Shitcoin Digest: HempCoin (THC)
HempCoin (THC)
According to the HempCoin website, “At HempCoin, our end goal is not just to become a payment option during the purchase of cannabis but a primary payment method. In 2018 we aim to offer three payment methods: HempPAY™ Mobile, HempPAY™ Card and HempPAY™Online. HempCoin will to work together with dispensaries to create incentives for cannabis buyers to choose cryptocurrency as a form of payment over fiat. With our HempPAY™ Mobile and HempPAY™ Card options. HempCoin is also working with e-commerce solutions such as WooCommerce, Magento, OpenCart, PrestaShop and OSCommerce to provide customers with the option to pay in THC.” Since US regulations won’t allow state legal dispensaries to put money in banks from the sale of legal marijuana, I see this as a good solution. Unlike other marijuana based industry coins, this one is rather professional and I appreciate that a lot. They had the normal from since January, so I feel that only means that this is a buy point. If they interface to purchase is easy to use, I will call them a strong buy and hold as a future investment. So I am calling this a long-term yes.
Picture a young Michael Beebe, fresh out of La Porte High School in ’93, diving headfirst into the world of hospitality with a busboy gig at the old La Porte Holiday Inn. That hustle led him to an Associate of Science from Purdue-North Central in ’95 and a Bachelor’s in Hospitality Management from Purdue-Calumet in ’97 (those schools are now merged into Purdue-Northwest, by the way). Michael’s early career was a whirlwind—running a 140-room hotel in Indianapolis, where he learned the ins and outs of the industry but realized it wasn’t his true calling. What did spark his passion? Teaching. He found himself thriving in front of students at Ivy Tech Community College and Lake Michigan College, sharing the art and science of hospitality management. Oh, and he also moonlighted at WIMS radio in Michigan City, juggling both on-air and behind-the-scenes roles with his signature high energy.
Politics? That’s been Michael’s sidekick since he was 18, registering to vote with a fire in his belly to make a difference. He threw his hat in the ring for La Porte County Council in 2010, where he got a crash course in the power of social media marketing. Undeterred by not winning, he campaigned for Indiana’s General Assembly in 2012 and took another shot at the County Council in 2014 and 2016. Though he hasn’t clinched a seat yet, Michael’s relentless drive to serve shines through. Lately, he’s been pouring that energy into helping other candidates who champion personal liberty, amplifying their voices with his knack for strategy.
Here’s a twist: Michael once co-owned a tattoo shop, despite having no ink himself. As the business manager and marketing guru, he leaned hard into low-cost, social media-driven campaigns to put the shop on the map. That experience fueled his love for digital marketing, and now he spends his free time crafting websites and boosting businesses online—a true labor of love.
These days, Michael’s living the dream as an independent contracted transporter, crisscrossing the country while getting paid to soak up new places and cultures. When he’s not exploring, he’s parked somewhere scenic, laptop open, building his digital consulting company, Spark Plug Strategies, or penning his thoughts. He even wrote a few books.
Based in La Porte County, Indiana, Michael’s embraced a “decentralized laptop lifestyle,” blending work, travel, and passion projects into a life that’s as dynamic as he is.
OXY uses a nice interface that runs mobile app to buy, sell, and trade. It looks pretty good and they offer some decent information on their website. I don’t see much information on the mining process for the cryptocurrency though, which is disappointing. But, they have a great system for techies to make apps that work with the coin, which is pretty cool. They are also only down one-third from their high at the time of this writing, so that is very encouraging. They are in my “yes” column.”
This coin, at the time of this writing, is about one-fourth or one-fifth where it stood just three months ago. Looking a bit harder, you notice the graph showing the decline is not as deep as almost every other coin I have looked at thus far. I think that speaks a lot for this cryptocurrency, plus it had a few spikes that popped it back up near to that January high, which is unique. For a token that has been around only six months at this point, they are impressive. They have a daily volume of around $10,000, which most cryptocurrencies could only dream of and the website has a lot of information on the currency. I didn’t investigate the odd name, but I can see where it may be catchy to some. I actually putting this in the “yes” column.
