Topic: rpietila Altcoin Observer - page 254. (Read 387493 times)

that's why i can embarrass the Crypto community  by asking for the smartest minds to discuss the issue with me.

because they won't.

The truth is a funny little thing isn't it.


I'm sorry to say it for the people that don't like to hear it but Quark is the only Crypto that is certainly not subject to this control.

the reason it is not is because it was mined in that 6 month period and dropped to a near zero value then lots of smaller investors picked it up, this way it was distributed in a way that will forever mean that it is outside that control largely then combine that with the EQ reward. and you have a currency that will flow in the free market, stabilize and be one of the best measures of crypto in the future.  

i don't doubt there will be others and there may already be , but Quark set this precedent, Quark is and was the first real Alternative currency.

I think someone has been doing some reading ! https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/amazing-fun-crypto-conspiracy-secrets-quark-included-619427  ; D

Roach has got this one right -

there is significant risk of both complete monopoly and velocity manipulation, in this way the owner of the majority stake cold in effect "tighten" supply and cause a recession or "increase" velocity and have "good times" just as interest rates are manipulated today.

That is why the EQ reward exists.

yet wait for it !


NO ONE TALKS about it ! ha ha ha ha ha ha !

 

Even if in your eyes Monero is seen as the  "first", it's just a clone of Bytecoin and offers nothing new to the table...Monero has the same exact features as Quazarcoin, HoneyPenny, and FantomCoin. The only thing that makes them different is the names and logos...I'm sorry but coins like these never make it far, they may be hyped in the short run, but in the long run, having innovation is what carries a coin further, not being copied code for code like Monero was from Bytecoin..

Regarding the clones, MRO was the first fair launch of a CryptoNote coin and is in my eyes essentially first, I couldn't invest into Bytecoin due to their chain being two years old underground. If Bytecoin had been known for two years I wouldn't consider it a pre-mine and I would have supported Bytecoin instead. I always support the first [1] but Bytecoin was such a pre-mine it makes no sense to invest.

Regarding botnet dumping, I wouldn't worry so much as Bitcoin has been doing well with ASIC dumping and Litecoin with GPU dumping. I thought it was common knowledge many farms dump their coin straight back to USD, the amount of believers that mine is a lower percentage of the total amount of miners.

[1] I like the idea of Ethereum too, that's a fair launch. If they instead released with a two year old chain, we'll have to move onto a clone because it's unethical to support two year pre-mines, hence why I see Monero as being first, because Bytecoin is void.

And you shot the guy down perfectly.

Perhaps it is you who doesn't understand how money works.

Money is a confidence game.  Like you said, "you can't hold it in your hand so that's what it's backed by."  Money is an abstract idea invented by humans to solve the double-coincidence of wants problem that a pure barter economy faces.  Money represents spots on a ledger that people trade in and out of for real goods and services.  The more legitimate the ledger, and the easier it is to trade in and out of that ledger (the payment system), the more useful this form of money becomes.  

You understand that the value of a cryptocurrency is related to confidence, but it seems you assume this confidence comes from the technology employed by the payment system.  But this is not true.  The confidence comes from the legitimacy of the ledger.  A new payment system can be built around a legitimate ledger, but a legitimate ledger cannot easily, if it's possible at all, be built around a new payment system.

The reason most alt-coins die is because the ledger wasn't legitimate in the first place.  It has very little to do with the technology of the payment system or else every bitcoin-clone would be equally valuable.  

You mentioned that a simple "update" could "implode" bitcoin such that 100% of its value was lost.  Can you explain how such an event would occur?  If the ledger of value is still intact, and if people can still prove ownership of their spots on that ledger with their private keys, and if transactions can still be registered on that ledger, what event could be so bad that suddenly everyone would agree that 7 billion dollars (or $7 trillion in the future) of purchasing power went up in smoke?  

Here's a thought experiment: at some point in the distant future, imagine that the Bitcoin Network gets relentlessly 51% attacked for days on end.  Imagine also that there is a new experimental technology that we know for a fact will defeat the attacks.  What would the economic majority do?  Would they abandon all their purchasing power, financial records and accounting systems?  Or would they simply employ this new technology to record transactions on the existing bitcoin ledger and go on with their lives?  

