Digitalcoin, the diamond in the rough

I’ll take a break from the usual altcoin bashing and do something a little less abrasive today – talk about a coin with favorable prospects.


Digitalcoin (DGC) was one of those coins that was launched during the altcoin flood back in May. While coins of this era were typically defined by egregious premining/instamining and generally poor launches, DGC was about the only one that had a fair launch with no premine. DGC was pre-announced days in advance (a rarity, in it’s time), and it’s launchtime graphs are damn near picture perfect:

A steadily increasing supply along with a steadily increasing hashrate – these are the things indicative of a fair launch. It’s been about 5 months since then, and DGC is still chugging along nicely. The community behind it is among the largest, as evidenced by it’s 200 page long main thread. Many services already exist, among them, payment processing and web wallets.

The developer, Baritus, has remained surprisingly active as well, pushing out incremental updates and working on various projects to further the coin. The most ambitious of these being the Free Bank of Digitalcoin and CryptoAve, an exchange platform. Shares of CryptoAve will be traded exclusively in DGC, which will undoubtedly boost demand for the coin.

About 2.6 million DGC are produced each month (20 coins @ 20 second blocks), and at the current price of 0.00014, this puts ~360 BTC worth of downward pressure on the market. Yet, the price has remained surprisingly stable for a while now, so this indicates that a lot of money is flowing into DGC. It’s important to note that in the upcoming v1.0 update block reward is being slightly reduced and block time is being increased to 40 seconds, effectively halving coin generation. Assuming cash inflow remains the same, the price of DGC should trend upward as a result.

My one real gripe with this coin is that not a whole lot is changed from the litecoin base. Block time and the coin distribution timeline are among the biggest of changes. I’ve talked with Baritus about this, and his design philosophy is such that he doesn’t want to reinvent the wheel, just make a better version of it. So far, I think he’s done a good job at accomplishing that. His involvement with the community and the scope of the projects he’s working on give me little reason to doubt his competence.

Overall, the pros outweigh the cons, and DGC is a good coin. Unlike some other coins out there, no gimmicks are used to lure people in. It’s just a good solid base, with a strong backing behind it. With v1.0 coming soon, and CryptoAve nearing completion, this coin is less of a risky investment than most. It’s one of the few altcoins that meets all my requirements for a good coin: A fair launch, a solid developer, and a good community.

source: http://cryptolife.net/digitalcoin-the-diamond-in-the-rough/

Guugll Search

http://www.guugll.eu/digitalcoin-the-diamond-in-the-rough/

PoS/PoW

PoS stands for Proof-of-Stake, and PoW stands for Proof-of-Work. This doesn’t take away your confusion probably, so let’s start off with Proof-of-Work.

Proof-of-Work is an economic protocol (or function, if you prefer that term), requiring processing time by a computer. Right, that’s easy to digest, right? No? Well i don’t speak that language either, so let’s try and keep it simple. Proof-of-Work was originally designed to try and counter DDoS (denial of service) attacks, as well as spam. How so, you might ask? Proof-of-Work requires a little processing power, usually from your CPU, which was meant to try and change your mind about the illegal or incriminating things you had in mind. This may not sound like the perfect solution, but we had to start somewhere, right?

And this ties in with mining how exactly? In the crypto world, Proof-of-Work is used to protect your coin’s network, as well as keeping it decentralized. Simple example : you have a coin’s wallet, and it’s out of sync. Suddenly, it gets connections to the network, and it starts syncing the blockchain to it’s current state. Where do you think that is downloaded from? Other people’s wallets of course, and those people are offering a tiny amount of CPU power to keep both their blockchain synced, as well as letting other people sync with the network through them.

Proof-of-Work is a security measure, and it’s what keeps our coins secure and without any central authority, just the way we like it! As you may know, when a new coin is announced, you might or might not see it offers “PoW”. This is not an exclusive feature to just some coins, pretty much every coin has it ever since Bitcoin was launched. The question is if most of the developers even know what it does, let alone that their coin runs the protocol too….

