Topic: How to clone Bitcoin to create your own crypto currency / crypto shares system (Read 48073 times)

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THE TROY

I am new to this forum but I came here as a result of searching out how to create a clone of Bitcoin.  I have a concept that dates back to Machiavellian.  He essentially said that bad currency would replace good.  This has been a truism for hundreds of years now.  We live today with most world currencies being FIAT Currency.  The power of the currency is held in the confidence of the people.  When people lose faith in the currency rampant inflation ensues.  When currency is minted in whatever fashion inflation also ensues and when rampant minting occurs then rampant inflation ensues.  My proposal is to tie a Digital currency like Bitcoin to precious metals and create a Digital currency that has a precious metal standard tied to it.  A potential name for this currency would be the TROY where one COPPER TROY is directly tied to One Troy Ounce of Copper, one SILVER TROY is tied to the value of one troy ounce of Silver and one GOLD TROY is tied to one troy ounce of GOLD, and so on for all precious metals.  TROY OUNCE COINS are already available, minted and certified by several minting houses worldwide.  Tie these coins to the new currency and you have a stable currency that is no longer Fiat Currency.  And you also now have a currency that can be used Digitally and Physically and is safe from rampant inflation.  All FIAT CURRENCY, which is either, printed money, struck coin, or digital in any form can now be measured to the ONE WORLD CURRENCY that is not FIAT in nature.

An exchange would need to be set up initially to exchange DIGITAL TROY for actual BULLION.  In so doing the Exchange would also be the Mint and TROY would only be minted when an exchange of hard metal was deposited with the Exchange.  An exchange of Fiat Currency would only have already existing TROY exchanged for it thereby avoiding Fiat inflation from ever infiltrating the value of the TROY.  To avoid interest inflated greed from infiltrating the TROY a pre-set enforced low exchange price needs to be tied to transactions.  A Physical Troy Ounce of metal will trade for a Digital TROY at par.  Fiat Currency however will have an exchange rate tied to it at, say one percent over.  So the purchase of a SILVER TROY that is say valued at $20.00 USD per ounce would cost $20.20 USD.  This will help to replace good currency for bad and mark the end of Fiat Currency worldwide.  As a result the Exchange would eventually Mint the Metals taken in into Physical TROY coin.  With the certification of the Exchange/Mint struck into the coin.  As such there would be no need for the security of places like FORT KNOX.  The Precious Metals that back the Currency would now be within the hands of the Worlds Population and the people would hold security of the currency. 

When the people hold the security of the currency and it is backed by hard metal the only danger to the currency that is left is GREED.  I am not saying that Greed is good or bad but it has one effect that does devalue the currency.  When ultimate GREED takes place and all or most Hard Coin gravitates into a few hands then inflation takes over and the people will do or offer less for more currency.  The value of hard bonded currency is only there when it is in circulation.  Hording inflates that value.   

Coloured coins are definitely looking better than more chains.

Marking more chains has already been tried, quite a few already found that even with merged mining it is not practical. You end up having to give away the coins to miners, in which case you might as well simply use a chain which already does that and actually has some miners because of it.

Coloured coins will be especially useful for tokens that are not being given away wholesale but, rather, are backed, like shares for example.

-MarkM-

We have at least two implementations: bitpaint.py and my fork of Armory. I think both kinda work, but have rough corners and are not thoroughly tested.

I'm going to make ColoredBitcoin Armory a bit more usable this week. Also I'm not far from making p2p exchange.

A system for creating secure tokens is valuable. Sure, many of the tokens created could become worthless but that's always the case for instance on today's stock markets for small companies. It's in the name of the game. The tricky part is picking the right stocks or being that one valuable company that actually delivers and provide valuable products or services that can be beneficial to others.

The fact that many high risk stock markets contain a large amount of soon-to-be worthless assets doesn't mean that the idea of the stock market itself is flawed. The service has to be there, there is a demand. There's something about it that appeals to investors and entrepreneurs alike.

How is coloured coins system coming along? From what I've understood it's not ready for active use yet.

Another thing, yes, I'm aware that there's a huge cost for securing a chain but I have a hunch that the Bitcoin system itself will be replaced eventually, perhaps soon. Think about it. The fundamental idea behind the Bitcoin software is already a few years old. Back then not too many developers were working on the code. Now, especially considering wordpress.com's recent announcement that they will accept bitcoins, the news are starting to spread to a huge amount of developers all around the world. You think none of them will come up with a better solution? The Bitcoin system demands too much resources. There could a better solution and maybe it's just a question of time before someone finds it.

The important thing is that Bitcoin has shown how valuable this type of product is (the crypto currency). Not Bitcoin itself, let's not cling to it too tightly.

I just want to make it easy for people to create their own blockchain. If securing it is too costly then I hope that the very skilled developers who are active within this community will find a way to make the process of securing it less costly.

