Aug 15, 2017 at 14:32 // News

Bitcoin Garden, the second altcoin forum in the world, earned its reputation because of the founder, Federico Mercatali aka Secco, who has been in the field of information technology for 12 years, and who joined the Bitcoin community in 2012. Coinidol.com interviewed Secco about his views on the media market and the promotion of Blockchain and cryptocurrencies across the world.

Coinidol: There were different predecessors to Bitcoin, that didn't have such huge commercial success. Why has only Satoshi Nakamoto achieved a revolution, though he is not the first who created cryptocurrency?

Secco: I was late to the Bitcoin party and missed the beginning so I may not be the most qualified professional to talk about it. I see two key points: first, the timing was just perfect. The required technologies were mature and the open source community was large enough to provide a strong base of enthusiastic people willing to contribute. Secondly, and this is what really surprised me, Bitcoin design was almost perfect since the very beginning. It took almost 8 years to come to the point where a redesign is needed to address the block size limit. As we can see in these days, Ethereum took much less to reach a critical point.

CI: Do you consider Bitcoin to be just a kind of share for Bitcoin's blockchain, a bubble that is going bigger or smaller depending on news around it?

Secco: I see Bitcoin as a solid value storage, the most reliable in the cryptocurrency panorama. Besides, its market cap may seem huge but it is tiny compared to other currencies or commodities, an easy target for speculation, thus the high volatility in the short term.

CI: How many news outlets are there in the industry at the moment?

Secco: There are many. At least a dozen of well-established outlets and another dozen mostly covering fintech news and occasionally featuring top cryptocurrency news. Plus there's a high number of YouTube news channels and individual bloggers who indeed provide very high-quality information.

CI: Which one do you consider to be the best among others? Why? Can you name a list of your top 5?

Secco: There are three I like to read because of their unique editorial style and their objective analysis. TheMerkle, CoinIdol and BitcoinCheaser. If asked what the most recognized brands in the industry are, I would say CoinDesk first and CoinTelegraph second.

CI: What is the mission of Bitcoin Garden among other news outlets?

Secco: I consider Bitcoin Garden more of a community than a news outlet. Sure there's a news portal as the front page, and I make it a point to manage it to the best of my abilities, but I think the most valuable info is inside, in the forum. It is still small compared to be BitcoinTalk though almost 1000 altcoin teams have their own thread there, but now, after three years of hard work, numbers are growing at a pretty fast rate. I guess mostly because of the altcoin madness. It is about to become the second altcoin forum in the world, or perhaps it already is. My mission is simple: spreading the crypto revolution. I'm a true supporter of open source and decentralization. I do believe it will significantly improve our idea of society and democracy. The cryptocurrencies are just the tip of the iceberg, I'm confident one day we will have blockchain-based voting systems, fully transparent and fraud-proof.

CI: Do you have a team of professional journalists or are you the one-man-orchestra that is doing everything alone?

Secco: I'm mostly a one-man band. I do have a few collaborators, who occasionally help me with certain tasks, and a number of trusted partners providing quality content, otherwise, I personally follow, review and approve every single article. I rarely delegate important decisions and I know this is a weakness as you can only scale to a certain extent following this model. On the other hand, this allows me to keep doing the things I like to do. Working must be a pleasure. If you end up doing things you don't want to do, it becomes a pain.

CI: How do you measure your results? Money or daily visits?

Secco: The revenue stream is important when running a business but it is not a quality indicator at all. This is especially true in the online media industry. Think of those services that automatically grab content from different sources, generate hundreds of thousands of web pages and put it online flooding the search engines. It is a business that produces millions of pageviews, requires almost no work and pays well but it does not generate any value for the end user. Most of the times it just makes good information harder to find. In the same way, the number of page views just give you an idea of how your site is performing over time but I consider time spent on the website, bounce rate and number of quality comments much better indicators.

CI: What is the best result that Bitcoin Garden has achieved during the time of its existence?

Secco: Many projects have grown and become successful because of the space Bitcoin Garden provided them to share their ideas. I especially like giving space to people who have good ideas but no millionaire funding. This is priceless and makes me proud of the work Ive done until now. The other achievement I am most proud of is having introduced many people to this new world. It's a drop in the sea but it's good to know I gave my contribution.

CI: How do you see the future of the crypto market in 3-5 years?