On the other side, we have PoS, or Proof-of-Stake. You’ll like this one better, because it can earn you money by doing absolutely nothing. Well, nothing is a bit of a lie, but so is the cake! Allow me to indulge you for a few minutes on what Proof-of-Stake can mean for you loyal readers.

In the beginning, Proof-of-Stake was also meant to be a defensive protocol, supporting the Proof-of-Work function. The Proof-of-Stake protocol would look for any vulnerabilities in the Proof-of-Work system , and try to address them. One of the best known vulnerabilities is the 51% attack. A 51% attack, for those of you who don’t know what it means, is when one mining entity (being it a single miner, or a pool) possesses over half the mining share. Now, it may seem cool to you to be over half of the total coin’s network hashrate, but trust me, you do NOT want that to happen to your beloved coins.

Proof-of-Stake isn’t all about defensive strategies though. It also allows you to earn interest on the crypto you keep in your wallet. Let’s say you hold 0.5% of all the generated coins for your crypto, and your coin uses the Proof-of-Stake function. That means that you get 0.5% of ALL Proof-of-Stake generated blocks as long as you hold the coins in your wallet. You can compare it with your bank account, once per year you get interest on the balance in your savings account. Proof-of-Stake works the same, it’s rewarding you for keeping the coins in your wallet.

This has, of course, some other side effects, effects we can all benefit from (either actively or passively). Proof-of-Stake should eventually result in a steady inflation of your coins. This means an unlimited amount of coins will be generated. But wouldn’t that crash the price? Not necessarily. Most coins won’t reach their full coin cap in the near future, but the network has to keep on moving forward. As difficulties rise, their will be fewer blocks generated each day, which could lead to a complete network halt. With these Proof-of-Stake blocks, new transaction keep on being generated, and thus the network stays alive.

Proof-of-Stake also influences the transaction fees of your coins. Crypto which does not support the Proof-of-Stake function, will work with a variable transaction fee, depending on the amount of coins you are sending or receiving. With Proof-of-Stake enabled, transaction fees will be at a fixed rate, regardless of the amount of coins involved in the transaction. We like that, don’t we? Yes we do !

If you are looking for some coins using Proof-of-Stake, you don’t have to look far. Bitcoin has used it from the start, but there are other coins which do so as well, such as NovaCoin, PPCoin, and many more.

source: http://majesti.co/cryptonerd/crypto-terminology-101-pospow-part-4/

Guugll Search

http://www.guugll.eu/pospow/

Scrypt-Jane

This is not Mrs. Scrypt, as they are in no way married to each other. In fact, that would be rather incestuous, because they are related. Now, I’m not sure what the laws in your state/country say about incestuous marriages, but in the crypto world it’s a big no-no. You should treat this crypto lady with dignity and the respect she deserves.

Scrypt-Jane is like any girl, she likes to have a good time. Her, and her mix functions and algorithm buddies will take you to exotic locations! What, you’re not following? Pardon me, I’ll explain.

Scypt-Jane supported no less than three different mix functions. Get your dancing shoes on right now! First up, we have Salsa20/8. Swing those hips guys, come on, lighten up a little bit. Salsa 20/8 is actually a pretty simple function : it takes a 64-byte String (a line of letters or words), and converts it to a 64-byte String Salsa20(x). Not making sense, am I? Fine, I’ll try to be less theoretical. Salsa20 consists of two parts : a stream cipher to encrypt data (this should sound more familiar to all of you), and a compression function (called Rumba20) to compress a 192-byte String to a 64-byte String. In layman terms: you can have a longer line than 64 bytes, as long as it’s below or equal to 192 bytes, it will be compressed (read : converted) to a line of 64 bytes later on.

