WankCoin



  • I decided to look up the cryptocurrencies and see what's going on these days. Seriously? :facepalm:

    http://www.wankcoin.com/ (somewhat NSFW)



  • Assuming for a minute that there's a point to having one crypto-currency, what's the point to having more than one?



  • @blakeyrat said:

    what's the point to having more than one?

    It made sense at first when there were 5 - 10 different cryptos, in practice it ended up being different denominations of currency like having gold, silver, and copper coins. But these days when everyone and their grandma is creating their own fork of other cryptos, it makes no sense at all and it's basically a new realm of stupid Internet memes. DogeCoin was the beginning of the end in that respect.

    If you're lucky, you can start a new crypto, do a bunch of pre-mining before you release it, release it, then sell it all once it has a little bit of value but hasn't crashed yet. Basically it's a scam. Nothing is profitable to mine anymore.



  • Yeah but what are you selling? Currencies are backed on trust and I can't imagine MyGrandmaDrivesABlueVolvoCoin has a lot of trust.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Yeah but what are you selling?

    Beats me, I don't pretend to understand it. I'm simply hanging on to some in case the value ever goes way up.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Yeah but what are you selling?

    Nothing. That's the whole fun. You just need to sell it higher than you bought, or be quick enough to grab some for free.

    It's basically a big-ass Monopoly game. Get lucky, you can wander off in the black, get less lucky and you lose.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    Yeah but what are you selling? Currencies are backed on trust and I can't imagine MyGrandmaDrivesABlueVolvoCoin has a lot of trust.

    You are selling the chance to resell MyGrandmaDrivesABlueVolvoCoin at a higher value before it crashes.

    Keep in mind that you're selling to people who think buying crypto-currency is a good idea.

    In less snarky terms, seems to me you are selling your ability to market your currency. If you can get a lot of people talking about it, some of them will buy it hoping to resell. The more people talking, the longer the boom may last before the bust. Naming it something like WankCoin so people tweet or repost it for the humor factor would be one such tactic.

    Honestly, the people making up the new currencies are people the smartest ones in the crypto-currency business.


  • kills Dumbledore

    would it be possible to scam the cryptocurrency community by creating one that looks like it needs mining but the creator could generate arbitrarily many?

    Asking for a friend...



  • I mined 2000 doge coins which I am sitting on, but I think I wasted my time :<



  • 2000 Dogecoins is nothing. I mined around 1,000,000 which I still have. What really sucks is the 10M or so I mined and sold for peanuts on the exchanges before the value went up.



  • So you're basically just hoping for stupid people? That's actually not a bad idea, there are plenty of those.



  • I had like 3-4 Bitcoins which I lost when they became stupid-worthless, and then I was mad at myself when they became stupid-worthfull.

    Turns out at that time it would have been impossible to get real cash-money for them anyway. But hey, some places take them as payment now. Oh well, so it goes.



  • @blakeyrat said:

    But hey, some places take them as payment now.

    Yeah, they funded quite a bunch of my Humble Bundles, so there's that.

    @Jaloopa said:

    would it be possible to scam the cryptocurrency community by creating one that looks like it needs mining but the creator could generate arbitrarily many?

    I don't remember the details too well, but it seems that pretty much everything is transparent - you need your coins verified by a number of clients, so you'd need a backdoor, and since it's open-source (and really the only thing that changes are logos and names), it's not that easy to pull a scam there.

    At least not such an obvious scam... there's still a lot of place for creativity.



  • The real money's in running an exchange. Preferably one that's popular but has no way to turn the cryptocurrency back into a real currency. Serve as a middle man, wait until the cryptocurrency is popular and valuable and there are enough other places to get rid of it then "Sorry our site has been 'hacked', all of your DogeWankCoins are gone..."

    Edit: Kinda a CryptoPonziScheme...



  • The reason why there are so many (hundreds, thousands?) cryptocurrencies is that you literally just need to change a few variables in the standard bitcoin client source to make one (plus the website). And you might get some real money in return, so why not.



  • Seems like a cryptocurrency for jerk-offs.



  • @Groaner said:

    Seems like a cryptocurrency for jerk-offs.

    Aren't they all pretty much like that though?



  • haven't you heard of titcoin yet?



  • @sh_code said:

    haven't you heard of titcoin yet?

    Can't say I have. Then again, I don't keep abreast of altcoin developments.


  • 🚽 Regular

    I wouldn't bother. Even if you keep a chest full of them, inflation will get you in no time.


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