Oh, where do I begin… Feathercoin, the original litecoin copycat that sparked the great altcoin flood of 2013. Actually, describing it as a copycat is giving it too much credit. Feathercoin is actually a fork of litecoin.
You see, the developer, bushstar, displayed absolute bare minimum competence when creating this coin. One of the most basic steps of creating an altcoin is to create a new genesis block. This is the block that the entire blockchain will build off of, and is one of the key differentiators between coins.
But bushstar, in all his incompetence, couldn’t figure out how to create his own genesis block. Instead of admitting defeat and that he had no business launching a coin, he did the next best thing he could think of: reuse the litecoin genesis block, and put in a hardfork at the first block. This makes feathercoin a fork of litecoin, a “distinction” that few coins have.
Additionally, the coin was launched with bare minimum difficulty, so it was instamined to an extreme degree, as shown below. Those who participated in the instamining will from here on out be referred to as the insiders.
The level of incompetence involved in this whole scenario should have precluded anyone from taking feathercoin seriously. But predictably, the community has little technical understanding of what they’re investing in, so they were suckers for marketing. For what bushstar lacked in coding ability, he made up for in his marketing ability. Feathercoin was marketed very similar to how litecoin was. Feathercoin was the “bronze” to bitcoin’s gold, and had parameters relative to litecoin equivalent to litecoin’s parameters relative to bitcoin. This strategy worked quite well, and feathercoin captured significant market share. Sitting at a market cap of about 16k BTC, it is easily the most overvalued coin out there right now, and not something I would ever invest a bitcent into.
A large part of it’s success can be attributed to BTC-e adding it to their exchange. It is likely that some shady backroom deals were involved, as BTC-e has a history of accepting bribes. I’m sure most of you by now know about the Novacoin scenario, but there was also another documented incident of the same kind. Several months ago, some emails were leaked detailing the possible addition of americancoin to BTC-e. The terms involved a large USD bribe, as well as a hefty amount of americancoins. The deal obviously fell through, but it is demonstrative of what one must do to have their coin added. Given how new feathercoin was, I have no doubts in my mind that the insiders paid BTC-e off for it’s addition.
Amazingly, 5 months later, FTC is still around. This coin should have died months ago, but keeps getting a new lease on life every time it’s close to death. From the beginning, this coin has lazily copied from others, and has done nothing innovative. That trend continues to this day. You may remember about 6 weeks ago feathercoin added a “new” feature called Advanced Checkpointing. It’s a nice feature, sure, but the feathercoin devs aren’t the creators of it. This feature was originally part of PPCoin, and yet, no credit is given. One must dig around on github to see that Sunny King (PPcoin dev) authored the commit. There’s no mention of him anywhere in the release post.
Feathercoin is a parasite. It brings nothing new to the table. It takes the ideas of others and passes them off as it’s own. But I tip my hat to you, bushstar. Despite your woeful incompetence, you managed to hack together a coin and swindle the community for a nice sum of money. It’s more than most would be able to accomplish. No doubt you’re laughing all the way to the bank.
UPDATE: Coblee (Litecoin dev) has reached to me to share his experience with feathercoin.
Lots of FTC bagholders over at BTC-E. All that FTC needs to be liquidated before the coin has any chance of growth. Definitely stay away.
Hey Hazard,
Do you plan on doing any articles on Litecoin?
I’m interested in what you think.
At some point.
Word up, well said and all true.
“This feature was stolen from PPCoin, with no credit given.” = FUD.
Sunny has several contributions to Feathercoin and all are well documented on the forum. Having Sunny contribute to FTC is good, not bad. I have no idea how you could possibly frame Sunny King’s work being used in a coin as a bad thing … oh wait, by misrepresenting the facts, that’s how. lulz
Good luck on your quest to drive the price down so you can buy lower (despite what your reply will say). I’ll be buying along with you!
Fixed, just for you. It is very clear why they don’t mention SK anywhere; having it well known that another dev is issuing key patches to your coin does not bode well for your image. In that sense, SK is both an asset and a liability.
The price of FTC will continue to go down, and I want nothing to do with it. In addition to all the issues I’ve discussed, it has one of the worst names out there. Can anyone honestly imagine paying for something with feathercoins?
