Some of you might be aware of a new service launched called coingen, which allows any idiot with about 0.2 BTC to make their very own crapcoin. Now, some of you might be saying: But Hazard, don’t you create coins for people as well? Well, yes, but the difference is that I’m always available for future developmental work and to fix any problems a coin might encounter. Coingen comes with no such guarantee, which is especially problematic since these coins come with a death sentence attached from the moment they’re created.
You see, coingen was created by one of the oldest bitcoin supporters and exists solely to discredit altcoins. Accordingly, every coin this site spits out has it’s difficulty scaling set the same as Bitcoin – 400% in either direction every 2 weeks. History has shown that this is a laughably bad idea, and that the difficulty will get stuck at some obscenely high value. This causes miners to jump ship and block generation to come to a standstill. At this point the coin is effectively dead, unless a patch is issued. Since all these coins lack a developer, no such patch will ever come. It is therefore inevitable that all coingen coins will be dead within a few days of launch.
In the end, the buyer is left with a dead coin, and the miners have wasted time mining air. Everyone gets screwed – except the coingen operator of course. He makes a nice little profit on the whole ordeal.
Thankfully, coins generated by this site are extremely easy to avoid if you know what you’re looking for. Our of sheer laziness, every coin generated through this site shares the same genesis block, so we can have a quick look at the genesis hash to see if it was created through it. In the debug console (help tab) type in getblockhash 0. If it returns either of the following, it’s a coingen coin:
SHA256 Coins
000000000019d6689c085ae165831e934ff763ae46a2a6c172b3f1b60a8ce26f
Scrypt Coins
12a765e31ffd4059bada1e25190f6e98c99d9714d334efa41a195a7e7e04bfe2
This has since been changed. There are other blatantly obvious signs to look for, but if I post about them, they’ll just get changed too. Just use your head, and look for things that they all have in common.
The code allows for a lower POW block if the difficulty is run up and the coin goes too long without a block. Not that I thing coingen is a good idea… Just saying…
False. That bit of code is only active for testnet.
I see that: I stand corrected… The funny part is that testnet doesn’t even work on those coins.
Ok, I have this on my mind since the 3-4 last posts so here I go:
I remember when I found out about your blog, it was all about which currency would be good and why. Also about global crypto stuff, giving free tips on the market.
Now it’s just about “this coin is shitty, this one also, this coin generator is crap”
I was looking at your history post on bitcointalk.org and .. gosh it seems you’ve become an hateful person.
You’ve made this premium offer and maybe we have to pay 1-2 BTC to have access the good news, I don’t know.
I’m not making money out of cryptocurrency, I’m just someone interested in this and I thought this website could be a good source of information.
Too bad because I learnt some stuff on your website and you are capable of writing good articles. Hope this side will come back.
ps: I don’t think you’re going to let this being published, but at least you would have read it! (hopefully until the end)
Interesting you should say that. I used to like reading bitcointalk, but it does seem that recently the posts are getting much angrier and more hate filled. A sense perhaps that bitcoin adoption may have peaked already?
Meanwhile, ibeacon and associated digital wallets seems to be getting a lot of retail and media attention.
I couldn’t agee more with Jerry. According to hazard it seems that all coins are crap now and there are no coins worth investing.
Jerry, maybe Hazard’s so angry because of all of these crap coins being created. It is terrible for the crypto-currency market and for the coins themselves. It undermines confidence, destroys value . . . and worst has the potential to alienate precisely those entities in business world who could most benefit the effort to legitimize e-coins for the broader markets.
You think merchants who come here and see this wild-west nightmare go away thinking “Yeah, that’s a great idea?” I don’t think so.
We have a world transforming concept here and it’s being destroyed by idiots.
>You accurately call a scam a scam, this makes you a hateful person.
There is nothing hateful about accurately exposing scams. And I am glad for the service he is providing by doing so.
Thanks for the info, you make navigating the altcoin world much easier.
I was interviewed by my local paper about bitcoin. I got a $ collapse silver plug in as well. check it out [link to www.delawareonline.com]
this is my youtube channel
[link to www.youtube.com (secure)]
I have tried to use the “getblockhash 0” method to test a coin downloaded from Coingen, but I got a different genius block. Maybe they have already fixed this issue. Therefore, we cannot check whether it is a Coingen coin or not by using this method anymore.
two other possiblities to dedect:
-if a coin is from coingen, and the buyer is not willing to pay an extra fee, on the splash screen there is the coingen logo. the splash screen sometimes is only to see an short moment. (I had to make an screenshot to read it)
– the about screen, an coingen coin claims full ownership, like this one “Copyright © 2009-2013 The Swisscoin developers”
To be fair, the Coingen stuff looks pretty bad, at least the ones that I have downloaded. I recognise a few that have been released, and have done okay, though.
The problem with Coingen is it is faceless, no support, issues with getting a working blockchain and little advice offered about what type of specs should be used to make a coin workable.
Plus, the price isn’t that great. You really want the source file and need to get the hideous coingen splash thing removed. So the price is about 0.20 taking that into account.
In saying that, unless coingen has a way of stopping you doing this, could you not buy the source and simply remove the coingen splash yourself? That would save you 0.10 BTC.
I asked Hazard about creating something for me but the price was a bit high for me given I have crap locked in Gox that I will never see again, although probably a fair given he promises more than Coingen in terms of aftercare.
Hazard, if you do a copy paste with a premine for me of 2.5% for 0.15, I’d gladly pay. Paying more than that in the current climate is too rich for me. I can’t mine coins given I own a tablet and a laptop that is incapable of mining coins.
But anyway, the point I am making is that I don’t think this is bitterness or anger from Hazard. he has identified that Coingen is ultimately flawed. Taking a look at the stuff released and testing them out proves that he right.