Altcoins

 

This presentation ended up being more condescending than I wanted.

 

Sorry.

Two ways to play:

 

Gamble!

 

Look for cool stuff!

Gamble!

 

Danger! Excitement! Winners and Losers!

 

Nxt went up like 10x in 2 weeks at one point

Ripple went up like 10x in 2 weeks at one point

Dogecoin went up a stupid-load at one point

 

Lots of opportunity for profit!

Lots more opportunity for pain!

 

Gamble!

 

Know the people, not the tech

People fall in love with dumb things

People fall in love with impossible technologies

The secret to gambling is to predict what people will get excited about.

Look For Cool Stuff!

 

Cryptocurrency is really hard.

Cool crypto is probably broken.

Worthwhile cool stuff is probably not crypto (tipping!)

Cool stuff might be overshadowed by dumb stuff for months or years

Unfortunate Reality


Bitcoin works the way it does for a reason.

 

Altcoins that change something simple about bitcoin are insecure.

 

Example: 10min block time

Unfortunate Reality

 

Most altcoins have significant security problems:

 

Ripple, Nxt, Peercoin, Darkcoin

 

And probably all of the rest of them too.

Proof of Work

 

Prove that you did useless stuff

 

People believe you

Proof of Stake

 

Prove that you own a bunch of coins

 

People believe you

Nothing at Stake

 

Blockchains are really dumb.

 

You can create conflicting blockchains

 

Nobody knows which blockchain is correct.

Potentially Cool Stuff

 

Monero - Ring Signatures

 

Ethereum - Turing complete!

 

Storj & Sia - Data Storage!

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