The Altcoin Observer - Meeting 1, Start Here!

I'd like to do a NXT/Counterparty comparison that would showcase both projects, I'm going to spend some time reading up on both tonight, I will post some ideas and thoughts in the AM.

Regards timing for live meetings, earlier in the day is likely to be better for me as I'm 5-8 hours ahead of the US here. I don't know anything about NXT so the comparison you're proposing should be fun.

Still reading up on some stuff, will try to get some ideas posted tonight.

Some questions regarding NXT. The client seems to have potential but its a giant pain to get working, I had trouble with it myself and after some research on the forums, it seems alot of people are shying away from adopting it after their first experience with the wallet/client software. If the development team is serious about adoption, is there a reason they chose to go with such a consumer unfriendly approach? After getting into the software it was also not easy to sift through and I don't like that you essentially have to recall the wallet every time or you lose everything if something happens to the pass phrase. For people to be comfortable investing time and money into something, they have to have something that works and I'm sorry but there is no way the average joe is getting that client working without some better instructions than whats posted. Shouldn't some initial investment have gone into ensuring the GUI was user friendly? People complain about the complexity of bitcoin clients, this is ten times worse for someone fresh off the street to wrap their head around...

I think the most interesting part about NXT is they are a 100% new, open source codebase that notably differs from bitcoin in one monumental way. Bitcoin in its most popular by far incarnation is actually one giant application that rolls in all the features you could want into one big beefy, slow core and then you run that core but only use the parts of it you actually need.

NXT is built as a simple, fast core that does not have bells and whistles, but is built to have bells and whistles added in layers on top. As these systems continue to be built, this will be demonstrated by increased slowness in the bitcoin application environment, while nxt shouldn't have any such problem.

People do not like what they do not understand, I see that universally. We cannot be afraid of complexity, if underneath that complexity is something worth understanding or even using.

That is what we are doing here, digging through the bullshit so we can find whats real, whats valuable, and what is not. And then share that information with our audience.

The fact that it is difficult to learn just means if there's something worth learning about, we'll be that much earlier. We are in this to find the buried treasure, and you don't do that by digging in other peoples holes.

Hi Guys! Thanks for adding me to the group. I've been researching and following alt currencies for several months with the goal of identifying which are long term buy and hold prospects.

It's true that there is a ton of bullshit out there, but buried in it are diamonds like XCP, PTS(BTS), NXT, MSC, etc. I believe these organizations are creating tech that will change the world. The Apples and Googles of the future are being born before our eyes. Exciting stuff!

I'm happy to help write about NXT, and happier to write counterpoint content about XCP. I barely missed the burn, bought in literally the day after via the forum thread. I've researched the hell out of it. Also know a fair amount about PTS (even claimed a bounty writing an AGS guide).

Are we at this point just charging forward, creating content and throwing it up for bid?

Right now we're gathering the initial group and ideating.

A double issue, XCP vs NXT is looking like it'll be the first destination.

Regarding Auroracoin, I think you're downplaying it by qualifying it as simply a gimmick to get people's attention on the latest crypto-coin. From my perspective, the Auroracoin could potentially have political and social ramifications if recognized and adopted by the Icelandic people ( I'm not familiar with Spaincoin, although I have heard of the Scotcoin.).

On the other hand, from a technological perspective, I agree there is nothing new here. Now, if it turns out the dev team is not genuine in their interest in the economic freedom of the Icelanders, then maybe you have an editorial or opinion piece here.

However, I am not about to make a stand for the Auroracoin as the feature for the first issue. NXT or XCP vs NXT is acceptable. Are the different enough from other projects such as Mastercoin, Bitshares, Colored Coins and Ethereum?

Shattered Zen has suggested doing a comparison article between NXT and XCP. Will this be a greatly detailed article, or will it address only high-level issues. Will it focus on user experience only? How about the administrative perspective? What about looking at code? Or a step above and focusing only functionality without actually looking at code?

What other kinds of topics can be covered besides a comparison of these two projects? How many articles are projected for the first issue?

XCP and NXT are both developing bitcoin 2.0 tech, but so is MSC and PTS. Is a comparison complete without discussing them all?

It seems more apropos to compare NXT with PTS since they both operate on independent blockchians. Pairing MSC against XCP would be more appropriate since they both piggyback on the BTC blockchain.

BTW, indepent of this conversation, a few days ago, I had downloaded and installed NXT server on my MacBook Pro and got 4 NXT from the faucet. I am able to view the NXT server through my browser, but I haven't done much more with it.