Copyright 2014 Alt Coin Speculation

http://www.AltCoinSpeculation.com

REPORT 9

ALTCOIN TRENDS
(MAY 2014)

ALT COIN SPECULATION

Index

NEWS AND COMMENT

pg.4

ALTCOIN CYCLES AND TRENDS pg.5

COINGECKO
LIQUIDITY + DEV TEAM + SOCIAL MEDIA COMMUNITY

pg.8

BITCOIN AS A CONSUMER CURRENCY IN FOCUS

pg.9

ALT COIN SPECULATION

DONATE SOME ALT COINS:

http://altcoinspeculation.com/donate-coins-2/

If you enjoy what I write, you can donate some spare Alt Coins, Ill be happy to
receive them!

http://altcoinspeculation.com/donate-coins-2/

(The contents of this document are not financial advice. Trade at your own risk!)
To Contact me directly:

olly@altcoinspeculation.com

ALT COIN SPECULATION

NEWS AND COMMENT

It has been a while since I have compiled one of these reports. There is quite a lot to say so this issue will cover
divergent topics.
The News has been quietly ticking over, and there hasnt been any Mt-Gox sized disasters these past two
months. Bitcoin has shown real resilience. There are potentially hundreds of thousands of people who work
daily in some capacity for the advancement of Cryptocurrencies, and it is these collective actions which underpin the technology and price of this burgeoning arena. A recent conference in Amsterdam had more than 1000
participants, plus hundreds of participating companies trying to make a space for themselves within the crypto
domain. It all underlines Bitcoin and Cryptos future potential, so that even when there are lull periods, we can
look ahead and expect things to continue improving and expanding in all areas.

Im sure like me, you also check coindesk.com religiously for the latest news reports, so I wont go into details
too much. There continues to be an explosion of Bitcoin Atm machines globally and I will speak more about
Bitcoin and its consumer potential later.
For now Ill highlight a few articles from my site with the most important Altcoin questions and some future
predictions:

Whats the Next Catalyst for Surging Crypto Prices? (1st April 2014):
http://altcoinspeculation.com/whats-the-next-catalyst-for-surging-crypto-prices/

Strong Currencies Big Discounts; Btc, Ltc, Doge, Ftc ? (8th April 2014):
http://altcoinspeculation.com/strong-currencies-big-discounts-btc-ltc-doge-ftc/

Great Video: Andreas Antonopoulos: The Future of Crypto-Currency (23rd April 2014):
http://altcoinspeculation.com/great-video-andreas-antonopoulos-the-future-of-crypto-currency/

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ALTCOIN CYCLES AND TRENDS

Altcoins have trended in some familiar ways which I will discuss in more detail. There is only a certain
amount of money sloshing around in the Altcoin universe and so the trend has been that only one currency will have a significant and stable rise whilst the other currencies look-on or fall in price. On top of
this there are some familiar patterns as to what has worked, and thus what new coins look to emulate the
successful formats.
A break down since last January looks something like this:

1) Dogecoin Takes Off to the Moon:

The success of Dogecoin with its large (100 Billion coin supply) and meme-led social community, caused a
plethora of similar knock-offs.
Mooncoin, Flappycoin, Beecoin amongst others, all decided to also have large coin supplies and tried to
recreate Doges Success but remain ineffectual.

2) Auroracoin Explodes:
The icelandic coin Aurora had a steady start, and what appeared to be a good idea, suddenly exploded in
a speculative frenzy. Money was squeezed out of other Altcoins and into Aurora as it rose up beyond 0.1
Btc roughly $100 per coin. This bubble soon burst and Aurora has crashed back since its airdrop to more
reasonable levels.
It did spark a frenzy of new coins both country and city specific. Mazacoin took a similar vertical rise and
fall, and others such as Spaincoin, Cypruscoin, Israelcoin, Germanycoin, Newyorkcoin, etc are yet to get
off the ground in any meaningful way.

3) Alternate Algo Coins Receive a Lift:

As the Gridseed Scrypt Asics became more popular, and other companies entered the Scrypt Asic marketplace, there was a sudden surge of popularity for any coin which was Scrypt. Vertcoin which had a previously decent run was back in vogue as was the X11 coins such as Darkcoin, Sha3 Maxcoin and others. This
trend quickly faltered and sunk as most coins got caught in a sell side plunge.
This trend though is set to continue and many new coins are attempting to launch on an Alt-Algo platform to harness the power of the small miners with cpus or gpu rigs.

