Altcoin Reviews

[altcoinreviews]

Market Observations and Tidbits of Financial Wisdom..

Bitcoin price has been tumultuous but stable- going between $6000-7000-ish USD the last 2 months or so. Will look into more altcoins and technologies soon. Honestly, most are not worth the time. It is easy to see why the market is as it is due to the fears (of government regulation) and concerns of the day as well as other factors. Much of the excitement has calmed down since the “bitcoin and blockchain are a panacea!” snake oil HYPE grip has waned off the masses. Down goes the drop off the mountain.... how far will it go no one knows. This is why it’s good to have a diversified portfolio... don’t just invest in cryptocurrency- look into a well-rounded portfolio as part of risk management plan in case shit hits the fan. Not saying it will. Just saying that it’s always a good idea. And of course, buy low and sell high. Don’t put in what you can’t afford to lose. Ideas to round out portfolio may include but are not limited to: traditional stocks, corporate or savings bonds, and precious metals.

Diversify your portfolio but don’t over-do it. “You reap what you sow” is an excellent saying- as many farming operations can be likened to business operations and life. Some endeavors will thrive and others will die- but with calculated moves, one can limit the latter.

[altcoinreviews]

Climate Read of Crypto World...

I suspect that Ethereum may be where it is at. Need to do more reserach of the topic, but I’m not the only one to suspect this and strategize around this possiblity. More on Ethereum soon. BTC has some flaws as we see- notably scaling and transaction fee issues with that prevent everyday transactions like a coffee.Due to this very issue, I think that Bitcoin may be replaced. 

[altcoinreviews]

A wormhole with deadlines for faster transaction speeds on the network.. among other features.

[altcoinreviews]

https://cointelegraph.com/explained/segwit-explained

[ibmconsulting]

IBM raises its game in blockchain with secure cloud services and Docker integration

Bitcoin may still be the most famous application of blockchain technology, but the distributed, encrypted database architecture is now being applied to a range of other services, from different kinds of (non Bitcoin) financial transactions to anything else that requires secure tracking. And today, IBM laid out its claim for some of that new business: the IT giant announced a new set of blockchain services running on IBM Cloud and Docker, along with standards to run those services to meet security and regulatory compliance.

The advances come two months after IBM made its first waves with blockchain technology. First, it emerged that IBM is now investing in startups building blockchain-based services — coming in on a $60 million round for Digital Asset Holdings.

Then weeks later, IBM announced its intentions to work with blockchain technology itself, committing to launch a “blockchain-as-a-service” across its “IBM Garage” network of developer centers (now in New York, Tokyo, London and Singapore); and donating 44,000 lines of code to the Linux Foundation’s Hyperledger Project, effectively giving it a place at the heart of how it will be built.

IBM raises its game in blockchain with secure cloud services and Docker integration | TechCrunch

[ibmblr]

Cleaning beaches with blockchain.

Almost 8 billion tons of plastic are dumped into the ocean each year. To help fight it, The Plastic Bank began offering people in developing countries incentives like basic necessities and mobile phone charging in exchange for recycling plastic. As the program grew in popularity, they needed a way to scale their incentive system in an accessible and economically-friendly way. That’s when they turned to IBM Blockchain. Learn how we worked together to help turn plastic into a currency for change.

See how they do it ->

[altcoinreviews]

From Blockchain for Dummies book in link above via courtesy of IBM , The Linux Foundation, and the hardworking authors: "And  transaction  volumes  will explode with the rise of Internet of Things (IoT) — autonomous objects, such as refrigerators that buy groceries when supplies are  running low and cars that deliver themselves to your door, stop - ping for fuel along the way." NOW THIS IS WHAT WE ARE TALKING ABOUT!!!! If you think about it, this enables IOT to act somewhat like "A.I." furthering automating one's life processes.

More interesting stuff: “By using a shared ledger on a blockchain network, every partici-pant  can  access,  monitor,  and  analyze  the  state  of  the  vehicle irrespective of where it is within its life cycle.”

