TL;DR: What attributes qualify a crypto to be a Sh* t Coin?
Serious question, not trolling. I am asking as there's a sea of shilling and mis-information out there and it's getting very difficult to figure out what's real and what's pump-and-dump / shilling, painting the tape, washtrading type scam.
My question is, What makes a "Sh* t" coin a "Sh* t" coin? I'm getting varying answers depending on source. Is it the current price (like fraction of cents) or is it a coin that has a landing page site with a "White paper" but no usage, or something else?
I thought Ripple ( XRP ) was onto something when they claimed that they have "partnered" with 100+ Banks, Financial institutions to provide liquidity and fees saving in cross border transfers.
Further research unearthed the fact that they do not have a SINGLE real customer, and that all the ones they hype on reddit r/Ripple and on CNBC are "Trials" / Pilots of their xCurrent and xRapid blockchain based software.
At the very least a coin should function as a coin. Over the last two weeks I evaluated the user experience of several coins based on the following steps.
1) Buy the coin on an exchange.
2) Install the wallet from the coin's official website.
3) Get a text based pass phrase or private key so that I can restore the wallet at any time from a paper backup.
4) Transfer money from the exchange to the wallet.
5) Restore my wallet on another computer using step 3 and verify money from step 4 is present.
6) Transfer some coins back to the exchange.
Ripple only passed steps 1-3. It failed for step 4, in the sense it was a bad user experience, because you find out the wallet will cost you 20 XRP which you can never get back ($40+ when I tried it). It failed step 5 because the website suddenly stopped letting you download their wallet, which is still in Beta, even if you agreed to all the popup warnings asking you to accept the risks.
Some other results...
ADA/Cardano: I tried installing their wallet 5 times on 3 different computers (macOS and Windows 10) and just got random errors or hang ups. I got one wallet to work out of 5 attempts and was never able to restore that wallet from my pass phrase.
ZEC/ZCash: The macOS GUI wallet often crashes immediately. When it didn't crash it was easier to find a "donation" address than my own public (send to) address.
PIVX: Fails step 3.
Verge: The video at the top of their website to "learn more" before installing the wallet is beyond words bad -- I couldn't bring myself to perform step 2.
NAV: Great, passed all steps. Just not sure how it will compete against Monero long term.
Monero XMR: Looks good so far. But my exchange (Binance) charges about $15 for each transfer to my wallet. Transfers for most coins cost under $1.
ARK was absolutely the best experience. Passed all steps first try and took very little time. I really loved the UX and UI.
What makes you think this would be a property of the crypto instrument itself, and not of the entire concept of entirely unregulated trading in purely speculative virtual currencies? The people starting cryptocurrency projects don't even need to be aware of manipulation, let alone desirous of it, to have the "shitcoin/buttcoin" property. Any set of traders in any instrument can manipulate it.
Where do you get that? Ripple seems to really have a few dozen banks as clients. The main issue with it is that the XRP token is not what actually powers their banking products, but an additional (possibly slightly cheaper) system which may not have any value after all.
Shitcoins are the ones that put up a fancy website, a babble-filled whitepaper, maybe have an ICO, but their economic model makes no sense (blockchain for dentists anyone?), or they have no product at all and just clicked a few buttons to generate an Ethereum/Waves/etc token. Thus their ‘currency’ is likely to have zero utility. They still go up on wild speculation, because why not.
Any coin I can't personally see a use for is a shitcoin to me. Unless it does something innovative that excites me to write stuff for, I'm not interested. By that definition, most coins are shitcoins, but there's no objective shitcoin test anyway.
Not to mention that nobody really uses any coins right now because of all the hype, so it's not a great time for people who want cryptocurrency usage to eventually be widespread.
The answer is not black and white. Most coins are filled with all kinds of illegal activity like wash trading that would never happen at such a scale on a real stock exchange. There are little to no regulations. So pretty much everything in the cryptocurrency sector is being manipulated heavily by people who've invested in the founders' coin or by the founders' themselves.
Most of it comes down to the common sense test: ponzi. Did the founder give themselves 50% of the lions' share of the coin supply? Is the code just a copy of something else but changed to give the founder extra coins or abilities? The list goes on. Pretty much everything out there is a mixture of both. No founder wants to be poor if people will accept these diluted offerings. After all, you take $1 from everybody, and no one screams and shouts, yet you become one of the richest people in the world. Same principle applies with initial supply dilution in some respects.
Long answer - It takes lot of research before you can label something a shtcoin. How to do that research is one of the longer blog posts pending in my draft folder.
Starting point can be the ownership aspect of a coin. There are coins which are pre-mine or instamine. Shameless plug and a badly written blog post:
Ethereum is one of the biggest example. During it's launch developers owned ~12% of the supply.
Now, pre-mine is not exactly bad. Developers need money for things like listing. HitBTC, consider to be one of the worst exchanges, cost 25 BTC per listing.
But, on the other end of spectrum you have Veritaseum where the developers still own 95% of the coins. People might support it but in my book it is a shtcoin even at $373 per coin.