There are already a dozen or more blockchains, so obviously some developers believe in the idea of a spectrum of blockchains. Others believe in the coloured coins concept. Let's see which one lasts.

I started up a couple of projects on GitHub pertaining to this matter:

https://github.com/Entrances

You still don't seem to understand that using a proof of work based blockchain is horribly expensive. You need to solve the problem of how you are going to pay the huge cost of securing a chain. Compared to that creating a chain is already trivial. There are in fact already so many chains around that if you need one for something you can just adopt it, the hard part is securing it.

Coloured coins are actually looking much better for every idiot to make up some worthless crap tokens with, since at least they can be secure.

-MarkM-

When I was young I thought so too. But now I understand this ritual.

It is like a secret handshake of the members of masonic lodge or some other gang. It allows to quickly recognize impostors and other newbies.

You can be sure that almost nobody will start their post: I'm a complete newbie to the computers, have very little idea how they work and understand only how to click with the mouse. I'm also slow with this "typing commands" thing. Listing the running processes in Task Manager/Resource Monitor (or equivalent method) is beyond me.

On the other hand people will freely post: "I clicked, black window popped up and disappeared." or "typed a command and nothing happened".

It declares the same informational content. In addition to the above one can frequently guess just from the writing style if the newbie is going to be a friendly, curious, inteligent person or a nasty, obnoxious dumbass. Or maybe somebody inbetween? Like a person who claims to be a writer but doesn't know which side of the postal stamp to lick?

As with many human social rituals: it works because it saves time overall for the society.

here there is plenty of space: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/nmcann-namecoin-stock-control-v01b-123271

for people new to this concept it would be nice behavior to print a line: bitcoind daemon running, please run bitcoind help from separate command instance

Ok, I will test that.

I set up a repo on GitHub for the project I initially created this thread for, namely creating software which can produce bitcoin like clients so that everyone in the world can make their own blockchain based system.

https://github.com/Entrances/Software-for-cloning-the-Bitcoin-client-and-adjusting-its-parameters-conveniently

Maybe we should start a new thread on this forum for the stuff we are discussing now, something like "using Namecoin as (bit)shares" or something like that, what do you say?

I also updated the website:

http://bitcoinfreelancing.t15.org

At the moment it just refers to the new GitHub projects and a Google Group I set up a while back.

Actually this weirdness is as old as Unix, so it dates to mid-seventies of the last century. It allowed people to work efficiently with multiple programs in a single session over 300/1200bps modems.

And the "no news is good news" principle is even older than that.

If you are spooked by bitcoind running silently then use an argument "-printtoconsole" or put "printtoconsole=1" in "bitcoin.conf". You will get a nice, reassuring real-time spew scrolling in the window you used to start the bitcoin server.

killerstorm answered your question above:

Probably it should say so... (some old bitcoin weirdness)

I got no visual output when I ran it from the command window. Is that supposed to (not) happen?

hey! were you waiting for anything? From my limited testing everything seems to be fine.

Any updates, Phelix?

It means that server works

Now open another console window and try communicating with this server, e.g. namecoind getnewaddress

Ok, I tried running it from a command window.

I could read the error message and I created the configuration file.

Tried starting it again from a command window.

This time it does nothing, i. e. no visual output, just a blinking cursor on the next line in the command window.

never tried running it through tor.

did you try to run it from a cmd window? from the console you will be able to actually read the error message...

Phelix,

Can the namecoin client run behind Tor?

The error message is something like: Warning, to use namecoind...

I tried starting namecoind but I got a couple of error messages.

Now it just starts the command window, some text blinks by and then closes again.

just use the normal 32bit version from here: https://dot-bit.org/Main_Page


you need to start a namecoind instance to create a wallet. then you can issue yourself or I can send them to you. If you never used bitcoind I am not sure this is the right thing for you, though...  let's just say I warned you

Phelix,

How can I receive the shares?

Do you have a link to a windows 7 64-bit version?

Nice. I guess I need the namecoin client now. I will try to come up with a suitable name for the shares : )

needs testing but basic functions are there: Namecoin Stock Control v0.1beta

https://github.com/phelixbtc/ncsc


I issued a hundred test stocks. Let me know if you would like a couple.

Issuing shares is ready. So just let me know what name you like and I will register a thousand shares. Handling of shares is still in my head only, though. 

Couldn't find your PGP key, -MarkM-, could you post it here?

Anyways, I will try to keep the conversation as public as possible, makes it easier for everyone who wants to get involved to stay updated.

If you and Phelix could perhaps take care of issuing shares, I could try to focus on starting up new projects and getting people involved (investors and developers).

I do, I am gribble/freenode nick "knotwork" on gribble's WOT.

I also have Torchat, PM me your Torchat ID if you want to hook up in that.

I also am on RetroShare, which (unlike Torchat I think) uses GPG/PGP keys like gribble does.