4) POS Based Blackcoin Takes Off:

Blackcoin was an experiment of a short mining POW period followed by a POS stage. It was mined briefly
in early march I think. Other similar coins around the time were also experimenting such as Mintcoin
which rose and fell suddenly. Blackcoin had a particularly good community which worked hard on building
a Mining Multipool buy scheme for Blackcoin, and promoted the coin well. This caused its price to rise up
from 0.00005Btc to almost 0.002Btc, it has since fallen back to a more stable level of around $0.09 a coin.
I still have my doubts as to how it will do long term, as a small number of hands held the vast number of
coins and they have become extremely wealthy off of it.

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This pattern has not gone unnoticed. Whitecoin was launched with a mining POW period of just one week,
and now many coins are trying to emulate this short POW instamine followed by a POS period.

5) At Present; Darkcoin Comes out of the Shadows, and X11 gains Popularity:
In the past week Darkcoin has moved from under $1 up to almost $10 today. The coin offers something
different in that it is focused on creating a coin with anonymous transactions, and it was also the first coin
to use the X11 algo system which is quieter and cooler to mine. Perhaps Darkcoin deserves its price as it
is popular and the promise of anonymous transactions should find a market audience. Im not convinced
they have delivered everything that they are promising but time will tell, if they do these coins could one
day be worth Bitcoin type price levels potentially. The point is Darkcoin offers something different to most
other coins, it was also the first of its kind on a new algo and so should be a continued success.
The X11 algo is certainly popular and most new coins are deciding to use it. On top of this new coins are
attempting a short POW period and then a POS strategy.
For news about new coin releases I check regularly:
https://www.altcoincalendar.info/calendar
and:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?board=159.0

Altcoin Trends Conclusions:

1)There appears to be a limit at present to which coins can rise at any one time. Possibly there are
speculators who spot the trends and then move their money into a coin as it inflates and then take profit
at a later date. Perhaps there is only a certain amount of liquidity in the Altcoin space at present which
means that for one coin to rise others must fall. Sooner or later no doubt the whole Altcoin scene will
explode again along with Bitcoin, but this seems to be the present cycle of things.

2)Coin creators whether legitimate or chasing a fast buck, appear to watch what has been a success and then follow a formula. We saw this after Doges success, and then after Aurora, and now after
Blackcoin. Most if not all of the clones have not as yet been successful. Whether that is due to inept developers or a bad strategy or lack of community or perhaps speculators who got burnt became wiser. It does
not necessarily mean a copy copy coin is bad, but certainly if they can differentiate their strategy better
then they may find greater long term success.

3)The present success of Darkcoin shows that any kind of innovation and alternative offering will
receive a following. This is definitely true with the alt-algorithms and so most new coins which want to
do well will exact a different algo to Sha256 or Scrypt, at least, if not totally invent a new algorithm all
together. This is not only to garner a widespread distribution and thus support from small miners, but also
because a new algo is less likely to get attacked by large sha256 or scrypt farms.

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Starting an Altcoin Today:

If I was starting an Altcoin today, there are several important things to consider. It is not true that all Altcoins are pump and dumps or useless, a good Altcoin can add real value to the Crypto scene, and be a huge
success both financially and for long term adoption.
As the scene is so crowded with entrants and I see so many trying their best to enter the fray, I think its
even more important to be wise and to take time to establish something that is truly unique. If you can be
unique you will find a following and support for your coin, its as simple as that.
The first port of call is to create a unique Algorithm. This is not only essential to enhance user adoption
and to create a widespread distribution by avoiding the asic mining community. On top of these reasons, a
new algo is the best way of securing your network and creating stability which cannot be attacked by other
larger coin communitys which use your similar algo. As well as this, being the first adopter on a new algorithm creates a strength which will keep your coin on top of the competition for a long time, this seems to
be the way with Bitcoin on Sha256, Litecoin using Scrypt, and now Darkcoin using X11.
One are which hasnt yet been fully explored is a coin which is mined by humans doing tasks, such as competing or filling out questions on a website. If done well with an important or fun usage, such a coin could
do fantastically as well as its supporting website.
Once the algorithm is decided upon, the next stage would be coin usage and name. The whole project
must be streamlined and cleverly thought out. Having an good idea is priceless and literally can create
huge value for that crypto coin.
The third step would be to pre-announce your coin, and to launch it fairly and effectively. Such a path is
not totally essential but if done badly will attract negativity in the crypto community, and some may shun
your coin indefinitely. An open and fair launch will attract a large community of supporters which will
help your coin grow.
With these three parts in place, the community will flock to the coin, and help will be abundant. That does
not mean you can rest on your laurels. A good committed and active community are essential to help the
coin expand and take root. The strategies for this can be explored at a later date, for now if you want to
start your own coin, focusing on the first two steps is what is most important.

