Bitcoin Forum

Peoples,

I'm getting tired of all the scams on here of the so called "developers" of crypto-currencies, duping people into investing with fancy artwork and blurby (but ambiguous) text.  

It gives ALL of the serious developers in this forum a bad rep, yet its a typical case of the few spoiling it for the many.....actually, it probably isn't, there are WAY more scammy developers that couldn't even put a "Hello World" together without a tutorial than real ones...hmmm.....anyway.

Of course, you investors are partly to blame as you seem to let the fear of missing the next big thing warp your logic to make it emotional.  PLEASE do some due diligence into the developers that you are planning to invest into.  Fake developers are easy to spot if you know what to look for, as are real ones.

Before I get to the topic heading subject matter, here are some tips for telling the difference between serious & fake developers:

1)  Any developer that wants to stay anonymous, RUN!  Gone are the days where this was acceptable, because back then, there was no money to be made ripping people off, so anonymous developers were not a threat

2)  Verify the developers credentials, don't just take his word for it.  A passport picture with the signature and numbers blurred out, and a 2nd/3rd or even 4th picture of that same person doing something crypto related should also be provided.  If the developer is willing, other proof should be provided, it doesn't have to be addresses where they live (unless they are willing to go that far), but a Linked-In account that is aged, or Facebook, even Twitter...can all provide credence to that persons identity.

3)  Voice/Video call them over Skype, or a few of you band together and one of you call them.  An honest developer won't mind, a crooked one will, as they wont have the time to think up lies for your questions, and listening to someones voice can give a lot of tell tale signals as to if they are lying.  Video call is even better, as you'll have a visual and audio queue for any tell tale signs of lying.

4)  Check into their background.  Almost any developer that is skilled enough to develop a crypto-currency (even a BTC code clone with new features) will have done something in the past that has been released and they can prove they worked on.  Ask about previous projects, papers, hell even activity on developer related forums will give you some idea if they know what they are on about.

5)  Developers releasing a new currency should be dedicated, as creating and launching one successfully is akin to starting a business, its hard work and requires 100% dedication to the project.  If they are always unavailable, or on holiday, or "ill", then they probably aren't that dedicated to the cause.  Remember though, some of these real devs also have day jobs & families, so many can't be online daily 24/7...but if its weeks between updates, even on their own forums, leave.

6)  Infrastructure.  Any serious developer would have a website, forum, email etc etc setup for the project they are working on.  No real developer, that was proud of what they were doing would run a project from here with a 1000 page thread.  That is insane and shows either lack of commitment, or just pure disorganization.  Real developers will want a home for that project, and will want to have a community..they will NOT run it from Bitcoin talk!  ::)

7)  Finally, and this is my fun call out to our developers here.  Any developer worth his salt, especially developing a P2P distributed system like a crypto currency will have gear, and probably quite a good stack of it.  Someone developing a crypto on an solitary old laptop isn't going to cut it.  Real developers will invest into hardware to get the job done before they even ask for any investment, and most likely will have collected plenty of gear over the years from previous projects they have done in the past.  At the very least, they'll probably have a laptop & a desktop in their arsenal.  If your developer is coding on a single Asus Netbook, I'd probably walk away.

So developers, please post your development setups for all to be awed at and prove your worth in regard to point 7 of my "don't get scammed tips".  If you are so hardcore as to have so much stuff you need multiple pictures, please post it.

Whoever has a setup better than this from Swordfish gets a prize :)

http://d3c0d3r.files.wordpress.com/2009/12/swordfish02.jpg

I've been working on a possible scorecard, just for sh*ts and giggles:

http://minkiz.co/posting/


Cheers

Graham

@gjhiggins

I had a look at your 'scorecard'..
OK if it's for giggles it's cool..
If it is meant to be reasons of making a serious developer legitimate I would immediately remove the Open Source row..

If indeed all Dan's points above are fulfilled - then a serious investor would not have to question if it is Open Source or not. The mere public credentials of that developer would be solid enough to TRUST that developer.