Many in crypto consider Ripple king sh*tcoin and I and many others don't even consider it cryptocurrency.
"A defining feature of a cryptocurrency, and arguably its most endearing allure, is its organic nature; it is not issued by any central authority, rendering it theoretically immune to government interference or manipulation."
This is a form of "painting the tape"[1] -- influencing the price of a security by artificially manufacturing volume. Obviously, massively illegal on the stock market, it's pretty common (and well-documented) when it comes to crypto-currencies.
Cryptocurrencies are not magically immune to all of the financial regulation of the past few hundred years just because they’re not specifically called out in those regulations.
“Cryptocurrencies are unregulated” is not just a myth, it’s propaganda created by shady people trying to sell you something.
And because you can't really buy anything useful with your sh*tcoin or buttcoin, you can buy future IOU coins, ICOs!
This is a seriously great video.
The 'bubble' will only stop when we can finally use these currencies in the real world, until them, it's purely speculative on their potential future use.
I don’t know that the bubble will ever stop. The ponzi is as old as time and there’s always room for more get rich quick schemes. As long as there’s a few charasmatic folks trying to get others to essentially give them their money the bubble will just hop from one coin to another.
So I am looking at Bitconnect which is IMHO the biggest sh*tcoin out there with many alleging it is a ponzi scheme. There was recently regulator action against it[1] and it looks like it is dead. Except it's still trading[2] and has recovered some value after falling 90%. This is the most curious thing about the cryptocurrency world. Is it that as long as they trade and there's limited supply and the network is still up this stuff will just keep rolling along in zombie mode? A cryptocurrency doesn't need to have any company at all behind it as long as the network and protocols work. Am I missing something here?
I'm inclined to categorize Bitconnect completely apart from shitcoins. It's not necessarily that it's not a shitcoin, but the fact that is so wildly, obviously a traditional scam with some modern tech as dressing. I feel some level of sympathy for a beginner who falls for a shitcoin, but that sympathy becomes anger when the general chorus is yelling "Don't mess with that," but greed is still the deciding factor.
This is good but I think there is some parallel between Bitcoin bubble and the unicorn building frenzy a few years back. Maybe they should make a video about that too!
I think most cryptocurrencies are shitcoins. The only currency that provably IS NOT a shitcoin is Monero.
Monero is the only private, untraceable, trustless, secure and fungible cryptocurrency.
There is a growing number of online goods and services that you can now pay for with Monero. Globee is a service that allows online merchants to accept payments through credit cards and a host of cryptocurrencies, while being settled in Bitcoin, Monero or fiat currency. Project Coral Reef is a service which allows you to shop and pay for popular music band products and services using Monero.
Linux, Veracrypt, and a whole array of VPNs now accept Monero.
There is new Monero only marketplace called Annularis currently being developed which has not been created for those who value financial privacy and economic freedom, and there are rumours Open Bazaar is likely to support Monero once Multisig is implemented.
In addition, Monero is also supported by The Living Room of Satoshi so you can pay bills or credit cards directly using Monero.
Monero is definetely not the only one in this club. For example: there is Numeraire which is actively used by data scientist on numer.ai. NMR has true value as long as Numerai hedge fund is using it.
[+] [-] justboxing|8 years ago|reply
Serious question, not trolling. I am asking as there's a sea of shilling and mis-information out there and it's getting very difficult to figure out what's real and what's pump-and-dump / shilling, painting the tape, washtrading type scam.
My question is, What makes a "Sh* t" coin a "Sh* t" coin? I'm getting varying answers depending on source. Is it the current price (like fraction of cents) or is it a coin that has a landing page site with a "White paper" but no usage, or something else?
I thought Ripple ( XRP ) was onto something when they claimed that they have "partnered" with 100+ Banks, Financial institutions to provide liquidity and fees saving in cross border transfers.
Further research unearthed the fact that they do not have a SINGLE real customer, and that all the ones they hype on reddit r/Ripple and on CNBC are "Trials" / Pilots of their xCurrent and xRapid blockchain based software.
So does this make XRP also a Sh*t coin?
[+] [-] throwaway011818|8 years ago|reply
1) Buy the coin on an exchange. 2) Install the wallet from the coin's official website. 3) Get a text based pass phrase or private key so that I can restore the wallet at any time from a paper backup. 4) Transfer money from the exchange to the wallet. 5) Restore my wallet on another computer using step 3 and verify money from step 4 is present. 6) Transfer some coins back to the exchange.
Ripple only passed steps 1-3. It failed for step 4, in the sense it was a bad user experience, because you find out the wallet will cost you 20 XRP which you can never get back ($40+ when I tried it). It failed step 5 because the website suddenly stopped letting you download their wallet, which is still in Beta, even if you agreed to all the popup warnings asking you to accept the risks.
Some other results...
