This is a nice thread. I’ll summarize what is going on as quickly as possible which for me is not quickly.
BTC- no comment necessary
Doge and Litecoin – You dismissed these but you very well shouldn’t have. Litecoin has by far the biggest marketcap despite going down like 90%. There is a very real chance on the next BTC pump, that Litecoin will pump even harder. In fact it almost doubled on the Coinbase news. And for Doge, it has something that all these other coins listed don’t have, which is widely underestimated; it is cool. Ultimately when you put a cool product next to a different product that is far superior, it is often times that the cool product wins. Nobody wants to be a dork.
Darkcoin and Monero – I see a lot of arguments about which is better, and it really doesn’t matter. In a year from now BTC will have its own anon options with projects such as Coinjoin or Darkwallet which will make theses alts obsolete and pointless.
Namecoin – forget about it
XRP – lots and lots of more people are coming over to Ripple. It does what it does really well, but will that be enough?
PPC – Was a great step, but we can gather that probably Bitcoin’s POW or other newer and more robust forms of POS will win out in the future, which leaves Peercoin left behind in either scenario. To avoid this it would have to develop itself extensively, and to be fair lots of new development is coming out of the Peercoin team, but ultimately they are limited with their code and just what they can do. A newer and more robust 2.0 system will just have so much more functionality.
Now for the two more controversial coins because up until now, it has been pretty easy to discern.
Bitshares – Not really a coin as others have said but more of a 2.0 platform. As stated earlier they will do anything to make a buck and don’t hide it. So at least you know where they stand.
I agree that Bitshares will do anything to make money, and that includes lie and cheat. When you look at the amount of money going in and out of Bitshares, it is almost nothing and has a terrible liquidity problem, so even if you did put a lot of money in (which would be very easy) you would have a really hard time taking it out. If you look on the inside of Bitshares there is lots of liquidity. One may suspect that there are just a few Bitshare’s holders holding a lot of shares and trading with each other to fake liquidity. After all, they will do anything to make money. Bitshares also has shills out in large numbers plugging this coin and that is evident on this thread too.
NXT – is the most advanced feature wise of all these coins by far (note what I said about Doge earlier because sometimes it doesn't matter. In theory if features were more important NXT would have smashed Doge, but in reality it is the other way around). It can’t be counted out but has had a really rocky start. It’s platform is also quite splintered and as a first mover has had to forge into territory that was unknown and often didn’t do nearly as well as it could have. All around some of the most exciting work being done in crypto is being done at NXT, and will continue to be done there, but the real question is "Can they pull it off?"
My summary.
Value.
- Bitcoin
Probable Value.
- Dogecoin
- Litecoin
Possible value.
- Ripple
- Nxt
- Bitshares
No value.
- Namecoin
- Peercoin
- Darkcoin
- Monero
Missed platforms: Gems, Maidsafe, Storj, and NEM because each one of these will be bring new things to the market that no other platform has done before if they can pull it off.
The only two coins that have successfully pulled off their niche is Litecoin and Doge. Litecoin has achieved being the known trading pair to BTC and Doge has pulled off being cool. Those factors might not carry them through, but at least they won a battle. None of the other coins haven't really proven themselves enough to get into my "probable" category.
And one last test is to look at market cap. I feel like to be safe a coin needs to be over 10 million USD, and I also feel like anything under 1 million USD has utterly failed.
BTC- no comment necessary
Doge and Litecoin – You dismissed these but you very well shouldn’t have. Litecoin has by far the biggest marketcap despite going down like 90%. There is a very real chance on the next BTC pump, that Litecoin will pump even harder. In fact it almost doubled on the Coinbase news. And for Doge, it has something that all these other coins listed don’t have, which is widely underestimated; it is cool. Ultimately when you put a cool product next to a different product that is far superior, it is often times that the cool product wins. Nobody wants to be a dork.
Darkcoin and Monero – I see a lot of arguments about which is better, and it really doesn’t matter. In a year from now BTC will have its own anon options with projects such as Coinjoin or Darkwallet which will make theses alts obsolete and pointless.
Namecoin – forget about it
XRP – lots and lots of more people are coming over to Ripple. It does what it does really well, but will that be enough?
PPC – Was a great step, but we can gather that probably Bitcoin’s POW or other newer and more robust forms of POS will win out in the future, which leaves Peercoin left behind in either scenario. To avoid this it would have to develop itself extensively, and to be fair lots of new development is coming out of the Peercoin team, but ultimately they are limited with their code and just what they can do. A newer and more robust 2.0 system will just have so much more functionality.
Now for the two more controversial coins because up until now, it has been pretty easy to discern.