Hazard,
I don’t know where you get your opinions, or agree with them, although I respect them. What I don’t respect is when you share your opinions as facts and then edit those facts after you are called out on it without addressing the changes. For that reason, I’m sad to say I’m no longer going to be reading your FUD.
You need to fix your shitty edit again because you didn’t even do the minute level of research to see that Sunny King is credited – he licensed ACP to FTC. Here’s the text from the FTC GitHub page
// A perpetual use license of this advanced checkpoint technology is granted
// to feathercoin by Sunny King on behalf of PPCoin developers and Primecoin
// developers.
If you want to be taken seriously, start doing the legwork and have some semblance of professionalism.
Did you only read the bolded text? This is already reflected in the article.
“One must dig around on github to see that Sunny King (PPcoin dev) authored the commit.”
My point is that in the release post for ACP, both on bitcointalk and the feathercoin forums, there is no mention of Sunny King anywhere. Do you think the newbies are going to dig through github to see who authored it? No. Most of them will just download the client and think “wow, feathercoin devs just added this cool, new, innovative feature.”
That is my issue with this scenario. There is a very clear reason that the only mention of him is buried in the source code. SK was also behind the fork that updated the difficulty algorithm… No mention of him there either. Why not thank the man publicly for all the work he’s done? Very clear agenda here: To pass themselves off as competent devs, when they sure as fuck aren’t.
And if I was publishing FUD, then I must be doing something wrong by publishing comments that are contrary to what I write. There’s nothing wrong with updating information to be correct after the fact.
Can’t please everyone, I guess.
Quote:”In addition to all the issues I’ve discussed, it has one of the worst names out there. Can anyone honestly imagine paying for something with feathercoins?”
That sounds like a highly technical reason to not invest.
The name is perhaps the most important part of a coin. It determines how well it will resonate with new potential investors. Feathercoin is a flimsy name and does not elicit any sort of value.
It’s a phenomenon called nominative determinism, and it’s a very real thing.
You online name is Hazard and, your are giving advice about names……… Your retort will be that my name is wesphily……. Difference? I’m not giving advice on names.
The term Feather I assumed was refering to the lighter class as used in boxing featherweight and super feather weight class.
Its a shame you think the whole coin is a sham but it does seem your opinion is not shared by everyone as there is quite a large community growing around this quite young coin.
I would love to see or hear some evidence to back your claims regarding bribery and btc-e. Its great to show u can jump to conclusions but your comments about marketing are true bushstar and others are very good at promoting the coin I would assume this was the real reason feathercoin was adopted.
Its much easier to smash others ideas than it is to come up with your own. So well done.
Briliant article. Just replace Litecoin for Feathercoin. That was my experience when I first tried alt coin mining. The Litecoin developer wasn’t doing anything and the forum was obnoxious.
Err, I feel dirty, cause actually Litecoin is great.
Some of us are in it just to scare up the banks, not make a “fortune”, the fact that Feathercoin was a clone of Litecoin with a better (more open) forum was the attraction, and part of it’s mission. Litecoin_Messiah. you are also right, it has been a great learning experience, including fighting the 51% attacks and seeing Bushstar develop as a the project creator / instigator.
Interesting read , thanks. I was not aware of the exact level of crap that is envoloved with FTC. Lets see if todays altcoin dump will be the final straw for the coin.
Good artical, but I cant agree with you in some point.
FTC has a strong community, some updates are in RC so I dont think it will down in the near feature.
Br,
TN
I liked FTC quite a bit early on, before I knew all the details, but I still don’t see it quite as dismally.
Mostly as it is an early copy (or fork – that few comprehend), and long term, the copies of copies… and so on, will just be farther down the list. BTC, LTC, FTC? Maybe not valued in that order, but some of the first crypto-currencies have a good shot at holding some value. Compared to the thousands and thousands of clones that are coming. I see it more around $1 long term, and it has been there before. Could go quite a bit higher with BTC/LTC rising as well.
Also, anything that you can buy anything with, is farther along that stuff you can only trade with. Thanks for the information, but I do think originality and success have little in common, historically, it is usually those that market others ideas better that win out.