[altcoinreviews]

The :50- 1 minute is interesting if accurate about diamond smuggling and fraud hampering macroeconomic activities like fair export taxes or retailers buy fake stones through the [blockchain] technology steps in with record keeping specs distributed throughout the lands (or LANs, in this case). Everyone in the game has a replication of the information & no record can be added to the blockchain without a consensus of those involved. No one individual can add to or manipulate blockchain without the effort being logged for eternity. Not even a sysadmin can delete it. What interesting implications can such applications have on biz? Well, IBM hedges on it. What do you think?

[altcoinreviews]

IBM rep on point with HyperLedger.. except for no trust in the Bitcoin world..too generalized of a statement.

[altcoinreviews]

Had trouble with the install on the nanowallet similar to Verge, where one would have to download a .winrar format and figure that process if one has never done that before. So far Lisk is leading in that space- because you just install it, choose from your options, and you’re good to go. For me as an end user, I strongly feel one shouldn’t have to spend 5 or 6 hours trying to figure out 7-zip and all that jazz. User Experience (UX) is important. I have IT experience..what about the person that doesn’t have IT experience? They would probably give up.

**After writing above was able to get help from a member of NEM team and he walked me through the process...which is transferrable to downloading other wallets.. so...score on that part!

The fee to withdraw is fairly steep through Poloniex (15 XEM) equates to $3.65 to send transaction via that exchange. Which is not good for micropayments... a $3.65 fee on a say $10,000 transaction... that’s fine... but what if I wanted to send 1 XEM?  Well, if you want to send 1 XEM you still have to send 16 XEM.

Bittrex is apparently better if you choose to use exchange for a wallet. Poloniex is picky...not sure why. I also wonder why they have not added Pivx... Pivx definitely has the market cap.

Hmmm.... also not to clear yet on the Message function. I think it’s a cool idea to send transactions between users using nanowallet function... but the fact that it costs something is not something as an internet denizen that I fancy because of being so used to sending messages free. In its current state, it just seems rather extra.

My favorite part is the low transaction cost between nanowallets.

When asked about their Mijin technology, I was told to think of NEM as WAN and Mijin as LAN. Would like more info about the mechanics of this blockchain application and how it connects in the NEM framework.

Conclusion?

Would like to re-visit this review after 3-6 months and hope to to see progress in their operations regarding tightening up operations and removing excesses.

Transaction time (speed it takes to go through):

Algorithm: Proof-of-Importance

Total coins: 8999999999 XEM

Established: 03/31/2015

Current price as of today (09/18/17 at 6:45 PM) according to coinmarketcap:

$0.247156 USD

Prominent members:

If you would like to tip me for my research, you can do so @ the following:

  BTC address: 1AHpACtZHigt4aFKaBxoQMDbFdpXBLSkpc

[altcoinreviews]

From what I understand, the privacy functionality is of this team’s utmost concern. And it backs that up with a suite of technological attributes.

The Verge Currency’s website’s roadmap is brill, because it shows that the team is goal-oriented... which is somewhere where some coins fail. 

I agree with The Crypto Lark in the Youtube video below agreeing the website could use some work- more visual media on site would be great. Perhaps a video or animation on landing page would help it have less of a no frills feel?

The Electrum desktop wallet installation in its current state was a pain. Could be more of an intuitive process for the user. Why? Because it is a Winrar.zip file format.. an impatient and not particularly tech-savvy user would probably walk away from downloading something like that on their system. Aiming for a simpler GUI that is simultaneously easy-to-use and secure would help them immensely.

After discussing with them, they let me know that core wallet under development and recommended me to Android Verge and Coinpouch for iOS.

One may ask, out of the privacy coins: Why Verge over say, Pivx or Monero?

