Cryptocurrencies described in four words or less

hmmmmmm if you could host as a text or even a json document somewhere and somehow get it to update that would be super useful. Happy to share my personal trading algorithm outputs if you do.

Benjamin_Dobell• 9 years ago

Applicable to all:

Is pyramid, buy please.

Joking, of course... sort of.

mrep• 9 years ago

Yeah, this list amazes me that there have been this many companies/teams creating new blockchains and yet they still fail to solve any real world problems more efficiently than current solutions (besides illegal markets where governments have explicitly made it hard and the "decentralized blockchain solution" kind of currently gets around it).

arxpoetica• 9 years ago

https://99bitcoins.com/bitcoinobituaries/

shazow2• 9 years ago

Would be nice to get more meaningful descriptions than "_ clone."

Also seems a bit selective/biased: For example, Litecoin is "Faster Bitcoin" but Vertcoin is "Bitcoin clone" while the Litecoin codebase is maybe closer to Bitcoin core than any other coin on that list. (Is there any coin on that list that is not "Faster Bitcoin" or a "Bitcoin clone"?)

If anything, "fork" would be more accurate than "clone", but still not really a meaningful description.

Some suggestions:

- Bitcoin Cash: Bitcoin for P2P payments

- Ethereum Classic: Ethereum for immutability purists

aulani2• 9 years ago

Bitcoin Cash: Bitcoin for P2P payments

Bitcoin... is for P2P payments. The literally only difference between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash is block size and segwit. Your descriptions are partisan and disingenuous.

shazow2• 9 years ago

Bitcoin... is for P2P payments. The literally only difference between Bitcoin and Bitcoin Cash is block size and segwit. Your descriptions are partisan and disingenuous.

... and different community, different ideals/goals, different features approaches, incompatible protocols (replay protection, difficulty adjustment).

Please be constructive in your comments, suggest how to improve things rather than disagree and hit submit.

moxious• 9 years ago

And here we see the problem with 4-word summaries of very complex instruments. Any summary will be sort of true from one perspective, but missing a lot, and probably wrong from other perspectives.

Cryptocurrency, like rocket science, is complicated and dangerous. It shouldn't be attempted to be understood in 4 words

stale2002• 9 years ago

No. The vision of Bitcoin is as a settlement layer. Just go ask the Core developers.

tscs37• 9 years ago

Bitcoin has way too high transaction fees atm. BTC Cash on the other hand has more acceptable fees for P2P payments.

anonymous51332• 9 years ago

That's what I thought as well...until I looked at the fees and saw $6. After that I knew bitcoin wasn't going to be to compete against other systems like BCH where the fees are low. If I am going to buy a coffee, there is no way in hell I am going to pay $5 + $6 processing fee. No thank you. The fees for BCH is like 10 cents which is completely reasonable.

BTC will be digital gold. BCH will be the P2P payment system IMO. Both can coexist.

Casseres• 9 years ago

Possibly biased, but at the minimum uninformed. There's a lot more scams there that aren't labeled as such.

My suggestion to the author: For each coin, search the internet with the coin's name and the word "scam".

Some of those aren't "focused" on those things, and some outright-lie about their capabilities.

jashmenn5• 9 years ago

Feel free to post better four-word descriptions

Geee• 9 years ago

Bitcoin Cash: Dogmatic Bitcoin / Flat-earth Bitcoin / Church of Satoshi

splix• 9 years ago

Not sure what you mean by "immutability purists", kind of trolling?

dewyatt• 9 years ago

Bitcoin: Digital gold

Huh, I remember it being "Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash".

https://bitcoin.org/bitcoin.pdf

LeoPanthera• 9 years ago

The current high transaction fees mean it’s not so great as an actual currency anymore.

QML• 9 years ago

Hence, Bitcoin Cash -- maybe instead of "Bitcoin clone", the article should say "Digital cash".

jashmenn5• 9 years ago

I would love for it to become digital cash, but the transaction fees are much higher than cash at the moment.

lostsock• 9 years ago

Cash "fees" are $0, I just hand you a note. Nothing is every going to be that cheap.

If you're talking about credit card fees, which are generally a fixed rate + a % (Stripes fees are 2.9% + 30c) then it's a hell of a lot cheaper for everything but the smallest of transactions.