Secco: Im very optimistic. I think in the next years we will see more development focused on security and usability, bringing a massive expansion of the user base. It's extremely hard to predict what will happen in details to a single coin, a family of coins or a specific technology. There will be winners and losers, new players in the field and dying giants. There could be epic fails and temporary market crashes but I'm certain that this process will produce significant and valuable innovation.

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One-Man Band To Create The Second Altcoin Forum In The World - Coin Idol (press release)

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Todays topic is altcoins and ICOs. In this episode, were going to go over some of the different cryptocurrencies out there and explain what are ICOs. So lets get started!

Altcoins, or alts in short, are cryptocurrencies that are not Bitcoin. The word altcoin is an abbreviation of alternative coins. So Litecoin, Ripple, Dash or any other non-Bitcoin cryptocurrency all fall under the category of altcoins.

Now you may ask yourself, Why do we even need altcoins in the first place? The answer is simple: Bitcoin is not perfect. Usually, altcoins will try to create a better or different version of Bitcoin.

For example, Litecoin is an alt that confirms transactions faster than Bitcoin. Dash and Monero are altcoins that focus on the anonymity aspect, making transactions virtually impossible to trace. Each altcoin has its own unique thing it does best.

Altcoins can also vary from Bitcoin in the way they are mined. For example, Bitcoins mining algorithm is called SHA-256, while Litecoins mining algorithm is called Scyrpt. Different mining algorithms require different types of hardware to mine.

Another thing to keep in mind is that if an altcoin is relatively new or not that well known, it will probably be harder to buy and will have fewer wallets that support it.

Until today, thousands of altcoins have been introduced to the market, but only a handful have managed to gain a significant following like Bitcoin. One way to figure out which altcoins are gaining popularity is by measuring their market cap.

A Market cap means how big is a coins market in dollar terms. Its calculated by taking the number of coins in circulation and multiplying it with the dollar exchange rate. If, for example, there are 16 million Bitcoins in circulation and the price of one Bitcoin is $2,500, the market cap for Bitcoin would be 40 billion dollars.

For a long time, Bitcoins market cap accounted for 90% of the total cryptocurrency market cap. Today, as more altcoins are gaining attention and appreciating in price, Bitcoins market cap makes up less of the total cryptocurrency market cap which has managed to surpass 100 billion dollars in 2017.

First and foremost, I suggest you read about the altcoin youre interested in. Make sure you understand what makes it unique and see if it makes sense to you. Most importantly dont invest in a coin just because of the buzz around it.

Many coins out there employ what is known as pump and dump schemes. This means the coins creators generate a lot of hype about a specific coin in order to get people to invest in it and inflate the coins price. Once the coin appreciates in value the creators sell all of their coins at a profit while crashing the price due to the massive sell off. This leaves the majority of investors with a bunch of useless coins and no one to sell them to.

Other stuff you should look into include the coins market capthis will give you an idea of how well this altcoin has been received in the community.

I would also suggest getting involved in the coins community. Usually, most major coins have an official forum, a Facebook group, a subreddit and other places of gathering where you can ask the developers of the coin specific questions. A strong community is an important predictor for a coins success.

Now you know what altcoins are, and we can move on to our next topic which is closely relatedICOs.

ICO stands for initial coin offering. The term derives from the traditional finance term, IPO (or initial public offering).

An IPO is used to describe the launch of a new company on a stock exchange, also known as going public. The purpose of an IPO is to sell stock in the company in order to raise capital from the public.

ICOs on the other hand sell coins, also known as tokens, as a way to fund a specific project. The general idea is that if you believe the project will succeed, you buy the tokens that power the project beforehand at a discount, and then you will be able to sell them later on at a profit once their project succeeds.

Lets break this process down a bit further.

When a cryptocurrency company wants to launch a new project through an ICO, it creates a whitepaper. The whitepaper is a document that states what the project is about, what needs the project will fulfill, how much money is needed for the project, and how long the ICO for this project will run for.

After the ICO is set up, the public can start investing in the ICO by sending money to the project and receiving project tokens or coins in return.

If the money raised by the ICO does not meet the minimum funds required by the whitepaper, the money is returned to the backers, and the ICO is deemed to be unsuccessful. If the funds requirements are met within the specified timeframe, the founding team will now get to work and bring the project to life through the use of the funds raised.

To sum it up, ICOs are like Kickstarter for crypto projects.