Now that we are all warmed after some Salsa and Rumba, it’s time to introduce the second mix function : ChaCha20. I’m honestly not making this up people. ChaCha20 is much like Salsa20 : it’s also a stream cipher. However, it offers some neat extras, such as increasing resistance to cryptanalysis. It also improves time per round. The easiest way to express this is : if you’re mining on a pool, you see that one mining “round” (time until the pool finds a block) can take either a long or a short time. The durations of these rounds are partially influenced by the ChaCha20 mix function of Scrypt-Jane. There are other factors influencing this too, but we’re not going there right now. Just trying to keep it simple to understand.

Last, but not least, is the third mix function. You passed the Salsa for beginners chapter, so it’s time for some advanced moves with Salsa6420/8. Sexy name, isn’t it? Salsa6420/8 is a proof-of-concept 64-bit version of Salsa20/8. It’s just a better version of Salsa20/8 which allows for bigger byte blocks. I could go into more technical details, but half of you would fall asleep, and the rest would start playing games on their smartphones, so we’re not going to bother with that. Just remember there are 3 mixing partners in Scrypt-Jane, you won’t have to fill this in on a test or anything! Or will you…..?

Back to reality folks! Scrypt-Jane also supports several hash functions. One of them is very well known by all of us now, SHA-256. It also supports SHA-512, but that will be covered in a later article called “Oddballs”. Other supported hash functions include BLAKE256/512 , Skein512 and Keccak256/512 (or simply SHA-3). The latter one will also be covered in aforementioned article “Oddballs”.

BLAKE256-512 is a very simple design to implement, and relies on previously analyzed components, the HAIFA structure (we won’t cover this at this point) and the ChaCha core function (which we have touched on earlier in this article). The most prominent features about BLAKE are having a high security margin (pretty important, but I shouldn’t have to point this out to you by now), and high performance versatility (which is also very important to us miners). The one things to remember about BLAKE is that it can and will be faster than SHA-2(56) on a number of platforms.

On the other hand , we have Skein512. Who comes up with these gorgeous names anyway? They should be awarded a medal…But I digress, apologies. Skein is a hash function, which has been submitted in NST’s cryptographic hash algorithm competition. It combines speed, security, simplicity and flexibility. We all love that, don’t we peeps? It’s also very efficient on a variety of platforms, both in hardware and software environments. You can find the Stein algorithm on something as little as a smart card, something most of you have experience with.

But enough of the theoretical background, let’s take a look at what Scrypt-Jane can do for us. You may or may not know this, but Scrypt-Jane does it’s own variant of scaling difficulty. Scrypt-Jane uses an N-Factor (which is a number), and that number determines the amount of memory required to solve a share. This N-Factor number will go up at certain intervals, usually when a certain block number has been found in the blockchain. Whenever this N-Factor number increases, the mining efficiency will lower, because more memory is required to complete the same task performed before. In simple terms : the number of accepted shares will drop, as will your earnings.

Scypt-Jane was originally intended to be mined on CPU’s only, but we wouldn’t be in the Cryptocoins world unless someone found a way to circumvent that. There have been GPU miners circling around for Scrypt-Jane coins , to increase our mining efficiency, and earnings. Now, you may think that, even if the earnings diminish, you’ll be able to mine with your GPU for a longer period of time compared to CPU mining? That’s where you’re wrong , I’m afraid. Eventually, the N-Factor will be so high, that GPU’s will be less efficient than CPU’s for mining Scrypt-Jane. You didn’t see that one coming, did you? In that regard, Scrypt-Jane is not like SHA-256 or Scrypt.

In my closing statement, I want you to take a look at some of the Scrypt-Jane coins that we have seen so far. One of the first Scrypt-Jane coins that got some traction was Yacoin, however, that traction has been lost with most miners I’m afraid. More recently, we have seen coins like Copper Bars

source: http://majesti.co/cryptonerd/crypto-terminology-101-scrypt-jane-part-3/

Guugll Search

http://www.guugll.eu/scrypt-jane/

Look at feathercoin

Feathercoin, the original litecoin copycat that sparked the great altcoin flood of 2013.


