Bitcoin Forum

The Case against Solidcoin:

Greetings Meta,

I come here to present various reasons Solidcoin representation should be removed and no longer tolerated on bitcointalk.org.

SC 1.0 was a cryptocurrency launched by CoinHunter on Aug 20th.  It was primarily based on Bitcoin, with just a few variable tweaks: 3m blocks, 32 coins per block, and a 30k premine for bounties. Just a few weeks after launch, a flaw was discovered in SC 1.0 which caused CoinHunter to shut down the chain.  There was no discussion about the idea, and only a ~5hr window of warning given to people.  To those who didn't want to change, they were threatened with being taken off the SC 1.0 website, even though many of those people had supported SC from the beginning.

On October 10th, SC 2.0 launched. Here is how 2.0 is different from 1.0:

Centralized: It's not peer<->peer, it's peer -> supernode -> peer.

Premine: The premine was announced to be 1m inorder to compensate SC 1.0 coin holders.  After launch it was later revealed to infact contain 13m+ premined coins. 12m+ were given to 10 anonymous people.

Tax:  Each block is 'taxed', and the tax is sent to CoinHunter.

Closed Source:  SC 2.0 is closed source -and- using the Oracle Berkeley DB, which means CoinHunter is promoting and distributing pirated software on bitcointalk.

Arbitrary enforcement:  Yesterday CoinHunter announced he could and would arbitrarily change the block reward from 32 to 5.

Voided Coins:  Since 2.0 is centralized, CoinHunter allegedly has the ability to void ones coins. (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=49859.msg593817#msg593817). CH has taken it a step further to purposefully -void- legitimately mined coins because he didn't like the guy who mined them.

FUD: Find out about SC on bitcointalk?  Here is a taste of what you'll find on their website: (http://solidcoin.info/solidcoin-ready-for-bitcoin-collapse.php)

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Because 2.0 is closed source, the only way anyone knows how 2.0 works is from what CoinHutner says, and apparently it's subject to change at any time. I believe the above is enough to warrant a discussion on whether or not SC representation should further be tolerated on bitcointalk.org, and what steps CoinHunter would need to take for SC to continue being promoted on bitcointalk.org. Also, I believe there may be sufficient reason to open a scammer investigation on CoinHunter for allegedly 'stealing' electricity to support his *coin by nullifying legitimately mined coins.

From the looks of it, SC 2.0 isn't designed to be a 'cryptocurrency', it's designed for the sole purpose of making CoinHunter and his closest friends richer off the backs of the naive, and as such has no place here.

Thoughts?

close the shit. ban him.

Id like solidcoin remove from the alt currency section its ruining the idea of innovation ideas and talk on real ideas.

Remove it.  The concept of cryptocurrency is based on three pillars.
1) No need for a trusted third party
2) Peer to peer
3) Decentralized

From Satoshi original paper



ScamCoin requires implicit trust in a single semi-anonymous person, it isn't peer to peer and is completely centralized.


The code is closed source so the full capabilities of the person(s) in control of the network are unknown but so far we know a single person can:
* revoke previously generated coins (and corrupt wallets in the process)
* deny properly signed blocks
* change generation rate at will
* force any change to clients he wishes (and clients which don't update are blocked by trusted nodes)
* halt the network, kill it, reboot it

It is damaging for Bitcoin and other crypto-currencies based on Satoshi theory/paper to be associated with a centrally controlled scam.

What is next?  Is Paypal going to be considered a crypto-currency?  eGold?  Flooz?

Removing a specific topic seems to be against the general philosophy of bitcointalk. It wouldn't reflect well too. Let it be.

I am curious to see the ruling come out for how crypto currencies will be defined.  Otherwise, as long as people know it is not decentralized and is closed source, buyer beware.

So if Paypal employees came here writing articles on how Paypal is a superior form of cryptocurrency, spreading misinformation, and duping users that would be ok too?  What about eGold? Or other dubious centralized payment systems?

Paypal and e-Gold are/were dubious centralized payment systems? What will you call bitcoin? A dubious decentralized payment system?

I just mean that it's a more general topic than SolidCoin. Bitcointalk is tolerating all kinds of views, even if they are deceptive. At one point, misinformation and FUD posts about Bitcoin were more abundant than actual Bitcoin talk, and they were not suppressed. I think Paypal can come here and try to dupe users as much as they like (up to the limit of being an obvious scam). Or else, Bitcointalk should become a more controlled environment. It's about consistency, otherwise (if you apply this specifically for SC) it would be perceived as if Bitcoin supporters were attacking alt chains, which is not the case.

Yes, I see the fine line that's being walked here, and I think discussion and points you raise are great.  However SC may be an active 'scam' with the nullification of legitimate coins.  Scammers are allowed to post but are given the appropriate 'scammer' label. I am unsure what the policy is of continued scamming by the same person/entity, and how the mods deal with it.

EDIT: For example, the casascius dot net scam that popped up yesterday.  If the .net (the scam one) had threads inviting people to come try out the scam website, I would like to think the mods would intervene.

