Topic: rpietila Altcoin Observer - page 55. (Read 387491 times)

I don't think that adding in the exchange rate is technically interesting;  I think it's cute and somewhat useful.  But it's "interesting" in some sense that he's continuing to make UI improvements and experiments in the wallet -- I like that.  Again, keeping in mind my view of crypto in general as a fascinating experiment, with cryptonote as a really intriguing advance that trades some bloat and other issues for anonymity in a technically and socially/financially interesting way.

The ring signature pruning is technically interesting.

So -- what I'm being most positive about is the continued development along directions not necessarily being explored by Monero or any other cryptonote coin.  That's good for anyone who thinks that there's value in having technology for anonymous transactions.  If things like blockchain aliases turn out to be dumb  -- great, we learned something.  If they turn out to be wildly popular -- same answer.

As David Clark famously put it in the early days of the IETF:  "We reject kings, presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code."  It's nice to have working implementations you can kick around and have fight against each other.

I don't think there is any other reason. Simply because you have improved the code and commented on its apparent soundness (and known and potential weaknesses)

I must say I'm a bit taken aback that you think exchange rate being displayed in a wallet is "interesting" but I guess that is in the eye of the beholder.

This was an interesting quotation to me as I do try to play nice. I had a keen eye on BitMonero when it was planned for launch, trying to reason with thankful_for_today et al about renaming the coin before it was launched and other general things. It was obvious that we were dealing with someone from the original Bytecoin coding team, so even after the disagreements between him and some of us who were following the ANN thread, we stuck around and when I saw the others who were into BitMonero, I knew it would have success. By the way none of the current vocal members of XMR were there when all of this was taking place. I never envisioned others would be promoting it so hard, and in my mind I knew that this would be the CN coin to go with even if there were no Heroes around.

When Boolberry came on to the scene, I rejected it and saw it as an unnecessary noise that would create some unwanted competition with XMR and the name didn't help the case to get acceptance. I didn't mine it and didn't even care what was happening with it, just like I hadn't cared for the Quazarscam (though Qcn was very frustrating crapping on the BMR thread those days). But then the pump happened and I saw people discussing it here and there and I checked the thread. I knew it was being the victim of FUD, deliberations and financial attacks right away. By that time it was hitting the current bottom in prices and it wasn't matching up with all the technical developments that were showing up in the thread. I made my own assumption that zoidberg was probably also one of the core CN reference devs with the command he had. Despite all this I can understand why playing nice is not part of the game and why people continue to defame him personally and ridicule his technical progress along with other absurdities.

I just refuse to play that game. I am not saying others need to do it too, but till date there have been zero reasons provided on this thread or elsewhere that makes me want to dispose of the BBR I procured earlier in August. People love an underdog story. It may be me today, but I bet people are going to question the market dynamics of BBR down the road once they find out too.

First mover has always been a bit of a myth.  For example see (along with other sections of the same page): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-mover_advantage#Second-mover_advantage

First mover advantage is often cited by some Bitcoin proponents who try to declare the competition over and themselves the winner. It is either wishful thinking, mistaken thinking, willful attempt to deceive for personal gain, or some combination of these.

His Freudian Slip of con vs coin speaks volumes.

@AnonyMint: What is the estimated time of arrival for the coin you are developing? Are you working alone or on a team? Has any other competent coder vetted your ideas for face plausibility?

Even its name is being forgotten:-)

LMGTFY - http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dga/cv.pdf

It's a Ph.D. in addition to the masters, so feel free to insert the obligatory jokes about "those who can't, teach"  (but I've probably heard them before.

But yes, georgehoster - that was mostly what I did.  But to do so, I wrote highly-optimized code for the Monero proof-of-work function, and spent a fair amount of time analyzing it for weaknesses.  My code wandered out into the rest of the world, and once it was out there, I gave permission and relinquished copyright on it, so it's part of what you're running when you run a monero daemon or miner.  The bright side of having spent a lot of time trying to break it is that I'm also pretty confident that CryptoNight, as a PoW, does what it says -- it's expensive but pretty good against current GPU/FPGA/ASIC technologies.

But I have no relationship to the XMR dev team, or any other coin.  I'm not quite sure why my name got pulled in here other than my comments about the PoW function.

(Also, as others noted, I do plan to hold the BBR, but as with anything I do, that should best be interpreted as an experiment, not an endorsement -- I have no clue what BBR's price will do.  Realistically, I view it as a slightly long shot gamble on Zoidberg continuing to do interesting things, as, for example, he did today with a new release: https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/m.8645436  .  Gotta love the built in exchange data in the wallet, and more progress on getting ring signature pruning working.)

Indeed that is why maturing products hire Marketing gurus such as Steve Guttman (former marketing product manager of Adobe Photoshop) who I worked with as a programmer liason at Fractal Design (on what is now Corel Painter) and I observed his skill set and activities.


