Cryptocurrency - Learn from the past part one: ZCash, ZClassic, ZenCash

First Post -
Episode "Blockchain and the digital gold"

?why?
is it important to understand the transitions and changes
in the life-time of a cryptocurrency (coin)

First. There is a huge mass media manipulation with Twitter bots,
fake Facebook accounts, internet news pages and paid Youtubers
to enlarge the existing community (number of active users)
for a specific coin, which means increasing market capital (volume)
to the point that one coin becomes the biggest for a public service.

All of you know and there is no doubt about it bitcoin (BTC)
is the largest and oldest one for blockchain based money transactions.
Sending money digitally around the world is not new and got
a lot technological developments since the 70s, but still has a big downside,
which is the reason for the upcoming flooding of the market
with so many different cryptocurrencies. This downside is not described in this post.

Instead the following questions should guide you in the cryptocurrency world
?what? service does the coin give me compared to the others
and ?how? do i trust the source of this coin
and ?where? are the technical experts to break the complexity down.

Answer: Do your reasearch! Read from several sources not only bitcointalk forum.
Try to get in contact with team developers through slack, twitter and so on.
Ask direct detailed questions which result out of your own experince

• Get your hands dirty and dig deep

Now to show you what I mean below you find a small overview
for life-time of ZCash, ZClassic and ZenCash. Without encoding the github
C++ Code this data is still ill-defined, but that´s where the IT experts come in.
Since the blockchain code is open-source and several white papers exist.
This group of people who reports bugs (positive attitude)
or abuses them (negative attitude), needs to be trusted. I personally found
a local blockchain work group with Consensys employee, Faizod CEO
and several years long experinced enthusiasts.

Comparison example

To finish point 1.: Just always be skeptical to new ICOs, old coins,
webportals and so on. If you are done with your research
then start sharing conclusions and in the end you will gain
confidence or your are convinced of the opportunity which this new "thing" offers.

Second. The valuation to FIAT effects dramatically and directly user experience,
because in anyway you pay for that service! Be it time, money
or mining you spent something so you want to get return in a service
which means a personal value. To continue with the example
of Zfamily I used the historical data (figure 1) from coinmarketcap
and applied a normalisation with BTC value and market volume (figure 2-4).

In reality the shown price and resulting market cap in figure 1
are based on BTC progress, which means since USD price for BTC
is going skyrocket traded altcoins through BTC exchange are directly benefiting.
Furthermore trading websites like Poloniex, Bittrex, etc.
are forcing BTC based exchanges or use ICO token trading
to make BTC rise again and again (passive FIAT pumping).
For the life-time overview a normalisation makes sense.
Price of ZCash, ZClassic and ZenCash are validated for each day against BTC
and coin ratio means the total number of altcoins compared to BTC coins and price.

Third. With or without you blockchain technology will somehow change
our daily live in future. Just picture the first stages of the internet
or computer hardware. Steady improvments in all sectors created
what we have today, a global inalienable technology
which created and changed work. Digitalisation is ongoing
and right now you are allowed to learn and apply your knowledge
in a development stage. If you follow the historical progress
sooner or later because of your research you are ahead of
the mainstream movement.

I hope these three points help you to become a eco-activist.
Eco because if you invest time and strain your brain to understand new things,
it is important to activate this potential up to a stage
where you use your thoughts to improve a system.
This systems are broad for the topic of blockchains.
Finance, social-media, manufacturing, govermental sectors are
part of future applications. Feel inspired and Feedback is welcome

Thx Arno Pfefferling
https://twitter.com/mrceebo