First of all thanks to all of you for taking the time to ask all these questions. I know you all have invested money and time in Hirocoin, as well as the cost of opportunity ( you've chosen to follow this coin instead of others ! ) and we really appreciate that. As well as your continued support. You're an awesome community.
I didn't answer all questions because I think my answers cover all of the important ones. Please ask again if you feel I missed something.
Ok, please be a bit more clear then. What are your two questions ?
Apologies, I tend to ramble on a bit...
1) Apart from a possible security improvement you mentioned, what else are the team doing to improve the coin?
Eg. Why is it not on Cryptsy? I'm not seeing very much public activity at all. Someone actually posted "so is this coin dead?" today!
2) Why should we have faith that this recent downturn won't continue, like it has for 95% of all other altcoins? I'm aware of the strategy (to wait for ASICs to come) but... well I'm just not sure if that's a genuine plan. Any other coin could come along with X11 in the meantime, add something which differentiates it, add a good marketing strategy, and wham! No more Hiro.
In general I'm just saying that more needs to be done for me, personally, to keep believing in this coin. I'm sure its the same for many.
1 Our main objective right now is threefold.
- To spread the word that Hirocoin is the new home for GPU miners. Since all of you are probably sick of me saying that by now, I think marketing that has been pretty effective.
- To make Hirocoin the most secure coin possible. The recent addition of NGW is a prime example of this. NGW is cutting edge, it makes does a great job in lessening a major vulnerability in KGW. Nite's fix limits the most extreme changes in diffulty by a time warp attack possible. Here's how : What an attacker can do is generate a series of blocks with future time stamps with very little spacing between them. By doing so, the attacker can pump up difficulty by a massive ammount. This fix sets a minimum for the space between these spammed blocks of 1 second where in the past it could have been 0. Further measures are debated as we speak
- To build a solid foundation to grow from. We have hired an external coder to develop an Android wallet, and both Hiro and N00bnoxious are working on strengthening Hirocoin infrastructure. We have a policy of not revealing what we are working on until it's clear that it will be of high quality and comforms to our standards of safety. We have an outstanding bounty for an Nvidia miner as well, and will start other projects soon after these are completed.
When we are ready we're going to launch a serious campaign to go for merchant adoption and encourage useage for the general public.
1.1 We're fine with the exchanges we have now. Our top two exchanges, Poloniex and Mintpal, are wel run and have good volume. Since I don't want to say anything bad about Cryptsy, I'll leave it at that.
1.2 Your not seeing much activity, but it sure is active in the team. We were working on doing a lot of testing on NGW, and I'm recruiting new team members, talking to coders, etc. Like I said, we don't believe in making big promises or pumping. This coin will gain popularity because of it's own merits, not empty promises. We'll post news when we have it
No websites with timers on the front page or,
god forbid, price forecasts.
1.3 Someone posted "Is this coin dead" ! Maybe you should take a quick look in the speculation forum in the main bitcoin board. People panic. Most of us are addicted to incredible % gains on a daily basis, but this is simply not sustainable in a downtrending market.
2 "Why should we have faith that this recent downturn won't continue, like it has for 95% of all other altcoins?" I'm not telling you you should have faith. We can not and will not make predictions like this. All we can do without lying to you is promise to work on our objectives every spare moment of free time we have. And I promise you this. Ask my wife. PM me for her email adres
2.1 Yes, other X11 coins will come. No offence to any X11 devs who read this, but I expect the majority of them to be rubbish. Why ? Well, just look at 90% of Scrypt coins being launched. They are either amateur copy/paste coins with a meme or gimmick slapped on, or they are blatant scams that burn brightly and fade away in a matter of days. We are part of a select group of dev teams in the altcoin scene that really want to build something awesome, something lasting. The community at large will see we are serious when we keep working our buts of even in times where our coin loses market cap. We're not going to disappear and launch a new coin.