Whats next Coin to Surge in Price?:

I wont attempt to second guess what the next coin to surge will be. It is true that with the Scrypt Asics
coming online, the Alt-Algo coins may all receive a boost again. There is potential there for all coins to
have a rise, but I would look now to a coin which enters the space offering something totally unique, not
only a unique algo but also a unique use. Perhaps it will be a human mineable coin, or a coin with an already large community or website attached, or something completely different.
Most coins suffer somewhat in that they have limited use at this stage. I will touch more upon this later in
the report, but if a new consumer type currency can gather support then that could do fantastically.

Ill add more predictions and thoughts about this at a later stage on my website, if you have views please
email me at olly@altcoinspeculation.com

ALT COIN SPECULATION

COINGECKO:
LIQUIDITY + DEV TEAM + SOCIAL MEDIA COMMUNITY
CoinGecko emailed me and made me aware of their rather informative site, which deserves a mention:
http://www.coingecko.com/
It is similar to coinmarketcap yet with more detail adding information about the amount of Development
a coin has undertaken and also the amount of Social Media Community support it is receiving. These categories along with coin Liquidity all receive a score which when added together translate to a Complete
Metrics Total.
In principal this total should point us towards which coins are most popular with the largest potential for
long term growth.
The Top Ten today CoinGeckos Metric Score are:
Bitcoin Dogecoin Litecoin Darkcoin Blackcoin Vertcoin Ripple Nxt Namecoin Reddcoin.
This compares to the Top Ten Market Caps today which are:
Bitcoin Litecoin Peercoin Darkcoin Nxt Ripple Dogecoin Namecoin Mastercoin BitsharesPTS.
The Coin Development Stats are worth examining, certainly the contributors column. These may help
you make up your mind if deciding to invest in a coin.
The Community score is determined from Facebook Likes, Twitter Followers and Reddit Subscribers.
This determines a fairly broad estimate as to which coin has a greater community and how many followers. Its probably pretty accurate. Other places to look would be at the coins personal forums and at the
number of postings on its bitcointalk forum page. On top of this some coins may never gather too much of
a large community on the mainstream social media channels as people might feel afraid to associate with
a coin in that way, for example Potcoin and Darkcoin, are two coins which people may feel hesitant about
supporting openly.
Potential problems with these statistics could be that a coins dev team may deplete over time and yet this
may not be accurately portrayed in the figures, or similarly a coin will lose followers from their community
without losing facebook likes, and so overestimating its Community score. Furthermore if the Liquidity is calculated daily as opposed to weekly or monthly, then this could radically effect the standings at
any given time.
However regardless of these small points the data is very useful, and I think accurately portrays which
coins are the most popular today and orders them effectively. If a new investor to crypto wanted to make
some investments I would definitely send them to CoinGecko to purchase some of these top ranked coins.

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BITCOIN AS A CONSUMER CURRENCY IN FOCUS

I have recently become more interested in promoting Bitcoin to Merchants in London. Although there is
a fairly large and growing crypto community here, there are currently very few places to actually spend
Bitcoin.
I spoke briefly with a company here called CryptoPay (who offer a service similar to Bitpay), and they offer
merchants the opportunity to accept Bitcoin and get paid in GBP or Euros, and or BTC. Its a great opportunity for merchants to get involved in crypto and will expand the opportunities for holders greatly.

