[quote=âHibero, post:5, topic:1941â]If you do not mind I will act like some of the newbies I have encountered.
â1% inflation? Why would I ever invest a coin that would give me such low returns.â
âThe fee is ridiculous. Why would I ever use Peercoin to buy things? It is useless. Bitcoin and Dogecoin have a lot more uses than Peercoin. Damn⌠You guys are a shitty 3rd currency.â
Not saying some of these are hard to argue with with. It is just that I feel the same with the high fee and it is hard to simplify Peercoinâs usage to newbies.
P.S. I am by no means a whale⌠I am (by far) probably one of the poorest Peercoin members here. I just want to try to bring a stronger community to Peercoin itself. I believe Peercoin is one of the strongest cryptocurrencies out there and I believe it be evident in a few years.[/quote]
Simplifying is always very difficult. Ten questions from uneducated people can keep one scientist busy for a long time.
It is a process of matching where people are at, what can they comprehend at one time and what they are after. It took you and me a long time before we started to grasp how this all works and we are still learning. So explaining someone else in a few minutes what it is all about and having them to understand all the complexities is not an easy feat.
I always start from trying to understand where the user is at, what are their interests, what is important for them. Letâs do a bit of profiling and story telling specific to this use case. The typical Doge user is new to crypto currencies, is likely to be young (under 35) and has been lured by Dogeâs good marketing. They are after a bit of fun money which they can mine and spend easily on small items or tipping people. That requires easy mining, abundance of coins and no transaction fees, which Doge has.
But is it sustainable? Doges are highly inflationary (anyone has the actual numbers? appears to be 5%), so either you have to spend them relatively fast or buy fiat or other cryptos. So that leaves the people spending every coin as soon as they earn them, they are happy with Doge as it meets their needs. Also leave the people who are happy with making a quick buck mining Doges and then returning it to fiat in their bank account. They are happy with Doge today and they will jump on another coin when they are providing better profits. Also leave the people who just want to play a bit with cryptos, have a bit of fun and learn their way around the different new technologies before they seriously consider moving their fiat. Doge is excellent for that.
So that leaves the profile that actually made a good amount of Doges either by mining or earning them and is not keen on transferring that back into fiat. A consideration could be transaction costs or not that much trust in the local fiat coin (also likely to be highly inflationary). This person is more interested to find a store of value within the crypto world. Peercoin would end up high on the list of offering just that (see my previous post why) especially when you only compare to other cryptos in top 15. Sentinelrv recently posted some information on the value gains Peercoin had on Litecoin in the last 7 months. This is most likely to continue and is also valid for most other coins (we need some more numbers to back this up).
The factor which makes the waters muddy is that cryptos like Doge act more like an attractive commodity (like the latest toy) than a currency recently as many jump aboard due to the good marketing. Therefore itâs value appears to be high (and rising) and as long as their marketing works they might be able to increase the value of their coin for a while despite the inflationary pressure. Great for speculators. But this wonât last forever, we have seen this in the dotcom bubble in the last decenium before. At the end of the day the real underlying values and issues of Doge and others will become clear and the speculators jump on the next train leaving a few train wrecks.
So that is why Doge and most other cryptos are not a store of value and Peercoin has the most properties to just serve that purpose. However, this doesnât stop it from being used for normal day-to-day spending as most people do with there current bank account. The Peercoin transaction fees are still lower than the total cost of most back accounts.
Itâs only for micropayments, e.g. small tips (<US$1 equivalent) where you used to be using fiat coins as opposite to banknotes, Peercoin is not the best solution, but it will still work for the odd occasion.
Maybe someone can make an infographic âPeercoin versus your average cryptoâ out of the information in this thread? Not comparing the technical stuff (like number of transactions and encryption protocols) but based on practical use cases.
Edit: And Pillow just provides us with another excellent example why people consider Peercoin as a store of value in the crypto world. Thanks for your timely post, Pillow.