Actually, describing it as a copycat is giving it too much credit. Feathercoin is actually a fork of litecoin.

You see, the developer, bushstar, displayed absolute bare minimum competence when creating this coin. One of the most basic steps of creating an altcoin is to create a new genesis block. This is the block that the entire blockchain will build off of, and is one of the key differentiators between coins.

But bushstar, in all his incompetence, couldn’t figure out how to create his own genesis block. Instead of admitting defeat and that he had no business launching a coin, he did the next best thing he could think of: reuse the litecoin genesis block, and put in a hardfork at the first block. This makes feathercoin a fork of litecoin, a “distinction” that few coins have.

Additionally, the coin was launched with bare minimum difficulty, so it was instamined to an extreme degree, as shown below. Those who participated in the instamining will from here on out be referred to as the insiders.

The level of incompetence involved in this whole scenario should have precluded anyone from taking feathercoin seriously. But predictably, the community has little technical understanding of what they’re investing in, so they were suckers for marketing. For what bushstar lacked in coding ability, he made up for in his marketing ability. Feathercoin was marketed very similar to how litecoin was. Feathercoin was the “bronze” to bitcoin’s gold, and had parameters relative to litecoin equivalent to litecoin’s parameters relative to bitcoin. This strategy worked quite well, and feathercoin captured significant market share. Sitting at a market cap of about 16k BTC, it is easily the most overvalued coin out there right now, and not something I would ever invest a bitcent into.

A large part of it’s success can be attributed to BTC-e adding it to their exchange. It is likely that some shady backroom deals were involved, as BTC-e has a history of accepting bribes. I’m sure most of you by now know about the Novacoin scenario, but there was also another documented incident of the same kind. Several months ago, some emails were leaked detailing the possible addition of americancoin to BTC-e. The terms involved a large USD bribe, as well as a hefty amount of americancoins. The deal obviously fell through, but it is demonstrative of what one must do to have their coin added. Given how new feathercoin was, I have no doubts in my mind that the insiders paid BTC-e off for it’s addition.

Amazingly, 5 months later, FTC is still around. This coin should have died months ago, but keeps getting a new lease on life every time it’s close to death. From the beginning, this coin has lazily copied from others, and has done nothing innovative. That trend continues to this day. You may remember about 6 weeks ago feathercoin added a “new” feature called Advanced Checkpointing. It’s a nice feature, sure, but the feathercoin devs aren’t the creators of it. This feature was originally part of PPCoin, and yet, no credit is given. One must dig around on github to see that Sunny King (PPcoin dev) authored the commit. There’s no mention of him anywhere in the release post.

Feathercoin is a parasite. It brings nothing new to the table. It takes the ideas of others and passes them off as it’s own. But I tip my hat to you, bushstar. Despite your woeful incompetence, you managed to hack together a coin and swindle the community for a nice sum of money. It’s more than most would be able to accomplish. No doubt you’re laughing all the way to the bank.

source: http://cryptolife.net/an-in-depth-look-at-feathercoin-the-coin-that-started-it-all/

Guugll Search

http://www.guugll.eu/look-at-feathercoin/

Bitcoin Alternative – Cryptogenic Bullion

The number of professional online services incorporating Cryptogenic Bullion is growing at a rapid rate and the currency is currently trading for approximately 500 CGB per 1 BTC.


A fork of the virtual currency Novacoin, Cryptogenic Bullion is designed to be a rare, interest bearing, peer-to-peer virtual commodity with the same decentralised characteristics of Bitcoin but with some key differences. Cryptogenic Bullion’s innovations include an accelerated decrease of the mining subsidy, almost immediate transaction time and 2% annual interest eligible for Bullion that has been stationary in a user’s wallet for at least 30 days. Cryptogenic Bullion has been well received in the digital currency ecosystem. The official Facebook page has over 4,500 fans, and the official CGB website has been translated into Dutch and Chinese.

