This presentation ended up being more condescending than I wanted.
Sorry.
Gamble!
Look for cool stuff!
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!
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.
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
Bitcoin works the way it does for a reason.
Altcoins that change something simple about bitcoin are insecure.
Example: 10min block time
Most altcoins have significant security problems:
Ripple, Nxt, Peercoin, Darkcoin
And probably all of the rest of them too.
Prove that you did useless stuff
People believe you
Prove that you own a bunch of coins
People believe you
Blockchains are really dumb.
You can create conflicting blockchains
Nobody knows which blockchain is correct.
Monero - Ring Signatures
Ethereum - Turing complete!
Storj & Sia - Data Storage!