Evaluating an alt-coin

With over 500 alt-coins in existence, it's important to be able to discern which are valid and which are scams. Let's look at a few important aspects to consider before buying into an alt-coin.

Developer activity

As an easy gauge to start with, the developer's activity is helpful when evaluating the legitimacy of a coin. By checking the public repositories of the source code, such as GitHub, one can see when the coin was made public, the contributions made to the code, and the activity level of the community.

As a reference, the GitHub repositories for the alt-coins discussed in this chapter are listed next:

• Litecoin: https://github.com/litecoin-project

• Namecoin: https://github.com/namecoin

• Peercoin: https://github.com/ppcoin

• Primecoin: https://github.com/primecoin

Looking through the commits, the developers involved, and the activity over time, one can assess the merits of an alt-coin.

If the source code is not publicly released, it could be a sign of a scam. All legit...