If a developer dedicates several years of his life to a project he believes in and he want to make it into a good and solid business for everyone to benefit from in an honest and ethical correct fashion, then of course he need to keep his source/codes to himself, until that day when everyone knows it is HIS project.
Then and only then can he start thinking about how much of the source he can safely disclose to the public, and still be in charge of his business..

It is not for bad reasons an honest developer does not want to disclose his coding in public, it is fear of losing his lifework!
Give him time - show him you trust his brilliant work - then he will show you trust.
There are still honest business people on this planet. Dan is one of them I can guarantee you!

can one of you peasants tell me the definition of "scam" and how this definition applies to an ICO?

IMO the thread linked to below says it all, together with the screenshot of the OP (recently modified by the "dev").

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=746191.0



http://s22.postimg.org/m7rs43pj5/image.png

1. Yes, yes, yes!
2. All easily faked, unfortunately.
3. Yes. While a lot of people lie, most will usually wilt under scrutiny. Unless they are pathological liars or psychopaths.
4. Helpful, but inconclusive.
5. Yes.
6. Ooh, this stings! "No real developer, that was proud of what they were doing would run a project from here with a 1000 page thread"
7. You didn't number it, so I am having trouble responding.



Graham, I saw your response to a new member requesting for help on wallet nodes a few days ago.
You took the time to write a lengthy response to him. I thought that was really nice of you.
Was browsing from a phone at the time, so I couldn't commend your gesture then (typing with my thumbs tend to make English sound like Swahili).

Everyone should have a good look at github.com/jl777/btcd (http://github.com/jl777/btcd)

SuperNET is the future of cryptocurrencies.

yup, im glad not too many people invested in nxt's ipo when my one btc turned into around 2,000 btc, would of hurt my own gains. everyone please listen to biggus dickus.

Nevertheless, how many bitcoins did EQX IPO investors make? I'm not saying all IPOs are scams, but the EQX one obviously was. Are you telling us it was a great idea to invest in the EQX IPO, or that all IPOs will make you a fortune?

How did you manage to invest in the NXT IPO considering you registered on October 26, 2014? The NXT IPO was in 2013.

Good tips from the OP.

The OP has been around a long time and even has a fundraiser or two while try make a new platform and speaks from experience.

I'm glad because you dont know that you're allowed to make more than 1 bitcointalk account, and that my oldest was made in 2011. Phew.

You are apparently oblivious to your implicit assumption that an honest dev is also, apparently by magic, a capable dev. Open Source isn't about the dev's integrity, it's about being able to ascertain the correctness of the implementation. No-one of consequence gives a monkey's fart about whether the dev is as straight as a die or as crooked as a corkscrew, it's all about whether the code does the job it's supposed to.

That's risibly simplistic, you are clearly unaware of the nonsensical nature of your argument. You need to address your profound unfamiliarity with the domain of FOSS licencing, only then will you be in a position to mount a coherent argument. I suggest you start with the wikipedia entry for FOSS (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/FOSS).

I presume you are referring to Dan Metcalfe. I've no idea why you chose to introduce that irrelevance but I regret to advise you that you've strayed well out of your depth and that has led you to make unforced errors:

1. I'll thank you not to insult my intelligence by offering me a vacuous guarantee that you patently have no means of securing.

2. Your choice of offensively patronising tone is unfortunate, it lends a keen irony to the fact that you have just embarrassed yourself, assuming you have any such sensibility. Earlier today I submitted a PR containing several fixes to the BlockNet code that had apparently slipped atcsecure's notice: https://github.com/atcsecure/blocknet/pull/2.

3. I'll leave you to reconcile the above fact with your claim of brilliance.

We can continue this discussion after you've acquired some basic factual knowledge about FOSS principles and practice.

Cheers

Graham

And jl777 is making the very P2P system that the original OP spoke of and it will be a core feature of Vericoin.

