BottleCaps Altcoin Price Takes a Slide
Altcoin BottleCaps Coin (CAP), a Scrypt Proof-of-Work / Proof-of-Stake hybrid which has been performing well across markets in recent weeks, has dropped off in time for the holiday season.
On November 17th, CAP hit a high of 2,481 Satoshi and then immediately took a slight slide to 2300 over the following week. During the end of November, the coin was back in the 2,400s, and then it briefly dove on November 29th back to 2,300. By December 4th, it was holding steady in the 2,100-2200 range with a total market capitalization of 187BTC.
Also read: Scotcoin Migrates from Altcoin to Counterparty Digital Asset
Unexplainable Growth, Unexplainable Fall
As with many cryptocurrency market changes, there is no immediately obvious reason for such a drastic drop in valuation. The ease of trades enables miners and traders to make drastic market waves without a second thought or much difficulty. The volatility – that some call virility – of the coin markets can leave unaware holders in the dust with thousands of suddenly valueless coins.
Recent weeks have seen a reduction in the introduction of new coins. While there is no way to be sure just how many cryptocoins are out there, notable additions to the field have been scarce since the summer. Meanwhile the mining difficulty of the coins formerly valued at high prices has gone up across the board, leaving newer miners in the cold.
Neither BottleCaps nor the BottleCaps Foundation have an official website, but CAP has been around for at least 18 months. Information as to the background of the coin and reasoning for its beginning are sparse. All of which makes it difficult to understand how the coin was ever valued over 100 Satoshi. After all, Dogecoin, which has one of the largest marketing campaigns and strongest communities of all coins, presently sits somewhere between 60 and 75 Satoshi. Earlier in the year, the poor shibe was struggling in the 30s; though, differing total amounts of planned coins may explain discrepancies.
Mysticism
The most recent developer post, by user Tranz on CryptoCoinsTalk, had to do with asthetics:
I am willing to draft another release here sometime in the upcoming months, with a few key updates, similar to what I put in HBN for 1.5. Dealing with locks, peers, and possible more GUI additions. But I would like to get some new icons made. […] So if someone is willing to make more cool icons. I’ll contiune [sic] to push this forward.
Tranz was not immediately available for comment on this article. All of this leads us to wonder what makes an altcoin valuable. UroCoin, the currency based on the value of the fertilizer Urea, is based on the value of a metric tonne thereof, and it currently trades over 90,000 Satoshi. The value of a full 42Coin is near 5BTC, which has to do with the extremely limited supply of that currency.
Despite it all, new coins will continue to enter the market, and new risks will be taken, and miners will continue to dedicate their hardware to coins outside the BTC/LTC/DOGE sphere of influence. Keeping currency markets honest has to do with constant innovation and dedication. Recently there has been a movement in the direction of storage-based coins, and it should be interesting to see how markets deal with those.
Disclosure: Author has mined and sold BottleCaps within the last thirty days but is presently not holding any.
Images from Shutterstock.