The best example of a highly lucrative ICO was the pre-sale of Ethereum tokens. In mid-2014, one Ether token (also known as ETH) sold for around 40 US cents . If you bought one hundred dollars worth of ETH back then, you would have the equivalent of 75,000 dollars in 2017.

Today, more and more projects try to mimic the success of Ethereums ICO. ICOs are conducted over the Ethereum platform, and thats why youll need to buy the Ethereum token, known as Ether, in order to participate in them.

The recent high volume of ICOs caused Ethereums price to spike and also overwhelmed the Ethereum network. This caused delayed or failed transactions, leading to the suspension of Ethereum trading in several exchanges and problems with ICO funding.

The worst example of a disastrous ICO is The DAO. The DAO, or decentralized autonomous organization, project managed to raise $150 million worth of Ethereum. However, shortly after the ICO ended, a hacker managed to drain a third of the amount raised due to a bug in Ethereums code.

This crisis and the different opinions on how to handle it led to a split in the Ethereum network and the creation of both the Ethereum and Ethereum classic altcoins.

Just like with any other financial instrument, where there is the possibility for great reward, there is great risk as well, and ICOs contain a huge amount of risk.

ICOs can be considered as high-risk gambles on cryptocurrency startup companies. Many people today invest in ICOs not because they believe in the project, but because they just want to make a quick profit. This, in turn, creates a general hype before the project launches.

But as the buzz fades away, project creators and early investors want to take money off the table, so they start selling massive amounts of token. This can cause the price to sharply drop.

Another thing to consider is that the bar for creating an ICO today is pretty low. While conducting an IPO requires to comply with a lot of regulation, ICOs skip this entire burdensome procedure by raising money exclusively in cryptocurrency which has yet to be regulated.

Want to create an ICO?

Just create a shiny website outlining your concept, create a digital asset, get some crypto celebs to say nice things about it, and sell your projects assets directly to people around the web. You dont even have to have a working product.

These low barriers to entry bring about a massive amount of low-quality projects that will never see the light of day. This could be due to the fact that the founders lack the skills required to execute the project, or that the ICO was just a plain scam to begin with.

As you can imagine, this is a scammers dream come true. With a minimal investment of time and money, they can get tons of people to send them money without any legal exposure or liability to the public.

In order to emphasize the absurdness of how much dumb money is spent on ICOs, one developer went as far as creating a site called Useless Ethereum Token.

The website states:

Youre literally giving your money to someone on the internet and getting completely useless tokens in return.

There are no whitepapers, no products, and no experts. Its just you, me, your hard-earned Ether, and my shopping list.

Amazingly enough, even the Useless Ethereum Token project managed to raise over sixty thousand US dollars.

In some cases you may lose money in an ICO not due to an intended scam, but due to the hacker manipulation. For example, not long ago a hacker managed to hack an ICO website and change the Ethereum ICO deposit address to his own Ethereum address. This caused over $7 million to be sent to him. Of course that money is now lost forever.

To sum it up, ICOs should be considered as risky as gambling. Due to the irreversible and unregulated nature of cryptocurrency, you have virtually no recourse if an ICO turns out to be a complete scam or goes bust.

Well, first of all, you need to know what youre investing in. This means you should take the time to actually read the ICOs whitepaper, research the project and founders and get involved with the community around it.

Also, make sure you understand how the tokens for the project will be distributed. ICOs which hold a lions share of tokens for the founders may end up selling these tokens in order to make a quick profit after the ICO ends.

Another important question to ask is how much money is being raised and for what purpose?

If there is no cap on the amount being raised, the project may get overfunded. Getting more money than you need can also hinder project development as laziness and no clear focus may arise as a result. Some projects have managed to raise tens of millions of dollars before the first line of code was even written.

Most importantly, dont ever invest in something you dont understand.

To sum it up, ICOs are a new form of crowdfunding which very few people understand. If youre just getting started with cryptocurrencies and ICOs, you probably should do a fair amount of additional research before committing your money to any project, as exciting as it may sound.

That sums it up for today. I hope you enjoyed this lesson of Bitcoin Whiteboard Tuesday, and Ill see you.in a bit.

Blogger and owner of 99Bitcoins. I've been dealing with Bitcoin since the beginning of 2013 and it taught me a lesson in finance that I couldn't get anywhere else on the planet. I'm not a techie, I don't understand "Hashes" and "Protocols", I designed this website with people like myself in mind. My expertise is online marketing and I've dedicated a large portion of 99Bitcoins to Bitcoin marketing.

