Weiss Ratings Crypto Report | Pseudo-Science for the Sheeple?

in #bitcoin6 years ago

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Today Weiss Ratings released their crypto report, ranking 74 crypto currencies with some letters (mainly B+ to D-).
I won't go into detail about the report itself, you can check the cnbc news for more info: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/01/24/weiss-ratings-gives-ethereum-higher-rating-than-bitcoin.html
Or just look on your favourite crypto news site, they probably did a report about it.

However let me just quote their FAQ to make my basic point that either the data that went into evaluating their indexes is bullshit or their formular to evaluate the data is.


Q. Bitcoin is the dominant cryptocurrency in the marketplace. Why doesn’t it get an A?

A. Thanks to its strong adoption and brand, Bitcoin does merit an A in one of our four indexes. But it falls short in two other important areas: Our Risk Index, and Technology Index. As soon as the metrics on one or both of these improve, an upgrade for Bitcoin is likely.

As stated in all our releases, the primary goal of the Weiss Cryptocurrency Ratings is to help protect investors from risk, while leading them to the most sustainable, robust cryptocurrencies. That goal requires playing close to the pattern of recent price declines as well as tech issues that could hinder a price recovery.


So Bitcoin falls short on the Technology Index? - You gotta be kidden me. Bitcoin today still has the largest amount of active and highly experienced developers in the whole crypto space.
Sure, the scaling debate in Bitcoin sucks/sucked and there is a possibility it will fail because of it. However with SegWit and especially Lightning Network there are solutions already fully implemented in code that have the potential to make BTC the #1 coin for everyday payments on top of the fact that it will probably remain the gold standard in crypto for quite some time to come.
There are still great challanges ahead, and probably always will be, but projects like Cardano or EOS having a higher rating than BTC, just because they have ambitious plans is a joke. These projects are so far away from actually reaching their technical ambitions - how could you even measure their technical possiblities - they might never actually be implemented!

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I am all for new technologies and interesting, never-seen-before approaches: for example the DAG is a fascinating idea and may be the next big thing in terms of decentralized applications. But right now there are tons of problems to solve and it still has to be tested long term and with huge amounts of users - something that Bitcoin has been doing successfully for 8 years now.
Smart contracts are another big thing. And I am 100% certain they are here to stay. However there are already solutions to implement smart contracts as a on-top layer for Bitcoin. And again, how can you give Ethereum a better ranking than Bitcoin? The language to program smart contracts called solidity is known to be very hard to handle securely, Ethereum actually has very similar scaling problems to Bitcoin and most importantly ETH is much less decentralized than Bitcoin.

Let me be clear: I find many many of these other cryptocurrency projects very interesting (including ETH, ADA, EOS etc.), I HODL some of them and am excited to see what will happen in the next months and years to come. Of course some of them might one day replace Bitcoin and eventually make it obsolete.
BUT! Right now. It is absolutely ridiculous to give these project a higher rating - most of them are early alpha versions or even less: a good looking white-paper and some creative minds that might make these paper-ideas a reality some day.

Well, looks like I wrote all this just to say that their rating system is flawed in its very core. - I cannot stress enough the importance to think for oneself and not rely on some mysterious leader figure, no matter in what shape and form they might appear. In this case some dubious ranking company.
Decentralized networks such as Bitcoin can - and probably already do to some extent - change the way society works (mostly for the better I am convinced!).
But unless people start to think for themselfes instead of hoping for some fortune teller to guide their way, its possibilities will stay limited.

Follow me @xwerk _ʕ•ᴥ•ʔノ

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Glad to see you back, and I agree critical thinking skills are something that many lack.

Nice post.I respect you very much because you contribute to steemit.I will do activities like you.I would like to extend the steemit.

nice thoughts.. i like the last one, hoping for some fortune teller to lead the way haha..Anyway, FUD is everywhere, i dk which :P ..yeah i agreed lets think bout ourselves..do self homework, always dyor.

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