The team behind Cryptogenic Bullion is comprised of digital currency enthusiasts with many years of experience in the Bitcoin ecosystem and beyond; having spent many years mining, programming and working on Internet technology projects. Unique among alternative cryptocurrency teams, CGB also has many years of experience in business management and marketing, ensuring CGB carves out a significant niche for itself in the digital currency ecosystem. Much like Satoshi Nakamoto of Bitcoin, the lead developer of CGB has remained anonymous – but the anonymous developer tackles problems and maintains the integrity of the CGB protocol. This is extremely important for the longevity of the project. Elambert, the founder of Cryptogenic Bullion, is a married man with an 8-month-old son who both works as a data analyst and is also extensively involved in other online businesses and pursuits. Managing the marketing and project development aspects of CGB is Mercury Stills, an entrepreneur with a passion for emerging technologies who founded his first successful company in the year 2000.

Team CGB is currently pursuing an aggressive marketing campaign via social networking sites like Facebook, GooglePlus, Twitter, LinkedIn, Sina, Baidu, Sohu and more. Moreover, Team CGB will initiate a billboard campaign across Europe, starting in Nicosia, Cyprus later this year. The more people who are aware of Cryptogenic Bullion and the financial and business innovation provided by virtual commodities and virtual currencies, the more people will embrace the unprecedented possibilities inherent to the emerging disruptive technology of global digital currencies. In this way Cryptogenic Bullion’s extensive marketing not only benefits the CGB project but the entire cryptocurrency space itself.

The Winklevoss twin’s intention to offer the world’s first Bitcoin exchange-traded fund (ETF) could be the precursor to a diverse range of alternative virtual currency ETFs. As an interest bearing, relatively rare, virtual commodity, Cryptogenic Bullion will be perfectly positioned to attract fund manager’s capital, which will generate massive potential for large long-term increases in value. Team CGB is currently reaching out to investors and business owners who may want to diversify some of their BTC holdings into CGB to potentially remedy price volatility. Any individual who contacts team CGB to incorporate Cryptogenic Bullion into their business processes will be warmly received.

With the professionalism and vision of the Cryptogenic Bullion’s core team, this digital commodity is operating in a different paradigm to the majority of alternative cryptocurrencies. The CGB protocol’s primary innovations of a 2% annual interest rate, and its relative rarity and faster transaction time as opposed to Bitcoin also bode well for the digital currency’s future. A diverse ecosysem is a healthy one, and due to its unique properties Cryptogenic Bullion may well become one of the cryptocurrencies of choice in the emerging digital currency investment space.

Visit http://cryptogenicbullion.org/ for more information.

Contact Info

Name: Mercury Stills

Email: info@cryptogenicbullion.org

source: http://finance.yahoo.com/news/rare-interest-bearing-bitcoin-alternative-091800738.html

Guugll Search

http://www.guugll.eu/bitcoin-alternative-cryptogenic-bullion/

GoldCoin: The Scam

Today I’ll take a look at goldcoin, one of the more interesting coins out there, if only for the fact that it was given a second lease on life to come back and scam the community for a second time. As some of you may remember, goldcoin (GLD) was originally launched back in the middle of may, and had one of the most disproportionate reward structures in cryptocurrency to date.


Take a look:

1 – 200 Block @ 10000 GLD

201 – 2200 Blocks @ 1000 GLD

2201 – 26200 Blocks @ 500 GLD

26201 – 48700 Blocks @ 400 GLD

48700 – 173700 Blocks @ 200 GLD

173701 – 673700 Blocks @ 100 GLD

Of course, this coin was launched with the bare minimum difficulty, so all the 10k and 1k blocks were mined instantly, undoubtedly by the developer and other insiders. It’s also worth pointing out that this coin was launched in the depths of the newbie forum, instead of the altcoin forum. This gave the insiders plenty of time to mine lots of super high value blocks at the beginning. All told, about 8 million coins were generated in the first 24 hours. The effects of this reward structure were pretty damning, check out the first month of the supply chart:

This was the first instamining of such proportions that the altcoin community had witnessed – one that put even feathercoin to shame. Some people bought into GLD and lost money, but the damage was fairly minimal. It was generally regarded as a scamcoin, and rightly ignored. The coin died soon thereafter. And it stayed that way, for quite some time. Being a dead coin, one could acquire lots of GLD for very cheap. It was the perfect oppurtunity for a con man to come along.

