I knew about Bitcoin since 2011 and started getting really involved in late 2013.

I was convinced that I was a late adopter. Even though the mood in the forums was mostly optimistic in 2014, I felt sad knowing that I knew about Bitcoin back when it was in the single digits and didn't act on it.

I forgot about Bitcoin in 2015 as college studies got in the way. But those coins... I still kept them. I also had quite a few in alts too which I never sold.

Now I'm selling 2/3rds of my entire stash and will be buying a house (fully paid, no mortgage) thanks to Bitcoin.

And of course, I will be putting the money that would otherwise go into rent payments back into Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies.

Because Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies are the future of money. It is truly a technology that will span generations.

Thank you Bitcoin.

I've never used BURST before but I have some coins on Poloniex and am familiar with the hard drive mining concept.

I believe BURST works in the same way as NXT (which it is based on) in that the passphrase is basically the private key.

A private key is all you need to "own" an account so anyone has access to the Bitcoin wallet with the private key corresponding to the letter "a" for example or for single dictionary words like "cat" or "dog", and putting coins into these publicly known addresses would instantly result in someone detecting it and sweeping them to an address that only they control.

There are people out there who have enormous lists of such Bitcoin addresses with easily guessable private keys. Likewise with NXT, there are people who have enormous lists of NXT addresses with such passphrases. They continuously look for incoming transactions and will try to snatch the coins into their own wallets before anyone else does.

You probably weren't targeted specifically. Even if you have top-notch security, if you have an easy-to-guess passphrase then eventually someone will find your coins and take them.

I'm surprised that someone has gone through the trouble of doing the same for BURST though, since its market cap is so low. I suppose it's possible that there was a manual passphrase collision as well - i.e. someone else somewhere in the world chose the exact same passphrase as yours but given the small size of the BURST community and the fact that the coins were taken immediately afterwards, that's probably quite unlikely.

12 random words from the dictionary is a good passphrase and is what NXT uses. A 35+ character passphrase with letters, numbers, symbols, and upper and lower case characters should also be safe. When in doubt, it's probably best to just use the passphrase that the wallet automatically generates for you.

Hmm... Those who own powerful media companies are probably heavily vested in fiat currencies and shares in large corporations. I wonder if they see alternative cryptocurrencies and decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs) as a threat to their holdings.

If the altcoin industry is now a multi-billion dollar industry then why doesn't the media treat it like one?

2016 and 2017 marked an enormous change in the cryptocurrency industry with alternative cryptocurrencies in particular gaining multi-million dollar or even billion-dollar market caps. The altcoin industry became a major industry in its own right and has gained the attention of banks, tech giants like Microsoft, and venture capital firms.

And yet, why is it that we never hear about altcoins in the mainstream media? By mainstream, I am referring to news websites like BBC.com, newspapers like the New York Times and the Washington Post, and TV news stations like CNN, Fox News, and NBC.

I can understand why the media did not report on say Darkcoin back when it had a $10 million market cap or NEM and Monero when they had a $2 million market cap because back then, altcoins were amateurish projects with only a small community of crypto geeks interested in them (I should know, I was one of them ).

Some altcoins do have mentions but they tend to be one-sentence examples. Only a very small few (e.g. Litecoin, Ethereum) have multiple articles dedicated to them.

Searching Fox News for the terms "Lisk", "Ardor", "Stratis", or "Monero" reveals nothing. Even "DASH" yields no results.

When PIVX gained a $100 million market cap, no news outlets mentioned it (Searching the term "PIVX" on BBC, Fox News, or NBC shows zero results). There is also no mention of PIVX in Reuters, Bloomberg, or the Wall Street Journal even though these are precisely the kind of places where you'd expect to find such information.

As part of a college project for introductory computer science students, I created a small FAQ for Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies which was well recieved by other students - many of whom had never heard of Bitcoin before or were only vaguely familiar with it.

I'm not an expert so it's possible that some of the information might be slightly incorrect or could be better worded but most of it should be fine. I'm publishing it into public domain for others to use to increase awareness of Bitcoin. Feel free to modify and republish it in any way you want.

