I’ll take a break from the usual altcoin bashing and do something a little less abrasive today – talk about a coin with favorable prospects. Digitalcoin (DGC) was one of those coins that was launched during the altcoin flood back in May. While coins of this era were typically defined by egregious premining/instamining and generally poor launches, DGC was about the only one that had a fair launch with no premine. DGC was pre-announced days in advance (a rarity, in it’s time), and it’s launchtime graphs are damn near picture perfect:
A steadily increasing supply along with a steadily increasing hashrate – these are the things indicative of a fair launch. It’s been about 5 months since then, and DGC is still chugging along nicely. The community behind it is among the largest, as evidenced by it’s 200 page long main thread. Many services already exist, among them, payment processing and web wallets.
The developer, Baritus, has remained surprisingly active as well, pushing out incremental updates and working on various projects to further the coin. The most ambitious of these being the Free Bank of Digitalcoin and CryptoAve, an exchange platform. Shares of CryptoAve will be traded exclusively in DGC, which will undoubtedly boost demand for the coin.
About 2.6 million DGC are produced each month (20 coins @ 20 second blocks), and at the current price of 0.00014, this puts ~360 BTC worth of downward pressure on the market. Yet, the price has remained surprisingly stable for a while now, so this indicates that a lot of money is flowing into DGC. It’s important to note that in the upcoming v1.0 update block reward is being slightly reduced and block time is being increased to 40 seconds, effectively halving coin generation. Assuming cash inflow remains the same, the price of DGC should trend upward as a result.
My one real gripe with this coin is that not a whole lot is changed from the litecoin base. Block time and the coin distribution timeline are among the biggest of changes. I’ve talked with Baritus about this, and his design philosophy is such that he doesn’t want to reinvent the wheel, just make a better version of it. So far, I think he’s done a good job at accomplishing that. His involvement with the community and the scope of the projects he’s working on give me little reason to doubt his competence.
Overall, the pros outweigh the cons, and DGC is a good coin. Unlike some other coins out there, no gimmicks are used to lure people in. It’s just a good solid base, with a strong backing behind it. With v1.0 coming soon, and CryptoAve nearing completion, this coin is less of a risky investment than most. It’s one of the few altcoins that meets all my requirements for a good coin: A fair launch, a solid developer, and a good community.
Have a coin that you’d like me to take a look at next? Let me know.
Great article. However you should update it in that the block reward has been reduced from 20 to 15!
Other than that, a good in depth analysis of a coin that is doing well regardless of downward pressure, specifically in a time when BTC is rising – not many coins can withstand and maintain a stable price.
Wonderful job!
– @Ronang_ on twitter
Haha, Hazard, is this one of your coins?
DGC no premine? This has been the ad from the very beginning by the dev, is it true? The answer is a clear No. Agreed, DGC did not premine much, but it did have premine. Look at the 1st 96 hrs graph
http://cryptometer.org/digitalcoin_96_hour_charts.html
The public launch at the chart is where the hashrate ramps up, and at least 10208 DGCs are premined by the dev that time. Not to consider the instamining by the dev while others joining in.
But let’s be honest and give credits to dev, he did not premine as much as some other coins, such as CNC for example. Another non-premine coin at that time is WDC. If you look carefully, you’ll see some small premine, but we can not exclude the dev to do limited testing and set up checkpoints.
10208 dgc equates to about 1.4 BTC at the current rate. Maybe the dev mined it, maybe he didnt. It’s such a small amount that I dont think its worth harping over… A tiny hiccup to an otherwise good launch.
And there was no instamining of DGC… If there was instamining, it would be reflected with a large spike in the supply graph.
You mention worldcoin, that coin actually had a pretty decent sized premine, and a small instamine, as you can see here: http://cryptometer.org/worldcoin_96_hour_charts.html
Notice by hour 47 there was ~200k WDC but only a hashrate of 3MH. This represents the premine. The instamine occured over the few hours. The hashrate didnt pick up until hour 52, by which time there was 425k WDC out there. Far from a good launch. WDC was also involved in that UNOCS bullshit, which was the most transparent pump and dump scheme I’ve ever witnessed.
DGC is a great coin, a little less then honest though. If you look at the most recent update, the block reward was lowered 60%, that effectively makes every day up until that point a premine and is a direct attempt to try and increase scarcity to make all the coins mined up until that point worth more. Gotta love rewarding early investors the most under the premise of equality and fairness.
True enough; as a rule of thumb I am generally against messing around with block rewards for this reason. Surprisingly, the price hasn’t moved on the news though, while is why I think it’s a great buy right now.
Hazard, your articles are good and I like to read them but try to be critical for all altcoins…
There is no innovation in this coin, it’s a litecoin clone.
But the worst is is, as mentioned above, the block reward has been reduced from 20 to 15! (same thing with Worlcoin, they added a “patch” to reduce the block reward)
RULE #1: Never change the rules at the middle of a “game”!
In the Bitcoin, Litecoin, PPCoin client, the block reward and the block time have never changed. It’s like this, you know that the devs and coins are serious.
DGC should be considered to be a scamcoin or alike and his topic is self-moderatedself-moderated to avoid criticism:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=310111.0
99% of coins out there are litecoin clones. While certainly not a good thing, it’s not necessarily a bad thing, as I’ve stated before. A lot of the coins out there try to sell people with gimmicks, but are still at their core litecoin clones. At least this one’s honest about it’s roots, I can respect that.
As mentioned above, I’m not a huge fan of changing block rewards either. Time will tell how it plays out. If he is indeed trying to silence criticism, then the Streisand Effect will get him, hard.
This coin has it’s faults and is far from perfect, but compared to everything else out there, it’s an angel in comparison. Just looking briefly at the other coins around it on coinmarketcap… You have mincoin, worldcoin, megacoin, goldcoin… Coins with much, much worse track records.
I don’t think it’s faults take away from the fact that it’s a good investment prospect right now.
The first DGC block was mined more than a minute after the launch. That is a fact you can confirm on any block explorer and using the bitcointalk DGC thread.
Anyone who says anything else is ignorant at best, a liar at worst.
“Have a coin that you’d like me to take a look at next? Let me know.”
What do you think about Diamond (DMD)?