Vertcoin Cryptocurrency Review

Vertcoin is toted as “a decentralized currency owned by its users.” Launched in January of 2014, Vertcoin has been around for quite a while now, yet it is not one of the more popular cryptocurrencies you will find. Vertcoin has been gaining some steam recently and has continued rising, valued at around $8.00 USD at the time of this writing. Vertcoin’s code is written to keep ASIC’s away from mining the coin. The main goal is to allow the coin to be mined by a wide network of people and not condensed down to only those who can afford the expensive mining rigs. This is an issue that has come up again and again in Bitcoin, since the companies that manufacture the ASIC’s essentially have a hold on the coin itself.

The development team is all volunteer based and the entire project survives on 100% donations. A truly decentralized coin is the am of Vertcoin, and it seems as though they have achieved just that and more. This is also a special time for Vertcoin. The reward for mining a block is being halved within the next 24 hours (11 Dec 2017) and it is expected that the coin, like others before it will enjoy an increase in value and interest because of this event.

A Brief History of Vertcoin
Like most cryptocurrencies, Vertcoin started off promising, trading at just around $5.00 USD when it launched, but within 4 months, it had steadily decreased in value until it settled into a steady price range of approximately $0.01 to $0.10 USD. Other than a brief spike up to $0.38 USD in July of 2015, Vertcoin had remained a cheap, penny cryptocurrency. That all began to change in May of this year (2017), when Vertcoin climbed to a price of $0.20 USD and since then, it has not looked back. The big lift in price came in October, when Vertcoin, which had gradually increased its value to $1.60 USD, climbed all the way to $8.09 USD in a short period of just 11 days. At first, it looked like it was just another spike, as prices retracted and fell approximately 30%, but Vertcoin was not to be bullied by the bearish market and fought back and broke through the previous high and has, so far, remained up. At the tie of this writing, Vertcoin is valued at $8.15 USD (10 December 2017).

With the first halving of the block mining reward less than 24 hours away, it is an exciting time to be at Vertcoin. Not only has Vertcoin benefited from the recent uptick in Bitcoin price, but general interest in cryptocurrency is on an upswing, as well. The halving of Vertcoin may just make it so that it is in the right place at exactly the right time.

Vertcoin Features

Active Developers & Team
The Vertcoin dev team are always working on something. That is apparent just by visiting the dev pages and viewing their open source files. Along with many members of the Vertcoin community, the projects that are active are constantly updated by the developers and new ideas are tried, tested and implemented on a regular basis.

Decentralized Mining
Mining Vertcoin is done using only consumer level GPU’s. While mining with your PC is still out of the question, because it just isn’t profitable anymore, anyone who has a decent graphics card ca mine Vertcoin and make a small profit doing so. They even have it set-up so that those with dedicated mining machines are on one network, and part-time and new miners, with less expensive and less powerful machines on another network. They split it so that miners who can hit consistent rate over 100 MH/s are on one large network (Pool) and those that are under the 100 MH/s threshold are on another. This allows those with less power to still earn a share of the mining, which is more difficult to do when running with the bigger hash rate capable machines.

Segregated Witness
Vertcoin activated SegWit in May of this year (2017). Th community felt it was the best option for transaction malleability, allowing for larger transactions and further software development. B increasing the block size, it allows for the implementation of several second-layer software solutions that will allow the further development of apps and utilities. This gives Vertcoin a versatile build.

Lightning Network (Currently in Alpha)
The Lightning Network brings the possibility of scalable, instant blockchain transactions to the table. It will allow for a massive network capacity increase. It essentially creates a second-layer, where transactions can be processed instantly utilizing smart contracts. This means that literally, millions, or even billions of transactions can be processed instantly. This same technology is being developed by the Bitcoin Core team, as well.

Planned Features

Stealth Addresses
Stealth addresses were actually already enabled and running on the Vertcoin network, but were removed until improvements could be made. That is were they are at currently: making the needed improvements. The goal is to allow for completely anonymous transactions on a public ledger. Currently, without the Stealth addresses in use, the Vertcoin network is akin to the Bitcoin network when it comes to the anonymity of transactions. It is more of a pseudo-anonymity, since if investigated thoroughly enough, the trail of coins can ultimately be traced back to the sender.

1-Click Vertcoin Miner
Another project currently in development is the 1-click miner, which will allow users to put their computer to work when they are not using it. It aims to provide a simple on/off style button, that when clicked, will turn on the mining software and turn it off again. This comes in handy for those who want to mine while they are not using their machines. Simply lick the button as you are getting up from the computer and it starts to mine automatically, and when you sit back down to use your PC, simply click the off button and the mining software shuts down. A very convenient tool to help optimize computer usage and maximize income.

*Even though it is still in development, the one-click miner is already available to be downloaded and used.