Enter Microguy. He proceeded to stockpile all this cheap GLD and then decided that he was going to “relaunch” the coin, trying to bury all information about it’s history. He preys on newcomers, telling them absurd lies with such sincerity that you have to wonder about his mental state.

Later, Microguy forked the client to reduce the reward down even further (to 50), as to further increase the value of his holdings. And now, he sits comfortably upon his piles of GLD, telling lie after lie to the community in an attempt to pump the coin, with the ultimate goal of dumping onto those poor individuals who buy into his rhetoric.

Goldcoin represents everything that is bad about the world of alternate cryptocurrency. It is spearheaded by an individual who cares about nothing other than lining his own pockets. There is not one redeeming factor about this coin; it’s the purest example of a scamcoin to date.

Guugll Search

http://www.guugll.eu/goldcoin-the-scam/

Altcoin Analysis: Megacoin

Launched just shy of 4 months ago, megacoin has been quite successful, reaching a market capitalization of $325,000 at the time of writing. But beware, not all that glitters is gold.


First off, megacoin is a simple litecoin clone, with no real innovation to speak of. Which is not a problem in of itself, but the history of this coin makes it one of the well orchestrated scams in cryptocurrency history.

One of the most damning issues surrounding megacoin is the way in which it was launched. You see, megacoin originally launched without source code, in the height of altcoin frenzy; a period during which new coins were release daily. Around this time period, altcoin clients embedded with bitcoin wallet stealers started popping. This combined with the very amateurish logo and poor grammar skills of the developer caused people to be suspicious of megacoin, and rightly so. As a result, the coin failed to get noticed, and was dead on arrival.

Consider this scenario for a moment – that this was all part of the plan. Now that the coin had been released, the developer, kimoto, could begin mining with little competition. The below graph shows the network hashrate of Megacoin during the first 48 hours:

We can see that the difficulty peaks at 600KHash, the equivalent of just one 7950 mining it. This highly suggests that no more than 2 or 3 people, at most, were mining it during this time period. Next, let’s take a look at the total coin supply during this period as well:

That’s a whole lot of coins being questionably generated, a good chunk of which we can assume went directly to kimoto. This continued for about a week, until kimoto decided to finally release the source code and promote his coin seriously. Network hashrate spiked to 50MHash at this point, and marks the TRUE launch of the coin. The earlier “launch” amounted to a nice cover story for the effective premining of the coin.

All told, during the first week, network hashrate reached no higher than 5MHash, and almost 6,000,000 coins were illegitimately generated. For reference, there are currently just over 18,000,000 coins in existence today (4 months later).

So, in short, it is likely that kimoto purposely botched the launch of his coin, so that he could mine it with little to no competition for almost a week, at which point he launched the coin properly. A clever way to get around the much hated premine, but having the same result in the end.

Speculation aside, where those six million coins went, no one can say for sure. Either way, it doesn’t make for a good launch.

It’s also important to point out that the reward structure of megacoin is disproportionately front-loaded. 50% of all coins are slated to be generated during the first 5 months. This makes it lucrative for all of its early supporters, but a poor prospect for anyone looking to get in later on. That might explain why the community is so fervent. They have a lot to gain – at your expense.

Take a second to look at the main megacoin thread. You’ll notice that the community is very reminiscent of a cult. Some of them seem to be truly convinced that kimoto is none other than Kim Dotcom, founder of megaupload. They’ll tell you straight faced that megacoin is on track to overtake bitcoin. They’ll preach about how fairly megacoin was launched. It’s all rather ridiculous. Whether or not they truly believe the nonsense they spew or if they’re just trying to lure in ignorant investors is up for debate.

