Ask HN: What's stopping anyone of you from creating a bitcoin alternative?
Judging from the prices of Bitcoin and more recently, Litecoin and the creation of new currency, it dawned on me: What's stopping me or anyone of you guys from creating your own "currency" and making a quick profit? Here's the plan:
1. Create a new "currency", claim it's better than bitcoin. 2. Mine as much as you can when the difficulty is low or pre-mint some coins yourself. 3. Wait for a while as prices for your currency rises. 4. Cash out and PROFIT for the win.
Maybe, I should spend the weekend hacking away of my new "bitcoin alternative". What do you guys think?
5 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 23.8 ms ] threadThe problem is you need to get other people to use it and buy it, that's the tricky bit. You're making a huge assumption with this:
"3. Wait for a while as prices for your currency rises."
You'll need to get it used enough that someone puts it on an exchange, or otherwise convince people to give you money.
To make huge amounts of money, you need to convince either lots of people, or a few really rich people.
It's also potentially illegal.
But you've already picked the successful few out, lots of other coins never got to that point.
However, the fact that you're designing a scam makes this whole thing a lot easier to answer:
The thing that is stopping me is that I'm not a scumbag. I don't want to trick people out of their money.
You can try, but I doubt it will be as easy as you think it is.