Vertcoin – why the hate?

I know this post will be downvoted to oblivion and will never reach the front page but I will advocate for Vertcoin anyways as it's very close to my heart.

According to Nerd wallet – "A cryptocurrency (or “crypto”) is a digital currency that can be used to buy goods and services, but uses an online ledger with strong cryptography to secure online transactions."

Vertcoin is just that a digital currency, it doesn't claim to be anything else other than that. It doesn't have Smart Contracts, no DeFi, you cannot stake it anywhere to earn rewards nor can you create NFT's or digital assets on it (Although it is possible). It is as close to Bitcoin as you can get with some alterations.

It was forked off of Bitcoin's codebase (Just like Litecoin) back in 2014 to give everyone with a decent graphics card a chance at earning coins for securing it's network. That's it, that was Vertcoin's promise to it's users, if an ASICS/FPGA's are detected on it's network it will fork to a new algorithm and has kept that promise till now. They have forked to a new algorithm 3 times (recently on Jan 30 2021 to Verthash) to keep it's network ASICS free. They also update their codebase regularly to keep it up to date with Bitcoin's code.

I know there has been 51% attack on it's network twice which is bad and can only be prevented if a lot of miners start mining Vertcoin. But so did other coins (Not trying to point fingers here just stating a fact). Even though the attacks were not profitable or successful at massive reorg, this is still a deterrent for a lot of folks and I get that.

It's value in USD and satoshis have tanked pretty significantly from it's ATH, but that has not prevented the developers from supporting it or improving it's protocol, keep in mind there was no pre-mine, ICO or airdrops from which developers can profit from, still they spend their free time on this project. Developers do not engage in price manipulation nor are they concerned about the price, when asked by a community member in Discord, their response was that they believe in Vertcoin's fundamentals and will keep working on it regardless the price. I bet you cannot find more passionate developers anywhere else.

Vertcoin is Atomic Swap and Submarine swap compatible with Bitcoin. There aren't a lot of cryptos that can proudly say that. In my opinion going forward it can play a key role in establishing Bitcoin's layer 2 ecosystem.

Lets talk about mining a little bit more. Vertcoin will always be a GPU mineable coin. That might not be a big deal for a lot of folks here but keep in mind there are only handful or cryptos out there you can mine with a consumer grade hardware. I just visited Dogecoin's Discord and there are a lot of new folks who recently entered crypto space because of Bitcoin's and Dogecoin's parabolic rise and are wondering how they can mine Dogecoin. Vertcoin was the first coin I mined and still do today, it's recently released One Click Miner makes it tremendously easy for folks to get started with mining and learn about Blockchain and how mining works. After the recent fork a lot of new folks have started mining Vertcoin with their GPU's and are learning more about crypto and the future of money. This is why I love Vertcoin and why it will always have a place in my heart.

With Ethereum moving to Proof of Stake(POS) soon and a lot of miners looking for a new coin to mine, I foresee Vertcoin's network growing exponentially.

Now, let's talk about environmental impact of Proof Of Work coins/algorithms. If you look only at the amount of energy POW coins use then yeah it's a lot but when you factor in the amount of energy used by current global financial systems then it's barely anything. We are trying to change the way we bank aren't we? I also know a single ASIC miner will use a lot more energy than a consumer grade hardware like CPU/GPU. Rewiring a global financial system requires a lot of energy and I think it's a fair trade.

One last thing, I know a lot of folks lost significant amount of their hard earned money during 2018's crypto crash but that's not a reason to hate a coin. It's a marathon and not a 200 meter dash. We don't have to pick a winner, we can all win together. Support the project with good fundamentals and stop throwing your money at scams. If we all work together we can all benefit from it and carve our own path forward.

Now that I have presented my argument I would like to hear your thoughts on it and any concerns/questions you might have.

Thank you for coming to my TED talk and may the moon gods be with you.

Mods, I couldn't find a suitable flair so I used Finance if you think it's not the right flair please feel free to change it.

Edit: 1. Few cleanups. 2. Vertcoin currently can be mined with a GPU with at least 2GB vRAM. Since the DAG size will be kept constant at 1.2 Gb, even the older cards can be profitable to mine. 3. You can mine and game at the same time with Verthash. (For games like Minecraft that doesn't need a lot of computing resources effect to the hashrate is minimal) 4. One click miner is truly one click, download, extract, add the exe file to AV/windows defender exclusion list then click on the executable file to run it. (If you are running it for the first time you will be asked to set a password to your built in Vertcoin wallet)