the alt-shitshow never ends. half the industry is an ongoing scam. we need theories about how alts became a thing and why they are still a thing. and we need to come up with a plan to end this this shitcoinery.
I don't think that they can be ended.
They can be tolerated and considered as unimportant, similar how
Hairy framed the matter in an earlier post.
Even satoshi seemed to account for them in his very first writings, before such alt coins and imitation attack vectors even existed.
There is a kind of human nature to try to get rich, to try to improve upon things by copying and imitation, and even thoughts about missing the boat on bitcoin and investing into various scams comes off as inevitably part of the playing out that will likely take close to 50 years to play out.. and even then will bitcoin take up 80-90% of value perhaps? but that remaining 10-20% would be quite difficult (if not impossible) to reign in. So why spend considerable efforts on fighting them, beyond education and of course, if they directly engage in fraud and deception then the individuals might be prosecuted.. but what more can be done if we are thinking free market principles anyhow and bitcoin is going to attract the vast majority of the value, anyhow?
i think shitcoinery is more dangerous than the "blockchain, not bitcoin" idiots. the latter burn corporate funds and going nowhere, but shitcoins are eating the bitcoiners cake (aka invested money) and the fool masses of people into their scams. the scammed people will not adopt btc, they will hate crypto forever and think btc is the same.
i really wonder how much fresh money invested into crypto moves into shitcoins.
I am not opposed to bad mouthing shitcoins or calling them out for what they are, but I think that you are overstating their importance and negative impact on bitcoin and the space. There is both good and bad going on with the money (however dumb that you want to label it) coming into the space for shitcoins, alt coins, ICOs and other non-bitcoin related scams, and sure, you are likely correct that some of the losers are going to lump bitcoin in with their problem of getting scammed, but we are increasingly having more and more money coming into the space and finding its way into bitcoin.
Perhaps, you and I read the matter differently, and sure it can be argued either way, but shitcoins and scams are likely part of the explanation for BTC's exponential price rise to $19,666 in December 2017, and no I am not going to give those goofballs credit for causing the rise and fall of bitcoin because at best, they are the tail attempting to wag the dog, but there is some symbi-ism going on here and back and forth relationship regarding financial flows and even providing some distraction of the side-money that would cause bitcoin to be the total focus if they were not to exist.. which a total focus on bitcoin might not be healthy, either.. especially if you have governments and financial institutions narrowing their focus in the bitcoin direction.
In any event, even if what you are saying is true (instead of my positive and negative assessment of the effects of such shitcoinery/scams) I remain confused about what you would be proposing as any kind of meaningful solution to snuff them out... both is it possible with any kind of reasonable approach to snuff them out and what would such an approach be that would not end up causing more damage than the benefits of just letting the market sort the matters out, even if it takes 50 years to sort out.
In the meantime, folks like you and me, and others who are active in this WO thread, recognize the information asymmetry and we are able profit stupendously and on an ongoing basis by our ongoing recognition that bitcoin remains the only meaningful game in town and that the vast majority of the remainder of the space is causing BTC prices to be more suppressed than they should be for further and longer than they should be... but in the end, bitcoin does not give any shits, and I doubt that bitcoin is going to be killed by these kinds of side scam projects.. the only thing that is suppressed is the price for longer and lower.. but in the end, and it is not even likely to take very long, those of us investing in bitcoin on an ongoing basis are going to continue to profit tremendously by our ongoing abilities to sort the wheat from the chaff.
I doubt that the altcoin craze of 2017/18 made btc going into a bubble. opposite to that I think the bitcoin run-up caused the shitoins to rise. interesting question, though. I doubt any symbiotic relationship. it is rather one-sided and rather parasitic.
another interesting question is the role of alts when it comes to regulation. did the existence of thousands of alts cause the regulators to give up on banning bitcoin? I doubt this, but it could be the case. imho regulators are as clueless as shitcoiners and misunderstand btc from every angle possible. regulators would ban bitcoin and just not care about shitcoins. regulators would hear about some shitcoin scam and blame it on bitcoin.
how to stop shitcoinery? 1) bitcoiners unite, 2) call out every scamcoin, 3) fight shitcoiners in all btc forums, make them leave, 4) educate the public about shitcoins, try to help people not losing their money to shitcoin artists, 5) argue against crypto agnosticism, 6) make bitcoiners aware that when they buy shitcoins "only to gain more btc" that they are actually funding enemies of bitcoin, 7) find out how shitcoinery became a thing and develop strategies to prevent a repeating of this shitshow during next run-up,
etc etc
yes, shitcoins are holding price of btc down longer and lower. why should we accept this and just wait? why not declare war on every shitcoin?