Bitshares – Not really a coin as others have said but more of a 2.0 platform. As stated earlier they will do anything to make a buck and don’t hide it. So at least you know where they stand.
I agree that Bitshares will do anything to make money, and that includes lie and cheat. When you look at the amount of money going in and out of Bitshares, it is almost nothing and has a terrible liquidity problem, so even if you did put a lot of money in (which would be very easy) you would have a really hard time taking it out. If you look on the inside of Bitshares there is lots of liquidity. One may suspect that there are just a few Bitshare’s holders holding a lot of shares and trading with each other to fake liquidity. After all, they will do anything to make money. Bitshares also has shills out in large numbers plugging this coin and that is evident on this thread too.
NXT – is the most advanced feature wise of all these coins by far (note what I said about Doge earlier because sometimes it doesn't matter. In theory if features were more important NXT would have smashed Doge, but in reality it is the other way around). It can’t be counted out but has had a really rocky start. It’s platform is also quite splintered and as a first mover has had to forge into territory that was unknown and often didn’t do nearly as well as it could have. All around some of the most exciting work being done in crypto is being done at NXT, and will continue to be done there, but the real question is "Can they pull it off?"
My summary.
Value.
- Bitcoin
Probable Value.
- Dogecoin
- Litecoin
Possible value.
- Ripple
- Nxt
- Bitshares
No value.
- Namecoin
- Peercoin
- Darkcoin
- Monero
Missed platforms: Gems, Maidsafe, Storj, and NEM because each one of these will be bring new things to the market that no other platform has done before if they can pull it off.
The only two coins that have successfully pulled off their niche is Litecoin and Doge. Litecoin has achieved being the known trading pair to BTC and Doge has pulled off being cool. Those factors might not carry them through, but at least they won a battle. None of the other coins haven't really proven themselves enough to get into my "probable" category.
And one last test is to look at market cap. I feel like to be safe a coin needs to be over 10 million USD, and I also feel like anything under 1 million USD has utterly failed.
Absolutely horrid assessment. You have no clue about value. Go learn what makes a successful product or company, then compare it to the cryptospace. Silly gimmicks don't make a product a bestseller, as Doge has learned from it's falling hashrate and declining interest previous to mergemining with Litecoin, it's the technology that does.
Frankly, every coin you listed as having no value, are the top and only ones that do have value, while the one you listed as having probable value, is worthless. Coinjoin is trivial and a 3rd party application, not to mention that most of those coin shuffling websites have been scams, and Darkwallet is basically Coinjoin, which means Bitcoin doesn't/won't have anonymity at the protocol level, and that's needed.
Go learn a thing or two.
I suggest you learn a thing or two and read better. I didn't say that a gimmick "will" win, I said often times it does. Additionally a silly gimmick did and has made Doge very successful. You say it doesn't, but it is very clear that it has for a fact. Your imagined world where tech always wins over gimmicks is not better than the real world of facts that I can prove by looking at market cap. For a fact Doge has a higher market cap, better liquidity and more transactions than Namecoin, Darkcoin, and Peercoin despite those being better tech wise. And Litecoin which you dismiss is still doing better than Namecoin, Darkcoin, Peercoin, Monero, and NXT combined. (full discloser, I own none of these coins)
Furthermore major corporations will often spend far more on advertising and marketing then they do or product development. Why? Because they know being cool and have a gimmick sells better than having good tech. It doesn't matter which product is actually better, it only matters which product the consumer thinks is better and most consumers are simply not knowledgeable about a product to truly discern which product is superior. This holds true with toothpaste, cell phones, jeans, sushi, cable packages, and prepackaged vacations. Gimmicks sell.
Furthemore, if gimmicks are so powerless why do you have a gimmick username that is a blatant rip off?
And as for anonymity it doesn't matter if it is achieved wallet side or protocol side. If you are anon then you are anon.
Go learn actual marketing and economics please. Mostly everything you've said is bullshit, I have no need to further discussion with you. Marketing places a huge role yes, but when it comes to these cryptocoins, such as Litecoin or Dogecoin, it's just blatant manipulation helping them. The majority of Litecoin's daily volume comes from 0% fee exchanges, so it's most likely that Litecoin's volume is just the same bots trading between themselves over and over to create the illusion of real volume. As for Dogecoin, if you've followed it's progess at all, you'd know that it's "AuxPoW' aka Mergemining is what saved it, no matter how much marketing they put in it's price and hashrate kept falling, so they decided to merge mine with Litecoin...
Solid Tech is what keep's users interested and coming back, especially in the world of cryptocurrencies. Marketing is what brings them in.