In closing, megacoin offers nothing new. It was effectively premined to an extreme, and has a neurotic community behind it. The reward structure only favors those who got in extremely early.

source: http://cryptolife.net/in-depth-altcoin-analysis-megacoin/

Guugll Search

http://www.guugll.eu/altcoin-analysis-megacoin/

Derivatives and Alt Coins

In rather basic terms, the value of a derivative is based on the value of something else, yet has no intrinsic value by itself.

Given the buzz with banks and their “derivative” problems in the news today, are derivatives necessarily a bad thing? Well it depends on who you ask, but if we apply that same definition of derivatives to cryptocurrencies, we can see that nearly all alt-coins are simply a derivative of bitcoin to varying degrees. A simple (and popular) derivative example would be litecoin. For example, if bitcoin is priced at $150 and litecoin (being a derivative of bitcoin) is valued at 0.017 of bitcoin, then we can conclude that litecoin would be valued at 0.017 of $150 or ~$2.55 each.

But wait, there’s more. Generally speaking, the more derivative dependencies involved, the greater the derivative risk… And rewards. For example, if you check out Cryptsy, you might see that doubloons (DBL) are traded in litecoin only. Using the previous example above and the speculative value of DBL currently at 0.0025 of litecoin, we know that each DBL is currently valued at $0.006375. Since DBL value is based on litecoin, which is based on bitcoin, this can make for wider market swings in any given time frame due to increased number of dependencies. If, for example, DBL increased to 0.003 of LTC, which in turn increased to 0.02 of BTC which increased to $167, then DBL value has increased to just over $0.01, which is a hefty gain of over 50%. Of course the market could have turned out just as worse or some combination in between.

It gets even more complicated when you delve deeper. On one exchange, mcxnow, you’ll find you can trade mcxFEE’s which are essentially a futures derivative that pays dividends in multiple coins based on exchange volume. A recent analysis based on various metrics has indicated the mcxFEE’s are severely overpriced, even though their value has actually increased since the time of their review. This is not to say it was a bad analysis, but moreso that the market is still finding itself with regards to cryptocurrencies. Metrics and analysis aside, the market will always be at the right price at any given time.

Now that we know how derivatives relate to cryptocurrencies, the question remains… Which alt-coins are good investments? Only time knows the answer to that question, but if you’re a seasoned trader of alt-coins, then you know it’s important to do your homework before trading away your precious bitcoins for an alt-coin investment. If not, here are 3 questions you may want to ask yourself before you jump on the latest troll-box fad.

1. Developer competence and communication. IMO, this is the single most important factor. Many traders and miners rely on the “Magic” of developers that breathe life into these various alt-coins. Does the developer have a solid programming knowledge of cryptocurrencies? Do they communicate necessary updates in a clear and timely manner?

2. Is the coin sustainable? Some coins were created with the intent of severe deflationary effects in as little as 2 months. Once all coins are minted, this provides little incentive for miners to mine and support this coin through transaction fees only. Without miners to process transactions, trading may eventually grind to a halt leaving you holding the bag.

3. Does the coin have global appeal? A key to any successful cryptocurrency is global adaption. The more people that mine the coin, the more balanced the coin distribution is which ultimately makes a healthier market. Since cryptocurrencies are currently not limited by national borders, I would recommend avoiding coins that appeal only to a specific country only (CHN, AMC).

Of course, these are not the only questions to ask before investing. Sound off in the comments below and let us know what YOU look for when adopting an alt-coin.

