Older than #Ethereum, my all time Favorite of all cryptocurrencies of remains Stellar Lumens (XLM).

Years ago on #DALnet, someone gave me a bunch of #Bitcoin to play with. It was sort of a novel thing, even though we already had E-Gold and a couple of other predecessors that weren't actually blockchain as we know it. Bitcoin was attached to a fable (Satoshi Nakamoto), but it really wasn't a big deal and there wasn't the notoriety of that pseudonymic character so much back then - probably because Bitcoin lacked "Capability", but certainly, was designed for "Utility".

That utility continued for a couple of years, although the capability wasn't what you would really call accessible. Sending/Receiving was with CLI tools and the highlight that I recall was a tour (in the back of a pickup truck) that went around from places like city festivals, fairs, etc., where the world's first Bitcoin ATM made the rounds and you could test it out to make a couple of transactions. It was a kiosk fashioned out of wood, and had a regular old CRT. Pretty kewl, actually.

The last time I actually used Bitcoin, during the next several years, was right around Halloween, when it was valued at 17 cents each. I lost interest in Bitcoin because although capability increased over the years, utility waned considerably, IMO - imagine buying a snickers bar for a buck-fifty, and the mining fees for that transaction costing you $20, with several hours to settle the transaction. That's what I call a lack of Utility, yet there's no question that capability has expanded considerably over the last decade.

#Lightning seems to be where a lot of folks are focusing their efforts nowadays, and indeed, a lot has changed. With the Lightning Network, there is indeed a lot of utility, but that's not "On-Chain", layers and sidechains have been looked to as solutions for several cryptocurrencies in recent years. It's gaining usage, raising awareness, and making things simple for average schmoes like you and me - if you select a custodial_wallet like Wallet of Satoshi, Blink, or the web based Strike.Me service.

Non-custodial Lightning wallets are a bit more involved, since many of them merely interface with external Lightning Nodes that you often run yourself remotely, but there are full-node and pruned-node wallets too; mostly for desktops (Like Zap, by the creator of Strike), although there's a couple of Android solutions that include a full node implementation at this time.

Since non-custodial, sometimes referred to as self-custodial, was the only method originally, long before the days of big centralized exchanges (CEX's) with their 'regulated' fake fractional reserves and #KYC, it's still my preferred method of holding and using cryptocurrencies.

I won't go into how channels work over the Lightning network, but suffice it to say that you're not actually transacting on the blockchain (on-chain). You might want to think of it as writing all of your checks to pay your monthly bills and then mailing them all at once. Eventually, after a few days, they all come through the bank to be honored at which point they're cancelled and then you have a copy as your receipt - the real transactions however, actually occur between the bank and your gas / electric / water / cable companies directly.

This is pretty much what any custodial wallet is anyway, say, if you have a Binance or Coinbase account - it's not actually your wallet, just like you don't own the safe where they actually keep the money at the bank. You're merely engaging in transactions tracked by your bank, who eventually settles a bunch of transactions all at once, while they are actually holding all of the assets that they have 'earmarked' as yours the whole time, when in reality the money never left the bank - And the same in the CEX's which are analogous to the fiat banking system, you swap between one kind of crypto token and another at the exchange rate, but the underlying value is held by the exchange themselves and never leaves until you pay the fee to send it to another exchange (like a bank wire transfer) or your Non-Custodial wallet (where you are your own bank).

Doing the non-custodial thing with Bitcoin is expensive, but leaving it in the custody of an exchange where they just keep their own ledger of what coins your value is in costs them nothing.

Since I've never been an actual trader (I do Hodl some assets as they accumulate), Bitcoin is even less attractive - because IMO, it isn't very good money. People speculate on it like pork bellies or Florida citris crops, and like people trade on the stock market.

Instead, I'm a believer in using crypto as actual tender to be used in transactions for goods and services - candy bars, guitars, and other types of everyday goods and services, like invoicing for labor. Since I'm happy to have people pay me for goods and services, I'm likewise comfortable purchasing goods and services. I have little to no need for a #CEX; I'm not flipping between tokens for the exchange rate or trending values, or withdrawing it as fiat currency into a bank where it becomes cash dollars or Euros, etc.