Now I am going to teach you something if you are not already aware of the distinction. Data driven marketing is a refinement mechanism. The conceptual qualitative decisions about the target market which drive whether a product has immense potential and spark the initial exponential growth, are made from instincts that encompass a broad understanding of issues and concepts. In fact, too much data driven feedback looping too early can muddle the higher-level process of formulating a target market strategy.

Steve Jobs had these instincts, as my former CEO boss at Fractal discovered. I think I do too, which is evidenced by myself being involved in three products (two where I was nearly the sole author and one or two-man company) so far in my career which all had greater marketshare and penetration than Bitcoin.

Note about a year before the iPhone, I was thinking someone should make a smartphone based on Linux. I had also thought about the open source .Net. My life was too spread out at that time, traveling and not settled. Any way, I had insufficient resources to do the hardware and software integration. I am sure I am not the only person who had these thoughts.

I notice Steve was obsessed with small details. I notice I did that at times, but one of my weaknesses is I will cut corners in order to ship something. I tend to lose focus when I am bored slogging through tedious details, which is probably why I am wasting my time past 2 days posting in this forum.

Yeah.  The "Play nice" people seem to think there can be more than one winner in this space.  Without realizing that bitcoin is 95% capital (can we say winner?).  So I'm def interested in the "winner" of the anon race as I think it's not just "the next big thing" but "the big thing" of "internet decentralized money".  I'll keep my eyes peeled and maybe finally buy up some Monero (or not) in the meantime.

A lot of coin supporters say "X isn't bad enough to keep it from adoption" (ex blockchain bloat).  But it creates friction and the coin that does the best at solving all of the friction eliminates the competition as there is no need for it.  

If your coin has a blockchain bloat and won't support Visa's number of transactions and another coin does.  Then I buy the other coin because I'm not sure you'll be able to fix these things.  

Competition between currencies when people are losing lots of money as coins die off every few months or so (anybody remember Aurocoin?) is actually a bad thing.  

It is my uneducated feeling that once who the winner in the anon is decided the amount of money poured in will increase a ton.  But until that happens, until the volume is there and until there is a good moat around the technology.  It's going to continue to be everybody trading penuts (in the grand scheme of things ... I don't have but fractions of penuts to trade)

So resolving all of these issues and coming out with one clear winner as soon as possible is the best possible case scenario IMO.

P.S.  I'm just happy Darkcoin is finally crumbling.

Here is my opinion. Opinions will vary. And you know I am biased because I am developing something.

Monero is indeed a reasonably serious effort and offers something different than Bitcoin. But Monero isn't what I want, because I want to defeat the Fascist State. So my goals are higher. But all I have to offer is vaporware, which is in many ways worse than useless to you as a reader.

Note when I inquire about the capabilities of the Monero developers, it is not that I am trying to make negative publicity. I am trying to ascertain what their capabilities are, because I am developing something. I view them as a strong competitor.

Wow, might be quite a wait, not inspiring much confidence there lol.

No it will mean local government.

More recently, he said that he was mining BBR on 22 GPUs and holding until 0.002
It may be a while.

Right.  Here is what I know.  Darkcoin was kinda a piece of shit and I avoided it.  But looking at the top market cap in the top 10 currencies it's pretty obvious that anon is NOT a fad in crypto.  It should be a cornerstone.  So anon = important.

Cryptonote is something besides a bitcoin clone.  Monero is well distributed.  Blockchain bloat sucks.  It's not the outright scam Darkcoin was.  Although Darkcoin scam + being first mover and seeing it's success was a lesson in how huge first mover is worth in this space.  

I'm not sure if first mover in anon coins is still a big deal since dark is falling to Monero?  Does Monero get first mover advantage if it passes Dark - or is first mover advantage gone?  But it sure seems like it would be an uphill battle for a new currency.  And at some point consensus / network effect takes over.  (MS Windows vs Mac, etc).

Just random facts.  I do wish all the issues you brought up were resolved (although I will admit to not understanding some of them).  But ... do they have to be to make a significant huge massive improvement to privacy over bitcoin?

It seems a helpful venue then, to focus one's priorities.  You have made the Philippines much more attractive to me than I had thought possible.  Despite, or perhaps in part because of, the death squads.

I understand. I suppose you should buy Monero. And support it.

Normally you don't get an advance insight. I offer that, but what you do with the information is up to you.

You also have advance insight of Zerocash and Ethereum. What you do about that vaporware is up to you. Criticize it, support it, wait, keep quiet, etc..

Monero developers also gain the benefit of that advance insight. And I probe here to see what capabilities they have too.

Competition is a good thing. Everyone benefits.

forgot to add the .html part

http://da-data.blogspot.com/2014/08/minting-money-with-monero-and-cpu.html

dga also made this statement, he just mines and sells coins that he mines.

(I don't personally own any, nor do I hold any Bitcoin - I mine and sell for the most part, to minimize my risk exposure.) - dga

Hahahahha ouch. 

It looks like he took it down though.  Vilatik needs somebody to keep his ego in check