This coin touts that they are totally anonymous, secure, and fast and those three things mean a lot with cryptocurrencies. The website states, “Zero project was made by an unknown creator called zerocurrency early February 2017 as an experimental project to solve many inherent weaknesses of previous crypto-currencies. A truly evolved project with multiple features that accomplishes to cover the needs of the many like no other. Since its inception and before it takes off and hits the markets Zero became an orphan and the unknown creator has been mysteriously disappeared. Nobody knows what happened to him but the created Zero project somehow refused to perish and appeared to have a conscious of its own. Moved by this formidable power of will to live on, a small but vibrant community that knows no boundaries in race or gender composed by citizens of the world has decided to help Zero project grow, reach its true potential and become what was initially intended or more. WE are the ZERO community and we are now many. We grow relentlessly each day continuously supporting this project because we believe in it and what it can offer to the people. And Zero project believes in us.” This sounds like a Libertarian Party manifesto sub-topic and for cryptocurrencies, that is a good selling point. The mining of Zero seems designed to be equalized to not give big mining operations an advantage, so it is easier to mine with smaller devices only out of a design of fairness. This really is a coin of the people. The price was roughly eight times higher a few months ago during a spike that happened among many cryptocurrencies. This is in the “buy” column.
Save the bees!!! This is another not for profit cryptocurrency that uses their investment returns for a cause. Their cause is saving honeybees and since we need them to pollinate so our food grows, I can’t really be anti bee. I learned a lot form their website and from their method of not naming the names of the design team they include on the site “to protect their privacy,” I have trouble taking them seriously. From the outside looking in, I see a group of activists that care about their pet project more than their funding source, which at this point is the cryptocurrency I would consider investing in. I believe in activism but I have trouble justifying parting with my money to invest in something that looks to care about their activism more than their profitability. They were once two tenths of a penny and now they are three one-hundredths or so. I can’t even calculate that. Aside from a cool, flash website that talks about bees, I can’t see making an investment in this product. That’s unfortunate based on my last name because I really wanted to own some. I recommend not buying.
Quark has issued an interesting comparison to Bitcoin 
Technologically speaking, Mercury Protocol seems to be on point and they work with their investors pretty well, including an undisclosed bonus for early adopters of the coin (I dod not look to see what that bonus was, but usually it’s a coin bonus for people who buy in pre Initial Coin Offering (ICO). From my reading, they appear to be focusing on communications that use blockchain technology and it looks like they are funding that aspect of their business with the coin sales. They keep an active Twitter page, which means a lot. They are trading at about a penny a coin right now and have a high from January (three months ago) of twenty four cents a coin. My problem with them is a short history. They jumped a lot when they opened up and then fell to between one-twelfth and one-twenty-fourth it’s value. A high open then fast drop over a few days puts GMT in the maybe column. I cannot suggest a buy but I can’t say not to buy it either. It may be a surprising small cap investment and there is a possibility that it is undervalued.
The ease of mining this cryptocurrency is a big plus since they use a low cost Raspberry Pi as the interface, which the coin maker will gladly sell you with the software to mine their coins. That makes things easy. The website says a lot of nothing, as I have seen many of them do, but it does have some good looking technical data on their whitesheets. They do actually list business partners, which is a plus that most don’t or can’t do. Depending on the exchange that you can buy from, it may be a decent option for ease, but I notice Bittrex is the primary exchange they have listed. As of this writing, they were over a dollar at one point and just shy of thirty cents right now, which is about the standard quarter of what it was in January like the others. I am going to put them in the “maybe” column because of their lack of obvious social media outreach (which I may just have not found upfront). Social media use usually means a willingness to market themselves so I am cautious.
This cryptocurrency uses proceeds, according to its website, to help grow sustainable energy usage. They have the goal of creating a crowdfunding system for these sustainable energy startups and projects and I can’t say saving Mother Earth is a bad thing. Aside from that, they are designed for peer to peer (P2P) transactions and from what I read on their website, I see no true plans to expand beyond personal use. They, like many others, seem to be riding the standard tide of the other market waves with the same ups and downs and the same percentages. Because of their lack of current acceptance, planned acceptance, or potential widespread acceptance in businesses; I am adding this to the maybe column for now.
This cryptocurrency is one of the original cryptocurrencies (OC) and has a decent track record, though they do not independently have a wallet yet. They host an updated 
Through my initial investigation, this cryptocurrency really stands out. Look at their website and you can see that, including an investor relations page. Though a name reminiscent of “breaker, breaker 1-9” truck drivers, it has an impressive layout. They are a corporate-built cryptocurrency to prop up their primary business and this adds a certain amount of stability in my estimation. As I write this, it is trading for one-tenth of a penny per coin and today’s volume has been $87. With all that, gut instinct tells me it’s a small cap buy. I see undervaluation based on their external circumstances and I hope to see a market correction.
