The whole crypto ecosystem is profiting from centralized coins, shitcoins, ICO scams, NFTs and all other useless products. Those market data sites get paid by dev teams to list and promote their coins, exchanges get paid for listing coins, and they also don't care what is being traded, they collect fees anyway, they only interested in more trades. Social media influencers will promote anything, as long as they get paid.
There's simply less incentive to be honest and refuse to cooperate with shitcoin projects, because it would be hard to make money in crypto sphere while doing so.
Topic: We should separate the markets for Bitcoin* and centralized altcoins - page 2. (Read 268 times)
October 04, 2022, 07:49:47 PM
October 04, 2022, 10:23:06 AM
Bitcoin is the most decentralized, mostly all others (altcoins) are not really decentralized, they are centralized to an extent.
Altcoins like ether, binance coin and most others are centralized
See stable coins, most can be freezed on noncustodial wallet. Nothing is most centralized than not having full control over your own asset. Maybe there are altcoins that are not stable coins like that too.
See what Binance is doing, the centralization is even more than creating a cryptocurrency, but into other aspects like backing completely close source hardware wallet (Safepal), having close source wallet (Trustwallet), manipulating stable coins for there own created stable coin, BUSD.
There is no coin that is decentralized like bitcoin.
People are people, even as there are many fake projects, they will still want to risk their money one those coins. I have seen Binance to be most centralized from them all, which is even beyond creating coins but about cryptocurrecies in general.
Altcoins like ether, binance coin and most others are centralized
See stable coins, most can be freezed on noncustodial wallet. Nothing is most centralized than not having full control over your own asset. Maybe there are altcoins that are not stable coins like that too.
See what Binance is doing, the centralization is even more than creating a cryptocurrency, but into other aspects like backing completely close source hardware wallet (Safepal), having close source wallet (Trustwallet), manipulating stable coins for there own created stable coin, BUSD.
There is no coin that is decentralized like bitcoin.
People are people, even as there are many fake projects, they will still want to risk their money one those coins. I have seen Binance to be most centralized from them all, which is even beyond creating coins but about cryptocurrecies in general.
October 04, 2022, 10:19:00 AM
To me i think the difference is clear and boldly seen from bitcoin and altcoins since they both operate on different grounds, bitcoin is decentralized while altcoins centralized, but i think the challenges start coming with the beginners coming in, they can't understand even why should bitcoin be preferred than any other altcoins, why they should make use of a decentralized exchange and not a centralized one, why privacy and security should be more a thing of concerns, and finally why shitcoins are more ever increasing each day to be avoided, know this that exchanges couldn't create the differences because they were also out for business, all other smart contract businesses and crypto projects that want to be identified along with bitcoin swindles their way in with beginners, but an average and experienced cryptopreneur should know and avoid these.
October 04, 2022, 10:01:40 AM
Websites like Coinmarketcap (owned by Binance) and many crypto exchanges give us the impression that all cryptocurrencies are the same thing, and that they can be "ranked". Some of these sites at least separate between "currencies" with their own blockchains and "tokens", some do not even that.
But there are big differences between cryptocurrencies. Only Bitcoin and a few other altcoins can really be described as "decentralized", while about 99% of the rest are centralized.
Most altcoins are businesses with "providers" and "customers", Bitcoin is not
The biggest centralizing factor is the premine. A premine from the start makes it clear that there is some entity, a person or a group (often called "the team" or "the devs") who are the "owners" or "providers" of the coin. They are responsible to conduct ICOs, giveaways, bounty campaigns and so on - which is easy for them as they have generated these coins for free. Development work may be significant in cases like Ethereum. But the relation is always pretty clearly one of a single "provider" or "issuer" (the team, devs, foundation etc.) and "customers" (the users).
Compare that with Bitcoin, where no such "owner" group or "team" exists. There is of course a development team, but Bitcoin Core is simply the group who develops the most popular reference implementation. And it's perfectly possible that an alternative team eventually develops a more popular solution and becomes themselves the group who works on improvements of the "protocol", and that would be perfectly ok. In the case of centralized altcoins, in contrast, the "owners" can threaten alternative implementations with protocol changes with legal action (due to trademarks), or a fork and a dump of the coins of the alternative implementation (ETC case) due to their immense economic power.
The development team, in the case of Bitcoin, thus is not a "provider", but simply one of many "user" groups, like miners, exchangers, Lightning channel operators, merchants and simple "private" users.
I would argue even that the differences between these two kinds of cryptocurrencies are bigger than between distinct types of traditional financial products. The Bitcoin type is the only one that is fundamentally different from other products because there is no provider, no owner and also no issuer. All other financial products have clearly an "issuer".
So even a possible "flippening", where a centralized coin like Ethereum achieves a higher market cap than Bitcoin, would be absolutely a non-event. Because it would simply mean that an asset of a completely different category is currently more "valuable".
100% premined currencies and tokens should be viewed directly as securities or loans. This is not a stance of mine against these assets at all. I'm pretty positive about ICOs, security tokens, and utility tokens actually, they are a good opportunity for young businesses to raise money and should not be "regulated to death" (although they should offer customer protection). But they are a different thing than Bitcoin (and a few other coins like Monero, NMC or Groestlcoin). Coinmarketcap thus is worse than an infomational website mixing the "market cap" of shares, loans, derivatives and commodities together. Would a trader of traditional financial products accept that kind of site?