Are you prepared to prove that by posting here from your oldest account you say was made in 2011? As you say you're allowed to make more than 1 bitcointalk account, so there is nothing stopping you.

The original NXT IPO thread is here.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=303898.0

It gives this IPO address

https://blockchain.info/address/1BCN1ugdKdWd9pQ8Am9hMhtHZfmbXzxE8a

Only about 8 people invested a whole bitcoin, and nobody invested more than one. If you don't want to post here from your oldest bitcointalk account, perhaps you could sign a message from the bitcoin address you say you used for the NXT IPO. That would prove you were one of the eight people to invest a whole bitcoin into the NXT IPO.

I'm glad to know that I'm one of those eight people, which one, idk.

No one with half a brain would take this talk by you even half serious after you pulled the old tried and tested (a billion times before) someone stole my bitcoin scam.

http://makeameme.org/media/created/are-you-directing.jpg

 ::)

Jog on troll! No billy goats on the bridge for you today.

AFAIK he didn't close up shop and refuse to make any refunds afterwards, but the exact opposite...

And to the OP, most of this stuff is common sense (although I don't get the tone or the point of 7), but there aren't many people with common sense on bctalk. As an outside observer of the bitcoin and altcoin economy, it makes a lot of sense if you viewed the whole thing as a pyramid scheme from the beginning. I think Satoshi set a very bad precedent, and he also knew it. Instead of uniting a community, it is totally fractured based on greed.

Thanks for that!

Yeah common sense indeed, but cant hurt to say it again!  Point 7 is meant to just be a bit of fun, and allow people to get a glimpse of what true developers use everyday.

Its not just fractured on greed but egos & arrogance too, if only we could get back to the early BTC days where everyone had a more common goal....but alas, times passed and lost :(

I completely and absolutely disagree.

Satoshi created a revolutionary currency model  - if you call that a "bad precedent", perhaps you're on the wrong side of the wall.
There was no "community" before Satoshi - he built the community based on a generational leap in socioeconomics theory and cryptographic utility.
As far as "fracturing" the community, Satoshi made his position quite clear during the early days with BitDNS (the precursor to Namecoin).


The advent and, subsequently, abuse and corruption of alternative cryptocurrencies is a byproduct of capitalism, human greed and the apathy of the forum administrators.

Good tips from eMunie founder, now when are you going to release your coin. My hair is turning grey, I don't think I have much time left  >:(

Dont buy coins from devs from second and third world countries, chances are 80% more likely a scam

It's not revolutionary, it copies gold with a highly accelerated timescale and the inability to cope at all with demand. The concept and the structures realized in code - absolutely brilliant, no question. The monetary system - barf.


A community that has a few thousand people that will rabidly support bitcoin to the ends of the Earth and are unwilling to even discuss alternative systems without foaming, a few thousand more that are trying to engender their own rabid fanbase, and a bunch of people that are taken for a ride. Meh.

if a coin has no premine, is opensource and no ito - i dont really care who the developer is... if he wants to stay anon he can...

i dont think any coin can claim it has a developer: its the majority of its users who decides. if another developer makes a change to the coin and the community likes it more is it suddenly his coin?

a coin - when released - only belong to the community and not an entity

Yes and thats the way this scam played out (you know its been done more then a few times here already?), make you seem or innocent and such, oh but I paid back any investor that wanted their funds back  ::), but it wasn't those investors you where scamming now was it (well atleast not yet)? but a scam none the less.

Those you really stole from don't know it....well yet  ???

You're little vaporware cult group maybe believes your bullshit, many other see right through it, most just cbf calling you out on it.

+1

I have exchange conversation with coinsource Dev and he will make it more strict for these scammers to come back with their ponzi scheme.

1). Skype video chat

2) 2-4 ID proof and show them during video chat

3) Everyone in Dev team needs to provide those proof and needs to be on video chat.

More proof from Dev outside USA

- Above are few things I've recommended and those will be done for all future Devs.

