy, and generally leverage BTC's move down. This had been my experience with XMR.

Now, the data seems to give quite an opposing testimony. Over this period of time, only two alts (XMR and BTCD) exceeded BTC's decline. When BTC declined by 34% (seen above as "66% remaining"), the basket of alts (I used cubic-root weighting) declined by only 17%.

What do you think of this? 

This would be for me, thank you. Or the one with top-30