Enough rant, what should be done?
Exchanges and informational websites should help users to be able to separate the markets between Bitcoin and Bitcoin-style decentralized currencies, and centralized altcoins or tokens. So the users can actually know which kind of asset they are trading, and are not forced into thinking that "all coins are the same thing".
At the very least they should be transparent about any significant** premine that happened. Coinmarketcap did this until 2016 or 2017 (I'm not sure about the exact date) but then decided to mix everything together. Among alternative sites of the same kind, neither Coingecko nor Coinpaprika seem to have such a categorization.
Premine is an extremely easy to detect in the software as it can be always seen in the first block and in the part of the software creating the Genesis Block. The work has to be done only once per coin. So there is no excuse for not doing that.
Ideally of course the operators of these sites and exchanges read this post and take action. But as this isn't exactly likely, also users can request and try to convince them to implement this simple change in their interface - in their Bitcointalk threads or chat/communication platforms. There may be reason they won't like that proposal, but I think it's worth a try
*I would only include those coins in the decentralized "Bitcoin category" that have strictly no premine, ideally also no instamine, where at least part of the blocks is generated by PoW and similar "open" methods (in contrast to close/permissioned methods like PoS) and obviously an own blockchain.
**A "significant premine" should be anything more than one single standard block reward. There are a few currencies with a few pre- or insta-mined "test blocks" like Litecoin; these could be included in the premined group or not.
But there are big differences between cryptocurrencies. Only Bitcoin and a few other altcoins can really be described as "decentralized", while about 99% of the rest are centralized.
Most altcoins are businesses with "providers" and "customers", Bitcoin is not
The biggest centralizing factor is the premine. A premine from the start makes it clear that there is some entity, a person or a group (often called "the team" or "the devs") who are the "owners" or "providers" of the coin. They are responsible to conduct ICOs, giveaways, bounty campaigns and so on - which is easy for them as they have generated these coins for free. Development work may be significant in cases like Ethereum. But the relation is always pretty clearly one of a single "provider" or "issuer" (the team, devs, foundation etc.) and "customers" (the users).
Compare that with Bitcoin, where no such "owner" group or "team" exists. There is of course a development team, but Bitcoin Core is simply the group who develops the most popular reference implementation. And it's perfectly possible that an alternative team eventually develops a more popular solution and becomes themselves the group who works on improvements of the "protocol", and that would be perfectly ok. In the case of centralized altcoins, in contrast, the "owners" can threaten alternative implementations with protocol changes with legal action (due to trademarks), or a fork and a dump of the coins of the alternative implementation (ETC case) due to their immense economic power.
The development team, in the case of Bitcoin, thus is not a "provider", but simply one of many "user" groups, like miners, exchangers, Lightning channel operators, merchants and simple "private" users.
I would argue even that the differences between these two kinds of cryptocurrencies are bigger than between distinct types of traditional financial products. The Bitcoin type is the only one that is fundamentally different from other products because there is no provider, no owner and also no issuer. All other financial products have clearly an "issuer".
So even a possible "flippening", where a centralized coin like Ethereum achieves a higher market cap than Bitcoin, would be absolutely a non-event. Because it would simply mean that an asset of a completely different category is currently more "valuable".
100% premined currencies and tokens should be viewed directly as securities or loans. This is not a stance of mine against these assets at all. I'm pretty positive about ICOs, security tokens, and utility tokens actually, they are a good opportunity for young businesses to raise money and should not be "regulated to death" (although they should offer customer protection). But they are a different thing than Bitcoin (and a few other coins like Monero, NMC or Groestlcoin). Coinmarketcap thus is worse than an infomational website mixing the "market cap" of shares, loans, derivatives and commodities together. Would a trader of traditional financial products accept that kind of site?
Enough rant, what should be done?
Exchanges and informational websites should help users to be able to separate the markets between Bitcoin and Bitcoin-style decentralized currencies, and centralized altcoins or tokens. So the users can actually know which kind of asset they are trading, and are not forced into thinking that "all coins are the same thing".
At the very least they should be transparent about any significant** premine that happened. Coinmarketcap did this until 2016 or 2017 (I'm not sure about the exact date) but then decided to mix everything together. Among alternative sites of the same kind, neither Coingecko nor Coinpaprika seem to have such a categorization.
Premine is an extremely easy to detect in the software as it can be always seen in the first block and in the part of the software creating the Genesis Block. The work has to be done only once per coin. So there is no excuse for not doing that.
Ideally of course the operators of these sites and exchanges read this post and take action. But as this isn't exactly likely, also users can request and try to convince them to implement this simple change in their interface - in their Bitcointalk threads or chat/communication platforms. There may be reason they won't like that proposal, but I think it's worth a try
*I would only include those coins in the decentralized "Bitcoin category" that have strictly no premine, ideally also no instamine, where at least part of the blocks is generated by PoW and similar "open" methods (in contrast to close/permissioned methods like PoS) and obviously an own blockchain.
**A "significant premine" should be anything more than one single standard block reward. There are a few currencies with a few pre- or insta-mined "test blocks" like Litecoin; these could be included in the premined group or not.
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