Advantages for Merchants:

1)There is no hardware cost so accepting Bitcoin is free, they would pay a 1% fee to cryptopay on
any transaction, but this is less than credit card fees which can cost merchants 2-5% per transaction.

2)There is also no minimum spend. Most credit and debit cards charge 40p as the smallest payment, so accepting BTC is great for micropayment transactions.


3)Cheap Advertising. Probably the best advantage of accepting Bitcoin is that the merchant will
get some good pr, and be advertised on Bitcoin networks as place of relevance. I believe this benefit can be
expanded upon and improved so that Bitcoin merchants really feel the full effect of accepting crypto.

4)Tourists may also over time use and spend it more and more. The tourist industry is huge, especially in London. With Bitcoins worldwide appeal and expansion, its continuing rollout of Atms, there
is every opportunity for travellers and tourists to move worldwide and spend Bitcoin, once the avenues to
spend become more available.

Problem Questions from Merchants:

1)One of the chief problems is that merchants most often have not heard of Bitcoin, or Cryptocurrencies and they need to be informed, which can be difficult and time consuming.

2)The next question they pose is who uses Bitcoin? Is it worth my while accepting it? Sadly the
consumers who want to spend Bitcoin are thin on the ground at the moment. It is difficult to know if this
is due to lack of merchants accepting it, or the deflationary element of the currency.
The second part of that question is what everyone in this industry are battling to get their heads around.

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Expanding Bitcoin as a Consumer Currency?:

Let us suppose that there are one hundred places to spend Bitcoin in London, (as opposed to currently
around 5 merchants). Those with Bitcoin may at time spend them here and there, but what incentives are
there for those without Bitcoin to open a wallet, buy Bitcoin and then head out to spend it, when they can
simply use cash or credit cards.
Bitcoin is an extremely deflationary currency, meaning that although the coins are still being created at a
slow rate, at some stage this coin creation will stop and so people are hoarding them in the hope that the
price will rise. Ideally a consumer currency would have an inflationary rate attached to it which would promote people to go out and spend their coins. Perhaps Dogecoin would be a better coin for such a purpose.
Furthermore the Bitcoin (and all crypto coin) infrastructure is still too complicated for mass adoption, and
simple transactions, there can be problems for the consumer using it and this is unacceptable in such a
competitive payment marketplace.
Bitcoins future, as it stands in its present form is probably to be the large gold style currency, used for
large transactions and held by few. I think for consumer spending other Altcoins will fill this roll.
For now of course the payment network is designed with Bitcoin at its heart. For this reason, lovers of
crypto must promote payment services such as Cryptopay and Bitpay to merchants around the world. As
more merchants expand into the world of crypto, learn more about this interesting technology, there will
come a time when other coins can fill the boots of Bitcoin in this department and become a more user
friendly and effective consumer currency.

Related News Stories:

Bitcoin Missing Out as UK Retailers Move Away From Cash:

http://www.coindesk.com/bitcoin-missing-uk-retailers-moving-away-cash/
Forbes Kashmir Hill on What Bitcoin Must Do to Go Mainstream:
http://www.coindesk.com/forbes-kashmir-hill-how-bitcoin-improved/
Bitcoin Needs Employers, Not Merchants:
http://bitcoinmagazine.com/13063/bitcoin-needs-employers-merchants/
Inside Squares Stealth Approach to Bitcoin Integration:
http://www.coindesk.com/inside-squares-stealth-approach-bitcoin-integration/
Cryptex Bitcoin Debit Card Works on 90% of US ATMs:
http://www.coindesk.com/cryptex-bitcoin-debit-card-works-90-us-atms/
Winklevoss twins: Bitcoin will be bigger than Facebook:
http://www.theguardian.com/technology/2014/may/19/winklevoss-twins-bitcoin-bigger-thanfacebook-investors

ALT COIN SPECULATION

DONATE SOME ALT COINS:

http://altcoinspeculation.com/donate-coins-2/

If you enjoy what I write, you can donate some spare Alt Coins, Ill be happy to
receive them!

http://altcoinspeculation.com/donate-coins-2/

(The contents of this document are not financial advice. Trade at your own risk!)
To Contact me directly:

olly@altcoinspeculation.com

Copyright 2014 Alt Coin Speculation

http://www.AltCoinSpeculation.com