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...
