Topic: rpietila Altcoin Observer - page 75. (Read 387552 times)

I wish there were a vehicle for shorting it (BTSX). But I wish that about almost every alt blockchain token.

Referring to it as a crypto-currency debases the meaning of the term.  Its price probably won't correlate strongly to the general alt market, because it's structurally different.  It's more than a crypto-currency in the sense that it does other things that crypto-currencies don't do.  It's less than a crypto-currency in the sense that it is not fit and will never be fit for primary use as a currency.

I suspect that, like Ethereum, it's an illegal security offering in the U.S.  If so, then I think that may bite them hard, before very long. Being the biggest, most successful, currently operating cryptographic enterprise share distribution would make BTSX the obvious first target of federal prosecution in the U.S.

Overall, I would venture to guess that BTSX has more short-term upside than e.g. XMR, and much, much less long-term upside. I am more confident of the latter than I am of the former, so I'm not playing it.

Well you are correct, it is much more then just a crypto-currency.  All of their code is public and on the table, not sure how they compare to a proprietary company such as Apple?  Check out those links I posted a few replies back, this software is quite fascinating once you wrap your brain around the potential use cases.

Not being bias here as I am invested in many crypto currencies, just want to keep the record straight on certain interesting ones!

Being decentralized means at least the byzantine generals problem is solved, i cant see how DPOS does this.

But it doesn´t really matter because i don´t see Bitshares as a cryptocurrency anyway, its simply a startup/company like apple and facebook.
And most IT Companies are overvalued anyway, so i have no interest in "investing" there.

The question becomes what is decentralized "enough?"

DPOS is far more decentralized compared with BTC pools as it also provides a way for everyday users to vote in or out the current 101 delegates.  Misbehave and the user base will notice, thus vote you out asap.

Is that really what we want? I doubt it.

Variations of POS are just one piece of the puzzle on securing the blockchain while also adding functionality.  DPOS for example with its fast confirmations will allow for the upcoming asset exchange.


Start here to read the background on DPOS:
http://wiki.bitshares.org/index.php/DPOS

Continue here to read about the security and simplicity of sending to names instead of addresses:
http://wiki.bitshares.org/index.php/TITAN

Listen to this episode from a few weeks back:
Let's talk Bitcoin! episode 129.  Starts around 12 minute mark with the lead dev Dan.  Great listen.
http://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/lets-talk-bitcoin-129-dogeparty-and-delegated-proof-of-stake

Which leads to the asset exchange:
http://wiki.bitshares.org/index.php/Bitshares_X

Finally finish up with this to really get you thinking about where bitcoin ideology will go:
http://bitshares.org/overstock-to-cryptostock/


With all the above were just scratching the surface of possibilities.

How many of your transactions would benefit from being made public records?  I think only payment for titled property.  Everything else is better kept private.  There is at least one medical practice in New York accepting XMR today, even at this early stage.

Maintaining privacy is very challenging today.  Because XMR makes it much easier to protect your privacy, that makes XMR much more valuable.  

Privacy is a fundamental human right and any political actor who opposes it immediately identifies himself as a fascist abuser, an enemy of liberty and of the people.

The masses gladly sacrifice privacy for trinkets, and perhaps XMR is not for the gumchewers watching Kardashians or Duck Dynasty - whatever the flavor of the moment may be, but that does not impose a meaningful ceiling on value or liquidity: They are the majority who can't raise usd400 in an emergency according to a recent poll.  They just don't exist monetarily.

PoW without any single entity mining more than 10% would be quite secure.

The problem with ghash.iocoin is that they can increase their hash power at anytime by just selling more GHS to a pretty liquid market (200 BTC last 24hrs). to my knowledge no other pool has access to such easy capital. So it is nervous for people to realize that by compromising just one private enterprise, bitcoin can get jeopardized. Since all of crypto is based on BTC, this is a disaster scenario for everyone!

I am no deep thinker on the PoW, PoS, DPos, PoXYZ matter. It is just common sense that if a small number of people can control a coin, well, it isnt very decentralized anymore. Maybe that matters, maybe it doesnt. It is what it is. Dangerous.

I hope that the community can level the playing field as to raising capital for other mining pools. The NXT Asset Exchange has several mining assets and they are reasonably popular, but the total capitalization of them is less than one day's volume of GHS. I know ghash.io promises to stay under 40%, but http://bitcoinchain.com/pools shows the top 5 pools control 70% of blocks.

So, ignoring the power usage issue, the danger of this concentration endangers all of crypto.

Now, I have no aspirations of anything replacing bitcoin anytime soon. Anybody that thinks that any altcoin will do this before this decade is over, is quite unrealistic and it could take quite a lot longer than this. The network effect is way too strong. For example, how long has Microsoft Windows had such large marketshare? I dont think I need to say anymore on this point. Bitcoin is here to stay, so it is in everybody's interest to make bitcoin as safe as possible.

With the impending legislative and regulatory attack on bitcoin, it is quite clear to me that if something isnt done to make some form of electronic cash out of crypto soon, the world will lose the ability to make cash transactions. This would be a disaster of unthinkable proportions to human freedom. Imagine if every purchase you make has to be approved by some govt official! Control the money, you control the people. Cash is no longer "legal tender for all debts public or private", in fact you cant use cash for a lot of things, especially any large purchases. Everyone is forced to use the fully trackable credit cards and with bitcoin a transparent protocol, according to senate hearing testimony by govt officials, it is quite a danger to us all.

