This is the first post of the so-called Random Coin Talks. Each time I will discuss a single cryptocurrency and give my personal opinion about this coin. I don’t want my choice depend on popularity, good-looking charts or any other prejudices. Therefore, I generate a random number between 1 and 200 and based on the market capitalization rankings of coinmarketcap.com this will lead to the ‘random coin’.
I use the tag #randomcointalks, so you can find them at any time. If you like my posts, don’t hesitate to upvote or comment!
I got LEOcoin assigned by the random number generator. Let’s start!
LEOcoin has been around for quite some time. LEOcoin launched on March 25, 2015 and picked up the gauntlet by competing with Bitcoin, claiming they had enough registered entrepreneurs to become the second largest digital currency. Nevertheless, the first block was already created a year before. By the way, LEO is an abbreviation of Learning Enterprises Organisation and they identify themselves with the lion, since ‘leo’ is the Latin word for this animal.
Regarding mining, in July 2016 they changed the proof-of-stake and proof-of-work algorithm with modified nFactor in scrypt-Jane to a sole proof-of-stake procedure, which makes the network more secure and mining will cost less energy in the future. The cost, though, is that proof-of-stake users are asked to prove ownership of a certain amount of LEO.
They are a non-profit organization, but I doubt whether I should consider that a plus. Companies who aim to make profit are, for example, more innovative and efficient than their non-profit counterpart.
(August 19, 18:30 CET)
Why do we need LEOcoin in the broad range of cryptocurrencies? The foundation mentions six reasons:
It’s positive that there is still a lot to mine. On the other hand, mining is only relevant for a small fraction of investors in cryptocurrencies and besides, given the price of one LEO, you need to mine significant numbers. LEOcoin claims to be more secure and more anonymous than Bitcoin, but nowadays this is not a special feature at all. Monero, for example, is completely anonymous. They claim to have a large number of merchants accepting LEOcoin, but this number is way smaller if we should believe leocoinmerchants.com. I did not see any large retailers and can’t imagine that merchants only accept LEO and not Bitcoin, for instance. Up to this point, it simply looks like a copy of Bitcoin.
What about the usability? There are no commissions, which is definitely interesting for small- or medium-sized firms as they often face relatively large fees. On the other hand, Bitcoin only charges small transaction fees, which is already a big step forward compared to fiat currencies. An advantage over Bitcoin, though, is that they offer a chargeback once payments are made. They mention usage of LEOcoin does not require specialized knowledge, but this is the case for most cryptocurrencies. I bet that a sufficient amount of Bitcoin investors does not know anything about the code behind the coin.
They have pre-mined 50 million LEO (5%) as company stock, but further they mention to hold 10 million. Where are the other 40 million? In general, they try to keep you uninformed about the pre-mining, while there is nothing wrong with it, in my opinion. Before ICO’s, this was simply the way to obtain a start capital.
LEOcoin claims to be a deflationary currency, just like Bitcoin. However, the two are different. The characteristic of a deflationary currency is a limited supply, while fiat money is being created continually. So, theoretically, if demand is stable or increases, your purchasing power goes up as time goes by. The Bitcoin issuance rate declines over time until no more Bitcoins are produced, but the mining of LEOcoin does not decline; at least not theoretically. Almost 80% of all Bitcoins are already mined, but LEOcoin can only reach such a percentage at the end of this era. So, yes, it is a deflationary currency, but this fact is much less relevant than for Bitcoin.
LEOcoin has committed to releasing a maximum of 28,800 LEOcoins per day for a limited period of 99 years, equating to a total of one billion LEOcoin, after which no more will be generated. This means it is designed as a deflationary currency that will increase in value as demand increases, the firm noted.(source)
Talking about their personal bitcointalk thread. It surprises me that there is a lot of positive talk, often by ‘newbies’. I am not accusing them of creating a positive ‘vibe’ by making those comments by themselves, but the lack of different views certainly looks strange. I get the feeling other opinions are simply removed, which they justify by saying the posts contain ‘unjustified statements’.
With regard to deleting a few posts; you have people capable to a sensible discussion and you have trolls. Sorry, if some of your replies to trolls got deleted too, but they contain their unjustified statements and it would be sad to let that stand. These trolls have nothing positive to contribute, just ignore them and I will regularly remove their 'opinion'.(source)
If you feel you have been marked as a 'troll' without reason, please send me a PM, as I am always open to reason.
I went in blank, but found it hard to mention any positive things about this coin. There are many criticists and most of them have valid points. I would not dare to call it a scam, it simply does not add anything to the current spectrum of digital coins. LEOcoin has no future and therefore I discourage you to invest in it.
