IMO the devs should comment on these close ties with this manipulation group. No serious investor will jump on a coin with an official P&D group. Won't be buying back in before this is cleared up. I thought vrc was supposed to be transparent but sharing bed with this group is a red card from me
There's nothing to say about Black Hand. They are people who bought VeriCoin. They have been very good citizens of the coin donating quite a bit to the VeriFund and helping us finish projects using bounty money. They have no control over coin code or direction. I think they legitimately realize the potential of VeriCoin and I don't think you're going to see any dumping from them coming in the near future.
VeriCoin is an open coin. Who are we to say who can and cannot own it? If Black Hand wants to be a holder of VeriCoin because they believe in it and they want to help fund the PR Agency and other tasks, that is fine by me and the other devs. We are not characters of judgement. Anybody group could come in and buy VeriCoin and we could either know or not. At least with Black Hand-- they are open about holding it.
As for VeriBit, there is a large buffer of BTC we have donated by a large investor (not in Black Hand) to block any market disrupting uses of it. For now we will limit maximum sends of 1 BTC until we can ensure we will not manipulate the price greatly. We are leveraging the optimal buying algorithm to recover the BTC after a VeriBit transaction and it's been seamless so far. There are no "fees" per se, but the conversion rate is constructed using price levels and often leaves us with ~1% extra BTC after. That BTC goes to boost the buffer to reduce potential damage from sends in the future. Nobody is getting rich of VeriBit. It's designed to help the community, not make much profit.
I am very excited about its release. If you are skeptical about it, just don't use it. The core of VeriCoin is the open code and blockchain. The "apps" we have made for it just add utility. And while centralized right now, we are decentralizing VeriSend after we finish testing and anybody can open their own ringnodes. VeriBit, due to the mechanism in which it works, will always remain controlled by us (though anyone could make a similar service) as well as VeriSMS (someone could also make a version of that). Both are relatively expensive to maintain and we are funding them with VeriFund donations.
Don't forget: Today marks a new era in Crypto. Gone are the days where a user must make an exchange account to spend his or her altcoins. With direct VRC to BTC spending, it's time for the most utilitarian coin, VeriCoin, to shine.
