When more than a decade ago they first mentioned cryptocurrency to me, i rejected the usage of it. Early Bitcoinists failed to explain what Bitcoin is, they didn't even understood the mining itself, so they was not able to convince me. Later on, when i was doing business, some people asked me if i was accepting crypto. I still rejected the chance of using a crypto, however, i have installed Bitcoin to test it. I haven't changed my mind yet, but i have decided to accept cryptocurrency for some of my business. The first business i accepted cryptocurrency is, was one of my RPG Game Maker engines, where i had to deal with a lot of fake PayPal charge-backs. But suddenly no one seemed to want to pay in crypto, so despite of me trying to earn money from cryptocurrency early on, it was still merely a conception without actual usage.
Giving up on Litecoin
The first cryptocurrency i was actually using was Litecoin. The price of a Litecoin was about $2 back then. I have added the option to more of my software, to allow payments with Litecoin. No one was interested, and this was quite sad. I was noticing that a lot of opensource projects also started accepting donations in Litecoin, but when i browsed their donation addresses, none of them was really able to gain any donations. Later on these projects discontinued accepting Litecoin, and i was also discontinued accepting it. I almost gave up on the conception of cryptocurrency, but i just didn't gave up yet. I have tried to collect some Litecoin on faucets, to see how easily accessible it is. I was able to collect daily 0.1 or 0.2 LTC from faucets, which was less than a half dollar back then. I wasn't amused.
Dogecoin appears
I have noticed a strange newcomer on faucets. By then, almost all the faucets was Litecoin based, but there was a new kid on the bloc, and it was called Dogecoin. The first version had no Linux support, so i almost instantly threw away the idea to try it out. But luckily just after a few weeks of the initial release, they have added a Linux version. I have downloaded, and tried it out. I have tried to collect doge on faucets to check if it really works... and it worked. The community seemed more playful and agile than the Litecoin community, so i gave the coin a chance, i started to accept it as a payment for some of my software, while i slowly decided to kill of Litecoin support alltogether.
What is Dogecoin
Dogecoin was a fork of LTC, but they have decided to use 1 minute blocks. This means that within a minute, typically, a payment can be considered secure. Dogecoin was actually a joke. People on Twitter and 4chan announced it as a joke, and they actually quickly modified the LTC node software. They have replaced the first letter of addresses from L to a D, and they have added the Doge meme as a logo of the project. Just within days, the project gained a multiple million dollar capitalization, and back then, in that time, this was like a shock for the market. Dont forget, by then, on the entire crypto market, we had about 20-30 transactions per minute. From that 20-30 transaction, usually 3-4 was processed by Dogecoin. This made Doge the second most popular crypto after BTC, sometimes even exceeding the transaction number of BTC and LTC combined.
Dogecoin is my first waifu
I have started accepting Dogecoin payments, and Dogecoin donations. Unlike Litecoin, people were willing to spend Dogecoin. I was able to sell a few copy from my softwares in every month. The price of my previous game engine was 50000 Dogecoin ($10 back then) and then i started to actively collect tips. There was a tipbot on Reddit (which later exit scammed with the funds) but i never leave money in online services, so i was not affected too much. Someone started a service to sell Dogecoin through PayPal payments, and i started to use that to buy more Doges.
Lets do something for Dogecoin
Before Reddit became a left-winged socialist shithole, it was full of hentai, and fanfic groups. I decided to donate and onboard content creators of these communities. I have topped up some Dogecoins to the Reddit tipping bot (which was not yet exit scammed by then) and started to tip each and every creator who have posted something interesting. I have usually tipped daily 10-15 content creators and authors for a year. I have used about 30% of my Dogecoins to do so, however, not everyone accepted the funds within the time interval, and in that case, the bot sent me back the money. My strategy worked, and eventually people started to discuss Dogecoin in these weeb communities. I befriended others in the community, and we coordinated out on-boaring efforts with others. Even if i was frenemy with most of the main developers, i still worked for the greater good. Dogecoin was slowly rising in popularity.
Monacoin is my second waifu
Monacoin was basically the Japanese version of Dogecoin. It appeared on 2chan, a Japanese alternative of 4chan, where people started to donate each other. After that, they have quickly started to use it on hentai sites as well, so the story of Monacoin is pretty much similar to the story of Dogecoin. I have decided to accumulate some Monacoin as well, but it was hard, as none of the exchanges having it. It took me at least half a year to find an exchange that can process me Dogecoin to Monacoin exchanges indirectly. Even nowadays, Probit is the only exchange for westerners that allow Monacoin trading, but it has very low liquidity to this day.
