Topic: Why I chose not to invest in SpectreCoin (XSPEC) now - page 5. (Read 2225 times)

Yes I have read the thread. It looks legit.

That is the negativity I meant. Look, Xspec and Xmr have almost the same circulation and there is a reason now why Xspec is $1, not $5, not $350.

If the developer pulls an exit scam it is worth $0

If he is just a poser who promised too much initially, but works it out later on, there is a massive opportunity.

Do you think jbg is a criminal? That it the question you need to answer. 

Take a read of this thread before being so sure
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/proof-that-xspec-is-a-scam-3055715

After that come back and tell us why you feel xspec has a chance.

This thread alone should be enough but due to the fact people are so faithful I had to put one up showing the work done over a year and some of the lies told.
If people still promote after all of this it sums up one thing, you hold xspec and have an agenda.

Isn't this funny. 

A lot of negativity about XSPEC. A lot of truth in the negative posts, but ponder this:

It is a clone of a 2 year old coin, but that was never denied by the makers. 2 years is relatively new, there are much older coins and they cost more than XSPEC.

Yes, XSPEC is not as mature and not as good as XMR. But XMR costs $350, XSpEC only 1$. This 350 fold difference in price, represents the risk and the opportunity.

So I believe that, if XSPEC developer(s) get their act together there is a 100x+ opporunity in this coin. Of course it could be an outright scam, but you see:

almost every coin when it was young, could have been a scam. You could never invest in BTC, ETH or XMR when they were worth 1$, each of these looked like a fragile baby or a possible scam at the time...

@gunner833

Hi,

thank you for your research on the XSPEC.

More interesting to me is the your attitude of investment and your background.

I'd also like to invest to the long-term and potentially project.

Do you have some recommended ones?

That's the problem of crypto coins!

Most of them (at least over 99%) are just ash.

Get smart and conquer your greediness.

It was interesting reading this review. I'm a member of the spectrecoin community and i have nothing but praise for everyone in it.Every coin at some point will get FUD directed at it, its up to you if you choose to believe it. You only need to spend a little time on spectrecoin discord channel to see the work and effort that goes into delivering spectrecoin. At present JBG and Bryce are working on this project as well as the community. There is a community fund raiser happening soon and the money that is raised will go towards adding extra devs, website/social media and marketing. To this date the devs have always delivered what was promised and that is all that matters to me.

3 days to go and we will see who is right.

Glad I could help to shed some light.

But, again always in my opinion, I don't think this is a problem of being content of jbg work or not, this is about if he is lying to the whole community or not. And in order to check this the actions are very simple:

1- Ask him to put 1.4 code public (promised but not done in almost a month),
2- If you are forming a council, ask him to show 2.0 code to the council, so you can actually see Bryce work.

Bear in mind that commit history can be manipulated, so I would pay attention if he is buying time, like he is doing with 1.4.

1 could clear some doubts (if the work done matches June/February commit gaps), 2 will clear most of them (if there are commmits from Bryce in the period Sept/Feb justify another developer working full time), as long as the council is not colluded and can evaluate the work done.

I don't know if it has been brought up here, but jbg suggested that perhaps the team form a "council" and we can apply the wallet donations to a multi-sig wallet controlled by the council.  We are the process of forming this Council at the moment.  That way a few of the community members will be in control of the funds and their release to him.  He proposed that if we are not content with the work that he is doing then we could opt to dismiss him and use the funds to hire a new developer.  The team will keep you updated on this and any other advancements that we make in the process of alleviating the existing uncertainty.  Again, thank you for your concern.  You've provided the less tech savvy of us with a necessary direction in this area.   

It's definitely is


Thank you for your good piece of advice. I checked: saw a picture of a credit card on the homepage, and then closed the browser tab.

LOL, this forum is the the jungle.

Have you guys checked out Retainly? Cute ICO with an MVP, and a nice bounty, to boot

Thanks for taking the time to reply HippiePyro. I am going to respond to a few points.


Sorry to point out that this is another promise to add to the list. As far as I know, this hasn't happen yet, after almost a month. In the meanwhile his donation pocket is growing. People in this community need to start distinguish between what he has promised and what he has actually done.


No one gave me a description, all what I wrote is from my personal experience.


Yes, we are running in circle, not for long though. In a week we should see the result of around 6 months of development (the gap of commits which everyone can see in github, which I mentioned multiple times.). Let's see. My bet, just to have fun: it will not be in time, pick from these excuses: "dev done, we are testing", "oh we need to fix a $random_bug_you_cannot_prove found during testing", "now we are packaging", "oh there is an unforeseen problem", "bitcoin tests are difficult to integrate", "Bryce has been kidnapped", etc...


Unfortunately this turned out to be worse. I have proofs of him saying he has 25 years of experience, which is not exaggerating anymore, but it's lying. This concern has been also passed to other senior members of the community, can say the names if needed, but no one said a word to the community.