What is Bitcoin?

Bitcoin is digital money that is not under the control of any one country or centralized entity. It was launched in 2009 by an anonymous developer who went by the name of Satoshi Nakamoto. Like cash, bitcoins can be bought, sold, and traded for goods and services.

With Bitcoin, you can send money to someone halfway across the world in mere minutes, at the cost of just a few cents, and without having to deal with banks, governments, or third parties.

How does Bitcoin work?

The Bitcoin network is a decentralized peer-to-peer network where each node maintains an identical copy of all the transactions made in the network all the way to the point when the network was first created. This record of transactions is called the blockchain. New transactions are added onto the blockchain by "miners". Miners use their computing power to solve a cryptographic puzzle every ~10 minutes and the miner who solves it gets a small reward in the form of newly minted bitcoins. The transactions that were made in the network during that time are then added to the next block in the blockchain. The more powerful your hardware is, the more chances you have of "solving" the next block and the more bitcoins you will generate.

The Bitcoin network is designed so that as long as no one entity controls 51% of the computing power, nobody can double-spend their bitcoins. The fact that data can be copied and infinitely recopied many times stumped those who had previously tried to create a form of digital money. With Bitcoin, this problem has now been solved.

Where can I buy bitcoins?

Bitcoins can be purchased from online Bitcoin exchanges or traded in-person via websites like LocalBitcoins.com. In some countries, bitcoins may also be purchased from special Bitcoin ATMs.

To store bitcoins, you will need a Bitcoin wallet. The official Bitcoin wallet software can be downloaded from Bitcoin.org.

Where can I spend my bitcoins?

For many years, the Bitcoin community has maintained a small cottage industry where goods and services of all sorts could be traded using bitcoins. While Bitcoin has previously had a reputation for being used for gambling and to buy drugs and weapons in dark markets, major businesses such as Overstock are now also starting to accept payments in Bitcoin. As public awareness of Bitcoin grows, it is likely that this trend will continue into the future.

Can I get rich if I mine bitcoins?

Back in the day it was possible to mine lots of bitcoins using a home computer. You could mine hundreds or even thousands of bitcoins everyday because the difficulty was low and prices were cheap. But as Bitcoin became more popular, more people started mining and so you needed expensive graphics cards to compete.

Nowadays people mine using specialized equipment called ASICs. These are specialized computers that are only useful for mining bitcoins. Mining using ASICs can be profitable but only if you have access to very cheap electricity. Most people don't have access to such cheap electricity so they can't compete. So no, you will most likely not get rich by mining bitcoins.

What is a cryptocurrency?

Cryptocurrencies are digital currencies that use cryptographic principles to regulate generation of coins and verify transactions.

Bitcoin was the first successful cryptocurrency. Because of this, it is the largest and most well known. However, a number of other cryptocurrencies have also been created in recent years. Nearly all of these alternative cryptocurrencies are modeled on Bitcoin's design with few changes. These include Namecoin, Litecoin, Peercoin, Primecoin, Dogecoin, and many others. Some of these offer features not found in Bitcoin such as faster transaction times or changes to their algorithm which makes it easier to mine using home computers.

Just keep in mind however that the return on BTC wouldn't be anywhere close to that of a good altcoin - i.e. if Bitcoin goes to $100 billion, that's a 5 times return on investment. If something like Stratis, Lisk, Ardor, or Waves goes to just $5 billion (1/4 of Bitcoin's current market cap), that's a 100 times return on investment. Of course, the upside is that you're far less likely to lose much by sticking to BTC.

I myself only have about 10% of my crypto in BTC at the moment. Most people would call that insanely low but it's been working pretty well for me so far.


Supernodes are nodes that have 3 million XEM and meet performance requirements. They help to support the NEM network and in return, are rewarded for it.

I would think that having more supernodes would restrict the XEM supply, since these coins are effectively locked up. This would drive the price up since there is less available supply to sell on exchanges. A similar situation is happening right now with DASH and its masternodes.

