Quote from: Mobius on August 10, 2014, 07:47:41 PM

Quote from: polynesia on August 10, 2014, 04:02:18 AM

Quote from: Mobius on August 10, 2014, 02:47:28 AM

Quote from: TookDk on August 08, 2014, 09:38:55 PM

Quote from: bander on August 07, 2014, 02:29:12 PM

So as everyone keeps coming up with these new coins and new algorithms, how do they decide how many total coins to offer? I know LTC is exactly 4X as many BTC. Can anyone shed any light on this, or is it completely random and up to each individual coin maker? What are the possible positive and negative impacts on a somewhat random, finiate amount of coins?

You already had many good answers to you question. I also think it is important to mention that the "coin makers" (called devs) can chose to add a "premine" to the genesis block (the first block). The word premine is a bit misleading, since nothing is being mined, they have simply started with giving themselves x millions coins as a rewards for making a new revolutionary coins that everyone should invest in.

I don't know if "revolutionary" is really the proper term to use. Most alt coins provide no value that bitcoin cannot provide and their network is much less secure then the bitcoin network.

Even 1 or 2 of these altcoins has a brilliant idea/feature implemented, it will be worth it. And which is why speculators keep throwing money at altcoins.

If one of these altcoins has such a brilliant idea then what would stop it from being implemented into bitcoin? We have the testnet that allows people to test new features or anything they want so there is no real reason to have to use an altcoin to develop these new ideas. IMP people throw money at altcoins because they want to speculate on the price.

Not all of alt coin has something new and just is the clone of existing protocol. The devs has premined a lot. Once the exchange launches this coin, they dump all the coins they have right away and grab a lot of profit.