-MarkM-

I think namecoins could be a temporary solution but it's not the ultimate solution.

Maybe we should give it a try.

-MarkM-, phelix, do you guys have public PGP keys?

If we ignore the suggestion of only issuing a thousand shares, I think we maybe already have a quality solution in the form of the namecoin blockchain and protocol.

It can already do what is needed, from the command line, manually.

Those who prefer a fancier user-interface are of course encouraged to make such interfaces, as fancy as they wish.

The important part, that is, the actual ability to register things and to send coins to addresses that own those things, is already done and has been for what, well over a year? Nearly two years? Maybe even more than two years?

-MarkM-

Still need a solution to this.

The world is waiting for a high quality bitshares solution.

The one who cracks this nut will win eternal glory.

Names are not linked to coins in obvious ways. To register a name costs something like 0.05nmc. it needs to be updated every 3/4 of a year or so - otherwise it will expire.

with each name you can store 512byte (maybe more in the future).

Please note namecoin does not have a lot of active developers.

When I find the time (hopefully tomorrow or next weekend) will release a script to make issuing and handling stocks with namecoin easier.

Nice.

Is it one name per namecoin or can you have many names for the same namecoin?
Can you have many values for the same name?

Actually it is not namecoins I am talking about but "names". Namecoin is not only about coins but also about a key (=name)  /  value  storing system.

You can register names that look like namecoinstock/sron_021   or namecoinstock/sron_354
The owner can set the values attached to these names to whatever he likes.
Names can be transferred to a namecoin address.

They are not dividable and I would not recommend to register more than a thousand to prevent polluting the system.

Sounds nice. Could you please explain some things to me?

-Is it possible to tell one namecoin from another, i. e. can I give the namecoins a specific name which separates them from other namecoins?
-Are namecoins dividable?

i would exploit this to save my backups in it lol

If you like I can issue a thousand namecoin shares for you.

You should get an Open Transactions client installed and working, you will understand it much better once you actually run it.

-MarkM-

1
1 million units. They would be dividable like BTC, right?

Haven't heard much about UKB, CDN, GMC, GRF, UNS, NKL. Do you have links to one or some of those projects? Are they crypto currencies too?

If I would want to issue under OT, how exactly would I do that?

I have a bad hunch about coloured coins, which is why I don't want to go in that direction. Feels wrong to colour the coins and sometimes I feel like the whole BTC software system is too clunky too and might be replaced by lighter solutions eventually.

Okay so decide then, how many units?

They can all be issued to you in the first block.

How much are you going to pay miners to mine it?

It is because mining it (SECURING IT) is so expensive that UKB, CDN, GMC, GRF, UNS, NKL etc moved away from using blockchains, it is insanely expensive to secure a blockchain.

They moved to Open Transactions, maybe you should consider issuing under Open Transactions too?

Or, wait for coloured coins systems to mature and issue coloured coins.

-MarkM-

I'm working on a project now and I would really need my own crypto currency to use as crypto shares.

If anyone could help me to develop my own crypto currency system I will offer 2.5 BTC + 1% of the shares.

Requirements:

-The units should be produced really quickly.
-I want to be able to decide the number of units produced.
-I want to be satisfied with the software you produce before paying.

I suppose attacker can create fake transactions and steal all your 21M MCs

I appreciate your advice. Yes, this is what I have in mind. No dividends but you could still stipulate in the contract that a percentage of the profits from whatever commercial project you are involved with will be used to buy back the coins/shares, in order to stabilize their underlying value and encourage trade.

When you say blockchains are too vulnerable, what exactly do you mean? Are they really vulnerable if all the coins/shares have already been mined?

Fancy a game of Cryptopoly?
 

Yes, basically it is very much like shares when you do that, except maybe with no dividends and maybe they are non-voting shares.

The value of the coins lies in the "reserves" (assets) the issuer owns, the "backing" they have available with which to "back" the coins.

This can actually work better than having coins issued by random "miners" since random "miners" often just "dump" the coins instead of "backing" them with their assets.

But, blockchains turned out to be too vulnerable. Coloured coins might be a better format to use for such things; others moved to Open Transactions for now though maybe they will end up moving on to become coloured coins instead of back to being actual blockchains once we see how coloured coins work out.

-MarkM-

Right, just make the genesis block worth 21 million MC (MonopolyCoin) 

It's even possible to give your coins to yourself (i.e. "issuer") from start.

Is it technically possible to clone the bitcoin client and adjust the parameters so all the coins are mined within a very short timespan (hours or days) rather than decades?

holy shit, there is a whole jungle of alternacoins and otcoins now. you think any of these is going somewhere?

With coloured coins each client only has to remember the colours its user likes, and optionally treat all other colours as "coloured but my user doesn't care what colour they actually are" to prevent mistaking uncoloured coins for coloured coins thus "wasting" unfamiliar / unliked colours by treating them as uncoloured.