Even though he did hurt lot of investors and he will get punished sooner or later. It has taught everyone their lesson and everyone will think twice before putting money on new dev and overall it'll make crypto more safer for new/old investors. I've also recommended them to create crowdfunding for any help they need with capital for making it more strict for devs.

*YAWN*  Make sure you have your apology ready for the new year, as soon after I'll be calling you out on it. 

Oh wait, you'll be one of those guys that are too yellow to actually have some decency and respect to offer an apology when you are proven wrong, and will probably instead decide to go and slump in the shadows and pretend you never said anything....

Its guys like you that have turned decent, smart people away from this site...all mouth and opinion, but never produce anything, even if it failed, it wouldn't matter, at least you tried.  But no, much easier to sit there fapping away calling everyone else out.....sad.

How in any single word is your reply anything to do with defending the FACT that you stole your own bitcoins? Classic change the topic and spin it on the messenger.

When its ready, as I've been saying for the past 6 months.  I wanna do it right, because I believe what we have is good enough to compete with anything head on that is currently in the works.

Whether I'm right about that, well, different matter, who knows! :D

I think it's past your bedtime, you're having trouble thinking....if I stole my own BTC, they wouldn't be stolen would they!  ::)

You tell me how on earth I prove I don't have something in my possession and I'll gladly do it.  But as far as I'm aware, that is impossible to do.

+1 keep up the good work, even thou all your ideas have been stolen already.

Now ain't that the beauty of the scam, and the irony is its pulled off almost exclusively by those on the forum who are the most experts in securing bitcoin  ???

You though you really can't let go of attack the person angle can you, got to sneak that into every reply, that's a sign of arguing on the internets too much.

Pot finally meets Kettle!  So accusing me of being a scammer isn't an attack on my person?

I've just had a browse through your post history, seems you are the first to call scam on anything and everything, and you've never had a single good word to say about me or the project. 

So on that note, in the troll box you go and ignored  8)

1. A consensus-based unregulated digital currency that exists independent of the existing fiat currency system sans traditional gatekeepers, and as I've said earlier, based on a generational leap in socioeconomics theory and cryptographic utility - you barf at this as if even a remotely similar, competing technology exists before? Your have a strange definition of revolutionary.

2. "inability to cope at all with demand"
Please elaborate. I''m curious to see which end you'll be leaning towards. It would be good if this doesn't veer towards your own crypto.

3. I realize your earlier account was banned, which would explain your intense dislike of the Bitcoin community as a whole. However, it doesn't change the fact that said community exists because of Satoshi. You originally accused Satoshi of "fracturing" the community, oblivious to the fact that he created the community and said "fracture" occurred long after he's left the scene. The fact that you keep returning here to promote your crypto shows you too want to leverage the knowledge/wealth of the community. Am I wrong?

Further, I noticed you missed the third part of my quote. I'll just repost it to keep the discussion in perspective.

Fyi, I'm excited to see how you will substantiate your rather extreme positions.

Thanks :)  And they haven't actually, there is still a few left that not even Mrs.Fuserleer knows about :)  (also kudos points for actually being one of the few that recognize that a lot of the stuff out there atm was originally my idea!)

Doesn't matter anyway, they are all spread around different currencies, most implemented badly IMO.  Nothing is the complete package, or is slick enough to pull in enough momentum to topple BTC, or even LTC for that matter.

However, what with Mr.Bridge Lurker and us, this threads getting off topic, its not about eMunie or my alleged criminal activities :)

rugrats, I'm not going to devolve way off topic with you. I was speaking to Fuserleer as someone who I know recognizes the same thing. I'm done arguing about bitcoin with fanatics, I spent about 2 years doing it already, feel free to look at the posting history of etlase2 (save the scammer that used it to scam someone recently after the purchase of it). My account being banned has nothing to do with it. I didn't miss the third part of your quote, it isn't relevant so I ignored it.

I think IX's point is that demand is not constant and can move up or down.  BTC has a constant supply generation that cant react to, nor cares about demand.  If you have a moving demand, but the supply is fixed, then it's down to the other variable in the equation to take up the difference, which is price.