Monacoin communities
Monacoin communities started to grow, and as they grew, a lot of scandals plagued the project. There was multiple instances of coin thefts, exit scams, 51% attacks, government crackdowns on the coin, but the coin was able to successfully survive those bad days. After that, they became a well established coin, and it moves mostly independently from western coins. This makes it an ideal investment if someone likes to speculate a coin into another coin.
Bitcoin Cash is my third waifu
In 2017 i have noticed that my Bitcoin node wont stop syncing. There was a day when i left my node to sync for the entire day. And the delay it accumulated just went up. There was just 20 hour behind, but after a day of sync, it was 24 hours left. Despite of actually syncing, and the hard disk almost jumped out from my computer, the node was not able to catch up with my HDD and 4 core computer under full utilization.
We leaved the early days with 20-30 transactions per minute, and now suddenly we had almost full blocks on BTC. The BTC community started panicking. One set of group supported the idea to increase the block size, the another set of group wanted to decrease the block time to one minute. Some of the community wanted the code to be optimized before adjusting anything - i supported this theory. Sadly, none of these ideas gained enough popularity in the community, and they entered a civil war against each other. BTC got crippled second layer protocols, and the people who supported the idea of increasing the block size, formed the Bitcoin Cash blockchain. Despite me not supporting this, i still decided to go with Bitcoin Cash, because an internal urge i can't explain pushed me to do so.
Me and the Bitcoin Cash
When i first joined Bitcoin Cash communities, it was looked like the last survivors of a terrorist group who just ran away from a drone attack. The people were licking their wounds as the coin quickly started to increase, then decrease dramatically in value. But it was full of people who wanted to actually do business, build things, and make the things to run again. Even if i know that i will probably at giant loss, i still started to offer small scale works to help to build the infrastructure. I am not a good graphics designer by any means, but i have offered to build some webpages, designs, logos and other services in the early days of the community merely for simbolic $5 payments in BCH, and i did some volunterism. It was hard, but the coin was able to survive all of the larger scandals, agressive splits by two group, and it was indeed able to scale at the end, and now its standing in the door of a potentially skyrocketing adoption. And this door is slowly started to open in the last year.
Reddcoin
I have noticed Reddcoin when i was searching for alternative coneptions of mining. Reddcoin is a staking based cryptocurrency (maybe it was the first to do so). This means that you can get interest rates after your coins if you run a node, and thats how you earn your money. Unlike other stake based coins, where you need to have a given number of coins at least to be able to collect interest, Reddcoin is created in a way which allows everyone to gather interest rates. Of course in the practice the staker needs notable money to be able to collect stake rewards. Similarly to Dogecoin, Reddcoin has one minute block time, which makes it very secure and ideal for micropayments. Reddcoin also has a very tiny transaction fee, and large potential to scale, comparable to Bitcoin Cash. The community is friendly, and the coin almost died without activity, when suddenly the life returned to it a year ago, so it has a very good potential in the future.
The positive and negative
None of the coins are perfect. There are no perfect cryptocurrency protocols.
The advantage of Dogecoin is being cheerful and widespread since the early days of the cryptocurrency history. One minute blocks allow it to be used in real-life payments as well.
Disadvantages of Dogecoin is the big transaction fee (fixed one doge, which i have fighted against for years in a futile battle against the main developers of the coin), which restricts the growth potential of the coin. Dogecoin can not really mined any more due to its being merge-mined with LTC by professional miners.
The advantage of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) is the ability to process almost one hundred millions of transactions per day for pennies as transaction fee due to the large 32 MByte block size. Giant communities exist for BCH where people can earn tips and make payments for each other (such as read.cash), and services which allows users to store data and messages in the blockchain (such as memo.cash and member.cash).
The disadvantage of BCH is the 10 minute blocktime, which makes it non-ideal for real life payments, and the SHA-based mining algorithm, which only allows professional miners to mine this cryptocurrency.
The advantage of Monacoin is that its independent from the western markets, which makes it a very good candidate to hedge your typical coins against. Monacoin have fantastic communities, such as monappy.jp where people can share their hentai arts and fan fictions for Monacoin payments. The 90 second block time is comparable to block time of the Reddcoin or the Dogecoin.
The disadvantage of Monacoin is the lack of widespread awareness in the western world, lack of high liquidity western exchanges, and the lack of a strong english-speaking community.
The advantage of Reddcoin is the negligible transaction fee and the steaking based economy, which makes it more friendly for a regular person to mint the coins than other coins which require professional mining hardware.
The disadvantage of Reddcoin is the small community and too few business based on it, and they will need a lot of time to build everything around them-self from the ground up.
It's funny. In fact, the first coin I used was also LTC.