Below, in this issue, is a copy of the latest offering from Bitclub Network on Alt Coin Mining Shares from their news feed. You need to decide whether this is something that appeals and, before you decide, I think some detail about what it is exactly being offered might be handy. You'll see that they're offering a range of Alt Coins to mine in addition to simply Ethereum and ZEC. And, it seems to me, that if you better understand the differences between these coins you can better decide which of them, if any, you wish to acquire and mine.

First off, let us deal with that basic but critical difference between mining Bitcoin (which requires massively powerful ASIC type mining chips and mega power consumption) and mining the others. Bitcoin mining is out of reach of all but big pools and the very wealthy now so Mr and Mrs Average cannot do this mining on their own. As a Bitclub member you have nothing to worry about there because you are, at least, involved in mining what is still the absolute market leading crypto.

With the mining of Alt Coins, such as Ethereum and co, the mining can be carried out using basic computer chips. A home and office based computer has a CPU that runs all the functions in the computer and to keep this simple, there is a bigger version of a CPU called a GPU which you can run independently and set it up for this one function, namely, mining Alt Coins. That is what Bitclub are doing here. They are building a farm of GPU's in (I believe) Iceland to mine Alt Coins. 

Now you can literally switch the program in the GPU to mine whatever coin you see fit providing its core program allows it and so, hence, they can offer a list of alternate coins to go after.

The full list now is Ethereum, Ethereum Classic, ZEC, Monero and Dash and I assume they will offer more if other coins emerge worthy of note. Now you might wonder why they are not sticking with just Bitcoin? The answer there is, to me, obvious. There are signs in the market now that enough people are beginning to take note of the new coins to make them a viable long-term money spinner.

The list offered, with the exception (in my opinion) of Ethereum Classic are logical choices. The reason I exclude Ethereum Classic is that you might as well just mine Ethereum as the market has demonstrated that it prefers the original Ethereum coin to the pretender. Also, with Classic at around $2 to buy directly at the exchanges, if you had a passion for it your $1,000 could buy you nearly 500 of them anyway, so why would you spend $1,000 on a mining share?

This, of course, is the counter-argument to any mining share - i.e. why not just spend your money on the coins?

Well, Ethereum has gone from around $10/$11 to $50 over the last few weeks. Dash has increased in value more than any other coins and now stands at a staggering $90 plus. I say staggering because this one, was also at around $10/$12 not so long ago. 

Monero has increased to almost $20 from single figure dollar values. ZEC is up at $70 having floored at around $27 after their launch honeymoon period. 

In all cases, you might logically consider that spending your money on mining them rather than the coins themselves has more weight to it. The GPU mining shares buy you, potentially, years of mining alt coins. You could (In a practical and real sense) take delivery of the GPU power yourself and carry on independently if you wished. 

Each of these coins has a certain uniqueness about them that captures the imagination and that is why they are all springing to life suddenly. The market at large see these coins as the best alternative to Bitcoin. 

The sudden interest or increase in interest in the "others" comes about because the Bitcoin, block size debate has moved from an irritating disagreement in the community to a potentially disruptive problem. There is talk of a split in Bitcoin and two separate block chains emerging. If that happens, the effect on Bitcoin initially could be to initially devalue it markedly at the time of the split. 

In the end, after settling, one of the two alternate chains will emerge as the stronger of course. Whichever one will, I believe, quickly re-establish as the pure Bitcoin again and the other will fade or even fade away. 

It is my belief that, were this to happen, Bitcoin Core would stamp all over Bitcoin Unlimited (the new pretender) and eventually get back to normal. All that is, of course, purely my opinion. 

Good news for us is that Bitclub have confirmed that they will continue to mine whichever emerges as the new, best supported, Bitcoin.

And this is critically important; All of this can and probably will be avoided when the crunch comes because too many worldwide organisations, in the end, have too much of a vested interest. And, after all, this is simply all about block size and speed and the blockchain has only just reached this point where the impact of slower confirmations is being felt and only then being felt in a small way. 

There are proposals for reasonable ways to resolve this issue but the new wave "Bitcoin Unlimited" wants to go its own way. 

With Ethereum the big attraction is and was from the start all about their blockchain and the way it sits nicely and easily with the "Internet of All Things" development (IoT). The Ethereum blockchain was designed to do everything, pretty much, that Bitcoins' blockchain does and some new stuff that it would struggle with. 

It is a blockchain designed first and foremost for contracts and agreements, making it particularly interesting to the legal profession and big company agreements and contracts. The implications for time-stamped, incorruptible agreements that can be publicly viewed opens much up for big business especially in areas such as Real Estate.

Monero was the forerunner in the big crypto currency anonymity debate. And ZCash has taken that on a little further (although there are flaws with both variations and, probably more so with the Zcash one). To explain Monero and Zcash (ZEC) in terms of what the attraction is we need to look closely at Bitcoin.

One identified fault with Bitcoin is that once you know my Bitcoin wallet address, you can look it up and see how much Bitcoin I have in there. Of course, that argument has always been blown out of proportion when related to companies. You could look at a company's Bitcoin Wallet and see what they are making (in theory) or even, if you wanted to trace the various payment strands back, who they are doing business with.

I say in theory because if we think about this, the company you are curious about could have (almost certainly would have in fact) several Bitcoin wallet addresses and are they likely to tell you what they all are? 

 The world consensus (in crypto circles) is that Bitcoin is not as anonymous as it could be and Monero and Z-cash offers greater anonymous exchange of value without any debate about the integrity of source. That, at least is the theory. 

But here's another piece of startling information for you. All of these cryptocurrencies are new and largely still untested. What people always fail to tell you about Bitcoin (and the primary reason why I think it will continue to kick all the others into touch with long term value arguments) is that the Bitcoin Blockchain has been stress tested to death for more than twice as long as any new version coin chain.

But they do say that spreading your eggs into different baskets makes sense so, if you can afford it, then maybe getting some shares in alt coin mining is a good idea. Because one thing that is absolutely clear to me if you look around the world of finance now is that is that digital currency usage in its many new forms is going to grow exponentially and you would do well to have a few different currencies to hand.

I haven't mentioned DASH because that one is very unusual compared to the others and is worth isolating some. First off, Bitcoin aside, DASH is one of (if not the) oldest crypto currencies. It used to be called Darkcoin originally and built a little reputation for being the favoured choice of the anonymity brigade. 

The press tended to hark on about Bitcoin and the underworld but the truth is Darkcoin was far more popular because, compared to other emerging Bitcoin alternatives, Darkcoin had some real value at its old $2 to $3 value range. Back then no other coins had any value at all.

Now as Dash it has a better reputation and, of course, is currently worth $90 dollars a coin. It has a very enthusiastic community behind it and is probably, right now, the second most accepted and used coin worldwide after Bitcoin. So, should you mine Dash? Hell, I don't know. The argument for would be that it has had a bit of a head start over the other new order coins. The argument against would be that at $90 plus maybe you wouldn't grow too many too quickly. 

I still like Ethereum and I am very tempted to add more mining shares to mining that. But I am also starting to lean a little towards Monero. 

I would suggest to anyone that is thinking about buying more GPU mining shares (and I do believe they are a good idea in general) that they should do some independent research. One of these days I will complete a book I am working on that seeks to compare and list the pros and cons of each crypto currency but, until I do, get out there on the web and study them some!