HTMLCoin, the X15 altcoin that is accepted by merchants alongside DOGE and MEC via Coinpayments.net, CoinToPay, and Casheer, is presently facing serious market troubles in terms of the Bitcoin markets. Massive sell walls are presently in place that are doing nothing for the progress of the currency as a whole. The coin is also a base unit of exchange at Bleutrade, joining Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, and the US Dollar.
While the proof-of-work, proof-of-stake hybrid coin enjoys a healthy activity in the Litecoin markets at Cryptsy, Bleutrade, and C-Cex, an unnamed HTMLCoiner (or very small group of them) has decided to thwart the coin in a serious way in the Bitcoin markets at Bleutrade and C-Cex, with more than 1 billion coins listed at just 1 Satoshi each on Bleutrade and more than 400 million at the same on C-Cex. This is an unhealthy sign for an otherwise respectable coin defined by a vibrant, diverse and pro-active community.
It’s a head-scratcher. Obviously, this is the work of a miner looking to make some money on their mining, but why value the coin so low? The market is going to have a lot of trouble taking the coin seriously if its biggest holders value each coin this little.
Nevermind the fact that the original website displays evidence of abject, juvenile ineptitude — H5 was able to gain a fairly wide adoption in spite of this. Nevermind that many of the lead community members seem to be part-time invested in it. These things do not a bad coin make. Simply put, the real trouble here is irresponsible trading!
Is it not clear that no one is going to spend 11BTC on a coin that the biggest holders value so little? There are only 40 billion coins total in circulation at the moment. If a full 40th of them are going to go for the absolute bottom dollar, how are serious investors supposed to take the HTMLCoin seriously?
The answer is simple: they cannot.
A possible motivation is to keep the market in Litecoin, Doge, and USD. This could be a positive move for the coin, but in the meantime anyone holding it faces an ugly outlook: no one considers your coin worth more than a single Satoshi, which is worth far less than a penny. Indeed, to purchase a $1USD item on Coinpayments.net would cost roughly 1 million H5 at the moment.
Another motivation might be of a BTC whale trader in fear of the grassroots nature of the coin. These moves, often seen in the up-and-coming alternative markets, represent a form of financial terrorism. Exchanges are supposed to be about values tied to profit motivation: I buy this stock because I believe it is worth this price, and I sell it when someone else believes it is worth more. (It’s all about belief.) Folks who can afford to take the loss and would prefer a forever-after Bitcoin hegemony sometimes show up, buy at whatever price, and immediately sell for a fraction of it. This artificially creates the impression that the coin has no value and keeps the masses in a state of scrambling over loose Satoshi. It’s sickening when you think about it.
There is also the possibility of benevolence. After all, those holding coins when the mining is through will benefit via the proof-of-stake algorithm which will then take hold.
Is that what’s going on here? It’s hard to tell. The buy order list is doomed to remain empty so long as the lowest possible price is also the dominant price. This would seem evident to any thinking person.
The Blockchain would require serious analysis to determine who is behind these very irresponsible sell orders. Holders of HTMLCoin can only hope that either some angel with a great deal of Bitcoins buys up these orders and refuses to lose on their investment or that the seller comes to their senses or that these exchanges go out of business. Otherwise, HTMLCoin will never gain actual acceptance in the Bitcoin markets.
What does this mean for the rest of us? Well, it’s either a good time to buy HTML5 in Bitcoin or it’s a great time to keep your HTML5 away from the Bitcoin market. Comment below!
Images from HTMLCoin, P. H. Madore and Shutterstock.
DISCLAIMER: the author is a low-level member of the HTMLCoin development team as well as the designer of the new website. This means that he has financial interests directly related to the contents of this article and this should be taken into account when considering it forthwith.