Who are creating all the alternate cryptocurrencies?

Question

Everyone knows Bitcoin and Litecoins goes hand in hand and they are the most popular cryptocurrencies out there. But who is creating all these alternative cryptocurrencies such as Feathercoin, Peercoin, Quarkcoin, Craftcoin, etc. And why are they created?

I see no potential why they would be something people would want to pay with in the future. I can not think that a café (for example) wants to add any other payments besides BTC and LTC and some FIAT money.

Why would they ever struggle with adding Peercoin, Quarkcoin, Craftcoin etc etc etc?

Once again, who are creating these coins and why? Do they have potential to grow high? If so, why?

Answer 1

Many people have an interest in cryptocurrencies - some of them are interested enough that they would investigate and work on creating a new cryptocurrency. Some people are in it for a quick profit, i.e. the scam coins, but others are genuinely interested. Sometimes it is good to be associated with a currency, but often they prefer to be anonymous (to some extent) and watch and help from the sidelines.

A cryptocurrency is not just a once-off effort. There is work needed to maintain it, especially when a problem occurs, or a security issue affects it. It is necessary to update clients, maybe even fix a blockchain.

Another reason for the increase in alternate cryptocurrencies is due to the hardware investment in the coin mining community. For most miners like myself, it is now almost infeasible to mine BTC unless you have or are prepared to buy into the latest ASIC miners, but even then, the timeframe for making a reasonable profit is very short. What do we do with this hardware - we use it to mine alternate coins that suit the hardware. USB ASIC miners for SHA-256 based coins. GPU mining for Scrypt based coins. Hence the alternate coins are actually filling a need by the mining community to have something to mine and have the chance to make a profit or get a return on their investment.

Answer 2

Good question. Some of them are pure scams, ie. Goldcoin. Most of them are pre-/insta- mined. Some of them are secured version of the BTC, using another hashing algorythm (Litecoin (it is pretty BAD example of scrypt coin btw)). But, in my opinion, they are useless, because in place where cryptocurrency is needed, you can deploy bitcoin. If the place do not need cryptocurrency, none of them are suitable.

Please note, that altcoins hurt bitcoin. BTC is deflatory by design, because money supply is limited, however, a number of altcoins is unlimited, so BTC is under inflation into the altcoins. Does it make any sense?

Answer 3

In my opinion, the ability to fork Bitcoin and create child coins is the biggest variable in the whole cryptocurrency world. Cryptocurrency is the future and is here to stay. Will bitcoin always be the dominant coin because it was first? Not sure. Should we adopt new coins because they offer improvements? Does that make most coins useless since we can throw away old coins and replace them with improved coins?

Either way, intuition tells me that there must exist at least one coin for EACH type of major computing power. For example, the big three are ASIC, GPU, and CPU. Cryptocurrency is based on the idea of security through math and encryption, regardless of what processor achieves that. Decentralizing computational power through hardware is the fundamental idea behind these currencies. A CPU or GPU coins can be just as secure (or more) as a ASIC coin such as bitcoin.

People are creating these coins because it is profitable and its making history. Altcoins have high potential to grow because all cryptocurrency today is speculation. I recommending dipping into one the big three and HOLDING. Bitcoin, Litecoin, and possibly a CPU coins if you're feeling risky (Quark/Primecoin). Its the wild west and things are just gettings started!

Answer 4

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stamp_collecting

Looks like something similar to nowadays events with alt-coins already were in the history of humanity.

What can stop Stamp collectors from creating new stamp? Theoretically, there is finite lumber on the Earth, finely, finite number of the atoms around Sun.

Compare to alt-coins, there is finite number of tcp ports, 1-65535. However, any alt-coin can take original bitcoin's ports.

Finite number of IP addresses, however, there is IRC protocol in the base of bitcoin protocol, probably, only one node needs in real IP, may be no one.

An Enter to the market for new alt-coin appear more and more friendly. Probably, once, user would chose couple of params, Number of coins, delays, ports, name of alt-coin, and Logo. Push the button. Alt-coin ready. User will only configure his GPU/CPU to make the life in the block-chain.

Look at the same question, and my answer: What's stopping an infinite number of altcoins with the same protocol from appearing in the future?

Answer 5

Many people are creating alternative currencies.

The Litecoin has been created by Charles Lee, a former Google employee. This guy's the only cryptocurrency creator that is publicly known. In fact you can find pictures of him and videos of him.

Most cyrptocurrency creators wish to stay anonymous. Some because their coins are scams, some because they have many coins because they were some of the first "miners" and if the value of their coins rises they'll be rich.

Bitcoin right now is under the control of very few people. An article about a month ago was written about the owners of Bitcoin and we know that 47 people owned about 1/4 of the Bitcoins and 927 owned over 50%.

LESS THAN 1000 PEOPLE OWN MOST OF THE BITCOINS. This was supposed to be for the little guy...you know, like me and you. Well, it's not. This is why other cryptocurrnecies are created. Bitcoin won't help the repressed escape persecution and help them move their wealth in other countries so they can escape. Bitcoin is going to be used to hide fortunes. Bitcoin might be used by the CIA, NSA, US Defense Intelligence for money transfers. Litecoin might soon follow the same trend. Yes, some cryptocurrenceis are scams but many aren't.

It's all about having an option.