This week on the altcracks, we have a new feature. Coins newly listed on Bter, Cryptsy, C-Cex and Bittrex will be listed at the end of the article. Next week, depending on your reaction, we may include coins being removed or at risk of being removed from each major market. That information is a little harder to find, so let me know in the comments if you would be interested in it.
This week, we have the debut of the NXT powered Nxtty chat and community app, XC members are wondering what is happening with the coin's developer premine, Ripple and Cryptsy are having issues, and Quark gets Shaq-Attacked.
Nxtty
We told you about Nxtty a few weeks ago in a previous Alt-Cracks article. It has officially launched for Android on the GooglePlay Store. While I haven't played around with it enough to give it a full review, and it is a little rough around the edges for a “1.0” release, it is clearly full of potential.
Nxtty is a bit of a Crypto-charged blend of Whatsapp and Internet message boards. Chatting is broken down into two categories: Open and Private. Private is just what it sounds like: messages between two users with the option to have those messages expire after a pre-determined amount of time (between one minute and “never”). Open chat is a bit like a message board or Reddit, with an inbuilt tipping system (using Nxttycoins, a token made on the NXT asset exchange). Boards are broken down into several categories (from “bitcoin” to “sports” to “support”). Users can make whatever topics they want in each board and reply to other users topics. Every user has an easily accessible “tip” button next to them. As of yet, there is no way for users to make their own boards.
Unfortunately, filling your wallet is a bit counter-intuitive at this point, if it can be done at all. Clicking “Wallet” brings me to a screen with my current Nxtty balance (currently zero) but no details on how to fund it with Nxttycoins (much less NXT or BTC). Right now, if you tip someone, it comes from the general tipping pool that contains 100 million Nxttycoins. Early adopters are being rewarded with 2500 Nxttycoins, but other than that and receiving tips from other users, there doesn't appear to be any way to fill your account.
It also isn't easy to add users to your contact list. At one point someone randomly added me to theirs (according to the app's push notification) but there was no apparent way to add them back or even find them again in the app itself without memorizing their user name.
Still, the app just released a few days ago and it looks really slick, not at all like a cryptoapp. If they can smooth it out around the edges they may really have something here.
XC Premine Sell-Off Worries Investors
XC and its well-known developer Dan Metcalf made huge waves last week when it announced the creation of BlockNet, a technology designed to let participating coins use the features found in every other participating coin. The XC team stressed that BlockNet wouldn't hurt the participating coins and would bring more utility (and eventually, value) to each of them.
Then, some users noticed that the XC's premine, transparently made to fund development costs, pay for bounties and other XC related projects, had started being emptied all the way back in August and continuing until recently. This is a problem because according to a Reddit post made by the team earlier, all payments from the premine address would be made public.
Members understandably took that as more public than just being on XC's privacy minded blockchain. They believed that every payment from the premine address would be explained before it is spent.
An XC team member, who goes by the name “synechist” responded on Bitcoin Talk and posted this apology to the community.
“In retrospect I agree that it would've been best for the team to have prioritised how and what we communicate about spending the premine. I apologise on behalf of the team for having dropped the ball in this respect. I'm not sure whose responsibility this would've been, and that's part of what went wrong.
[. . .]
Would it be ok with you if we give a general summary? Accounting for every expenditure would take quite a while.”
We spoke to Dan Metcalf on Skype about the situation. He was quick to point out that XC has been funded mostly with his own money and confirmed that a general summary of how the funds were spent will be forthcoming.
He also shared with me that some of the premine was used to pay him to pay back some of the money he personally invested into XC's mobile app development. Some of that XC paid to him was then sold to buy his own stake in BlockNet, but he stressed that the XC premine was not directly used to buy BlockNet's ITO and has been used exclusively for development of XC and its related projects (including bounties, multi-pools, an ATM and the mobile app).
Some in the community are expressing feelings of betrayal, saying that spending from the premine account was not done in a transparent way as the development team originally claimed it would. However, I would point out that the premine account has been sending out coins for a few months now. At any time, any user could have checked on that and then asked the developers what the money is being spent on. They didn't. In fact, no one seemed to bother checking on the premine account until XC's current price dive. Had anyone checked, this situation could have played out much earlier in the process.
XC may have had a commitment to transparency that they didn't tackle with the kind of gusto one would like, but if no one was interested enough to ask them for a report until now, can we really blame them for not providing one?
Regardless, the premine is nearly empty now and the community didn't know about it until recently, due to both a lack of diligence on their part and a lack of transparency on the developer's part. How that affects your feelings on XC as a currency is up to you.
Cryptsy Having Issues With Ripple Withdraw
Earlier today, Cryptsy announced that it has been having issues, for a week now, with withdrawn Ripple making it from Cryptsy back into the Ripple ecosystem.
It is unknown at this point what exactly the problem is. We don't know if it is at all related to the issues the Justcoin exchange had with Ripple or if it is a new one, any details at all.
All we know at this point is that Ripple Withdraws from Cryptsy have not been making it to users since 10/21 and that multiple users have been affected. They are looking into and promise to resend the funds soon.
This could be nothing, or it could be something major. In either case, it is something to keep an eye on for the time being.
It should also be noted that XRP (Ripple) is a base trading pair on Cryptsy along with USD, BTC and LTC.
Shaq Speaks on Quark
Now, for a bit of light-hearted news:
Shaquille O'Neal aka The Shaq Daddy, aka The Big Aristotle aka Shaqtus remains one of the biggest figures in the sports world, years after his retirement from the NBA.
The inclusion of Quarkcoin into the recently revived “so bad, it's good” Shaq-Fu videogame made big news when it happened, but no one seemed to ask Shaq if he knew what Quark is. Someone finally proposed the question to Shaq and posted the video on YouTube.
In the short video, Shaq demonstrates his knowledge of the coin, or at least his ability to properly read a description of a coin. In either case, it is pretty cool to watch one of the biggest stars in the sports world talk about a cryptocurrency.
Now, for the promised new feature for the altcracks: New coins added to major exchanges. None of these exchanges paid or even asked to be included in the article. If you want another exchange to be included, mention it in the comments along with instructions on where to find information on newly added markets if applicable.
This information was gathered from the sites themselves and from Twitter and may not be a comprehensive list of all the coins that were added. All markets are BTC unless otherwise stated.
New Coins added from 10/23 - 10/30
Bittrex: BlockNet [BLOCK] X-Children [CHILD] 1Coin [One] DarkKush [DANK] GanjaCoin [GANJA] CleverHash [CHASH] DarkShibe [DSB] MiracleCoin [MCL] Nopecoin [NOPE] CannabisDarkcoin [CND] SembroToken [SMBR] ScatterCoin [XSTC]
Cryptsy: Umbrella Litecoin [ULTC] HyperStake [HYP] Architectcoin [ARCH] UtilityCoin [UTIL] Titcoin [TIT] Exclusivecoin [EXCL] BitSwift [SWIFT]
Cryptsy XRP Markets: Pennies [CENT] HTML5Coin [HTML5]
Bter: BitSwift [SWIFT] TileCoin [XTC]
C-CEX: CataloniaCoin [CATC] (Presale) SecuritySysCoin [SCSY] DarkKush [DANK] DarkShibe [DSB] Sync [SYNC] QiBuckCoin [QBK] WoodCoin [LOG]
That is all for this week. Let me know if you would enjoy a list of de-listed or coins in danger of being de-listed. As always, if you feel your coin's news fell through the cracks, feel free to contact me at [email protected]or on Twitter @iandemartino. No coin, company or exchange can pay to be put into this article (or any article under my byline) so don't even bother asking. Just make some news.