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What I don't get is what's with those hundreds of alt coins. Sometimes I get a feeling that people who missed the BTC growth are just trying to make up for it b

by gedrap 13y ago

What I don't get is what's with those hundreds of alt coins. Sometimes I get a feeling that people who missed the BTC growth are just trying to make up for it by creating their own coin. I understand that people are passionate about it and all, but it makes much more sense to have a few coins with plenty of people working on it rather than a new coin popping up every week, and being forgotten a few weeks later. It's like everyone would fork Linux kernel, make some adjustment and try to promote it as something new rather than doing a pull request. Or, like everyone was writing their own blogging engines after WP's success.

_pmf_ 13y ago
> Sometimes I get a feeling that people who missed the BTC growth are just trying to make up for it by creating their own coin. Which is true in 95% of cases.
eloisius 13y ago
Competition between crypto currencies isn't undesirable to early BTC adopters. You may be right that some people who missed the train just want to make one of their own in order to get rich in the ramp-up phase. It's confusing now, but I think eventually having hundreds or even thousands of crypto currencies will contribute to their stability. Hopefully, we'll eventually have an abstraction layer on top of all these coins that can maintain a balanced portfolio of "value" in your wallet.
facepalm 13y ago
There is a lot of nonsense, but there are also some fascinating ideas being tested out. For example I hope that "Proof of Stakes" instead of "Proof of Work" can succeed, because I dislike the waste of energy that comes with Bitcoin mining. Then there are differing distribution models, or the "encode a contract" approaches. Anonymity is another interesting field.
whyenot 13y ago
As I write this,the market cap for all crytocurrencies is $7.22bn. $5.6bn of that is Bitcoin, $900m is Ripple, $340m is Litecoin, and the remaining ~$400m is the remaining 205 currencies with enough of a presence to be traded on exchanges. A lot of money, for sure, but it's really a drop in the bucket compared to Bitcoin, (Ripple), and Litecoin. If you look at daily volume, get rid of Ripple and add Dogecoin.
sliverstorm 13y ago
Some of the CC's try totally new ideas. For example, litecoin uses scrypt instead of bitcoin's sha. Another coin uses Proof of Stake instead of Proof of Work. These aren't simple bug fixes, these are fundamental differences of philosophy on how the network should work. Hence the forks. But, yes, there are some "me too" CC's.

by gedrap 13y ago

_pmf_ 13y ago

> Sometimes I get a feeling that people who missed the BTC growth are just trying to make up for it by creating their own coin. Which is true in 95% of cases.

eloisius 13y ago

Competition between crypto currencies isn't undesirable to early BTC adopters. You may be right that some people who missed the train just want to make one of their own in order to get rich in the ramp-up phase. It's confusing now, but I think eventually having hundreds or even thousands of crypto currencies will contribute to their stability. Hopefully, we'll eventually have an abstraction layer on top of all these coins that can maintain a balanced portfolio of "value" in your wallet.

facepalm 13y ago

There is a lot of nonsense, but there are also some fascinating ideas being tested out. For example I hope that "Proof of Stakes" instead of "Proof of Work" can succeed, because I dislike the waste of energy that comes with Bitcoin mining. Then there are differing distribution models, or the "encode a contract" approaches. Anonymity is another interesting field.

whyenot 13y ago

As I write this,the market cap for all crytocurrencies is $7.22bn. $5.6bn of that is Bitcoin, $900m is Ripple, $340m is Litecoin, and the remaining ~$400m is the remaining 205 currencies with enough of a presence to be traded on exchanges. A lot of money, for sure, but it's really a drop in the bucket compared to Bitcoin, (Ripple), and Litecoin. If you look at daily volume, get rid of Ripple and add Dogecoin.

sliverstorm 13y ago

Some of the CC's try totally new ideas. For example, litecoin uses scrypt instead of bitcoin's sha. Another coin uses Proof of Stake instead of Proof of Work. These aren't simple bug fixes, these are fundamental differences of philosophy on how the network should work. Hence the forks. But, yes, there are some "me too" CC's.