Verge has a public ledger with private use options such as Tor and i2P used to mask IP addresses for users. With the way Monero and Pivxcoin are currently set up this information can be traced (yet Monero is working on this problem with Kovri). Verge’s  dedication to privacy provides enhanced security features from hackers. And XVG is looking to add even more tech features- so keep an eye on them.

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IF ALREADY SUPER TECH-SAVVY, SKIP THIS PART AND CONTINUE READING AFTER NEXT SET OF STARS:

For the nerdy cats that want more on IP address and how that fits into the security tangent of the puzzle, I refer thee here:

https://www.quora.com/Can-I-be-hacked-if-someone-knows-my-IP-address

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Verge hopes be an answer to Bitcoin’s privacy and government seizure issue. In a certain aspect, I think many coins are aiming to have the qualities of cold hard cash on being able to track transactions and users’ activity. It’s not far-fetched that something like the Bolshevik Revolution could occur in any country and those that have taken steps to fortify and diversity their portfolios may be better off.

Definitely a coin to watch.  It is estimated that all the coins will be mined by 2024 and expected that the price will rise by then if not sooner assuming XVG makes its way through the fray. And considering how cheap it is, why not pick some up today? Might not stay that way.

If you would like to tip me for my research, you can do so @ the following:

Verge address: DJUkE4UNTRFRAdxLHYP5fPKMbNN1pEPsWG

BTC address: 1AHpACtZHigt4aFKaBxoQMDbFdpXBLSkpc

Thank you for reading!

                                              Metrics:

Transaction time (speed it takes to go through): ~30 seconds

System: POW

Total coins: 16555000000 XVG

Established: 09/10/2014

Current Verge price as of today (09/14 /17 at 8:54 PM) according to coinmarketcap: $0.004988 USD

Prominent members: https://github.com/vergecurrency/VERGE/graphs/contributors

[altcoinreviews]

“Lisk, the JavaScript based platform that allows developers to deploy and develop their own custom blockchain, and decentralized applications.” It was forked from Crypti in the beginning of 2016 by developers Max Kordek and Oliver Beddows with a highly successful crowdsale with their ICO.

-Lisk subreddit community ( https://www.reddit.com/r/Lisk/ )

What makes Lisk different from Bitcoin one may wonder? DPOS (Delegated Proof of Stake). “DPoS makes Proof of Stake scalable by allowing stakeholders to elect a specific limited amount of block generators in deterministic fashion.” After investigating now it makes sense. This is a complicated coin, can see how it would fit in to up and coming infrastructure that blockchain is bringing to the world. My source also goes on to explain “Lisk is a platform for launching your own blockchain appliations. In order for such a platform to be lean and scalable it needs sidechains.”

What is interesting to note is that the DPOS system was originally developed by the Bitshares team.

Wikipedia puts it this way: “The idea is that every Blockchain App is on its own sidechain, separate from the main blockchain. This should help with scalability issues that many cryptocurrencies were facing, such as bitcoin.“ Therefore keeping the speed up.. important- if you’ve ever had transaction drag on BTC network, you know how irksome that can be!

One major difference between Ethereum and Liskcoin is:

Ethereum focuses on smart contracts

and

Lisk focuses on sidechains.

Another difference between the 2 are in the code/s... Lisk is written in Javascript while Ethereum is written in Solidity or Serpent.

“Solidity is very similar to Javascript, but is custom made for smart contracts.”

-https://ethereum.stackexchange.com/questions/2104/how-does-lisk-differ-from-ethereum

Javascript is one of the most popular languages at the moment.

I wish I would see more projects collaborating with other coins and creating standards asking “How can I contribute something UNIQUE to the overall puzzle?” rather than aiming to compete with other coins. I see it having long-term potential in the larger scheme of thing due to its complexity- which is good, we don’t need another Bitcoin clone.

If you would like to tip me for my research, you can do so @ the following:

Lisk address: 17830550436490871748L

BTC address: 1AHpACtZHigt4aFKaBxoQMDbFdpXBLSkpc

Thanks for reading!