These objectives have to be completed when all Scrypt GPU miners are banished and come looking for a new home.
2.2 Something more needs to be done for you to keep believing in this coin ? Then I have to ask you, what is this belief based on ? The wishful thinking that your investment would multiply 100x overnight ? Or is it something more realistic, like slow but steady growth, possibly to become one of the top coins ? Tell me what this something is, that you need. Better yet, come to our forum at
Hirocoin.org and brainstorm about it. We'd love to have you there.
ibfragalot, my man, I hope I answered all your questions there. I'm not being super formal here, I hope you don't mind the tone. I think being respectful often means : not talking down to someone and being direct !
Ok. Next up :
Equalizer. No matter what your intention, you raise points that other may only be thinking and not saying out loud, so I want to sincerely thank you.
I'll quote the questions and remarks I believe I didn't answer to yet in my reply to ibfragalot.
In another thread, I got a response from a Hiro Team Member that I was being too dramatic. Hirocoin needs some drama now.
I'll give you the benefit of the doubt and not assume you mean pumping this coin. What kind of drama would you like to see ? What kind of awesome promotion do you have in mind ? Give me a nice proposal and if I like it I'd love to help you organize it.
.... not enough activity and fight from the Hiro Team as prices plummet and doubters' voices get louder (surprisingly disappointing after such a strong start).
I think you are a bit confused about cause and effect in this case, with all due respect. Price is going down. True. Please take a look at the average first few weeks of 99% of altcoins, especially ones that have been launched in the last 4-5 weeks. Do you notice a similarity ? With very few notable examples, this is a what
always happens there's an initial price spike because a coin is new and exciting. When the ADHD attention span of the herd of miners and investors kick in, they hungrily look for the next coin, and stop mining and sell of the "old" one. And that short cycle repeats.
This dumping is almost impossible avoid. It can be done reversed in two ways :
- A massive pump engineered by bagholders
- Showing that the coin has actual value in some way
We are working very hard to accomplish the latter.
Hiro came out strong with X11, but after the first big boost from premiering on Mintpal, it quietly folded up like a sad soufflé in a cupboard.
Hahaha, nice metaphore
The thing is, there's only so much we can do. The community has to pick this up. Guess what, dear Equalizer, that means YOU. The fact all of you are in this thread probably means that you wish us the best and want to see Hirocoin succeed.
If this applies to you, please use your talent with words in a positive way ; write FOR Hirocoin, instead of letting Fear, Uncertainty and Doubt rule you.
If that is far from the truth, the Hiro Team needs to do a better job at proving the doubters wrong.
It doesn’t matter how many people don’t get it. What matters is how many people do. If Hiro is truly about being transparent to its community, I'd like to see a clear response to the accusation that a small group of miners/developers may have their hands on some optimized code for mining Hiro/x11 coins faster/easier than the rest of us (and a future patch to be handed out to the community once this accusation proves too difficult to slip under the rug). While this may sound like a goofy conspiracy theory, these cheap dumps are forcing us to take pause and ask - could this be true?
I believe this is a textbook example of FUD, spread by people who have considerable investment in coins that are threatened by X11. I have not seen ANY proof of this. Also, I've heard from highly skilled coders that optimizing the X11 miner would take weeks of work and you'd need to pay huge ammounts of BTC to the few coders who could actually pull this off. Until we see proof, it's pure speculation. Impossible to disprove, and unfair to the Hirocoin team responsible for.
The price today is the result of the marketing inactivity and lack of engagement.
Inactivity ? Lack of engagement ? Hirocoin has been launched for a little over two weeks, has a twitter account with 755 followers and an avarage of more then 4 tweets a day. We have a forum, a newsletter, a reddit and facebook page, and we've been active in this thread almost every day. I'm available by PM and Skype to whoever wants to talk to me.
How many coins are run by small teams who do that ?
Ha, I see that while I was typing many other replies have been posted. And I see Equalizer has offered his help. I can go to bed with a smile