That is similar in parallel to Gold, except we know the supply parameters of BTC, we don't with Gold.  The end result is the same though, no real control over supply of Gold just as with BTC, so the price is the only variable that can move.

Another similarity with BTC & Gold, is that while there is not control over supply, both can be bought and hoarded en mass leading to a bubble, and nothing can be done about it.

The above was one of the main reasons I decided to develop eMunie as opposed to doing something with BTC (plus the fact that the economic model is based on the medieval theory of "Value By Labour")

From a technical standpoint Bitcoin is genius.  As a tool to kickstart to decentralization of wealth, its genius.  From an economic standpoint, it sucks.

Maybe we should add to this list the ability to handle conflict resolution effectively, you got lured in by the trolls with your Emunie project pretty easily until something that wasn't a big deal, became a big deal to people. I know you are on the up and up, drama follows you though.

I've no problem with courteous and respectful questions, no matter the subject.  Outright accusations and aggressive ego's I never have and never will stand for and parties taking such an approach will be met with the same attitude in retaliation.

I believe in treating others as you yourself would like to be treated, and I do until provoked.  If people can't or don't abide by the same, then I have no problem taking off gloves :)

Also, I'm used to drama, bad luck, short end of every stick all my life.....if I ever write an auto-bio, you should pick up a copy, it'll be entertaining hehe :)

As far as I am concerned, I am responding directly to your statements. And thanks for calling me a Bitcoin fanatic - I feel all warm inside.
I don't think I am going to scour through your post history just to find something that can substantiate your arguments.
Also, the third part of my quote is relevant because it counters your accusation of Satoshi fracturing the community.


Fuserleer, I must confess that Ix's dismissive attitude towards Satoshi, Bitcoin and the community as a whole was what prompted me to engage him in the first place.

1. I've heard similar arguments before, and I was interested to see which direction he will take. Resolving the pressure of demand with inflation (creating new product units) diminishes both the real and perceived value of the product. I think we've all learned that from fiats, yes?

2. The single similarity doesn't really justify the "barf" remark. Bitcoin is revolutionary. It's a fact.

3. I think the same can be said of any product - unless someone has found a loophole in the law of supply and demand.

4. I take it you mean the labor theory of value? I am very interested to see how you've developed a currency model using ltv. I'll probably check it out.

5. I disagree. Bitcoin has lost one of its central tenets - decentralization, which has effectively crippled its wider adoption. However, Satoshi's entire model as a whole is still revolutionary, as was his code.

Heh I noticed, he's been here as long as me, and probably taken as much shit.  It wears you out :)

1.  True inflation does erode the real and perceived value, but so does allowing demand to be countered by wild price swings and bubbles, as then no one has a damn clue what it should be worth.  Ultimately that is the same thing, loss of faith, loss of value.

2.  Perhaps not, and I agree for the most part that it is indeed a revolutionary technology.  That doesn't mean though that it's got everything right, and something else isn't going to replace it that does a better overall job.  Look at almost any technological innovation in history, the first out the door is nearly ALWAYS succeeded by something else bigger, faster, better.

3.  There are no loopholes as such, but there are actions which you can take which cover the short term "bumps", yet allow the long term to pan out as the market commands.  This is something I'm working on and is one of the unique features of eMunie (damn, I knew this thread would keep spiraling here :( )

4.  Yes I am referring to the Karl Manx labor theory of value, and no I haven't developed a model that uses it as its inefficient and not required for what our crypto "movement" as a whole is trying to achieve.  I was stating that Bitcoin resembles very closes that theory, whether intended or not I do not know, but regardless it is a consequence of the POW used to secure the network.

5.  Agree also, it has lost it, but that wasn't the point I was trying to make.  It doesn't matter if it has lost that decentralized aspect or not, fact remains it kickstarted an entire industry which revolves around disruptive decentralized technology, so its still genius :)

Where in my post did you see 'patronising' ?
It is all simple facts of life.
You on the other hand are very patronising. And your onwards stream of 'expert facts' and 'I know better' has no relevance to what I am saying.
Oh as for your - you go demand that from successful closed source companies who are big business players today.