Periodically user could review how much of their coin is tied up in colours they don't care about, run a breakdown of that showing how many unfamiliar colours it consists of and eyeball whether he/she has enough of any one unknown colour to consider researching that colour to see if maybe that amount is enough to be worth recognising that colour in future, and think about whether to deliberately tell client one or more of the unfamiliar colours to treat, with deliberate aforethought, as uncoloured and thus have no qualms about mixing/melting back into uncolouredness.

With merged chains it is still not clear whether having more than a few will prove worthwhile. Those that moved all their balances back out of blockchain format onto an Open Transactions server seem to be doing far far better value-wise than those that stayed in blockchain form allowing anyone and their GPU to mine-and-dump them constantly undermining their value. (See http://galaxies.mygamesonline.org/digitalisassets.html even bitcoin itself seems to be suffering vastly from mine-and-dump syndrome so that some of the altcoins that moved to Open Transactions look like they might yet catch up with bitcoins in value...)

-MarkM-

I've been toying with this idea, as well as using "closed" alt-coin clones for internal company accounting.

However, having run across coloured(smart) coins, contracts, smartproperty, pay-to-policy outputs & distributed bonds, I see the light as it shines down on issuing various types of securities. 

Any way that I've looked into it, the blockchain security issue is the most significant barrier to making many bitcoin clones. Massively merged mining is problematic, and without the level of security of the larger network(s) you're exposing yourself to the risk of a dishonest miner connecting to the altcoin chain, and attacking it.

Furthermore, if securities are traded p2p, via colored coins, they're, by definition, globally tradeable, by anyone with the client. The cloned coin solution requires a multi-coin client, that supports each different coin's alterations to the core bitcoin code. This simply doesn't scale. Look at this solution down the road, and imagine hundreds of thousands of public securities, each having their own altcoin, and consider the scaling issues on the client side, and the blockchain security side. Colored Coins/Contracts/Smartproperty has no different scaling issues than bitcoin itself.

Merged minig is only possible if the secondary chain is somehow related to the main bitcoin chain.
And i think the effect of ASICs would be a little more subtle.
Against people without the asic hardware it would become more secure and you could spread that hashing power across multiple chains and still have enough left to make the bitcoin chain stronger.
Seen from inside there could be problems when big miners switch coin as that would mean a direct transfer of security from one chain to another.

mobodick, you forget about merged mining. It doesn't suck hashing power away from it's host chain.

ASICs won't really fundamentally change anything: attackers can get ASICs too, so they will simply make GPU mining obsolete. Just like GPU mining obsoleted CPU mining. Hashing power did not become "abundant" when GPU mining was invented.

They're there because some people got gredy and thought they can start a new chain and mine a shitload solo and then hope others will put value into their personal coins.
Any successfull parallel chain would suck hashing power away from bitcoin.
When ASICS prove to be as powerfull as they are claimed to be and we get abundant hashing power we can maybe start this discussion.
But for now it would water down the network.

So you say. I say let's facilitate the creation a multitude of bitcoin clones. Some of them might get hacked and attacked, some of them might survive.

Through the process we will develop new technologies for protecting fledgling crypto currencies from attacks.

If there's really no point of cloning crypto currencies, how come there are already a dozen or so of them out there? Many skilled developers are working on those projects.

I updated bitshares.tk

-Registering and logging in is now working (I think)
-Menus updated and switched, wiki page is now frontpage
-DNS settings updated

MarkM, I took the liberty of updating the wiki page with your latest post. Please let me know if you want me to remove that content, alternative you can edit it yourself if you register on the site.

Skip all the below and search "coloured coins" and/or "colored coins", colour some coins and you're good.

Or read on:

It is easy. Simply convince 51% or more of miners to merged-mine yet another chain.

Currently the maximum number of chains being merged mined by anyone I know of is only seven: BTC, NMC, DVC, GRP, IXC, I0C and CLC.

(I had to stop trying to add geistgeld to the merge for now as it was too resource-intensive, interfering with my machine's ability to handle the others well. More machines might fix that but will/would cost more electricity.)

So the most useful first step toward your goal would be to work on getting more miners to add more chains to their merge, since until they all see and experience as fact that merging seven at once works fine there is no point trying to add more to the list.

For people in a hurry and not too worried yet about attackers, GRP is still looking good because it is insanely low difficulty still, even CPUs can mine it, so it is basically so incredibly dirt cheap to mine it again makes little to no sense to try to add yet another to the list when this one is sitting there ripe for the taking even by people who only have CPUs.

It also serves as a weather-vane to all the many chains that are waiting in the wings, especially the ones that moved to the Open Transactions platform in order to establish transaction volume sufficient to attract miners before attempting to go public in blockchain form once again. Basically if you can succeed in getting enough miners to merged mine GRouPcoin to make it secure against attack, then entire groups of chains who are ready to come out of the closet the moment miners become open to merged mining more chains can do so. If they too can also get enough miners merged-mining them to render them too secure, then possibly we will have proven that spawning even more is reasonably do-able.