This is why I am working so hard on some new tech that will allow bitcoin to go dark. I feel the world is at a crossroads and feel urgent need to recreate something that can be used as cash in today's world. Now I know my pedigree coming from the NXT world is probably making many dismiss me, but its worse! I only discovered crypto last November and of all things it was ripple. I didnt even know what bitcoin was last october. So, it took me a while to get up to speed, but I think I have done a decent job.

I am soon to release a Teleport beta release, but it is only myself coding and I want to make sure it is not having any bugs and of sound design. After seeing all the thoughtful posts here, I think that maybe there is a skilled C programmer here that would like to help. I write all the code from scratch, though I make liberal use of existing libraries like nacl, libtom, libuv, libwebsockets, etc. Also, my method for Teleport is not based on any new untested math, but more a wholistic approach to create a system for privacy. There are some weakspots, especially with the entry and exit to the system, but I feel that with proper precautions, these can be managed. But these are the things that need a critical review!

To clarify, the BTCD teleport will teleport any other supported coin and the coin interfacing code is based on multigateway.org codebase, so any bitcoin fork is easily supported. Others would not take long to add. The more teleport transactions, the larger the anon set, so privacy level scales along with network size. We will be offering free teleporting of other coins for a while. community is debating on 3 months to one year of free teleporting and the security of the transactions is based on the security of each coin's blockchain, so it wont be like entrusting BTC tx on BTCD network.

Now, I am too busy coding (and I am no academic) to make anything approaching a scholar whitepaper, so I only have a DarkPaper http://209.126.70.170/DarkPaper.pdf written so the common person can pretty much understand things, my posts in the BTCD thread and the source code: https://github.com/jl777/libjl777
It is still very much a work in progress and I am embarassed for some messy code, but I hope for understanding and cooperation. The BTCD community is so new and small, and the NXT community is all Java guys, so I have come here to ask for help.

Is there a C programmer who can do a code review to ensure that Teleport is indeed secure? I am able to pay a reasonable fee (in any currency), if this is an issue

James

What I am seeing is that a large proportion of well renowned experts in Crypto are starting to talk about PoW being a failure and that there must be another way. The Bitshares people, James from Nxt and BitcoinDark, Vitalik and even your idea suggests the future lay in PoS in some form.

The only people supporting PoW at the moment with large credibility are the Bitcoin core developers.

Anyone care to explain if things like dPoS are really the future, or is PoW still the most secure way to run a decentralized network?

Bitfinex

Everything you need to know is in the OP ..

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/xcxcurrency-decentralised-trustless-privacy-platform-encrypted-xchat-pos-630547

Well presented, dev has credentials, delivering on their timeline .. 

Triff ..

What's the deal with XC? I hear a lot about it, but is it all hot air?

Anyone have a rundown on it?

In an utopic world, yes.
But if you are attacked, you are at war, it's not like you can have a choice.

Here is the coinmarketcap.com list of crypto-currencies sorted by 24-transaction volume. There is certainly no surprise that bitcoin and litecoin have the first two places. It is interesting that BitsharesX and BitcoinDark have rallied this week when others were weaker.  Supply figures with an asterisk indicate that the coin cannot be mined, i.e. not proof-of-work. Interesting too, how many of these are ranking higher this month.

welcome to the club, smoothie! we could certainly use your skills putting down the anti-monero trolls here. LOL

please feel free to join the Monero Community Hall of Fame and support the devs! https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/monero-community-hall-of-fame-700400

Good post. Perhaps I am still disregarding the blockchain-technology based ventures, based on my prejudice that they are not functional as "coins", that is value storage and transfer. In this market the network effects will ensure that not many can prosper, and I believe that BTC and XMR are the winners. Lazy as I am, still waiting for you to promote the non-coin startups so that I might be convinced  

The app coins such as Storj, Maidsafe, Ethereum, etc. are definitely a big new phenomenon (new if you ignore NMC I guess) and somewhat distinct from either the transparent block chain or anonymous block chain niches. They're certainly controversial and I have no idea whether they are viable long term, but worth a closer look perhaps.

Why do you think supporting more than two coins is less credible? Isn't it rational to assume different probabilities for different coins growing in market share over time? And that some of them might easily be a profitable investment over time? That seems to me like someone saying I'm only going to hold GOOG and APPL and nothing else.

Even if you believe that the probability of BTC and XMR reaching sky high market caps is extremely high, and much higher than any other currency, what makes you think it's an all or nothing situation? Right now we can see an extremely varied market with all sorts of new technologies covering different niches and different markets. Storj wants to replace Dropbox, Bitshares wants to service the business sector, and many more.

I'm not saying that any of these new currencies are necessarily going to succeed and gain 100mm+ market caps, but it's certainly possible and the probability is more than 0% I would think. All I'm saying is that as an investor why limit your portfolio?

Monero to me appears to be a good alt to mine or purchase.

Its anonymous features do set it apart from other cryptocurrencies along with its clean slate.

Not sure how it will fit into any main stream type of usage given how it can be essentially untraceable in terms of who sent what to whom etc in any transaction. Please correct me here if I have not seen an outcome where it could be accepted in a main stream sense.

If it purely operates as a black market currency then perhaps it has its niche. Again please correct me here if I am not seeing this correctly from a regulatory standpoint and and economic standpoint.

Full Disclosure: I've bought some for myself. Not selling anytime soon (if at all).