Hey,
IxCoin simply has increased the reward for each block from 50 to 96. That means that every 4 years the reward halves so it should eventually reach 42 million.
However the hard coded max value in the code is 21 million. There are checks (see MoneyRange and ProcessBlock) in the source code which haven't been changed to still limit it to 21 million.
Once it reaches 21 million, all new blocks minted by miners (which are still using the same reward) will be all rejected and the network will shut down overnight.
Reasons I now think it's a scam after playing with it:
- They only made one minor modification to the source code (changing 50 -> 96)
- Already mined 400k IxCoins themselves.
- Copied and leveraged bitcoin community with minimal input. Product doesn't have much value on its own.
- wallet.dat is 52mb already. Within a year that will be 3gb. This is not sustainable in terms of computer resources.
Initially I was ambivalent about them, but after talking with the other guys here (at Bitcoin Consultancy), it's looking like a classic pump and dump.
IxCoin:
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/announce-ixcoin-a-new-bitcoin-fork-36218Also all the devs on the front page of bitcoin.org (me included), got this message:
So... I got this unsolicited email:
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1
Hi Gavin,
I'm one of the founders of the Ixcoin fork of Bitcoin. If you're
interested in trying out the new blockchain, we set aside a 5,000 IXC
bonus for each of you.
Please email me your IXC addresses if you're interested.
Best regards,
Thomas.
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... and I'm trying to figure out why my immediate reaction is "yuck."
I guess I just don't see the point of IxCoin. I just spent some time looking back through all the original poster's messages, and I don't see any prior discussion of goals of IxCoin, how it should be designed, etc.
If the goal is to let more people be early adopters of a new cyber-currency, then it seems to me giving early bitcoin adopters a bunch of IxCoin goes against that goal.