Excerpt from:
What are Altcoins and ICOs Bitcoin Whiteboard Tuesday - 99 Bitcoins (blog)

Bitcoin PR Buzz August 2, 2017 11:45 am

Belarus-based blockchain company Hubcoin has announced that it has distributed 300,000 (10%) of the total pre-mined HUB tokens to a chosen group of different altcoin developers. The promotion took place alongside the live Hubcoin ICO.

[Note: This is a press release.]

Hubcoin believes that the launches of fair coins have been successful but that there is still a lot of potential to get more out of their protocol. Influenced by successful premine distribution projects such as NEM and Auroracoin, Hubcoin chose to give away 10% of the platforms HUB tokens to leading blockchain developers of previously established cryptocurrency projects. The company thinks that it would be beneficial for the company in the long run as it would stimulate interest amongst the community.

From the 10% of HUB tokens distributed, 7% was given to the developers of various altcoins that are already in the market. The distribution of HUB tokens was organized in proportion to the respective coins total market capitalization. 2% of the coins were equally distributed between all the altcoin developers currently holding a wallet, block explorer, or topic on the Hubcoin website and 1% is held by the projects lead developer.

Hubcoin has implemented a unique technical code that limits the premine spending for the first year. The use of the allocated Hubcoins by developers is designed to provide sustained motivation for all of the development teams and mitigate against early token dumps.

The project has outlined a number of different milestones from its roadmap that are listed in order of cost:

2 BTC: A coin tracking service like Coinmarketcap or Coinwarz capable of sorting coins by an algorithm and will list new coins much faster.

4 BTC: Hosting for interested altcoin developers for free (limited slots). The service will be extended to non-developers as well, for a small charge. Additional services like website creation, DDOS defense and more will also be provided. Block explorer for coins will be created for those needing it. Premium features and priority coin listing will be available for a fixed Hubcoin payment.

6 BTC: Create Block Explorers for altcoins that dont have one. Coin creators would be able to add their own coins to the service for free. It will support urgent coin additions for a small charge.

8 BTC: Pool creation for all coins requiring the feature. The coin creators will be allowed to add their coins to Hubcoins aforementioned services at no cost (free slots will be limited). Premium features and priority coin listing will be available for fixed HUB payment.

12 BTC: Node maintenance service will be created at this stage. The first three altcoin developers will get this service for free while others who follow will be charged a small HUB token payment.

20 BTC: Desktop and web wallet service will be provided. It will be free for altcoin developers. Premium features will be available for a fixed HUB payment.

30 BTC: Android wallet creation service will be made available for free to altcoin developers. The platform will offer premium features for a fixed HUB payment.

50 BTC: Hubcoin will start offering its own coin creation service, which will be free of charges with a 10% premine share. Those opting coins without premine or custom premine can avail the service by making a fixed HUB payment.

100 BTC: Promotional services for coins will be created enabling facilities like voting to secure more recognition. Other promotional services such as press releases, social media, signature campaigns, advertisement, fakeouts search for investors, etc. will be provided.

200+ BTC: Reviving support for unsuccessful coins will be provided by repairing stuck block chains, connection issues, hard forks, creating websites, adding block-explorers and services, and a full work on the coin. Hubcoin owners will be able to vote by paying Hubcoin and choose coin for reviving.

Saracenis (Topaz coin), Belligerent Fool (BenjiRolls), UsuallyHappens (PartyCoin), PhoenixWarrior333 (FidgetCoin), CryptoWiz420 (Turbostake), findblocks.com(findblocks.com), AtomicProject (Atomic Coin), mbmagnat (Evotion), bumbacoin (BumbaCoin), victoriouscoin(Victoriouscoin), Bzzzum (Deutsche eMark), TrollCoins (TrollCoins), Whitey92d15b7 (GPU Coin), ACP (AnarchistsPrime), OBAViJEST (Doubloon) , soulgate (Virtacoinplus), joshafest (B3Coin), LiftOff1969 (UDOWNcoin), pallas (Cryptonite), vashshawn (corgicoinV2), DreamCrusherFTW (MOZZI), notnormals (InsaneCoin).

Images courtesy of Hubcoin, Shutterstock

Read more:
Crypto-Startup Hubcoin Announces Distribution of Pre-Mined HUB to Altcoin Developers - Bitcoinist