A Note of Consensus in this Time of Cryptocurrency Chaos
Cryptocurrencies are exploding; as the market caps of these new assets rise, it is important to keep in mind the fundamentals that created this space in the first place
If you are just reading up Bitcoin today, you would be overwhelmed by vocal disagreement on the two conflicting subreddits, personal attacks on twitter by prominent members of the community and the slow... freaking... blocktimes...
consensus freedom
This chaos may seem very concerning, especially given Bitcoin's position as a store of value. It is important at this time to see through some of the tweet-storms and disingenuous blogposts and remember the resilience and freedom cryptocurrency is able to provide. There is a reason that despite the many issues, Bitcoin is still Bitcoin. Hypothetical attack vectors aside, a cryptocurrency is by definition, at the mercy of its user's consensus -- if someone stole every Bitcoin in existence in a single transaction, it could be inferred that the consensus of the users would be to return their funds; if all the users come to consensus, the thief doesn't matter -- this scenario seeks to demonstrate the user's control when it comes to cryptocurrency and how little someone else can influence the protocol.
If you are new to cryptocurrency, don't let this fighting and rhetoric scare you, it is that which the blockchain is resilient against. Although the math and code certainly protect us users, it will be important to resolve issues with more maturity if we would like to remain agile with progress. The following quote from Vitalik does this point justice:
One of the worst aspects of crypto culture is the idea that because math and code are supposedly apolitical, we do not have to be polite.
-Vitalik Buterin
beware of the shitcoins
There are lots of scams in the cryptocurrency space. With all the new money flowing into the current crypto bubble, now more than ever it is important to beware of the shitcoins.
If you are a newcomer to this space, looking at a "CoinMarketcap" list of every random coin and their 500% returns is a very tainting window to the real innovation happening. There are hundreds of bitcoin-like tokens that can be traded and speculated on, maybe a dozen or two are projects with real prospects and development. You might be easily dazzled by #Burstnation posts or the Mooncoin runup, but these projects don't represent the same innovation or market penetrability that made Bitcoin a success.
There is a reason you see here on Steemit, frequent posts by the same individuals promoting an obscure altcoin: they are trying to keep a market around to legitimize this token they own. Except that token is a copy paste of the open-source Bitcoin code where you can only mine with hard drives or something ridiculous. These are pure scams. The developers make a small change to Bitcoin and then start their own blockchain, they do most of the mining at the beginning while they promote the heck out of it. Once momentum dies down, they have hopefully sold a bunch of useless tokens to idiots who buy them thinking it will be the next Bitcoin. /scam
The most important thing that you can do is weather some of the fighting and research the project you want to invest in. Who are the lead developers? Do you agree with their mission? Did the coin emission look fair? Do the developers hold a significant portion of the supply (see Dash)? These are some of the questions you should be confident in the answer to before investing in any of the projects you read about.
Beware of the propaganda
Stay decentralized,
Kyle
