cryptocurrencies we accept, why we accept them, etc.

At magnetosphere.net we accept payments from all major credit card providers, and paypal.

We also accept several different cryptocurrencies: Bitcoin, Skycoin, Privateness and Discreet.

Bitcoin is the ubiquitous occupant of the top of the cryptocurrency charts. When people hear 'cryptocurrency' they think bitcoin.

But a glance will tell you bitcoin is not efficient. It's actually among the least efficient because of it's 'Proof of work' consensus mechanism using sha256.

Bitcoin mining has it's own special dedicated hardware now; Over the years the mining of bitcoin has become ever more centralised - in large part, to china.

The main problem is that once bitcoin becomes so expensive, it's not practical to transact $20 worth of it. So it's not really useful as a currency to the common person. Fees can be a bit high.

One thing many people don't know about bitcoin is that the fees increase with every transaction you make from a particular wallet (or perhaps it's by the address). So if you move BTC to a new wallet it can lower the fees substantially.

So I am not a huge fan of bitcoin, but gladly accept it because of the time already invested in setting up and maintaining the software installations required to accept it. But there are other cryptocurrency projects that I can speak more favorably about.

First, a word of warning. Ive seen many different cryptocurrencies over the years. And I've seen some scams which call themselves 'cryptocurrencies' or 'tokens'. If you make something sound complicated enough, people might think something is there, when really the idea isn't going to work for one reason or another. Or it was never supposed to work, and just designed to fool people. Some of the top cryptocurrencies I believe are in this category, or arrive there as a consequence of not achieving their goals.

Is bitcoin even actively developed anymore? All it seems to do is fork. Etherium can't scale! I can start at the top and go down the list by market cap, and it all boils down to the same thing.

I don't recommend anyone hold cryptocurrency unless you can hold it safely. This is not something for amateurs, and you can lose your money quick if you aren't meticulously careful.

At the top of the list of crypto's I've known and loved is Skycoin. I've actually been involved with skycoin for several years since purchasing a skyminer. I maintain build scripts of the skycoin github software repositories in the archlinux AUR. I also host a debian package repository containing a subset of this software. I can say from packaging it that the code is very high quality; compared to the difficulty I've had maintaining builds for certain other things.

Additionally, I'm running my own blockchain built on the skycoin platform.

I wrote a payment modal, so I can generate payment requests for skycoin; as well as a custom payment gateway which uses it and integrates with snipcart. You can see it if you select skycoin at checkout in the webstore.

I have nothing but good things to say about skycoin. Though some may complain about its preformance in the market, it's obvious that markets are completely driven by emotion and ignore fundamentals entirely. If you look at the all time high a few years ago compared to the current rate (~$1), it's basically the deal of the century. Check out their telegram group.

Another cryptocurrency which I am involved with is Privateness (Telegram: @Privatenesstalk). Privateness is another coin built on the skycoin platform, and if you ask me it's the ultimate underdog of a coin. The founder, a friendly Canadian, had foresight on different challenges faced by skycoin's skywire network pertaining to DNS, and solutions using Emercoin. I can only follow so much, so forgive the haziness of the details. Emercoin is as well, worth a look but not something I've spent much time looking at.

Lastly, and most recently, there is a new cryptocurrency which has just completed the first phase of it's IDO called Discreet (Telegram: @discreetnetwork) and referred to as 'discreet crypto' or $DIS. Why is it worthwhile to mention a cryptocurrency which doesn't yet even have a testnet? Funny story on that, the lead developer of Discreet (Mr. Kittyface) was once a developer for skycoin, and I credit him with getting me interested in programming in the first place. I've seen what the guy is capable of, some really advanced AIs, a twitter clone on blockchain, he even made a tamagachi-like game with skycoin's hardware wallet called 'cryptokitties'. So while it may sound like strange reasoning, I am no less thoroughly convinced that good things will come from discreet.

So in conclusion, do your own research! I may add a discount for cryptocurrency payments at some point, if I can figure out how.

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