The answer is pretty obvious if you think about it.  

The Blockchain will be preserved.

Yes he was. He was advocating a specific altcoin is useful because it has an infinite supply and Bitcoins coins get lost every year. That cannot be interpreted any other way.

As with your actual proposal: the block reward is a subsidy. If the subsidy is needed forever our little experiment has failed.

The amount of coins lost per year matters, that's a net gain for every other holder.  

Nobody was talking about some noob question of "oh no, we will run out of bitcoins if people lose them because we only have eight 0's".  

I was talking about applying the average estimated coins lost per year towards a minimum block reward instead of only transaction fees for block rewards in the future.

It's a matter of security vs "oh no! we have to make the currency as hyper deflationary as possible!".

As an example, a coin like Whitecoin was mined in only 7 days distribution, yet during those days, some guy managed to lose 2% of the entire monetary supply by having a laptop stolen out of a car by people who most likely don't use digital currency.


Is this a joke?  I don't think you really understand how cryptocurrency works, the entire thing is a confidence game.  Since you can't hold it in your hand, that's what it's backed by.  Walk around in the altcoin world for a while and you'll see that when coins encounter major security issues like forking, double spends, whatever, most do implode and don't recover.  Bitcoin won't be exempt from that in the future.

GPU Miners also dump their coins because they are just interested in Profit - and they need to pay their electricity bills and equipment.
ASICMiners also dump their coins because, see above. KNC Miner dumps half a million USD worth per day in Bitcoin.
What do u think will happen to Litecoin when all the ASICS hit? The miners will first of all sell all their Litecoins to get their investment back.

A Botnetowner doesn't need to pay off his equipment or pay the electricity bill, why should it be more unlikely for him to hold his coins?

Also its absolutely no problem to start cgminer and co. on a Botnet - GPU mining has no difference there.

The whole PoW ecosystem depends on greedy miners to be secure, it simply doesn't matter much HOW they mine.

I see you only disagree with that part. What about the botnet part? I'm really curious here as I like the idea of CPU coins for a distributed network but wonder about the long term viability. Even then, we are talking distribution of coin once the hackers dump, but not a preferred method and it brings other problems of course.

Subbed.

I would say this is inaccurate.

Monero code has been worked on by many different developers. We optimized the slow_hash code roughly 16 fold and continue to create bugfixes for the chain while keeping the code up to date with what ByteCoin is offering. A bunch of our commits have already been integrated into the ByteCoin master.

Additionally, the Monero community generously donated what is now more than ten thousand USD to support the generation of the first open source pools and GUI for cryptonote coins. The major pool developer zone117x (NOMP) has gone from wanting his bounty in BTC to wanting it in MRO over the past couple of weeks, and looks forward to continuing to optimize CryptoNote pools.

Would you be so generous to share your research with others? Otherwise this claim is unsubstantiated. I hope it doesn't repeat what was already discussed.

altcoins are testcoins for accidents which should not happen to Bitcoin. 

I sold all my other alts over the past 2weeks , dumped dark A few days ago at its peak and transferred it all into Monero.  As others have said, it's an easy choice once you lay everything out(especially next to dark)

That 2 million premise is a joke

Thanks for composed answer. Sure bubbles tend to pop and DRK is not an exception. However it does not necessarily mean it would collapse and die completely. With ongoing development I'm sure it will take its niche.

The perception of those points is purely subjective and I doubt that the majority of people who are interested in Darkcoin share your point of view. And I don't understand how my counter-arguments strengthen your position.

I agree market is fickle and the perception of the coin itself would be as you said simply a justification. However this is typical cycle for any new technology which I see as completely expected.

My post from which you quoted was an academic view of the "Alt-Coin Narrative" cycle.  Believing that Darkcoin will collapse does not imply that I am a "hater."  In fact, I believe Dogecoin will collapse too (due to its quickly dropping mining subsidy) but I actually have a soft spot for the Dogecoin community and I am saddened for the good people losing money (because they invested without understanding Dogecoin's fundamental technical flaws).  