Meanwhile proving on some other platform that you have enough transaction volume to make your currency attractive to miners could also move you along toward your goal. Open Transactions is probably not the only platform you could use to get your economy up and running and thriving sufficiently that it reaches a point at which the cost of paying miners so you can reasonably move to a blockchain format is a reasonable overhead cost compared to the sheer volume of sales / transactions / activity going on in your currency's economy.

Take a look at http://galaxies.mygamesonline.org/digitalisassets.html to see how some of the currencies working their way up in non-blockchain form toward a point where going back to being blockchains (as they were originally and as they were designed and intended) are doing toward that goal...

-MarkM-

Yeah, yeah. Easy cheezy. But seriously, MarkM, I like one part of what you're saying, namely the part about it being "trivial to create another [...] blockchain-based currency".

I want to make it even more trivial by showing everyone in the world how to create their own crypto currency / crypto share.

If you show me how to do it, I will show the world by writing down and publishing comprehensible instructions that anyone can follow. It could be good for the crypto currency industry as well, because it would let more entrepreneurs get started rapidly with their own currencies (which they could also use as shares).

It is trivial to create yet another merged-mine-able blockchain-based currency.

There are numerous capable coding-businesses in which one could invest some "quid" to obtain a new blockchain "pro quo".

It might not be as dirt cheap as getting DeVCoin created was, but then again there is no indication yet that you are going to do as much of the actual coding work yourself as Unthinkingbit, who commissioned DeVCoin (yet actually did most of the coding himself, as it turned out) did.

"Investing" in a business that so far seems singularly lacking in coding capability seems a rather obtuse method of promoting the creation of code.

-MarkM-

I seriously advice against helping OP. He really doesn't know much on this topic.

It is like "Hey, I have a vague idea, implement it for me and I'll give you maybe 10% of profit." (Spoiler: there won't be any profit.)

While a script which would create merged-mined alt-chains on demand would be cool, it definitely shouldn't be developed under OP's guidance.

By the way, there was a client mod which allowed creation of unlimited number of crypto-currencies: MultiCoin https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/new-release-of-multicoin-client-a-branch-of-the-bitcoin-client-24209

But I doubt it supported merged-mining and also it seems to be dead.

Also, um, you say "please invest today" and give your bitcoin address? How is that an investment? Where's contract? Will you pay dividends?

Investing into a can of beer has a better payoff, you know.

I'm glad to hear that so much work is being done to create an exchange system.

What I need most urgently right now is a way for me to easily create my own crypto currency producing software.

Could anyone help me with this? I offer commission, contact me for more info.

I will also try to update this thread with instructions about how to do it.

Expiration is necessary to be able to drop old blocks and improve scalability. User/apps are expected to 'refresh' data before its expiration. For example, you can 'spend' your old output which is about to expire and create a new transaction for it.

this

it would be nice to be able to keep "keys" ("names") you don't own from expiring. That would make the handling of bonds and stocks a little easier.

Namecoins though can broadcast arbitrary data? Or only arbitrary strings?

If only strings, then any normal coding libe base64 or whatnot can be used to render data as string.

So in namecoin it should be possible to broadcast offers and partially completed transactions as well as complete transactions.

You just have to stick what you want broadcast into some field associated with some address.

It probably even has fees already implemented to discourage spamming of insincere offers.

-MarkM-

I have proposed an auxiliary transaction feature (https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/ppcoin-aux-transactions-proposal-113615) with ppcoin to natively facilitate distributed storage of key-value. Auxiliary transactions/blocks are deleted after expiration thus addressing the block chain bloat issue with a namecoin/bitcoin solution.

I plan to start implementing this feature in a couple of months but I would love to hear comments as to what app writers would need (such as your proposed exchange). If I got time I might consider doing a simple web-of-trust app prototype to test out the auxiliary transaction feature as well.

Suppose A wants to exchange his coins for coins B has. I think minimal version is this:

1. A publishes an offer which has information on what coins A has, what he wants to receive, A's address, A's contact info.

2. B discovers A's offer, accepts it, creates a transaction and signs his input. But this transaction doesn't have A's signature. So it is again published somewhere.

3. A discovers B's incomplete transaction, signs his input and broadcast this full transaction into coin network.

Bitcoin nodes relay only correct transactions, so you cannot use this protocol to broadcast offers and incomplete transactions.

On the bright side, it's possible to use something as simple as IRC or email to do trading. (I plan to use HTTP for this.)

challenge accepted  

This would be very nice but also more complex.

this is good news indeed. So I could broadcast a half tx and whoever completes it is the partner in trade?

Namecoin is not rocket science either but it is running already and waiting for someone to play with it.