Coming from someone who knew about Bitcoin since 2011 and has been involved in the community since 2013, the guy who said that crypto is a technology that will span generations is right. Short of a 1984-style totalitarian regime happening, I can't think of any reasonably realistic scenario that could make Satoshi's invention disappear. After the whitepaper was written and the genesis block was created, Bitcoin and cryptos were here to stay.

My personal feeling is that by 2030 or possibly even within a decade, Bitcoin will have a market cap in the $50-100 billion range and more importantly, the trend of decreasing BTC dominance will continue due to simple market dynamics. Therefore, several altcoins (e.g. Ethereum, NEM, DASH, XMR, Litecoin, etc.) could have market caps in the low billions by this point as well. We're already seeing this happen with Ethereum right now and XRP and LTC (briefly) have also had $>1 billion market caps in the past.

I would advise against selling all of your XEM. In the short term, the price could come back down and selling XEM would have seemed like the right decision. But thinking further out, there is a big chance you could end up like the other guy who sold all of his 2.25 million XEM for 70 satoshis each. When Bitcoin spiked to $30 in 2011, many lucky miners cashed out their coins and used this to buy new cars and clothes and stuff. Unfortunately for them, many of those who sold their entire stash also lost sight of the bigger picture.

I still have about 80% of my XEM from the genesis block. I did divest some into Lisk and Ardor recently however. And of course, I keep some in BTC because that's the closest thing in cryptos to a safe haven you're going to get outside of fiat-pegged coins which also have their own problems (e.g. Tether, Nubits). I try to keep a fairly diverse portfolio because it's impossible to predict which coins will come out ahead in 1, 2, or 5 years time. It's simply far too long. But when Bitcoin started receiving mainstream attention and merchant support in 2013, it wasn't just Bitcoin that benefited. The entire crypto landscape benefited. And I suspect the same will be true in the coming years.

Thanks. I will check those out right now.

What are some good projects happening on WAVES right now and how do I find their assets?

The only ones showing up for me are Waves, US Dollar, Euro, Chinese Yuan, Waves Community, Miner Reward, and various combinations of these.

Do I need to find and enter an asset ID into the search box rather than its name (as in the case with NXT)? Or do I need to download the full wallet to use the asset exchange?

Apologies for asking so many questions. And thanks in advance!

Thanks for the explanation.

That sounds a lot like InstantDEX which I think was planned for NXT but not implemented.

I've just downloaded and opened the lite wallet now. Very impressed at how quick and easy it was to get everything set up.

Does the seed that the wallet gives me at the beginning function just like a NXT passphrase (i.e. it's the only thing I need to access my account)? Everywhere I go it says that a WAVES seed should be 12 words long but why does mine have 15 words?

Long-time NXT user here.

I remember you could trade fiat on the NXT asset exchange using Coinomat's coinoUSD asset as well as assets representing cryptos (e.g. mgwBTC, mgwLTC) using jl777's multigateway.

I know that Coinomat and jl777 were a big part of what made NXT and its AE so successful in its early days so having them is a big plus for WAVES and WAVES' distribution is probably better than NXT's due to the difference in size of their ICOs but feature-wise, what is the difference between WAVES and NXT circa 2014?

Back in January 2016, Myriad had an ATL market cap of $25,000 and each coin was worth 6 sats. Now its market cap is $750,000 and each coin is worth 40 sats. Vertcoin is another example. In mid-2015, it had a market cap of $100,000 and each coin was worth 2,500 sats. Now its market cap is $3.5 million and each coin is worth 9,000 sats.

Probably the most famous example these days is PIVX.

Coins such as these tend to escape the attention of most people. When a coin goes from a $20 million market cap to a $200 million one, it's a big deal. But when a coin goes from a $100,000 market cap to a $1 million one, very few people will take notice. And that's despite the fact that the return on investment is identical for both.

More importantly, it's far easier to bring up a coin's market cap from $100,000 to $1 million than it is to bring up a coin's market cap from $100 million to $1 billion since the former requires a far smaller injection of money. Lots of coins with market caps in the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars have increased in value by 10 or 20 times that of BTC. Very few coins with market caps already in the hundreds of millions of dollars have done the same (Ethereum might be the only one so far).