This is under everyone eyes: another broken promise. Nothing of what it's written above has happened in almost a month. I am still waiting for 1.4 to be made public. After almost a month!
And "with v1.4 it was just out of a desire to not have people trying to run unfinished code." is just another excuse, since he has made a lot of public commits during December (the only active month he had in 9 months), and he wasn't worried at that point. Why? No sense. Also why on Earth someone would try to build from a separate branch other than master?! Again, no sense. And also no one did try that, there was only someone trying to build from master, but never from a separate public branch.


We'll see on this one, but again: it takes 2 seconds to make 1.4 public in a separate branch! Promised but never done.


This made me laugh Bryce (if he actually exists, I doubt it) has just made a simple library update, with a few breaking change fixes between OpenSSL 1.0 and 1.1. My personal estimate for that work: a day or so, max 2. You don't need to be a "cryptographer" to do a library update, and anyone could have done that PR, jbg too (guess what my bet is... ). Actually a cryptographer usually is much more theoretical than practical. Anyway after this change Bryce went back in the shadows.


What he says here on his company might be true, I still have my doubts he's full-time on XSPEC, where has he been the last month? Almost disappeared.


This is correct. Even though working as part-time developer is debatable, as he says that only because he integrated an online payment to his POS system of his bar. Also from my research, he's never been a software developer in a company, but he was more into system administration. He also created a couple of IT companies, always around system administration / hosting, which are all closed now. Good entrepreneurial spirit though.


I re-inforce my point:
In my opinion there is the need of proving that a guy who has been proven lying to people about his development experience, is really a full time developer on the project, with also another "cryptographer". At the moment there is hardly any proof of 2 developers working full-time, and I am backing my assumption with quite a lot of facts here.

Time will tell (but after almost a month it's already telling a few things!). But remember: in the meanwhile he's getting donations for doing almost nothing. And people blinded by their investment will keep giving him donations until Q2, that of course will be the end of Q2, that then will be delayed and... you know the story already.

If I was you, I would ask every single day "why 1.4 code hasn't been pushed in a public github branch yet".

On behalf of the SPECTRECOIN team (but mostly myself as I'm not asking their permission to speak on their behalf and am simply assuming from our previous deliberations  ) I would like to encourage ALL community members from attacking Gunner for positing very valid concerns.   Gunner is not conducting themselves in an unreasonable manner and if you believe in the project there is no reason to be aggressive in the face of a perceived adversity.  It does nothing for the community or  for the project.  Instead I would encourage people to delve into the concerns if you are concerned and if you're not then disregard the issues that Gunner has posted here.  But as an investor I think these would be things you SHOULD be concerned about and do your due diligence to alleviate those concerns.  Currently jbg is working on the 1.4 release and hasn't been AS available for questioning, but it's been all of our experience that he WILL answer questions.  Remember, we are not a football team (American or REAL football) and though though there is nothing wrong with rallying behind an idea, IMO energies would be better spent contributing to the project itself directly  and not e-thugging on message boards.   

@Gunner, though this post poses a threat to the project by possibly inhibiting its spread, it would be negligent of us to not address these things internally so that they won't be a problem in the public so we will.  We aren't perfect and we don't have the capital to pay a team.  Our efforts are community based and, though our pool is growing along with talent, we are still working on ironing kinks so that new kinks have a place to rise... because that's how this works.  A never-ending skein of kinks.  Thank you for bringing this to the attention of the community and the team.  We are, and will be, working on these issues with jbg.  I'm going to apologize in advance as we will probably not accomplish tasks with any expected expediency, but we are trying. 

Below are the responses that jbg gave to the community the day of the OP, point by point. The only concern jbg did not respond to in his public slack post was that he alone controls donations and could run off with them. He did address this issue a few days later by suggesting the concept of a community council to control the funds with a multisig wallet. This potential idea is currently being developed, and various options how it would function are being investigated. Jbg has always done right by everyone within the Spectrecoin community. It's true his methods are not “typical” by most standards, but Spectrecoin is not a “typical” project. I have always been satisfied with his work. He has never shown any of the illusions of grandeur or desires of greed that are implied by the OP. I don't think you were given an accurate description of jbg's persona.
Gunner, I appreciate your research and thoughts on the work done thus far, and for not revealing his identity. It is true the commits have not been on the new GitHub, hardly a broken promise, just the usual for our dev. But updates keep coming. I can't say I agree with your conclusion.  I'm not a coder but I have seen the results of his work since I joined the community and compared the older versions to each new one. There have definitely been improvements with both performance, appearance and functionality, with each version. Nothing ground breaking, just what was promised. I don't know what more you can ask of a dev. You are right though, we are simply running in circles here. You said your concerns and he had addressed them. Only time will tell who was correct. 

RESPONSE TO DISINGENUITY ABOUT EXPERIENCE:

It was suggested that I had a bit more experience than I really do:

This is the most true thing in the post. I've never said anything about my age (at least as far as I remember), but I've said I have 20 years’ experience. In reality, if you actually go back through my CV, I've only been working on software development since about 15 years ago, of which 2-3 of those years were spent part-time and the rest full-time. I rounded up (which is hardly rare), but I shouldn't have, and I won't be claiming 20 years any more. I'm sorry that a casual exaggeration from me has led to this shitstorm!