I'm talking about honesty and ethics. That is two of the basic cornerstones (obviously amongst others) of a good business. If someone can provide those two fundamentals into a business, then the rest of the business will grow with whatever talent you put into it.
Honesty and ethics are unfortunately rare commodities these days.

The rest of your post just tells me that you love to bash other people and come across as a 'master oracle', so I'm not going to engage you any further on that. I am no developer, coder, technician or anything like that, so I would never be able to satisfy an apparent 'oracle' like yourself. I have no desire to start studying stuff I don't need.

What I am though, is a human who knows who to trust and who not to trust. From your lecturing of me, you would fall into the last category. I would never trust a person with your attitude! So don't you 'Cheers' me ever again! Unless of course you realize you went too far in your bashing.

PS: have no idea of who that is..

No, you aren't, you are responding to what you think I said. You conflated my opinions on bitcoin the protocol/code and bitcoin the economic system even though I carefully separated them.
You also claimed that I said something like "satoshi fractured the community" which is definitely not what I said. I said he set a bad precedent - anonymous head of a pyramid scheme is what I was implying based on the prior sentence. I did not say that Satoshi fractured it, but that his precedent led to the inevitability of it.

If you say so (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=848208.msg9453464#msg9453464).

I misunderstood item 4. I thought you meant eMunie, when it was the other way around.  ;)

With your post history lol, ego to the point of several threats against this very forum (which btw the threads you make threats about still exist mr toughie), you come on to use to promote your scam.

Fuserleer is no scammer.
All those who says so, will be begging to join eMunie when it hits the streets.
War of words over eMunie here in BCT will be a distant memory soon.
You can take almost any thread in here  and they all end up with a few strong-minded persons arguing. Myself included btw :)

A fun thought I always have in any forum: I can argue and dislike someone in a forum, but if I ever met that someone in real life it may turn out that we could be best of friends because our charisma is in tune/sync :)

A few questions though:

If this indeed was/is a scam, then why

... does Dan still develop and push new betas to test?
... dosen't there exist posts saying they got scammed?
... does Dan reply to the bullsht and not just keep low?


Seems like an awful lot of trouble for the relatively few dollars invested into emunie compared to, say, Ethereum? - i mean, those guys got 18 million in bitcoin during their IPO and they have a contract that clears their back from actually delivering a fully functioning piece of code, let alone finish the product. Dan is doing 18-20 hr workdays and comes up with a lot of great ideas. The last one we are testing takes the blocktree-model and replaces it with a new way of thinking of the ledger. All in all, i hear it's kickass. It just dosen't make sense to put in so much work if you are going to run a scam??

Premine scores positively?

Hi Skywave, I have personal experience of Graham when he *IS* intending to "bash" someone and believe me when I say that he was being gentle with you. He was pointing you in the direction of information that would have better informed your early comment.


Yup, he does know better.

Er, no. It was very relevant to what you said.

It's not about point scoring, it's about maintaining the quality of the discussion.

Kind regards, Ngaio.

@Ngaio

'Being gentle with you" - so am I supposed to be grateful? Crawl back under your stone and be quiet.
I don't care one bit if 'graham' think of himself as being superiour to the rest!
I was pointing out some basic facts of life which has nothing to do with just crypto but everything to do with how to win over peoples trust.
He jumped on my back and for that - well - he deserves my disgust.
He is an insulting, lecturing, egoistic patronising prick as far as I am concerned. He can be oh so clever in what he is doing, but speak/write to people in a proper tone is not what he is clever at, and he does not win over people with that attitude.
Go ahead - claim that I speak bad myself, but let me remind you he brought it onto himself.
I am used to argue with people in a positive spirit - he brought negative spirits into it - so there you have it.