Disclaimer: The views in this article are solely the author’s opinion and do not necessarily represent the views of CryptoLife.net nor its owners and/or affiliates. Any prices or forward looking statements in this article are for exemplary purposes only and are not intended to define what prices *should* be. As always, invest only what you can afford to lose and at your own risk.

source: http://cryptolife.net/derivatives-and-alt-coins/

Guugll Search

http://www.guugll.eu/derivatives-and-alt-coins/

7 Things To Know Before Investing in an Altcoin

If a coin has any of these characteristics, your money would be better put elsewhere.


1. Unjustified premine

The oldest method in the book. Here, a coin is released with a large chunk of coin set aside for the developer for one reason or another. They’ll try to justify it in some way, but it really just comes down to lining their own pockets at your expense.

Examples:

Phenixcoin: Massive premine with poor explanation given.

Zenithcoin: 50% of all block rewards goes to developer, with no explanation given

2. Disproportionate amount of coins generated at launch

Also known as instamining. This method became popular after people starting to become wary of coins with a premine. Here, a coin is released with parameters such that the developer can mine a massive amount of coins after the coin has been released, before people can get their miners set up.

Examples:

Feathercoin: 3 million coins generated during first 24 hours

Goldcoin: Massive amount of coins generated during first few hours

Bitbar: 2000 coins mined during first three hours. Two months after launch, this amount still represented 50% of all coins in existence

Mincoin: 868k coins mined during the first three hours. Two months after launch, this amount still represented 75% of all coins in existence

Alternatively, a coin could generate a disproportionate amount of coins in a given time frame.

Example:

Megacoin: 50% of all coins will be generated during the first 5 months. The rest will be generated over the next couple of decades.

3. Initially released in a remote corner of the web

Here, a person will “release” his coin on some obscure website, and begin mining for days with little to no competition before posting about it on bitcointalk; a very obvious attempt at masking a premine.

Example:

Pennies: “Released” via an obscure website days before a bitcointalk forum post was made.

4. Broken client at release

This could technically fall under developer incompetence, but I believe deserves it’s own section as many scams have been perpetrated this way. A coin will be released, but the client is either not provided or missing. Meanwhile, the developer mines his coin with little to no competition.

Examples:

Mincoin: No GUI client provided for weeks after release.

5. Developer incompetence

My favorite metric to go by. A coin is only as good as the developer(s) behind it, after all. Is the developer active? Does he appear to have a good grasp of how the bitcoin protocol works? Are the parameters chosen for his coin realistic? These factors and others are pertinent to consider when judging a coins worth.

Examples:

Fastcoin: Unsustainable parameters chosen

Gamecoin: Initial client released with a feathercoin logo, and FTC as the currency abbreviation.

Megacoin: Initial client released using same ports as Litecoin. Developer refused to admit this was a problem for weeks until he caved and issued a patch.

6. Presentation

A very strong indicator of how a coin will fare. More than anything else, coins live and die by their name and logo. A poorly chosen name or a poorly designed logo is a death sentence.

Examples:

Fastcoin: Exceptionally poor logo design.

Junkcoin: Name speaks for itself.

7. No Community

And finally, perhaps the most important of factors; the community. This applies only to established coins. Some time after release, there should be an active community of people not only supporting the coin, but developing relevant services for it. Coins that lack this weeks after released should not even be considered.

Examples:

EZCoin: Aged coin with no relevant services or community to speak of.

source: http://cryptolife.net/the-anatomy-of-a-scamcoin-7-things-to-know-before-investing-in-an-altcoin/

Guugll Search

http://www.guugll.eu/7-things-to-know-before-investing-in-an-altcoin/

Feathercoin in Action at the Oxford Blue

The future of digital money and borderless payments is here


With so much emphasis on Bitcoin Mining and how you can get something for nothing we wanted to make a video that showed the impact digital currency can make in the real world.

Take control and have impact: http://feathercoin.com

CREDITS

This video was funded by the community at Feathercoin and made by the talented Olly Newport and Chris Leydon and we are very grateful for their patience and hard work.

Guugll Search

http://www.guugll.eu/feathercoin-in-action-at-the-oxford-blue/