Yes, divisibility. Also, less blockchain bloat, I think.


Colored coins are also available and running right now. How so?

• they can "run" on top of any blockchain, particularly, Bitcoin and Namecoin
• basic implementation already exists
• implementation is not released to public yet, but neither is your hypothetic script

So I'd say right now colored coins are closer to becoming a real thing.

As for advantages of Namecoin, nobody stops you from using colored namecoins. So you can grab colored coin implementation, apply it to Namecoin client and then integrate it with Namecoin's advanced features.


"Truly decentralized but automatic exchange" are possible without WoT too, as atomic coin swaps are 100% secure. Some reputation system might be needed to prevent order book spam, but I doubt that WoT is needed here since there is no way for people to lose their money.


Atomic coin swap can make trade 100% secure: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/atomic-coin-swapping-112007

As for order announces, it can be done over a simple p2p network. It's not a rocket science.

I like the colored coins idea (and the name) but pretty much the only advantage vs namecoin that I see is divisibility.

Namecoin has other advantages:
* it is available and running right now
* it can be used for many other things like: wot, newscast, aliases, ...

With a wot established it could be used for a truly decentralized but automatic exchange. You could just offer your shares by setting the value field to something like: "ask:42.0nmc". A buyer can then send the money to the name and will receive the name in return. of course you have to trust the person holding the name.

It really isn't just an idea anymore, concrete implementation is currently under development. There is a prototype which is demonstrated to work.

It is vouched for by some members of core development team, particularly Jeff Garzik. See here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.1225948

You cannot simply not believe in it, it's already a reality.


It's certainly your right to prefer one thing over another, but it would be more constructive if you listed concrete cons/pros of different methods.

You can find a discussion of colored coins vs. merged mining here: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.1231210

I don't believe too much in the colored bitcoin idea.

I prefer the idea of a multitude of bitcoin clones with variable parameters.

With regard to the mining issue, I have a hunch there might be a way around it.

Well, this is quite similar to colored coins, aside from namecoin integration.

I've even mentioned your thread on colored coin project announcement: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/chromawallet-colored-coins-issue-and-trade-private-currenciesstocksbonds-106373

   
[Idea] Arbitrary bonds (fiat, gold, options), shares, votes - via Cryptocurrency

to be more specific:

* register a thousand namecoin names like ncs/yourcompany_000 to ..._999
* trade shares on bitcoin-otc like a boss or directly - decentralized
* send dividends to shares in nmc
* let share holders vote via name values if you like

Namecoin is being merge mined and currently has 42% of bitcoin difficulty.

This operation is not 100% free but will cost $2 or so


http://namecoin.info
http://nx.bit  ( http://bitcoinx.com/charts )


I am thinking about throwing together a script to make handling multiple names easier.

this problem you still need to solve.

You fail to understand that Bitcoin is secured via proof-of-work.

Miners do that work to get a reward.

What reward will they get if they'll mine your share alt-chains?

Yep, that's right, no reward at all.

Your alt-chains won't be secure through proof-of-work, so you'll end up with something equivalent to OpenTransactions in the best case.

On the other hand, colored coins run on top of Bitcoin system and do not require any additional mining power.

Also you can exchange different colored coins (particularly, buy coins which represent shares for BTC) via atomic coin swap, which is secure, unlike cross-chain trade. (Which is both very complex and insecure.)

So, the GLBSE is down.

I predicted this would happen.


Now, I don't have a shadow of doubt that the main problems with GLBSE were as listed below:

-It was centralized
-The shares could only be exchanged through the platform
-It was not open source
-It was vulnerable to attacks by governmental agencies

My solution is THE solution. We should ALL start working on this.

-My solution is decentralized
-The shares can be exchanged freely between everyone everywhere
-My solution is open source
-This system cannot be taken down by so called authorities due to the same reasons that the bitcoin platform cannot be taken down (p2p, can be made anonymous).

Let's set up a project on GitHub right now, today.

The purpose will be building software that can release software which in its turn can create new crypto currency/crypto share units (just like the bitcoin client)  with variable parameters.

Setting up a crypto stock exchange will then be super easy. Here's a very basic example:

A website owner writes on his website: I sell [name of his particular crypto share units] for x BTC, I buy [name of his particular crypto share units] for x BTC.

That is, in essence, a very basic crypto stock exchange.

The important thing is that we give everyone the possibility to create their own client similar to the bitcoin client. With millions of web site owners running their own clients and micro crypto share exchanges, there will be absolutely no possibility whatsoever for the so called authorities to take us down. It shall be the start of a new world order.

This thread can be found at: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/how-to-clone-bitcoin-to-create-your-own-crypto-currency-crypto-shares-system-114336

What's being proposed has nothing to do with P2P, which is the core concept of bitcoin network.

The proposed "cloned networks" are more like numerous Paypal servers, each filled with monopoly money instead of USD. No one would participate in such a system unless he's either a con, or incredibly dumb.

