Bitcoin Forum

...or at least says so on his boombust blog:

The Future of Money is Here: BoomBust Zero Trust Digital Currency Contracts (http://boombustblog.com/blog/item/9188-the-future-of-money-is-here-boombust-zero-trust-digital-currency-contracts)


he then goes on to explain that in more detail (haven't read yet). I've read the post, not much substance so far.

What the hell is he up to?
Could this really be something big?
Who's helping him?

Or is he only fishing for subscribers?

Did you read it? Can you sum it up? How is it supposed to work?

I don't even now what exactly a swap is.

My guess would be that it's a client application for a centralized exchange. But, the way he describes it, it's hard to know for sure.

Well, he says "zero trust". That's what got me interested. He's talking about "boombust" (his firm?) contracts in the text. This sounds like there's still some centralization and/or third party risk.

Just read the text, doesn't really explain (to me) how this is supposed to work technically. How are the parties brought together, how is the contract established / settled / whatever?

This is essentially a gambling platform because at no point does any currency exchange take place.

I open a wager (contract) that essentially boils down to "USD will go UP", at the end of the contract the USD price will be taken from somewhere and then the contract settled. If I bet correctly I get more BTC than I staked. If I bet wrong, I get less. I would assume the zero trust comes from the fact it's automated and that both parties would be putting some stake up which is then automatically settled. However there needs to be a currency price feed source for the system to be able to settle.

Of course in the financial world it's not called gambling, it's contract derivatives.

We'll  have to keep an eye open for this one.

This is good to see.  Middleton has ranked highly on my list of the pool of people who do the rounds on the fringe interview circuit (e.g., Keiser's show.)  He has always struck me as being quite observant and not an orthodox thinker.

Whatever Reggie has got cooking could be big I think.  Some of the things which could be built on a solid distributed crypto-currency foundation with an eye toward reducing counter-party risk* are pretty mind blowing.  I'll be watching this as well, and hoping that Bitcoin remains a platform which is reliable for this purpose.  That is, the globally distributed blockchain and transaction network is not spammed with 1x10^9 morning coffee expenditures and, relatedly, appropriated by entities who have the ability to operate an ever increasingly expensive and technical set of infrastructure.

* More important to people who went through Jon Corzine's MF Global debacle/scam.  That reminds me to check.  Nope, the guy is not in jail yet.  Surprise, surprise.

sounds big. bitcoin will not only challenge credit cards and wu. decentralized trust is an earthquake and not a small one.

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/images/stories/large/2011/01/20/vandenberg_rocket_delta4_divh_nrol49_r2.jpg

You think you might've just explained what derivatives are.

I wish Middleton would explain technically how he wants to pull this off with "zero trust". Then I'll get excited.

I could imagine something with smart contracts (https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Contracts#Example_4:_Using_external_state) that are automatically settled based on external data like EUR/USD rate or whatever. But I don't think the Bitcoin Network is ready for that feature at this point.

 no whitepaper.

 no theory.

 no history of publication.

 trying to attract attention.

who would buy these products?

 -bm

Noone's buying anything. He's letting us know about his development (albeit not with enough detail to be able to even judge what it's all about).

if he isn't supplying any detail, how is this anything but spam?

In that case: what an idiot. But we'll see.

historians that study the dotcom bubble "new economy" of the beginning of the millenium might come to the conclusion that the euphoria back then was unsustained because a technology like the bitcoin protocol was not available.

now we are talking about "new economy" for real. 

Good point. The .COM bubble is a great example of how new emerging technology is picked up and blown out of all proportion. Bitcoin will be no different.

bitcoin .... because this time it really is different .... lol

That's pretty much Wall Street in a nutshell - gambling with other people's money.

The worst part is the people involved think they are financial geniuses - masters of the universe - instead of welfare queens.

They lobbied for changes to tax laws to create the 401k, then when this caused trillions of dollars to flow into, and bid up the price of, equities they interpreted this as evidence that stock traders were financial gods.

It was just the demographic realities of the baby boom coming into their peak earning years though, as well as the tax code shovelling a bunch of money into the markets that otherwise would have been used for something else.

Then on the occasions when your bets don't work out, a primary dealer can just borrow unlimited dollars into existence from the federal reserve, or get laws changed to work in your favour at everybody else's expense. Or just get bailed out by taxpayers.

It's all a huge scam, which makes the inflated egos of traders particularly comical.

I noticed something... made an experiment (started about 4 weeks or so ago): Usually my goal when trading was to increase the the amount of BTC I hold. I was doing so-so.

The experiment was to split off a small amount of funds, swap them for USD and try to increase my USD balance.

Guess what: I feel like a fucking genius trader now because I'm finally succeeding in increasing my balance substantially. Obviously this is very easy to pull off with an asset that is constantly increasing in value. Even bad mistakes are easily forgiven over time. Even using a coin flip to decide wether to buy or sell will certainly net you an increasing USD balance over time. Or let a bunch of monkeys make the decisions, it'll work.

You'd have to compare to holding in a constantly rising market or coin-flipping to judge your own success.

Yeah, our brains are particularly bad at recognizing confirmation and selection biases.

Combine that with success being addictive (dopamine rush) and now you understand why so much money changes hands in Las Vegas.

http://vimeo.com/4590203

BBB has made some solid calls in the past, so I think that given his track record of publishing financial info early and sometimes against the crowd (FB, Ireland, Apple, Google etc) this deserves a chance. Obviously subscribers get early access and this is partly a ploy to attract them, but don't be so quick to shoot it down.

Yes -- Reggie does his homework.  I'm thrilled to see him see Bitcoin's potential, and possibly take Bitcoin further in ways other's haven't yet done.

Yeah but Reggie is more likely a con artist than anything.

