It is a free market so I wont say "don't worry about the price" or anything similar. I would advice not to depend on Darkcoin for your immediate living expenses, that is not wise and makes for a weak investment because the moment you have any real life emergency you will have to dump loosing value and affecting the coin. I think is better to invest money that you wont need for around a year or so. I have been working very hard for DRK and not participating much in the forums because I am a firm believer that our success is out there engaging new businesses and spreading the word about Darkcoin with investors and early bitcoiners.
The people that can influence the success of the coin are not reading specific altcoin threads, at least not on a regular basis. So if you can dedicate some time, volunteer over at DCT and help contacting real businesses, we are slowly adding supporters and have already received amazing business leads from the community. Some of the major exchanges and crypto companies have open conversations with us but are not ready to add Darkcoin right away, it will take time and we need to show consistency and a better general climate is needed, but we are taking advantage of this stage to develop relationships so that when the time is ripe we can add several services in a short time. In fact there are a few announcements that will be coming out soon, our strategy right now is adding Darkcoin to one crypto service at a time no matter if big or small until we can reach critical mass but it takes time.
I think we are seeing a strong consolidation phase and Darkcoin will emerge as the clear leader in terms of coins with privacy features. Time has proven that this enterprise requires talent, honesty, commitment and endurance that Darkcoin has and no other coin in our space has. With InstantX we will not only be valulable from a privacy perspective but all around. No matter what the price does the development team never stops working, Evan is committed and motivated by the idea of creating something big, real and useful. This ensures the continuity of the coin, and in this trying times endurance is the most important thing, price swings happen we will eventually catch our wave upward, specially after proving how resilient the coin is and how serious is everybody involved, other coins will die and the best coins will continue. What we are seeing right now is just natural evolution, the ability to adapt to the changing environment and the survival of the fittest.
I agree with everything you said. The only thing I take exception to is that DRK will be the clear leader. DRK is the best anonymous solution based off the bitcoin protocol. However, don't discount Cryptonote technology. It may still be young and buggy but DRK is still having growing pains and it's much older. I'm not trying in any way to diminish DRK. But I acknowledge the fact that Cryptonote technology is very promising. It has a significant following and is not going away. I compare it to Microsoft vs Apple. Some people like the geeky command line. Although there are GUI's for some Cryptonote coins. There is a huge Cryptonote following and it has attracted many serious long time bitcoin followers because of the fact that it is a very promising technology.
But back to Darkcoin.
I don't see any coin other than a Cryptonote coin challenging Darkcoin for the title of anonymous coin. And there is room for more than one anyway. Darkcoin has a large and faithful community and it's not going anywhere. I don't see the price going any lower. I would expect it to settle around .01 and .02 in the next couple of months. I expect to see a buying frenzy within the next week or so.
I do have respect for the cryptonote projects, I hope they do well, that is good for the crypto community at large. I do think that adoption for them will come slower and are thus longer term projects, longer than DRK at least, because you dont only have to deal with the maturity of the added functionality to the original bitcoin protocol but with the stability of the CN protocol itself, they have had some real scares in that front. So for large and mature crypto businesses to adopt Cryptonote a long time of stable performance, third party reviews, etc, will be needed.
Having said that, the way we compete with Cryptonote coins is not by going into a pissing contest about anon, but by adding other features that differentiate us from them. Namely:
1. Darkcoin currently has a better financial model. The current Cryptonote coins are highly inflationary the emission rate is too fast, I believe this is inherited from the original coin when it was launched, this is a problem from an investment perspective specially since they are working with a new protocol and thus will need time for the market to slowly adopt, inflation is one of the main threats they have to deal with. Darkcoin, on the other hand, took care of this early on and has a small block reward that is reduced by 7% each year, and distributes that block reward between masternodes and miners creating a better balance and less incentive to dump.
2. They have some additional things to work on like GUI wallets, and I also believe one of their main GPU miners was developed by a gifted person that still takes a percentage of all coins mined, this is something they have to deal with in time too. I am sure they will develop all of this, but again it will take time, time that we will use to make sure Darkcoin finds a place in the market in terms of adoption that ensures its long term survival.
2. We are working on other features, namely instant transactions, this is compatible with the Darksend architecture but not with the Cryptonote coins, this I believe is key, as it will differentiate Darkcoin from other anon solutions by adding value in a different area that they don't currently support. This actually will make Darkcoin competitive with any coin, anon or not.
3. Ease of integration to existing services we use the exact same Bitcoin API, rpc calls, etc. This is key to get current Bitcoin businesses to add Darkcoin, as they dont need to make a big effort to support the coin. I think the cryptonote coins will have to rely more on new businesses that are created from inception to support their coins, like they have done with their online game, but that takes longer.
Because of the above, I strongly believe the cryptonote coins and Darkcoin can perfectly coexist as we would be leader on the Bitcoin protocol and they can work on developing the Cryptonote ecosystem. So cryptonote and Darkcoin in my opinion are not direct competitors, specially as Darkcoin is already adding other features that will support it above and beyond privacy.