Whether those 5 points you posted are true or false no longer really matter.  Darkcoin is riding the hype cycle--only hype matters.  Darkcoin is perceived as insta-mined.  Darkcoin is perceived as closed-source.  Darkcoin is perceived as non-innovative.  Darkcoin is perceived to have a volatility-enhancing block reward.  Darksend is perceived as less advanced that Cryptonote's ring signature approach (Bytecoin, Monero, etc). The fact that you feel the need to argue that this perception doesn't represent reality strengthens my case.  When the hype is over, the market will use these as excuses to justify dumping the coins.  The market is fickle.  

For the record, I don't believe in Monero either.  I gave my opinion that it may appear to The Market as a more legitimate continuation of the "privacy narrative" that began with Darkcoin, after the coming collapse.  

This argument is part of the Alt-coin Narrative Cycle.  It is only considered valid by people who don't fully understand how bitcoin works.  As people learn more about bitcoin, they will learn that it is not possible to "implode" bitcoin by an "update."  Even a network split event due to a poorly-excuted forking change wouldn't result in anywhere near a 100% loss.  It would be annoying, some double spends would occur, speculators would no doubt dump coins, but things would return to normal.

How is it possible to "implode" bitcoin if the value of bitcoin is stored in the blockchain ledger? 

Satoshi had to create a fixed-supply currency to break the "deflation is bad" myth that is accepted as fact by the status quo.  The 21 million coin limit forces a debate on this subject and a re-thinking around the "wisdom of central bankers."  But a hard limit is not strictly necessary: a currency with a money supply that increase or decreases, for example, by less than 1% per year is little different than one with a fixed supply.  What is necessary is for the new currency units to be created by an objective and transparent algorithm on the basis of work performed.  

The mechanism employed to ensure the security of the network in the distant future when the block reward subsidy drops below the transaction fees is unknown.  But one thing is clear: if bitcoin is successful there will be a large vested interest in ensuring continued network robustness.  There are many many possibilities for how bitcoin could deal with the reduced block reward twenty years from now:

  1.  Continued advances in the size and cost of flash and RAM memory, coupled with investment in internet infrastructure, could enable bitcoin to scale enormously and beyond even credit-card-level transactions per second.  The fees earned from transactions could be more than sufficient to secure the network.

  2.  Bitcoin could become more like SWIFT or FedWire, and side-chains or third-party solutions could be used for day-to-day spending.  Transaction fees could increase as required to ensure the security of the network.

  3.  Wealthy bitcoin holders might subsidize their own mining operations.  Advanced detection systems could be deployed to ramp up network hashrate to defend against attacks.  

  4.  International organizations like the IMF might create "bitcoin defence strategies" similar to #3.  Network attacks might be criminalized and offenders hunted down.

  5.  Some combination of the above might happen, or something else I haven't thought of.  


Furthermore, there is little to no direct economic benefit for an attacker to engage in a perpetual 51% attack, and any short-term attack for economic gain can be mitigated by requiring a greater number of confirmations.  Therefore, the only attacks that truly threaten bitcoin are the non-economically-motivated ones (IMO).  

But if you worry about non-economically-motivated attacks in general, then you would live a very fearful life.  People might destroy bridges, explode damns, randomly kick people in the balls, etc.  Think of all the bad stuff that could very easily happen but doesn't.  It is actually amazing: if I spend a day in a big city like New York I might walk past 10,000 people.  If I do that 365 days in a row, perhaps I've walked past 1,000,000 unique people.  All it would take is for 1 of those people (0.0001%) on one of those days to decide to kill me, and they could very easily do so.  I would be a sitting duck!  But the fact is that the vast majority of people can live their entire lives in a big city without ever being murdered despite how easily it would be for anyone to murder them.  

People will argue that it is different for bitcoin because control of money creates power.  But control of communication creates power in the same way and the internet has never really been attacked to the point where it was at risk of becoming unviable.  Bitcoin will be the same way.  The Powers That Be are less organized than we give them credit for.