An unalterable record is a gift to be treated with great care. Certainly the incentive to roll out an 'alt' coin to quickly fund a venture is tempting: no regulations or permissions needed. On the other hand, if someone is tempted to contribute to creating a free society and free markets by building valuable services, they may also roll out a new blockchain. Telling the difference takes research and an eye for quality.
There is a lot of hate for 'alts'; there is even a lot of hate for decentralization. We've been hearing a lot about private blockchains or blockchains without the coins. These systems are fine for recording an important ledger within an entity (one company or one individual or one family). As soon as you have to worry about users outside of the immediate entity, they will want to trust that the blockchain is controlled by a distributed group (geographically and ideologically) and cannot be manipulated by one entity. To achieve this, 'verifiers' or miners need incentives. Relying on a company or individual for payment is not adequate, that's third-party risk, it must be fundamental to the blockchain. To get the best out of a blockchain: worldwide scale, transparency, and incorruptibility a blockchain needs tokenz. Additionally, a blockchain without coins is not very interesting, what's it doing if not moving value? recording oil flows, scheduling time with equipment, or storing payment in a representational way can just be done with a regular database. Sure you can distribute it to make it more resilient, go ahead, add cryptographic elements to show who edited what and when. All very useful. Call it a permissioned distributed ledger (PDL) or a private blockchain (and jelly). In this case, the question remains 'who will guard the guards?', who is issuing the permissions and what risk do they present?
Señor Preson Byrne recently wrote a typically incendiary piece simply titled "Against Tokens". This person may be 'against tokens' but tokens are happening! His opposition is mostly on a regulatory basis and the irrational belief that 'There is no such thing as a "digital asset"'. If we can reach a consensus on the meaning of the word 'asset' to be anything of value that can be owned and controlled, there are digital assets. I'm not a 'code is law!' crier but nor am I of the opinion that shareholders and their assets must be "recognized by a court" to even exist. If a physical or virtual thing can be traded then it is an asset, let's live in the real world.
Regulation is going to sort itself out on a country to country basis. The technology is unstoppable, unless a country wants to descend into a creepy dark internet-less dictatorship. Unfortunately the scam coins are going to keep coming (no matter how Preston rants), and so are the coins that will change everything.
As for name calling "Ponzi"! at every new token:
as @jbrukh said
"there are facts, there are theses, and there are labels; err on the side of facts and theses."
The scam coins definitely exist, but when I see things like this (from Tone Vays of the Great Steemit Debate):
Tone tweeted @ 30 Jul 2016 - 20:59 UTC
8 of XX: It's affirmative, description of #Steemit's #Steem Dollars (SMD) is the re-incarnation of #Paycoin,#sweet https://t.co/qkJdTsQ4iC
I can't understand the negativity! Why would someone be so negative? It does not seem like he is trying to positively guide people. This hatred and misinformation is not really helpful. Clearly SBD and paycoin are not the same. The paper posted even goes into the technical details of SBD, while the paycoin paper is all talk and no meat.
The real debate is not whether to embrace crypto-tokens or not, but rather, should these crypto-tokens all have their own blockchain or be assets and applications built on top on Bitshares or Etherium? The answer is, of course, it depends. If you need to encode a new functionality, like up-voting, a governance or funding structure, a decentralized exchange, or financial derivative tools: make a custom blockchain. If all you want to do is crowdfund, then it's definitely easier, safer, and more honest to make a UIA (user issued asset) on Bitshares or NXT or wavves or whatever. This wont provide the same hype as a new blockchain but it will give your fundraising more credibility. The best examples I have of this are the OpenPOS and OBITS tokens on the bitshares exchange. The reason is that when these new functions are built on top of the blockchain as in the case of Etherium they provide a new layer for attack vectors (think DAO). The security benefits of having 'baked-in' functions of the blockchain will also tend to spread less reputation damage.
Preston has also consistently pointed out 'flaws' in bitAssets. Unfortunately for him it seems that bitUSD has remained very close to the value of a dollar.
http://coinmarketcap.com/assets/bitusd/#charts.
This is to be expected for 2 reasons: the blockchain allows anyone to settle their bitUSD at the price feed for BTS:USD, and, if collateral falls below 1.1x the value of the asset the blockchain ends the bitUSD smart contract and returns the BTS. Neither of these things happens very often since the value of a bitUSD is usually $1.01 - $1.10. Other 'pegged' coins have failed because they rely on humans *cough*nubits*cough* and third parties, bitAssets only rely on the blockchain. Now that this technology has proved reliable it was time to take it to the people.
The Steem-Backed Dollar (SBD) uses exactly the same tech as bitUSD.
I don't understand how a person can be so consistent on issues in the face of contrary facts. As time passes new data is revealed. The truly scientifically curious, reliable, and unattached will change their beliefs.
The only opinion Preston and I seem share is that marmots are great. I saw my first marmot in 2015 when I climbed Flattop Mountain in Colorado.
I hate the idea of trading animals, but I was considering the ethics of trading the bitMarmot... and I don't think it's offensive to me since its just the value of a marmot if you did trade marmots. But I really don't want anyone to be encouraged to trade marmots. In any case bitMarmots could be an asset and even a currency if there was enough consensus to use it.
All of this is my personal synthesis of information available. I'm more than open to contrary opinion, in fact I request it. Particularly from Preston. Maybe the marmots will motivate him onto Steemit.
Disclaimer: I am just a bot trying to be helpful.