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The Landscape of Alternative

Cryptocurrency

Coinfest 2014: Currency ConferenceFebruary 16, 2014

Eric Liow and Xin Lou

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Outline

• Current Landscape of Altcoins• Mining As It Is Now• The Future of Altcoins• Mining for the Future

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Current Landscape of Altcoins

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Definition: Altcoin

• What is an Altcoin?– Reference to Bitcoin (the OG)

– All other coins are “alternative coins”

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Much Coins! So Wow!

• There are currently 102 coins listed on www.coinmarketcap.com

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Litecoin (LTC): The Need to Knows

• First marketable Altcoin!• One of the first coin to use scrypt• Currently Second only to Bitcoin• (Ripple’s not a cryptocurrency *ahem*)

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Bitcoins vs Altcoin

• On the first day, Satoshi said, “Let there be Bitcoins!”

• BTC is the grand-daddy of all cryptocoins– Genesis block of BTC was like the Big Bang

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Bitcoins vs Altcoin: The NittyGritty

• SHA vs Scrypt• 21 Million BTC vs 84 million LTC• 10 Min vs 2.5 min block time generation

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Popularity Contest!

• How did they get so popular?• Social mechanism of Dogecoin – Charities: SOCHI Jamaican bobsled team

• Any purpose to these coins?– Namecoin– Primecoin

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Popularity Contest!

• How did they get so popular?• Social mechanism of Dogecoin – Charities: SOCHI Jamaican bobsled team

• Any purpose to these coins?– Namecoin– Primecoin

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Mining As it is Now

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Mining

• It’s hard work!

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Mining

• Joking, it’s not really that hard

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Mining

• Bitcoin Overview:– Peer-to-peer transaction network– Block chain: public ledger– Subsequent transactions added on to block chain

• What is mining?– Transaction verification– Keeps system honest, robust, reliable– Miners rewarded with newly minted coins and

transaction fees

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Mining

• SHA vs Scrypt – Encryption, proof-of-work scheme, hash function,

etc– The latter is extremely memory intensive

• Difficulty of mining adjusts automatically– In order to maintain the block times– Built in algorithm or protocol

• Shovels: CPU, GPU, FGPA, ASIC

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ASIC

• Application-specific integrated circuit– Currently applies to SHA coins– Scrypt is “immune” to ASIC • Requires a lot of memory• Building an ASIC for scrypt will take a lot of time and

money• Litecoin

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Future Landscape of Altcoins

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Natural Selection: Coins

• Which coins will be viable?– Suggested from trends– Whether or not they survive the volatility of the

market– Which has most trust– Which is most popular

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Alpha Coin(s)

• There is an assumption that BTC will forever be king. – *CAUTION* coins are more volatile than any other

commodity.• *ahem* tulips.

• Counter to tulip argument– Utility

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It’s all Relative

BTC LTC21 Million 84 Million10 Min. 2.5 Min.(Safer) (Safe)

First SHA coin First Scrypt coinLarge Transactions Med. Transactions

Yachts Cars

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Top Doges!

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Why So Coin?

• Dogecoin– Social mechanism that will keep it in play

• Namecoin– Decentralized DNS

• Primecoin– Solves prime numbers

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Ripples (XPM)

• Underlying reason is very honorable • We need more of these coins– Altriustic: Human Genome, HIV, Denge Fever, etc– Idea started in Vancouver– 45 percent pre-mined

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How Do We Choose?

• Purpose (as mentioned before)• Will regulation affect the survival of coins?

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Who else?

• Large corporations dominating the arena– Disproportionate distribution of power• Capital to fund ASIC farms

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Who else? Uncle Sam

• Governmental regulation– Negative?– Positive?– Fiat currencies?• There are 182?• Could crypto work in conjuction to fiat?

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Aurora Coin

• Regulating bodies have the momentum to push crypto into circulation

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YOU!

• We the masses inevitably control what is and what isn’t. – Governments do not control P2P– For the people by the people• But can also be forgotten by the people

– Notion of Decentralized

The Most Influential Demographic

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Ethereum

• What is it?• Vs. Mastercoin?• Vs. Coingen.io?• More user friendly• Supplies a better foundation to build upon.= More coins then evarrr?

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The Amazon RainCoinforest

• Just like living species– We know a lot about a few– We know some about others– We don’t know anything about many

• Natural selection– Coinmarketcap is $10.6 Billion– Top 5 coins control 96% of that market

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Honey Badger of Coins!

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Mining in the Future

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Mining for the Future

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Mining for the Future: Considerations

• Is GPU mining still relevant for scrypt coins?– YES!

• Doubt and skepticism surround ASICs– Aren’t scrypt coins “immune” to ASICs?– Sort-of, • Litecoin miners coming

– Efficiency vs. Profitability

• New mining-friendly algorithm: Dagger and Slash, currently prototypes

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Take Home Messages

• 1) There are a lot of Altcoins• 2) Several of potential due to purpose,

support and history• 3) GPUs for mining still viable in the near

future (1 year?)• 4) A lot of cool coins out there and a lot of

money to be made • 5) Buy Litecoin plus donate to this address:

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Take Home Messages

• Thank you!