Took the first step to building a wiki for the purpose of creating instructions for cloning the bitcoin software. Please feel free to comment and provide feedback:

http://bitcoinfreelancing.t15.org/wiki/how-to-clone-the-bitcoin-software-to-create-new-cryptocurrency-crypto-shares-systems/

Here's the solution, I think:

-Fork or clone the Bitcoin software
-Change parameters so all the new currency/share units are mined/created in a few days, rather than 20-30 years
-The first miner(s) now holds all the bitshares, just like in an IPO. They can then do whatever they like with them. Offer them to investors, developers, entrepreneurs etc.

Am I in the wrong about something? I think this should be doable if we put our heads together. Mind you, once anyone on earth can create a cryptocurrency/share program of their own, things will really start moving. Probably a new world order.

Thing is, if we make it easy to clone the Bitcoin software then anyone can easily create bitshares (crypto shares).

Bitshares have many advantages over regular shares: they don't require a central exchange platform, anyone can trade them with anyone and if someone is interested you could even use them as payment for goods and services, just like bitcoins.

Please help me to create instructions or even software for making it easy for anyone to clone the bitcoin software.

Mark, did you build this open transactions thing? If so, when? And is anyone using the service?

There is no point trading shares when the company they are shares of has run off with the loot.

Anyone can create assets on loom servers or on truledger servers or on the default configuration of an Open Transactions server (I deliberately turned off people's ability to do it on my server).

So just open an account on such a server, create your assets, and start pumping them.

If the server goes down just issue them elsewhere and tell your customers where that is.

When you run with the loot it won't matter which server you used to sell the things.

-MarkM-

You should name it "pump and dump generator"!

Correct me if I'm wrong but I believe a bitcoin chain cannot just vanish like that. Also, if one exchange website is shut down, nothing prevents other entrepreneurs from opening new ones. In fact, it would be unlikely that only one exchange platform would exist. Where there is profit to be made, there are entrepreneurs willing to take risk.

Cloning bitcoin you run into "51% attack" problems; securing a blockchain is not easy.

The missing function really seems to be offer matching.

You can technically issue and exchange assets using any number of existing free open source solutions, from online banking site type solutions to the Truledger system; the missing piece since when I went searching two years or more ago is the order-matching engine. The "market".

It is for that that I have been working with Open Transactions, however if you are willing to risk the seemingly vastly oversized attack surface you get by using the web, there are also at least a couple of free open source "bitcoin exchange" packages available now. YOu could cross out fiat and write your asset name in in crayon (so to speak) and presto, an exchange for your newfangled asset.

I have even looked at MUDs and other games for this functionality, since in many such games it is trivially easy for a gamemaster to create objects people can carry around, give to each other, buy and sell in shops and so on. But usually no "offer matching engine". (Though CoffeeMUD does have auctions, both in a form you can attach to a room or shopkeeper-creature and in free roaming form whereby at any moment one (and only one) auction can be taking place that anyone in the MUD can participate in. The problem with software intended for playing games though tends to be that things vanish; it tends not to take good care of balances. Easy come, easy go. Oh the MUD crashed and your million gold is gone, no problem, just go out and dig up more or kill more monsters or whatever to get more. Not good for preserving inventory records that you really care about.

I installed a full banking site system a while ago called Cyclos, but some kind of javascript problem or something tirvial like that made it un-useable from my (FIrefox on Fedora Linux) browser so I don't even know whether it would have worked to securely record balances robustly like Open Transactions has been doing for me for so long now, and of course again the missing piece was markets: order-matching.

Secure storage of ownership data is easy, you can even create one dot-bit name per share to have individual items/shares that can be traded on the namecoin network. Finding the best price anyone is willing to buy or sell for is again the missing piece with that approach too, though maybe the fact people can trade them directly without an intermediary does at least open the possiblity of using any platform they want to try to find buyers or sellers on, simply by placing ads anywhere they think they might find a trading partner.

What I was actually searching for when I came across bitcoin and Open Transactions was simply a generic marketplace system, something that would record who has what, where, at what price, maybe with optionally a shipping info handler to figure out how much it would cost to move the thing offered to somewhere else so it could change in location as well as in ownership and part of buyer preference could be where the thing offered is as well as what it is and what price it is available at in what quantity. I still have not found that; Open Transactions lets anyone trade anything for anything else but does not handle where the things are located and what it would take to move it from one location to another.

(I could create separate asset tokens for grams of gold on Earth, grams of gold on Mars, etcetera but it has no move the Earth ones to Mars or the Mars ones to Earth type of stuff in it.)

So overall yeah there is a huge gap in what is out there in the way of free open source software for trading stuff. I never did come across a decent general purpose auction site system yet for example.

So far I am still using Open Transactions.

