<p>Is having a known public identity not helpful in building reputation for a project? Are the privacy and security concessions associated with revealing your identity not worth the perceived benefit?</p>

CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-05-28T15:49:19.683Z
Which coins? The major ones have clear creators Litecoin = Charlie Lee, Ethereum = Vitalik Buterin, etc.
Jimmy Song
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-05-28T19:03:37.553Z
Good point. There are hundreds (or thousands?) of alt coins. Your comment correctly points most of the largest (by market cap) do have some known developers. However the majority (of much smaller projects) of developers still remain anonymous. It will be interesting to see if this changes.
tryinghard
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-05-28T19:29:23.470Z
I honestly don't know of any coins that have an anonymous creator other than bitcoin. You can at least look up the bitcointalk username from the altcoin forum of most altcoins.
Jimmy Song
CC BY-SA 3.0
2016-06-03T16:10:13.853Z
Well, it depends what you mean by "anonymous". Satoshi has an account on bitcointalk too :) To the original question, there are two main reasons: one is because a lot of those coins are scams, and many of them started by the same few people. Second, is that people who like privacy are attracted by cryptocurrencies, and their choice to remain anonymous follows readily. How to tell between the two is left as an exercise for the reader :)
user36303
<development><privacy>
Why do most alt coin developers choose to remain anonymous?
tryinghard
# Why do most alt coin developers choose to remain anonymous?

(Asked by: username_0 on 2016-05-28)

Is having a known public identity not helpful in building reputation for a project? Are the privacy and security concessions associated with revealing your identity not worth the perceived benefit?

**Tags:** development, privacy

> **Comments:**
> **username_1**: Which coins? The major ones have clear creators Litecoin = Charlie Lee, Ethereum = Vitalik Buterin, etc.  
> **username_0**: Good point. There are hundreds (or thousands?) of alt coins. Your comment correctly points most of the largest (by market cap) do have some known developers. However the majority (of much smaller projects) of developers still remain anonymous. It will be interesting to see if this changes.  
> **username_1**: I honestly don't know of any coins that have an anonymous creator other than bitcoin. You can at least look up the bitcointalk username from the altcoin forum of most altcoins.  
> **username_2**: Well, it depends what you mean by "anonymous". Satoshi has an account on bitcointalk too :) To the original question, there are two main reasons: one is because a lot of those coins are scams, and many of them started by the same few people. Second, is that people who like privacy are attracted by cryptocurrencies, and their choice to remain anonymous follows readily. How to tell between the two is left as an exercise for the reader :)  

---

## 0 answers