And you're more likely to be a < unsubstantiated attribute > too. Man, these forums have gone downhill.

At least Reggie isn't asking you to send your BTC to an "exodus address" so he can split it up with his "board members" and control the peg of his contracts with a flawed escrow scheme.

But you lap THAT up, because - OMG whitepaper.

Just truly an exercise in crowd psychology, isn't it? Programmer == shining hero, Wall Street Analyst == evil incarnate (With zero proof, of course.)

Reggie started rising money for this project:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1099845630/1908258569?token=96e15a8c (https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1099845630/1908258569?token=96e15a8c)

Looks more and more real to me.
I'll keep my eyes one it. I'd like to see it becomming reality.

actually I think kickstarter banned the project so he is crowdfunding it through the ultra coin website.

@reggiemiddleton UltraCoin: The Future of Money! was rejected by Kickstarter so I configured it to compete against them@2/3rds price 

http://ultra-coin.com/index.php/fund/crowdfunding/21-software-developement/1-ultracoin-the-future-of-money

So if I understand correctly: Essentially users are making bets against one another (or more accurately, entering into zero trust financial contracts). If I bet that the price of BTC will fall against the dollar, I have effectively hedged into USD because at the time that the contract expires, I get back the same USD amount in BTC as I had when I entered into the contract, i.e. if price drops I get back more coins whereas if it climbs I get back less. This means that you never have to actually trade BTC for USD or whatever else you might want to gain exposure to, and yet you are still able to hedge the value of your coins against, well, anything.

I really hope this works.

i want a CALL with a bitcoin strike price of 500.  BRING IT!!!

 counterparty protocoll will be updated on friday allowing derivatives

protocoll is still buggy but running

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=395761.0

Reggie Middleton posts a lot of articles on ZeroHedge.  From what I can tell most of the stuff he posts is either way over my head or nonsense; I haven't figured out which yet.  :D His target market/audience is the doomers/preppers/anti-gov/goldbug scene.

Lately he's jumped on the crypto currency bandwagon. It seems like he's developed his own alt-coin called UltraCoin.  He pitches it alongside with Bitcoin trying to drum up support for it at ZH.

A lot of the ZH'ers are NOT buying it.  There's a lot of Ponzi/Tulipbulb/Beanie-Baby/NSA-Invented-It talk over there.

+1 and to the point.

I've been aware of Reggie's 'work' for many years, and it mainly consists of trifling ideas wrapped in many layers of hype.

I don't know anything about this particular project of his, but I remain incredulous until he presents details.

Bottom dollar bet: it's something that's been discussed ad nauseam on this forum.

How do you come to the conclusion that it's gambling? It can just as easily be called investing, hedging, speculation... Or if this is gambling then buying BTC directly in exchange for fiat is gambling as well, no?

With a wide open, public and relatively successful track record, what in the world would possess you to say such a thing? Care to put some facts behind your opinion? I don't take kindly to those who attempt to unduly tarnish my reputation.
Here are some facts to back up the statements. For those who don't know me, here are some recent calls and my Wikipedia page:
http://www.boombustblog.com/reggie-in-the-news
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reggie_Middleton
http://www.boombustblog.com/blog/item/6222-deconstructing-the-most-accurate-apple-analysis-ever-made-share-price-market-share-strategy-and-all

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-JQt9Jpw7w

This is the type of financial acumen that I'm bringing to Bitcoin derivatives, see http://ultra-coin.com/index.php/fund/discover/21-software-developement/1-ultracoin-the-future-of-money. I've been lurking in the shadows of these bitcoin forums for a while and I've been meaning to correct you and your friend, but never got around to it until now.

For the record, the client will be given away for free to all to use, it will not be sold. I'm here to answer questions, or better yet serious questions  can be posted on the Ultra-coin.com site where I will be sure to get them.

Reggie, I don't know whom you were quoting from the 'con artist' claim; I'd like to dissociate myself from such a claim, since I do not think you are a con artist. However, I do have serious reservations about your claims, especially since the quality of your work is so often hidden behind the extremely one-sided nature of your hype and self-promotion.

For starters, how are Ultra Coin contracts enforceable? What are the various ways one may renege on a contract, or even abuse the system outright, and how does Ultra Coin mitigate such risks? Segue that with the zero-trust/centralization conflict.

In what way is Ultra Coin dependent upon you personally and the company behind Ultra Coin? Similarly, how is your company—and thus Ultra Coin—dependent upon the financial/monetary laws of the jurisdiction in which it is domiciled?

Would you contrast the differences between Ultra Coin and other Bitcoin derivatives like MasterCoin or the Ripple system, and how Ultra Coin is superior? I frankly invite developers and VCs to make something better than the derivatives that currently populate the BTC ecosystem.

Inevitably, you'll also have to explain in greater detail the technical side of Ultra Coin, which may be a question best posed to your programmers.

Lastly, is Ultra Coin open source?

I could go on, but I'm sure you understand where I'm going with my line of questioning. More questions later, perhaps.
Thank you. I appreciate your candor. 

The major difference between Reggie's system and Disastercoin/MSC is that Reggie knows what he's doing, has a track record, and isn't trying to game the blockchain and its miners.

Good job Reggie, glad to see a real competitor step up and take the lead from the squabbling coder-fiefdoms present on these forums.

Zerocoin?

will never understand why people ponder endlessly what others might be up to instead of getting into action for themselves. get into multisig transactions and start to rule the world. it's going to be fun. and never forget transactions can also make sense a lot of time to be offline, too ...

so is anyone testing this out?

The people who say they have tried it, say it works well enough. They say the UI could be improved, and more liquidity needs to be in play, but generally, the concept seems sound. Seems a cool way to use bitcoin, to expose yourself to stocks/commodities/forex, in a trustless way. 

  http://veritaseum.com/