If not an actual scam SolidCoin is so close it makes no difference. In its current incarnation its centrally controlled and badly designed. Solidcoin.info is full of outright lies. The only developer isn't capable of handling a complex project single handed and has introduced countless bugs and issues caused by a badly thought though design. SolidCoin also appears to be using Oracle's Berkeley database in violation of it's license. Did I mention it also has a mining tax paid to the developer as well as a massive premine?

If the mods are happy to let promotion of this project on their forums the very least they can do is add a scam warning thread, sticky it, and lock it so anyone who looks at alt currencies will get a clear warning about SolidCoin.


EDIT: I should also have mentioned the use of what appear to be sockpuppet accounts by CoinHunter ( The SolidCoin author ). The users Ten98 and viperjbm comment on every SolidCoin thread often in strict alternation. Their comments are often vague nonsense aimed at nothing more than derailing any SolidCoin discussion.

Keep it. I read bitcointalk because it is the best uncensored news source available.

As a software professional I want to know all the news and all the rumours about all good and all bad projects. SHA-256-coin SCRYPT-coin ROT-13-coin, I want to read about all of them.

If some pro- or against- people give you moderators trouble then give them a week timeout to cool down.

But please don't get themselves involved into the censorship games.

Thank you for keeping this board open to all ideas, good and bad. Keep up the good work. If you start need to offer ads, please do so, I don't have any ad-blockers. Grow your site's traffic and business. Good luck.

Great points about censorship, and good ideas and bad ideas can and should be promoted openly to build upon - that's how we get better at things.

However, SC 2.0 is closed source with no documentation save for one guys word - so there is little to 'build' upon as one can only guess as to whats going on inside. The further question I have is the disabling of valid coins from a centralized level.  One person specifically invalidating another persons coins... I don't see how that isn't a scam, but I'm open for discussion about that aspect.

https://i.imgur.com/q5qbl.png

https://i.imgur.com/Neh3p.png

These should be big red warning flags.

Edit: I'm not super clear about laws, but I'm pretty sure printing a currency and stating your intent is to subvert governments and 'take over the world' is frowned upon, legally.

Can we at least get the sockpuppet accounts ten98 and viperjbm banned and block any other accounts from their ip(s)?

That alone would clear up a great deal of the trolling on alt-currencies.

I wholeheartedly support this decision.

Bitcoin does not need Solidcoin, and Solidcoin does not need Bitcoin. The "bitcoin" threads on the solidcoin forums is full of anti-bitcoin sentiment, just as the "solidcoin" threads here are full of anti-solidcoin sentiment. Maintaining this is impossible, and I believe that the two currencies - run by different ideals, different technology, and different user base should do whatever possible to avoid each other. It is an undeniable fact that the existance of solidcoin in these fora have negatively contributed to the quality of discussion. In fact, I would even go so far as to censor all alternate currencies from this board.

No bitcoin supporters-in-waiting need to know about its competitors.

IMHO the best bet is to just move it from "alternate cryptocurrencies" to "off-topic". I don't think we should ban/scamtag suspected socks unless an admin confirms identical IPs, like checkuser on Wikipedia. I just don't want to see some epic conflict that the media would portray as infighting.

This is reversing what was done previously. Solidcoin was moved from Off-Topic to Alt Cryptocurrencies.

Ok, so let's reverse what was done previously and move it back. It's not a cryptocurrency. It's a Paypal-like online payment system.

It is a currency, it uses cryptography to secure it. How is it not a cryptocurrency?

SolidCoin does use encryption but so does Paypal, which has a SSL website for security. Linden dollars likely use SSL too. So does all internet banking and on-line share trading. You have to draw the line somewhere.

SolidCoin fails as a currency because it will never be trustworthy enough to use as medium of exchange. A single man maintains god like powers over the entire SolidCoin network. The author can freeze the whole network at will, alter block rewards, lockout certain addresses, and likely perform many other manipulations. Surely a currency has to be a stable container of value for it to be any use. This same man trolls this forum posting outrageous lies about BitCoin and insane claims about SolidCoin in order to hook more people into his scam.

Exactly. If you use a lose enough definition ("crypto" = useless token encryption) then SC doesn't fail on the "crypto" part but it still fails on the "currency" part.

Okay,

Now it appears that the 12m+ premine that CoinHunter and his followers chanted 'Not spendable' are now very much spendable.


Really, how many more bait-and-switches does RS have to promote on these forums until the forum mods here deal with it?

Technically and someone correct me if I am wrong but at least in the US failure to at least to attempt to enforce ones copyright/patent/trademark can be grounds for it to be nullified.  If you allow your property to be treated as public domain then the courts can deem it in the public domain.

Sue goes to the Marketplace forums, and says 'I have a 5850 for sale. It's brand new with an aftermarket heat-sink included.  Send me 150 BTC and it's yours.

People then weigh take variables into account before they invest.  They weigh their long-term electric cost, initial cost, they are able to weigh how much a 5850 and an aftermarket heatsink are worth to them, before they spend their money.

