Topic: rpietila Altcoin Observer - page 230. (Read 387493 times)

The concept itself. I doubt that attaching non-trivial value to an arbitrary attribute such as color can be secure. In fact one of my biggest doubts about bitcoin is that this sort of non-fungibility might ultimately destroy it, and only systems with stronger fungibility (zerocash, etc.) can survive.

I admit I haven't investigated Counterparty, mostly because I was put off by "another alt-coin."  I don't see why services need to keep creating new coins, we already have bitcoin.  


But then why does XCP trade like a currency on alt-coin exchanges and why is its market cap reported at coinmarketcap.com?  I would be interested in something like Counterparty if I could use all of its features by paying in bitcoin.  I would be interested in purchasing crypto-equity in something like Counterparty if it paid dividends in bitcoin.  


I agree that support for colored coins is still immature, but I'm more interested in what will be possible.  What can Counterparty do that couldn't be done for free using current or future bitcoin infrastructure?


That looks interesting, but I'm still put off by XCP.  Why can't the contracts be paid in bitcoin with Counterparty acting like a service provider (if that's what it is)?


Colored coins are "encoded" in OP_RETURN outputs.  If Bob wants to purchase Alice's colored coins, he can create an unsigned bitcoinTX that spends Alice's colored coins to his address and his bitcoins to Alice's address.  If both Alice and Bob sign the transaction, it will get mined.  If either one of them doesn't, it won't.  If either one of them "double spends" the transaction is void (so no one loses).  

Here's something else that's useful with colored coins:  a service like Counterparty could sell XCP colored coins (which are really shares).  These shares could trade in a trustless decentralized manner using the open-assets protocol.  If the service earns a lot of bitcoin (because people are using it), then it could issue dividends directly to each bitcoin address where the XCP-shares are located.  


I don't see why this can't be done in directly with bitcoins.  For example, I can already create colored coins that represent grams of gold using Coinprism (I'd probably want to add a few more details to the "issuing" procedure…).  These gold-grams could trade p2p via color-aware bitcoin wallets.  

I suppose I'm mostly put off by XCP.  I feel the same way about XRP, Maidsafecoin, NXT, Ether, etc.  It seems to me that these services want their "shares" to trade more like "money" because then P/E ratios won't apply when evaluating their market caps!  

In my opinion, we need only one crypto-currency.  Services built on top should accept bitcoin; they can still raise money by issuing shares, but shareholders should be paid dividends in bitcoin and not by "more shares in lieu of bitcoins."  

In regards to colored coins built using the open-assets protocol, what aspects of the security model make you skeptical?  Are you concerned with a possible problem in the protocol, or the concept itself?

I haven't reviewed the protocol with a fine-tooth comb, but it seems like a fairly simple accounting system for tracking color using OP_RETURN outputs.  This simplicity is why I am drawn to it.

The darksend part will be open sourced when finished, the rest of darkcoin is already open source.

What about a date of release for the open source code ?

This is taking so long that it looks like Darkcoin can only rely on having a closed source.

The RC3 launch date with masternode payments has now been brought forward to the 20th.
https://darkcointalk.org/threads/help-test-rc2-forking-issues.1009/page-31#post-8067

Yes that's the problem of Bitcoin. You cannot change anything.
The power is in the hand of a small cartel of miners that own all the network and refuse any change because it could go against their profit.

There will always be incentive to compete when a currency is based completely on free market mentality, there will always be the people who want to get rich quick and be early adopters. Plus once a currency become established it becomes long and cumbersome to add or change features. Bitcoin is an example of this where most features that are desirable in a new alt could be worked into Bitcoin fairly quickly and easily but there are too many involved to make decisions like that.

Something I have been thinking about, I think that a currency needs new coins to be minted for all time.

For this argument, let us assume that we do not need miners to solve the security problem, so miners are only needed for making new coins.

I believe that a currency might need this because it takes away incentive for others to compete with that currency. Also it would lower the eventual cost of transactions.

If there is always an amount of new coin generated, it could drive people to join instead of fight.

Hmmm. Any opinions?

The greatest threat would be side chains in Bitcoin.

Could Monero reach 0.1 in the next years? there is a big demand for 100% anonymous coins and it seems this is the real deal to fill that niche.

Yes it's true, there was XCP and MSC before.
I also heard that Peercoin will have its own so we can add it on our list.
To explain my statement, I didn't say "Nxt has the only existing decentralized asset exchange ".
I said that the Nxt one is working and active.
I tried both MSC and XCP but until now, they are no match for Nxt exchange.