Bitcoin (and several others) are slow (in practice, Bitcoin can support about 3 to 7 transactions per second, while in theory, it can support 10 per second), use a LOT of energy, charge mining fees or "Gas" (they're expensive, too expensive to use for purchasing candy bars and beer). I've seen it take hours to settle a transaction, and that's a long time to stand around in a liquor store waiting for the owner to tell you that you can eat your candy bar now because the transaction has settled.

I'll digress here for a moment - for many things I prefer privacy coins. Specifically, Shielded #ZEC (Zcash) and #XMR (Monero), They're not expensive to transact with, but they're not super fast either. Absolute privacy is however, well, it can be a very empowering and protective thing.

Back to #XLM (Stellar):

As some non-crypto skeptics are quick to point out, the value of a virtual currency - a cryptocurrency, is nothing but what someone is willing to pay Geppetto in crypto for Pinocchio. It is not backed by a guarantee with Gold, Silver, or Platinum. But neither are modern fiat currencies like the dollar (USD, AUD, CAD, Etc.) - they are only worth what the baker is willing to accept for a baguette of bread she bakes.

#Stellar has been pretty stable over the years. I think it got up to about 40 cents at one point but one XLM has typically ranged between 7 and 12 cents per XLM (right now it's about 11 cents per XLM.) the value agreed upon per unit of the cryptocurrency isn't really all that relevant though. We agree what our labor is worth in terms of how many XLM per hour of my time, or not. I don't have to work for you. We also agree on how many XLM I must pay you for a six-pack of beer. If we do agree, then I leave your store with beer.

So value is strictly a relative thing, subject to what we can call market pressure. But let's look at why Stellar #Lumens are so special to me now...

* Transactions occur directly on the blockchain itself - no funky layers or side-chains to mess with for regular transactions in everyday commerce.

Each transaction settles in about 5 (typically 3) seconds - that is super duper fast.
Each transaction costs exactly 0.00002 XLM (and the current price of one XLM is about 11 cents) - that's thousands upon thousands of transactions for less than a penny!
Stellar is not a "Proof of Work" model, but rather, it is based on a much quicker and less expensive (energy wise and otherwise) consensus model
Stellar is "alias enabled", for lack of a better term - and it has been for many years (older than Ethereum, remember?). For example, you can send/tip/donate to me at anytime by sending some XLM or fraction thereof to me at `tallship*keybase.io`. Try it out! if you wanna test it out DM me via my Matrix address in my bio first and we can send say, 0.0005 XLM, or even 10 XLM (about $1.10 right now) to each other. By the way, those two transactions will only cost us each exactly 0.00002 XLM each for a total round trip fee of 0.00004 XLM.
Stellar is perfect for those who are wise not to trust the fake, fractional reserve custodial system - since you don't need to be running huge daemons for bitcoind or lightning nodes with blockchain storage requirements in the neighborhood of 1 Terabytes on your Android or home desktop computer, it's just about the easiest to act as your own bank and use extremely lightweight desktop or mobile non-custodial wallets.
Stellar is the de facto international exchange standard where crypto is concerned (I'm going out on a limb here, but that's my story and I'm sticking with it!) - XLM is the official cryptocurrency adopted by MoneyGram! This means that when you walk into a Walmart and want to send $20 to your grandma in Bucharest via their MoneyGram service, that money crosses over the ocean within 5 seconds and arrives in Romania via Stellar Lumens (XLM). It is also officially used by some of the largest and oldest German banks. There's more, but I just don't bother keeping up.

So for example, if you right now walked into Walmart and sent Grandma twenty bucks, in less than five minutes from now she could be walking out of a MoneyGram licensed payment center with 94.55 Romanian Lei. Walmart and MoneyGram of course, each have their service fees which are passed on to the sender, but the point is that the whole transaction only costs MoneyGram 0.00002 XLM which is immediately converted into the Romanian Leu for Grandma. Plus Walmart has to pay an employee at their counter too to service you, but you get the idea.

Stellar also has an ecosystem including #NFTs and Gaming/Gambling/Etc., but I personally don't pay much attention to those things, and I'm not aware of anything coming close to what we have here at #HIVE with respect to #publishing and social networking, or Live Streaming / VoD with 3Speak and the other rich aspects of our own ecosystem here; but like MoneyGram, I use XLM as money. I buy stuffs, and I sell stuffs, and I prefer to be paid in XLM - because, after all, like you asked in your question, it "is my most favorite all time cryptocurrency"!

And that's why :)

I hope that helps! And lemme know if you have any questions, I'm always happy to help out.

tallship

.