I like this cryptocurrency because it actively works to grow. Directly from their website, they state, “One of the primary users of Tagcoin is 
This cryptocurrency has had a steady decline faster than the market as a whole. In that, I believe, based on user-friendliness of the website for the cryptocurrency that it is unfounded and undervalued. They are, at the time of this writing, in a transitional phase it seems and I think this cryptocurrency stands to be watched harder. With that said, they are not on any of the exchanges I researched and there is a higher degree of difficulty in the purchase of ETHD. Though I tend to like this cryptocurrency as it sits, I am going to have to pass.
This one was added as a comparison piece. As I stated earlier, I was choosing them based on name and this one had a great name…for potheads. I may be wrong in the long-term, but I don’t see this cryptocurrency going anywhere. For a small cap cryptocurrency, they do have a surprisingly stable track record and seemingly average ups and downs with the industry as a whole. Also their website didn’t actually work. They are a no with some reservations because I think they could do a lot more if they really wanted to as a way to increase value.
Californium is a radioactive element that was first synthesized at the University of California in Berkley in 1950 and the Periodic Table’s name for it is Cf…so someone named a cryptocurrency after it. That’s kind of cool! They have a lack of social media, which means the social outreach is rather limited and I think limits the potential for adaptation of the cryptocurrency and they are only represented on one exchange, YoBit, which I read so much negative about that I didn’t even bother reviewing them. Aside from an awesome name that COULD be popular, I see nothing else to indicate a reason to buy this currency.
For some reason, I like this one. They do a great job of social media outreach, which is important in acceptance of any currency and they have a historical high of between 2 and 3 cents a coin, but are valued at the time of this writing, considerably lower. I think this is a great rebound buy for a mid term hold and if I am wrong, I will be out what, $10? This is going into my yes list for sure since I think they have a potentially strong network.
LiteCoinUltra uses the adoption of Proof Of Stake and Proof Of Work random superblocks. This adds to both the security and easy of mining of the currency. Every other aspect is identical to LiteCoin and it was, in fact, developed by fans of LiteCoin. It is also (according to their website) four times faster than BitCoin and reduces bottlenecks of transaction processing. In my opinion, this is a strong maybe.
As I do the research, I am reading some information calling TOR a scam coin that doesn’t really exist. One writer said it’s noting more than a Ponzi scam and upon further research, their website points back to an Apache Server Node site and there is no data from the creators of the cryptocurrency. I initially felt this would become a good darkweb currency since it’s name (“tor”) is the same as the main access browser to darkweb websites and based on potential marketing to that segment of society, it seemed like a potentially good investment regardless of the ethics of those involved in its usage. As of this writing, TOR has not had a twitter post in roughly one year and I am now eliminating them as contenders.
There! I said it! But what if I really don’t hate Texas? I’ve taken more than a few trips through Texas but always down Interstate 40 through Amarillo, but I haven’t seen the whole state really. Maybe there’s more to see than a desert and stockyard. Statewide Texas is a strange mix of churches and strip clubs; adult toy superstores and stores just named “guns.”
Finally I hit McAllen after sixteen days of driving through Texas (it may not have actually been that long) and I fell in love with “The Valley.” Edinburg and McAllen are awesome! I loved McAllen so much I requested another trip down there in a couple weeks for my birthday so I can cross into Mexico for my first time. It has most of the things I love about Los Angeles except the ocean and the cost of living is manageable. Like El Paso, it has a huge Mexican population and a vibrant downtown area because of it. My Uber driver dropped me off at the bus station and told me there was a Subway inside. I had three hours till my bus and I smelled good food. I walked into a little place and seated myself. I ordered some tacos and a Coke. The owner asked if I wanted a Mexican Coke or a regular Coke. Please! I would have just eaten at Subway if I wanted “regular Coke.” The place was called 
The bus from McAllen dropped me off in Dallas. I walked to the McDonald’s and ate. It was 1am and that’s all that was open. While there I asked the security guard if I should take an Uber to the airport or wait on the train (the real underlying question was if this area was a shithole at night that I should avoid walking around in). He suggested I Uber and I heeded his advice.
With my job, I have visited a lot of states. Coupled with family vacations, I’m so close to seeing the Lower 48. I had two to go and now there’s just one. I drove through North Dakota last week…and it sucked.