Photon: Whose Coin is it Anyway?

in #cryptocurrency7 years ago (edited)

Back in early December, I had some LTC dust left over on Cryptopia from trading some LTC for SmartCash. I decided to look at the LTC market and find a really cheap coin that was trending up and just put that $3.60-at-the-time into that coin and see what happens. I didn't research the coin, didn't read a whitepaper or even a web page. Just saw I could purchase a lot of PHO for $3.60 and that it was trending positively against LTC so I put in a buy order. I found and downloaded the wallet, put my new coins in it and left the wallet up to sync. It was only then that I decided to research the coin. So yes, I am a carpet-bagging opportunist and this is absolutely the worst way to do crypto. I would NEVER do this with a sum of money that is more than I have lying around between the couch cushions. And I don't suggest anyone ever do this again. It's a total crapshoot--and I got lucky.

Photon, as it turns out, has a real use case and It's pretty damn cool. The coin is meant to be used in several ways inside of video games. The developers are working on an original video game. I've seen some videos of the basic game engine function and if you like zombie first-person shooter MMOs, this game will be for you and it looks like it will be good. I can only start to imagine the possibilities of a cryptocurrency being woven into the fabric of the game. And not just the game that the devs who made are developing right now but really any game that wants to work this concept into their game-world, because the coins are open-source. They also implemented a merged-mining system, so if you mine PHO, you also get BLC, BBTC, LIT, ELT, and UMO.

So if you click on the PHO link of clicked on the one above, you can see the coin has increased in value by about 16,000% since my haphazard purchase. And recently, a "community" has sprung up around Photon Coin. I am excited to see other people excited about this coin. But I am skeptical of pump-and-dump, because most of the interest is like "when will it moon?", "why haven't the devs put this on all the exchanges??", "how do I mine with my laptop???", "Is there a use-case????", etc.

The clear intent of the vast majority of folks who are now really interested in Photon is that the price increase as quickly as possible. They want to get rich quick, and they are expecting other people to do the work for them. The clear intent of the developers of the coin was to build a bock-chain based economic infrastructure into video games. Not to get rich quick.

The new Photon "community" really didn't get off the to best start, but still has a chance... The founders of this community of course claim to have the best interests of the coin in mind. Read this conversation and see how it develops. One of the devs calls them out on calling themselves part of the "Photon Team" before even having made any contact with the developers and certainly without having made a commit into github... The dev basically shames them into not trying to co-opt his team's years of work.

I'm not sure how interest in these specific coins caught on before the video games even have a public beta released... but it clearly has. The price of BLC has risen quickly but I'd say healthily. The price of PHO has exploded in two separate pumps. There have been small dumps but the big one, if it's coming... is still coming. Is this healthy for the coin? Does it pay respect to the developer's intent and plans for the coin? If the price is volatile and the network is congested with speculators, how will that affect the usage of the coin in games? In a positive way? I personally don't think so.

A community that springs up around an open-source project that they themselves put zero work in should remember to be a little bit humble and at least do a little research before thinking that because you made a purchase on an exchange that somehow the coin's developers owe you something. They don't. If you are being smart (not lucky like me this one time, but actually smart like I aspire to be) you research before you buy. And you invest in a coin because you believe in the use-case of the coin.

So whose coin is it anyway? I know the portion of it that is in my wallet is mine. Other than that, I'm really not sure...

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Thank you for this information and for the link where they speak with the dev. Beautiful story. I have now also love for the coin photon and with the community there will be succes.

Thank you for sharing and always #PHODL

If the "community" has the goal of driving the price up, it may make some people rich but it will not help the success of the coins or the games that the coins are meant to be integrated into. So far the only stated goal I've seen is "$1 per PHO". And most of the posts in the community telegram account are asking people to hound Cryptopia to put a PHO/BTC pair up. Very few if any people in this new community seem to know or care about the original concept of the developers.

Please read before posting .
I readed a lot about photon. It is tested as ingame payment. Making it possible to let it be a ingame coin for alot of games is what the community want.Ofcourse photon will be 1 dollar when game developers will use photon.

Maybe you need to read the conversation on bitcointalk again because they talk very good about the developers and they talk also with them. The original dev is oke with the management team so nothing can stop them because there are 1400 people that want al to make photon a ingame coin. They will have succes

I did read the thread on Bitcoin talk quite closely. It's clear to me Bluedragon747 was initially concerned that people were glomming on to his team's work and claiming to be the Photon Management Team. After some discussion where, as I say above, he shamed them into at least saying they wouldn't co-opt his team's work, he says he's cool with them as long as they are supporting the actual project.

On the new community telegram, 9 out of 10 people ask "when is cryptopia coming back" and "when will the price go up" and the only stated goal of the "community" is a $1 price for Photon. The price of the coin is not the goal of the coin or its devs, it's the goal of this new community. When your only goal is the price of the coin reaching a certain point, what do you think the plan is when that goal is reached? What's the point of having a goal of the price of something if you don't plan on selling when it reaches that price?

Do I need to be this explicit for the high likelihood of this being a pump-and-dump scheme to be clear? I hope I'm wrong but I'm just trying to be objective here and the facts seem clear to me.

No,you did not read everything on bitcointalk or you had allready your answer for all your question. :)

People please read bitcointalk. On page 24 the conversation starts with "thank you dev" It is a wonderfull story if you read everyrthing. There are people that support photon only because the wonderfull story. People are talking that this is looking like a movie....
It is now not only bacause photon why people buy photon :)

So please share more (bad) articles

I did read the entire thread. I think you might be missing some of the nuance of the conversation.

People "supporting" Photon and people wanting it to be listed on exchanges so they can profit off of the years of hard work of the devs is not the same thing.

You was not talking this way if you was follow the conversation on bitcointalm with bleudragon. So you did not read it.
I cant wait to see reactions from others.

Again, I have read the whole thing and have made several comments on that thread. Have you seen Bluedragon747's twitter feed? His thoughts on this have been made pretty clear.

You say "Ofcourse photon will be 1 dollar when game developers will use photon." To believe this, you clearly fail to understand the basics of market economics, blockchain in general, or how Photon's blockchain is configured specifically. You aren't trying to learn anything, I can't help you.

Ha! I did exactly the same thing as you! Forest gumped my way into a few hundred quid. I missed the swap-over to the btc market(I assume you traded on cryptopia to get your PHO). Bit of bummer but it will eventually move from 0.000001. I've seen the game behind this too and it looks pretty good. I will hold onto this one for a while. Cheers for sharing your thoughts on this.