Now Sue sends instead a 5770 with no heat-sink at all. Though a 5770 is still technically a graphics card, what was received is not what was advertised.   Or what if the card was broken?  Or what if Sue left out the heatsink?  Further, what if any of those things happened and it was proven that Sue had prior knowledge? Or what if Sue used the defense she made a 'decision' she thought was best for you, without your input?  Sue would be labeled a scammer for accepting peoples investment and changing the terms of the sale after the fact.

CoinHunter goes to the Cryptocurrency forums, and says 'I have an investment opportunity.  If you invest X money (based on your hardware cost), you'll receive Y (coin reward) over Z period (time it takes to find a block), according to N parameters (design of SC). People then weigh all those variables into account before they invest.

Coinhunter has adjusted and concealed many variables people must weigh in order to make a proper investment. Further, CoinHunter has lied about his own 'earnings', to a tune of holding a whopping ~85% of the current coin supply. Coinhunter has changed the Y reward and N parameters directly, after initial investment was made. The investment made by those people, whether it be through buying on an exchange or contributing hashes to the blockchain, were done under the guise of A terms, but coinhunter executed the investment under B terms, of which B terms are directly beneficial to Coinhunter and directly detrimental to the investor.

Lets take TerryTibbs case.  He sold X-long Spotify accounts, which lasted only X-N. Since the investment advertised was not the investment received, Terrytibbs was labeled a scammer.

I do not see how this is any different than what Coinhunter is trying to pull off.

This is beside the Oracle DB licenses
This is beside the Bitcoin MIT licenses

In genuine sincere honesty, I'm at a loss of what else the mods would need in order to take action.

Anyone here left thinking RS has bribed the mods with tons of SC ;D ??? The rabbit hole goes even deeper ... :P

No, I don't think it's that, it's just that SC isn't a 'traditional' scam. I don't think most of the mods frequent the AltCurrency board, and without informing them (here) of all the red flags, they simply wouldn't know.

Still one has to admit a fact. The amount of PR that SC gets from this forum with BCX and all the others is just phenomenal. RS might as well be paying the forum for advertising SC at this point in time. Flame on folks ! You fail to realise that by talking about SC you are actually giving it more momentum :P

While I'm aware of the Streisand Effect, I would hope the intended effect would be akin to yelling 'fire' when indeed there actually is a fire and people need to be warned.  How the mods decide to put out the fire is up to them.  At this point, I can see no other way to communicate this is an actual fire that needs the mods attention.

bulanula has a point; I would probably have forgotten about SolidCoin altogether if it wasn't for BitcoinEXpress threads. "Yelling 'fire'" can be confined to responding claims of SC publicists without any ill effects.

I completely agree, however this requires users to moderate documented users who issue and promote fraudulent investments.  There is already a forum function in place to warn people who may not be aware or have 'kept up' with a particular users prior fraudulent investments.  When you have users moderating users, it ends up with a lot of noise.  This is why I'm petitioning for a moderators intervention.

Edit: Imagine a Marketplace forum where there were no 'scammer' labels.

I don't agree that it was scamming. Lying is not scamming. He didn't make a contract with users, and users voluntarily ran closed-source software that could be centrally controlled.

I'm not trying to split hairs here, but I'm trying to fit that into TerryTibbs case, or any other 'scam' case. Though lying is not scamming, it's critical to scamming, when the lie is to the detriment of the investor and to the gain of the scammer.  If TerryTibbs Spotify Accounts instead were X+N in length, he wouldn't have received the 'scammer' label.

I genuienly don't understand how lying in this case isn't a scam.

Even though I may not understand it, I guess if it's the stance that what CH is doing is not an actual 'scam', then I guess that's that.

While I understand the AltChain subforum isn't of critical importance to the strength of Bitcoin, I sincerely wish the moderaters would in the future perhaps change their stance, and help the forum users not get lured into shady dealings, even if they don't take place on the market board.

Gavin does have a warning sticky in alt currencies.

It's not the forum's job to protect users from dangerous people/services/ideas. You need to use your own brain. (I was initially opposed to the idea of responding in any way to scammers. I only created the scammer tag because it seemed that almost everyone expected scammers to be banned once identified, which caused otherwise-reasonable people to stop using their brains in some cases.)

I absolutely support a removal of anything SC related from here.   It has no place here at all.

I'm not super tech minded, so I can only gather what everyone says and filter through it. I think we've already covered license infringements, not-a-cryptocurrency (it's a cryptocurrency just as much as PayPal is), bait-and-switch investments... I'm not sure what else to say really.

I guess is this is kinda sketchy territory to set precedents, and don't want to jump the gun. Or it could simply be ideological, that they simply see it from a different perspective.

But the only thing I could do was raise awareness, and of which I take it they've read through what's been provided by myself and others. theymos is right, there is clear disclaimer stickied by Gavin, but I (and others) believe that SC, for many reasons provided, is an anomaly which requires further mod action. They're intelligent people and can weigh the evidence for themselves, and though I may disagree... it's not my forum.

Edit: Unless of course theymos has other questions concerning SC, of which I'm sure there are people that can answer.  Unless he says otherwise, I'll interpret the silence as to be a dead issue.