RESPONSE TO QUALITY OF DEVELOPER WORK:


It was suggested I have not made "structural" changes to XSPEC's codebase but rather UI changes and library upgrades and there is not as much activity on GitHub as it would be expected:

I've made some pretty significant changes since I joined the project, and there isn't really a definition of a "structural change", so this is quite hard to respond to. He could basically make this claim regardless of what changes I had made. As we've said before, the development work for v1.4 and v2.0 has mostly been happening directly between Bryce and me rather than on GitHub. With v2.0 it's because we want to keep stealth staking under wraps until it's ready, and with v1.4 it was just out of a desire to not have people trying to run unfinished code.

However, after talking to @Gunners (the author of the BCT post) and having other people express a desire to see the development happening out in public more, I decided to make some changes on GitHub so that the contributions could be seen more clearly, and talked to @brycel about how we could be more transparent with development. We decided to move to a model where we make pull requests to each other and review each other’s' code in public, so that people can see progress. Ironically, this action seems to have been the trigger for his BCT post!



RESPONSE TO RECENT GITHUB ACTIVITY AND OPENSSL MIGRATION:

It was suggested that going ahead with the GitHub repo move would mean that if we did do private commits during Sept to Dec last year, we would probably not be able prove this anymore:

Actually, we took pains to preserve the repository history, and when v1.4 things and v2.0 things are merged in, the history/dates of the commits should be preserved.

It was suggested that if there really had been some work done by two full-time developers since June last year I would at least see some public commits from them both:

He is presumably not aware that Bryce didn't join until September last year. And the "see some public commits from them both" is addressed in the second response above.

Bryce's first pull request was a "library change" (migrating to OpenSSL 1.1) rather than a "structural change”:

That meaningless phrase "structural change" again... Bryce was the most qualified to make this change. Not only does he know OpenSSL through and through, but the change touches parts of the code that deal with important cryptography, which he is most qualified to ensure remains correct. He wanted to move us to OpenSSL 1.1 ever since he started, and he finally did it. I don't see the problem.

RESPONSE TO DEVELOPER ANONYMITY:

The author of the BCT was able to find out my identity and, supposedly, where I live:

Sadly, yes, he was able to find out my real name.
This was due to a misconfiguration on GitHub that has been rectified. I don't think he actually knows where I live based on his statements in the post.



RESPONSE TO PROJECT COMMITMENT CONCERNS:

It was suggested that I am running another ecommerce company on my own, that is a web application:

I am supposedly running an "commerce company" alongside XSPEC (and therefore not devoting full-time work to XSPEC) The only other thing I have is a hobby web service, completely automated, with about 7 customers. I spend maybe 1-2 hours a month on it. Calling it an "ecommerce company" is flattering but a total misrepresentation. I work full-time on XSPEC.

RESPONSE TO PRIOR BUSINESS DEALINGS:

I ran a hospitality business years ago, for a few years. I kept working part-time on software development. The hospitality business didn't go well (I'm much better at software), and ended up owing a bunch of tax. The business was wound up, the bar sold to pay the tax debt, and the rest of the tax debt written off. I don't think more detail than that is warranted.

It's nice to hear that I escape a rational argument where I did my research and posted a detailed report. You're only saying "jbg delivers" and don't say why or what.

For example you could post here any change on the ShadowCash core logic (what I was referring as structural change in my original post) here made by jbg since June. But you know, this will require you time, since you'll need to go through his commits (don't worry, there are not many ). A hint: you can find this information already in my original post (again... read it...).

This gives you another fact: jbg has been talking on chat about thinking of implementing several features (RingCT, bulletproof, merging bitcoin core, cold staking, stealth staking, HD wallet ... basically everything he has been asked he answers "we are thinking about it" lol) when he has never done one before. He just using ShadowCash, a 2 years old coin. Nothing wrong with this, but someone needs to tell me how someone could expect he can implement anything in the core logic, when he has never done anything in the last 9 months. Everyone, including you, is saying "jbg delivers", but there are just not proofs of that (apart, again, of simple UI changes and library updates).

You are the one escaping a rational argument here

By the way I love these discussions, it's a nice psychological and dialectical exercise to talk to people who are blinded by their investments, so please go on with your arguments.

It's not FUD. Xspec just another coin in the staking coin flood, it's obvious you're going to shill it if you bought a lot o it.

The truth is... there are so many better coins out there that you don't want to buy one whose sole function is to siphon funds.

Ok, buddy. Whatever you say. Since your only objective for you to have created your account seems to be to spread FUD about a coin, and since holding a rational argument on this topic escapes you, I leave you to it. Time will anyway reveal who is right or wrong.

(PS and just FYI, as a software engineer, I can make a distinction between a small patch and a material change. Can you?)

What a shill

I am sorry to say that we are running in circle here. If you read my original post, I am not only using the number of commits as metric. There is a detailed description of what have been done. And my conclusion is that, within the timeframe June/Feb, it is not much. I have been through ALL jbg's commits on the project. Have you? Can you distinguish between a noticeable change and a quick patch or a library upgrade?

You are probably too invested and cannot reason objectively, and that's understandable.