I skipped many details so let's see the differences :

Both MSC and XCP rely on Bitcoin's blockchain.
As Anotheranonlol explained, there are not real alternative cryptocurrencies but more like abstraction layer on top of Bitcoin.
You can see it as an advantage or a disadvantage.
On the short term, it is great because you can use Bitcoin.
On the long term, if anything happen to the top layer or the bottom layer, everything could fall.
For me, project like MSC or XCP are 2 times riskier than a crypto relying on an independent blockchain.
You add the possible flaws of both Proof-of-Stake and Proof-of-Work.

Firstly,  In the case of counterparty you can utilise the protocol without interacting with any proprietary token. It's a common misconception that you need XCP token to buy and trade. I don't think the UI factors much into this argument at all, especially considering most complain about it.

Counterparty is an abstraction layer ontop of Bitcoin blockchain to enabled advanced crypto-financial markets which aren't supported by default in it's current incarnation. It's not a competitor 'altcoin' -- this is another common misconception. - It enriches the bitcoin ecosystem as it matures.

If you'd tried to do anything worthwile with what is, at the current time the most mature colored coin implementation (coinprism) and then tried CounterParty to achieve the same ends it should be crystal clear why one is the superior option.

Creation & management of smart property and the subsequent exchange of them are only a subset of the features of counterparty. Here's an example of the betting functionality being put to good use: XBet– the world's first distributed betting application You could not do such a thing with colored coins.

I'm not sure how Colored coins & Coinjoin would auto-make trustless & p2p trades between two parties like you said, just seems like you'd have slightly more private purchase of a colored coin that you'd have to arrange via separate channel.

With CounterParty token/token trades are escrowed by the protocol, the exchange engine, order matches, btcpay etc are baked right in (amongst a whole host of other features). Anyone is free to setup a node.

with Vennd (which is an app built upon counterparty) you can interact with a vending machine which would enable crowdfunding in a basic mode (bidirectional in enhanced mode), EG BTC in and COMPANYSHARES out. or 2 way bridged gateway between any alt (litecoin or monero for instance) and assets distributed on DeX. It's already possible to buy and sell silver/gold purely in a decentralised fashion using counterparty, in future it will be feasible for someone to distribute native assets backed by real value on an as/needed basis.

A huge driving force of the value of BTC will be the utility of it's blockchain, after all that's the truly fascinating part of the whole invention;  I think it pays to keep an eye on exciting technology like this

The best place to ask is nxtforum.org as all the devs have moved there now.
I am not technical enough to explain. Likewise, I am not technical enough to explain how Bitcoin works exactly. The point for a user is, both Bitcoin and NXT solve the consensus issue, except in NXT you can't easily buy 51% of the mining power.

I'm skeptical of the security model of either, unless the asset exchange is merely a toy for assets with negligible value (say microcap scam stocks).

I need to have a crash course on the actual mechanism that solves the Nothing-at-Stake problem in NXT!

My current understanding is that there is none, and it is therefore a no-buy.

What I don't understand is how one can benefit using an alt-coin platform to issue digital tokens (shares, bonds, vouchers, etc), when this is possible using bitcoin directly (colored coins / open-assets protocol).  Is it just that some altcoins are further along in their user interfaces?

The hugely beneficial thing about colored coins (in addition to not requiring one to purchase an altcoin) is that they can be traded in a trustless p2p manner for bitcoins (using coinjoin). 

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395761.8340
https://www.counterparty.co/

Ok, if the issue was solved, that's fine, I actually liked XCP when I used it in its early stages, although it was quite buggy then, until NXT AE came along. XCP can survive, at least as long as Bitcoin survives, but you always have to worry about 51% attacks and such. With NXT you just don't have those worries and time between blocks is much shorter, so trading is closer to centralized exchange speed of trading.

FIAT->BTC->NXT->Asset will soon be shortned to FIAT->NXT->Asset, as there are fiat gateways under way, that's just a matter of time.

the issue is long solved and was much smaller than expected.

I think the biggest advantage of counterparty protocol is that you do not need to go the way btc-> nxt -> asset. you can simply buy the asset with btc.

the "currency" (xcp) of the protocol has a completely different function. it can be taken in escrow on the blockchain (until now impossible with bitcoin). It will be probably in short term be used for betting, mid-term for CFDs and long term as insurance.

BTW I used NXT AE and I was quite impressed by the easy to use functionality as well as the speed. kudos.