-MarkM-

+1. As a shareholder, how can you be sure your "exchange" website won't shutdown overnight, with the cloned bitcoin chain vanishing at the same time?

where does the trust come from?

and ... port number .... I'd like to reserve port 80 for my exchange please...

So does colored bitcoins. The underlying share system is more or less irrelevant. What matters is the fact that the share can be moved from market place to market place without friction.

You could always put the market on an .onion site.

If we use a bitcoin clone the market place doesn't really have to support anything. Anyone would be able to set up a website on the internet or deep web and offer to exchange bitcoins for bitshares.

Know that a distributed share system only mitigates the risk of the market place not the asset issuer... There still needs to be a market place. And that market place has to support the underlying share system.

Interesting.

I think there are different ways of creating Bitcoin shares:

-Through a crypto stock exchange like glbse.com
-By cloning the bitcoin code and changing some parameters.
-Colored coins

Anything else I have missed?

The first person who shows me how I can create my own crypto shares system for free without going through glbse.com will receive 0.05% of the shares from the first IPO. (It has to be a system that I like and actually will use). I will try to upload the instructions to everyone else, so that we can get things going. There are millions of website owners out there, I want every single one to get involved with crypto shares and change the world forever.

How to clone Bitcoin to create your own crypto currency or crypto shares system

Hi there,

Yesterday I had a vision. Nothing religious but more like a clear idea of how we can solve the crypto stock dilemma. What's the problem? Crypto stock exchanges like cryptostocks.com and GLBSE are owned privately by small centralized entities and business owners. They are vulnerable to attacks by hackers, government agencies or even lynch mobs if something goes wrong. If you ask me, GLBSE is likely to run into problems within a year. See this thread for instance [], and know just how many people hold the GLBSE owner and specific site asset creators personally responsible for their losses with regard to the Pirate ponzi. Even if the current crypto stock exchanges have nothing to do with fraudsters who create IPO's on these sites, try telling that to a lynch mob consisting of unsophisticated investors who have lost their life savings.

How can we solve this?

We could make it as easy to clone the bitcoin code and create modified digital currency/crypto shares as it is to fill out a form. Please don't be too protective about the uniqueness of bitcoin, we need as many good derivates and clones as possible, it benefits the bitcoin too.

You see, a bitcoin clone can be used as a crypto share. Let's say you create a new bitcoin clone and call it [random name]. You can then create a website where you define the contract (the type of contract that you find on GLBSE now or in the legal paperwork which constitues a real world company), namely how and if dividends will be paid out, how much influence the shareholders have etc.

If anyone wants to claim a dividend, they just send x amount of this new currency/share to your account after which you send them back the currency/share unit plus dividend (in bitcoins). By receiving the unit, you will know for certain that the account holder actually owns it. Using the bitcoin framework will also make it possible for anyone to trade their currency/share with anyone else, without having to go through a clunky third party platform with extorbant fees set by only a handful of crypto stock platform owners.

A system like this cannot be taken down by the authorities, just as little as bitcoin can be taken down. GLBSE and cryptostocks.com on the other hand could perhaps be taken down one way or another.



Why am I sharing this idea?

Because I cannot do this on my own. Clones of bitcoin already exist (devcoin, litecoin) and an exchange platform too (https://vircurex.com/). However, we need to make it as easy as possible to create a clone. Anyone should be able to do it by just defining the parameters, perhaps forking the code and releasing it under a new name.

Defining parameters before launch

When creating a new clone it should be possible to easily define:

- How many currency/share units will be produced through mining
- How long the mining will take place for

Now, if I want to create a new currency and use it as a stock, I should be able to create say only a 1000 units in a very short time and keep them all to myself. They can then be offered against bitcoins, dollars, work hours or whatnot to investors, entrepreneurs, developers or just about anyone who wishes to get involved in your company and share an interest in your project.

The aim of this thread is to create instructions for how to create your own clone of bitcoin [bitoin github link] and defining the parameters. The instructions will be uploaded to this website [insert link].

Bitcoin is already an indestructible piece of software due to its open source and peer to peer nature. Why painstakingly create crypto stock exchanges with all the risks and coding it involves, when we can use the bitcoin source code to create new currencies/shares with ease?

Let's say anyone in the world can create a bitcoin clone. They can just define the contract on their website and start their own exchange. Do you grasp the implications of this? We are talking a whole new world order.

Bitcoin is great, but it needs more good clones and derivate products, now! Let's procreate and clone the source code like rabid but earnest monkeys, let the bitcoin cell multiply into a myriad of units and create a new universal body of free commerce and a haven for investors and entrepreneurs.

Future vision for software:

A client which can be used not only to trade bitcoins but any bitcoin clone too and perhaps also  to create your own clone in five minutes. I cannot emphasize enough how useful and powerful a financial and entrepreneurial tool a client like that would be.

This thread and original post will be updated continously. Originally published on www.bitshares.tk