So, anyway. That's probably enough rambling from me. What are some of the more promising very low market cap altcoins out there?

EDIT: Just to clarify, I'm not saying that Myriad, Vertcoin, and PIVX are currently promising altcoins with low market caps. But only that they were so in the past. I have no idea what these coins will do in the future.

Basically the idea is that anyone can retire if they have ~25 times their annual expenses in savings due to return on investments such as stocks and property. Those whose goal is FIRE aim to minimize their expenses while they work until they reach this amount so that they can retire at age 30, 40, or 50 rather than the more typical 65+.

So if you want to live on $30,000 a year after retirement then you will need 30,000 * 25 = $750,000 in savings.

The two most popular FIRE blogs out there are Mr. Money Moustache and Jacob from Early Retirement Extreme. MMM lives on $25,000 a year and lives a fairly normal lifestyle while Jacob from ERE lives on $14,000 a year and lives a very frugal lifestyle.

I guess the question boils down to whether or not you're willing to avoid the temptation of buying new cars, fancy electronics, and expensive restaurant meals, etc. during your twenties and thirties so that you can be freed from the burden of having to work in your forties, fifties, and beyond.

A typical example:

Bob is a recent college graduate who lives on $20,000 a year. He cooks his own meals rather than dining out in order to save on costs and drives a 1988 Toyota Camry. After graduating with a bachelor's degree in software engineering at 22, he gets a job that pays $80,000 a year. He could do what all of his friends are doing and upgrade his lifestyle to match his new salary. He could dine at expensive restaurants every week, go on luxurious holidays, furnish his house with expensive furniture and electronics, buy designer clothes, and upgrade his Camry to a brand new BMW. Or he could take the FIRE approach and continue to live the same way he did for 13 years while diligently saving most of his income. By age 35, Bob has saved $60,000*13 = $780,000 which enables him to retire provided he spends no more than $31,200 a year from then on.

Good idea? Bad idea? What do you think? Would you ever consider FIRE for yourself?

As I understand it, the WAVES devs were originally part of the NXT community but decided to make their own coin?

I've read the [ANN] thread and much of the stuff (e.g. creation/trading of tokens via an asset exchange, encrypted messaging, voting system, automated transactions, tokens like coinoUSD, multigateway) seem quite similar to NXT's current/planned features.

Not criticizing. Just curious.

I thought it might be a good idea to make a list of short, one-sentence descriptions/summaries of the top altcoins and assets on CoinMarketCap. This idea isn't new, but most of the existing lists out there are old and outdated. Of course, it's possible to search the name of each coin/asset on Google and go through the links one by one or read through their [ANN] threads but this can be a rather tedious process. So I think this would save people some time.

Since the list is always changing, I'll try to update it every few days/weeks.

The coins/assets in red are ones that I don't know much about, so they currently lack a description. I might add their description later on. Or feel free to suggest a short, one-sentence description and I'll add it to the list. If there are any mistakes or I've left something important out, then feel free to point it out as well.

Bitcoin: The original cryptocurrency
Ethereum: Decentralized application platform for running 'smart contracts' (i.e. code on the blockchain)
Ripple: Distributed peer-to-peer payment network and currency exchange for financial institutions
Litecoin: Cheaper and faster transactions than Bitcoin
Dash: Anonymous coin with decentralized mixing, fast transactions, and decentralized governance
Monero: Anonymous coin (fork of Bytecoin - see below) with fairer distribution
Ethereum Classic: Variant of Ethereum where a large amount of hacked funds were not returned to investors
NEM: NXT-inspired coin with modified PoS system ("proof-of-importance") and wider initial distribution
Augur: Decentralized prediction markets built on Ethereum
MaidSafeCoin: Token to be exchanged for Safecoin once the SAFE Network (a decentralized data storage and communication platform) goes live