Atomic Cross-Chain
(Lightning Network Development)
When completed, this will allow for the ability to transact with other blockchains in a decentralized way that is also direct. Trading Vertcoin for Bitcoin or Litecoin without the nee for an exchange will be possible, totally unleashing the full power of cryptocurrencies and blockchain technology.

Buying & Selling Vertcoin
Vertcoin is currently listed with the following exchanges, markets and platforms:

English Markets: Poloniex / Bittrex / BleuTrade / Yobit / Coinigi / Bittylicious / SouthXchange
Chinese Markets: 19800
EURO Markets: LiteBit / Shapeshift
Person to Person Trading: Local Vertcoins

Merchants That Accept Vertcoin
Video Games
Eternal Summer Sale
Gamerz Heat
XBL4BTC

Food
Crypto de Change(UK)

Goods/Merchandise
Gifftoff
Geekboxit

Wallet Software
Wallet software is available for Windows, MAC OS X and Linux. The source code is available on GitHub and you may also utilize Electrum’s wallet service with Vertcoin, as well. Just as with any cryptocurrency, the Vertcoin wallet requires you to download the entire blockchain to your computer and update to stay in-sync with it. However, Vertcoin’s blockchain is under 2GB in total size, so this shouldn’t take all that long. (Compared to Bitcoin, which takes an average of 3 days!)

 You can also get a paper wallet for Vertcoin at Vertcoinaddress.org.

Vertcoin Support
The core development team is led by James Lovejoy, and are dedicated to keeping Vertcoin decentralized and accessible to all. They offer stellar support to any users, or even, would-be Vertcoin users. They even have named those who hold Vertcoins, Vertans. It doesn’t matter if you are a seasoned cryptocurrency fanatic or brand new to this wonderful world of digital currency and assets, Vertcoin support will take the time to help you in any way that they can. This says a lot about Vertcoin, since nobody is paid for anything. It is all, 100% volunteer based. That just shows you how dedicated these folks are to their beloved coin.

Vertcoin Community
Believe it or not, this small cryptocurrency has a pretty large following. Vertcoin has there own Subreddit, Twitter and Facebook page, as well as a Discord Channel. They have over 7,000 followers on Facebook, 56.2 Thousand followers on twitter, 24,760 Vertans on reddit and the Discord channel has 1393 active members. They have also just recently (within the last few days) launched their own Instagram channel, as well.

Vertcoin In Action 

Mining Vertcoin
Utilizing the one-click miner is a very easy to follow process that does not require any real technical know-how. Simply download the miner from the Vertcoin GitHub page and it will install, just like any other program. Once it is downloaded, you can use a very user-friendly guide that will walk you through all the steps of getting your miner running. The miner allows you to choose between AMD, Nvidia and CPU for your mining hash rate provider options. Simply choose which type your computer has available, then you click a button that will generate a list of all the available mining pools. A few more clicks and you will be off and running.

Each mining pool that is listed, tells you the total amount of time the pool has been active, the fee required by the pool, the latency and the location of the node which is hosting the pool. You can even set up to run your own node, and host a mining pool and charge a fee to miners to mine on your pool. In order to host a mining pool, you must first install the Vertcoin Core Wallet.

This is what was found:
Mining with a PC was actually profitable. Running an Intel I5-3790, the hash rate averaged right around 30 MH/s. The profit, minus the .25% pool fee and cost of electricity at $0.10 USD / KW/h and Bitcoin priced at $16,040 USD, was as follows:

Profit per hour:    $0.05
Profit per day:      $1.26
Profit per week:   $8.82
Profit per month:  $37.81
Profit per year:     $460.00

If you are using a GPU that can hash just 150 MH/s, your profits look like this: (Considering the same variables as above for Bitcoin value, Electricity cost and pool fees.)

Profit per hour:      $0.28
Profit per day:       $6.78
Profit per week:    $47.44
Profit per month:  $203.30
Profit per year:     $2,473.47

Considering that most $100 GPU’s can put out more than double the hash rate for the above calculations, Vertcoin is a very profitable mining option still.

When using the one-click miner, utilizing your CPU instead of a GPU, it can take over n hour, or more even, before you even see your hash rate. There are downsides to CPU mining still and more options that are probably going to be more profitable, but it is not out of the question with Vertcoin. If you have a GPU, then this is a very viable and profitable option for you to earn some money while you aren’t using our computer.

Vertcoin Review Summary
Vertcoin is a great cryptocurrency to hold, trade and mine. The fact that it has gone this long without becoming more of a well-known coin is actually quite amazing. This coin will not stay in the shadows for long, however, now that prices are approaching the $10.00 USD mark. This is a great chance to get involved with a great cryptocurrency, great community and great all-around experience within he cryptocurrency world.

Altcoins come and go, this is no secret. While we never know what tomorrow might bring for Vertcoin, it sure does have all the correct ingredients that a recipe for success calls for. It also appears that the ingredients have been mixed properly, and in the correct proportions. There is nothing bad to say about Vertcoin, except that it would have been nice to discover it sooner.