ADA/Cardano: I tried installing their wallet 5 times on 3 different computers (macOS and Windows 10) and just got random errors or hang ups. I got one wallet to work out of 5 attempts and was never able to restore that wallet from my pass phrase.
ZEC/ZCash: The macOS GUI wallet often crashes immediately. When it didn't crash it was easier to find a "donation" address than my own public (send to) address.
PIVX: Fails step 3.
Verge: The video at the top of their website to "learn more" before installing the wallet is beyond words bad -- I couldn't bring myself to perform step 2.
NAV: Great, passed all steps. Just not sure how it will compete against Monero long term.
Monero XMR: Looks good so far. But my exchange (Binance) charges about $15 for each transfer to my wallet. Transfers for most coins cost under $1.
ARK was absolutely the best experience. Passed all steps first try and took very little time. I really loved the UX and UI.
[+] [-] tptacek|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ricardobeat|8 years ago|reply
Shitcoins are the ones that put up a fancy website, a babble-filled whitepaper, maybe have an ICO, but their economic model makes no sense (blockchain for dentists anyone?), or they have no product at all and just clicked a few buttons to generate an Ethereum/Waves/etc token. Thus their ‘currency’ is likely to have zero utility. They still go up on wild speculation, because why not.
[+] [-] sdrothrock|8 years ago|reply
https://www.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/7r6chx/here...
[+] [-] StavrosK|8 years ago|reply
Not to mention that nobody really uses any coins right now because of all the hype, so it's not a great time for people who want cryptocurrency usage to eventually be widespread.
[+] [-] goldenkey|8 years ago|reply
Most of it comes down to the common sense test: ponzi. Did the founder give themselves 50% of the lions' share of the coin supply? Is the code just a copy of something else but changed to give the founder extra coins or abilities? The list goes on. Pretty much everything out there is a mixture of both. No founder wants to be poor if people will accept these diluted offerings. After all, you take $1 from everybody, and no one screams and shouts, yet you become one of the richest people in the world. Same principle applies with initial supply dilution in some respects.
[+] [-] thisisit|8 years ago|reply
Long answer - It takes lot of research before you can label something a shtcoin. How to do that research is one of the longer blog posts pending in my draft folder.
Starting point can be the ownership aspect of a coin. There are coins which are pre-mine or instamine. Shameless plug and a badly written blog post:
https://blockchaintechblog.com/2017/09/02/ico-token-explaine...
Ethereum is one of the biggest example. During it's launch developers owned ~12% of the supply.
Now, pre-mine is not exactly bad. Developers need money for things like listing. HitBTC, consider to be one of the worst exchanges, cost 25 BTC per listing.
But, on the other end of spectrum you have Veritaseum where the developers still own 95% of the coins. People might support it but in my book it is a shtcoin even at $373 per coin.
[+] [-] JohnJamesRambo|8 years ago|reply
"A defining feature of a cryptocurrency, and arguably its most endearing allure, is its organic nature; it is not issued by any central authority, rendering it theoretically immune to government interference or manipulation."
[+] [-] hypron|8 years ago|reply
Yes.
[+] [-] empath75|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] QuackingJimbo|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] matthewbauer|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] drb91|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] temp-dude-87844|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] baby|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] coderdude|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] dvt|8 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/paintingthetape.asp
[+] [-] eschaton|8 years ago|reply
Cryptocurrencies are not magically immune to all of the financial regulation of the past few hundred years just because they’re not specifically called out in those regulations.
“Cryptocurrencies are unregulated” is not just a myth, it’s propaganda created by shady people trying to sell you something.
[+] [-] keyle|8 years ago|reply
This is a seriously great video.
The 'bubble' will only stop when we can finally use these currencies in the real world, until them, it's purely speculative on their potential future use.
[+] [-] themagician|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] narrator|8 years ago|reply
[1]https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-01-16/bitconnec...
[2]https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/bitconnect/
[+] [-] nefitty|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bb88|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] afeezaziz|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|8 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] perseusprime11|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] damdog2020|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] laurentoget|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] neuro_imager|8 years ago|reply
Monero is the only private, untraceable, trustless, secure and fungible cryptocurrency.
There is a growing number of online goods and services that you can now pay for with Monero. Globee is a service that allows online merchants to accept payments through credit cards and a host of cryptocurrencies, while being settled in Bitcoin, Monero or fiat currency. Project Coral Reef is a service which allows you to shop and pay for popular music band products and services using Monero.
Linux, Veracrypt, and a whole array of VPNs now accept Monero.
There is new Monero only marketplace called Annularis currently being developed which has not been created for those who value financial privacy and economic freedom, and there are rumours Open Bazaar is likely to support Monero once Multisig is implemented.
In addition, Monero is also supported by The Living Room of Satoshi so you can pay bills or credit cards directly using Monero.
The use-case and features of Monero are well explained in this post: https://np.reddit.com/r/CryptoCurrency/comments/7ra409/your_...
[+] [-] kolar|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rkagerer|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] irl_zebra|8 years ago|reply
[+] [-] InclinedPlane|8 years ago|reply