Golem: Decentralized Ethereum-based computation network for buying/selling computing power
Zcash: Anonymous coin where transactions are verified without the sender/receiver and amount transferred being known (zero-knowledge proofs)
Tether: Blockchain-based representation of the US dollar backed by fiat reserves
Dogecoin: First meme-based coin
Decred: Community-directed cryptocurrency with decentralized governance
PIVX: Dash fork
Stratis: Customizable blockchain-as-a-service (BaaS) C# development platform for businesses and organizations
Waves: Platform for creating and trading tokens on a decentralized asset exchange
Factom: Blockchain-based record-keeping system
Steem: Reddit-esque social networking/blogging platform

Iconomi:
DigixDAO:
BitConnect: HYIP-esque lending platform with trading bot
SingularDTV:
Round: Decentralized Ethereum-based eSports platform
Lisk: Decentralized Javascript application platform
First Blood: Decentralized Ethereum-based eSports platform
Bytecoin: Anonymous coin and the first to use CryptoNote technology (ring signatures)
GameCredits: Coin for the gaming industry (in-app or in-game purchases)
BitShares: Decentralized cryptocurrency and crypto-asset exchange

Miscellaneous coins not in the top 30:

Auroracoin: Coin for Icelandic residents
Burst: Coin mined using free hard drive space ("proof-of-capacity")
Gridcoin: Coins rewarded for contribution to BOINC network
Huntercoin: Human-mineable coin where coins are harvested by playing a game
Namecoin: Decentralized Domain Name System (DNS)
NXT: First pure proof-of-stake coin
Omni: Platform for creating custom assets/currencies on top of the Bitcoin blockchain
Peercoin: First coin to use proof-of-stake (actually hybrid PoW/PoS)
Primecoin: Coin with proof-of-work system that searches for prime numbers
RISE: Lisk fork

Yeah, it's the price rise that got be interested again. It's on the front page of BBC right now.

To be fair, Bitcoin did reach close to $1,200 in November 2013 but only very, very briefly. It was definitely not the sustained long term price trend that we're seeing now. If this upward trend continues past this region and into new territory then things are going to get very interesting very fast. For starters, a lot of people who left during the last bear market will probably be back.

Howdy! I knew about Bitcoin since 2011 but only became seriously interested in late 2013 just after the big price rise that happened prior to Mt. Gox going under. I was quite a frequent poster on these forums until the first half of 2015. Then I went to college and studies got in the way of posting so I kind of lost interest in Bitcoin for the most part.

I was pretty deeply involved with the cryptocurrency scene during those months. I bought coins through LocalBitcoins (which I still hold to this day ), gambled with them, ran my own faucets, traded altcoins, printed my own paper wallets, took part in signature campaigns, and mined with USB miners for fun. However, my knowledge of Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies pretty much stops abruptly at around 2015.

So my question is this, what are some of the major developments that I've missed and should know about?

(For example, I remember learning about how GPUs were used to mine BTC in 2011 but that info was well out of date by 2013.)

I was one of the original stakeholders who bought stakes on the NXT AE. Glad to see NEM is doing well (and Bitcoin too!). Never sold any XEM but am definitely kicking myself for not buying more. 2017 is already shaping up to be a very interesting year for cryptos.

Hi, I would like to join this campaign. I got an invitation through PM:

Name: Lorenzo
Position: Sr. Member
Wallet address: 1H9AaiUjuPzTtHD99FxsBGhWFuZgPUrc5M
Starting posts count: 801 (including this post)



Removing newlines should make it work correctly.

Apparently the character counter has a bug which shows newlines being counted as one character when it's actually counted as two so this results in part of the signature getting cut off even when it says that you haven't reached the max character limit. It used to be that the signature still worked in this truncated state but theymos recently made a few changes to how the forum parses BBCode (probably because of this bug which was spotted a while back) and now the hero signature doesn't work anymore.

Very interesting. Sadly, I know nothing about Scala.

Is part of the idea to make the code as short as possible? Kind of like those <1 kB chess programs that attempt to do the same? If so, wouldn't adopting proof-of-work rather than proof-of-stake help simplify things even further? Or are proof-of-stake systems not significantly more complex than proof-of-work systems?