                                              Metrics:

Transaction time (speed it takes to go through): 2 tests- first transaction took 1 minute 2nd transaction took 2 minutes to go through

System: DPOS (Delegated Proof of Stake)

Total coins: >100000000 LISK

Established: 01/30/2016

Current Lisk price as of today (08/09/17 at 10:04 PM) according to coinmarketcap: $6.74 USD

Prominent members: https://lisk.io/team

[altcoinreviews]

Let’s start with some minor technical details:

“Decred is an open, progressive, and self-funding cryptocurrency with a system of community-based governance integrated into its blockchain. At its core is a hybridized proof-of-work proof-of-stake (PoW/PoS) consensus system that aims to strike a balance between PoW miners and PoS voters to create a more robust notion of consensus. The project is a result of the theoretical proposals brought by proof-of-activity (PoA) and MC2 in 2013.”

- https://forum.decred.org/threads/decred-an-overview.4/

Another thing I’d like to note about Decred, which stands apart from Expanse whom I blogged about earlier, is this part of the forum post:

“Compatibility with Bitcoin transaction scripting system - Decred's scripting system has been derived from Bitcoin's with care in ensuring that all future updates to the Bitcoin transaction script will be easily extensible to Decred. Further, any newly created functionalities will also be devised with backwards compatibility with Bitcoin in mind.”

In the long run, a 5 minute block time might help solve data size problem.

Another piece I’d like to point out: their ICO was self-funded (therefore no financial puppet strings?)

Collaborations with: Ledger, wirexapp, Uquid, Trezor

I agree with the Youtube video below that it just seems like a project at this time and believe the team can up their game. If they can somehow tighten up on strategy and do more with established CREDIT companies or somehow bend the rules to make their own system somehow, I’d be more impressed. From an investor standpoint however, one is wondering, “Will they be around long-term?” followed by “Why?” & “How are they going about accomplishing this?”

Will be following this coin’s development and am curious to see how this develops.

If you would like to tip me for my research, you can do so @ the following:

Decred address: Dsd6bYYQ5czAjFiFJh6EaGc2UtrSUX9J1yP

BTC address: 1AHpACtZHigt4aFKaBxoQMDbFdpXBLSkpc

Thanks for reading!

                                               Metrics:

Transaction time (speed it takes to go through): 0-5 minutes

Algorithm: POW/POS

Total coins: max. coin supply is 21 million

Established: 12/15/2015

Current price as of today (08/06/17 at 7:57 PM) according to coinmarketcap: $34.49 USD

Prominent members: https://docs.decred.org/support-directory/

[altcoinreviews]

Expansecoin.

Expansecoin (EXP) is the first stable fork of Ethereum (ETH). It is supported by myetherwallet, Jaxx, Ledger wallet, and Microsoft Azure among others. Part of its inception was due to founder Christopher Franko finding a problem with the Bitcoin code- the Bitcoin scripting language is fairly restrictive. And any entrepreneur will tell you- a problem creates an opportunity...so he added elements from Ethereum into the cauldron and thus Expanse was born! If you know about the DAO (Decentralized Autonomous Organizaation), it is one reason why Ethereum (which we won’t go into this post too much about) is significant to the future of blockchain technology.

Read rest of interview here: https://news.bitcoin.com/interview-expanse-project/

                                                        Metrics:

Transaction time (speed it takes to go through): 1 minute.

Algorithm: Proof-of-Work (POW)

Total coins:11000000 EXP

Established: September 13, 2015

Current price as of today (08/06/17 at 10:40 AM) according to coinmarketcap: $3.45 USD

Prominent members: Christopher Franko (founder), James Clayton, Dan Conway

If you would like to tip me for my research, you can do so @ the following:

EXP address: 0x4c505ab17e16d1493e3b379a3f6485d4f844f034

BTC address: 1AHpACtZHigt4aFKaBxoQMDbFdpXBLSkpc

Thanks for reading! More to come.