You can currently get a transaction confirmed in the next block for around US $0.60 based on an average transaction size of 250 bytes and 30 satoshi / byte. With that $0.60 fee you can transfer everything from tens to millions of dollars. If the transaction isn't as important or you can wait more than ~10 minutes you can get it even cheaper.

ericb2• 9 years ago

Bitcoin cash deserves the moniker "Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash." Core's roadmap ceded that claim.

Sadly, being "digital gold" is a huge mistake because a store of value that is also a currency is a dominating strategy in this game.

Lightning is "18 months away" which is exactly the sort of estimate I hear at work when something will take 4-6 years, or be shelved without getting released.

solotronics• 9 years ago

there are lightning implementations on the test net currently

lawlessone• 9 years ago

Bitcoin cash deserves the moniker "Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash."

I think Litecoin deserves it far more, bcash was a cynical pump and dump.

anonymous51332• 9 years ago

bitcoin is going to be digital gold and bitcoin CASH is going to be the P2P cash system. Both can coexist with each other.

diggan• 9 years ago

"Pura | PURA | Cryptocurrency"

Well, true and it is under four words but...

dannbru• 9 years ago

to the trolls: it's impossible to be exhaustive in 4 words; this is excellent starting point to learn more...

jashmenn5• 9 years ago

Author here. The TC version of this post is essentially immutable, but I'll be keeping the Google doc (and potentially Github repo) up to date.

If you have a better four-word description of what any coin is for, post it below and I'll make updates.

This list is designed for minimal orientation. The difference between e.g. hashing algorithms or block time is inconsequential at this altitude.

jashmenn5• 9 years ago

Here's the Github repo if you'd like to suggest changes: https://github.com/jashmenn/cryptocurrencies-in-four-words

This guide is intended to provide orientation for someone who knows very little about cryptocurrencies. Many are quite different in scope (and legitimacy).

I hope no one makes investment decisions on just four words. It's just a taste to help you find what you might be interested in pursuing further.

By the way, if you're interested in learning the hard-core technical details of programming cryptocurrency, you find more of my in-depth material here: https://www.newline.co/

stochastic_monk• 9 years ago

I've been interested in ZCash since Snowden commented on it. Quoting a tweet stating 'Zcash is the only altcoin (that i know of) designed and built by professional and academic cryptographers. Hard to ignore':

"Agree. Zcash's privacy tech makes it the most interesting Bitcoin alternative. Bitcoin is great, but "if it's not private, it's not safe.""

[Source: https://twitter.com/snowden/status/913544739542241282]

I still think cryptocurrency is a dumb idea on the whole. I haven't invested and never plan to. But the element of privacy would be important to me if I did.

debt• 9 years ago

Mine applies to all of em: Bubble about to burst.

deevolution• 9 years ago

What might cause the bubble to burst, in your opinion?

ryangittins2• 9 years ago

I'm really disappointed at how Buzzfeed-esque this piece is and (even more so) how it could reach the front page of HN. I'd like to think that easily-digestible, low-effort articles don't have a place in this community, but here's one on HN. I guess even HN-types are susceptible to the wrapping of a hot topic in the "For Dummies" style.

King-Aaron• 9 years ago

I'd like to think that easily-digestible, low-effort articles don't have a place in this community

I'd be inclined to disagree with your opinion here - You can have an easily-digestible piece of writing that still holds good value and insight. Not everything needs to be a peer-reviewed journal article, I'd start pulling my hair out if literally every submission here was an effort to read since I usually browse HN on my short breaks at work.

However it's still worth vetting low-quality content, I agree.

ryangittins2• 9 years ago

Yes, fair enough—I guess it's more about the low effort on both sides of the equation. I suppose I do value articles which make it easy for me to quickly digest more complex ideas, but this this in particular is just... almost the bathroom graffiti of cryptocurrency reporting.

ahmeni• 9 years ago

Have Solution, Seeking Problem

unixhero• 9 years ago

I can't get this page to work on Chrome/Android.

arisAlexis• 9 years ago

Maidsafe is a new encrypted internet. Rent your disk space is sooo far from what it is

Cryptocurrencies described in four words or less

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