- you must be kidding!? who the heck took the quality out of the discussion? Not me for sure - go up and read what I wrote - it is absolutely relevant. He and now you took the quality out..!

I will monitor what 'Graham' and you comes up with of further insults - and then I will evaluate if it is worth it responding to.

It's a first cut, a work in progress. My main objective is to provoke thought and further questions (so, thank you); an aide-memoir presented with Minki's characteristic wry spin.

With respect to a big +10 for a premine: I'm attempting to acknowledge that IRL, ordinary, day-to-day coin logistics requires resourcing, somehow; DNS seed nodes don't pay for themselves per se, nor do nodes hosting block explorers.

The main issue with a premine is previous instances where an unscrupulous dev dumped the premine, trashing the price and effectively killing the coin. The risk of a repeat occurrence remains significant while devs are allowed to remain pseudonymous and I believe I can discern some small degree of hardening antipathy towards pseudonymity of devs.

As the consequences of this change of attitude begin to propagate across the domain, investors will gradually be able to regain some confidence that a specific premine will be responsibly curated because developers will be better able to demonstrate their integrity.

The recent “No, no I'm the EQX dev!" episode has nicely illustrated the profoundly human problem of verifying “personal identity” in the absence of (the usual) validating social context. It's an abstract concept, increasingly difficult to implement canonically IRL and impossible to achieve (with the same degree of confidence) in bitspace. Fortunately, with the intense interest in developing “trustless”  (a misnomer, I caution you) devices, we may be able to make some practical progress towards reducing the risks.

I'm not ignoring the other issue that seems to attend premines, the matter of the amount. Different brand development strategies have different costs, what might be seen as a ludicrously large premine for an unprepossessing “store of value” coin might be seriously underpowered for a coin with an ambition to grow a significant global reach. Assessment has to be performed on a case-by-case basis, hence a mild positive 10.

More generally, from an investor's perspective ...

At the moment, we (collectively) have no reliable means of decentralising control over the fin logistics resources necessary to maintain a coin and, until such a means appears, this de facto centralisation will continue to present practical problems.

The same is true for the management and control of nonfin central resources such as control over the website domain reg, possession of the coin-specific private keys and, importantly, the rights to the IP that emerge from the result of collective efforts of the dev(s) and the community of coin adopters.

These issues cannot safely be left just hanging in the wind - the Mooncoin dev has stopped responding and theymos' response to “can we take over the forum thread?” is that the thread ownership cannot be transferred, another thread must be started. Not a show-stopper admittedly (this time) but a change in URL will have a deleterious effect on communication between p2p participants and on previous promotional efforts after coin adoption that were rash enough to quote URLs for resources maintained by third parties.

The demands that arise from this militate the creation of a self-organised, community-based solution (such as a not-for-profit supporting “foundation”) to which can be ceded control of centralised issues that cannot yet be devolved to a decentralised, “trustless“ solution.

It's going to take time to achieve that transition and until then, I'm inviting assessors to challenge the “received wisdom” about premines and make their own informed assessment, taking into account the coin management's closely-argued, well-supported pitch.

Cheers

Graham

Dan open source the code so no one can accuse you of being a scammer. You got to be an idiot to think people aren't gonna accuse you of being a scammer, you have absolutely no code or technical papers to show.

Possible Ways to pull a scam of:

1. Who knows maybe your jar files could be malicious; snooping on other peoples computers, it makes sense.
2. Cash in on the big IPO. Your code is closed source so it could easily function as described but in a centralized manner.


People know who you are and will be after you if you turn out to be a scammer.


Ask this question:

Dan has revolutionized cryptocurrency technology or he is just a scammer?

Which one seems more likely hmmmmmmm.......


You got to actually show code and technical papers.

You seem to care so MUCH when people accuse you of scamming, that rings my alarm bells because it seems to be a very touchy subject for you. I also saw you donate some bitcoin publicly to someone in need on this forum, that is scam 101, make your self look like the nice guy.

No one should assume your not a scammer and no one should assume you are a scammer, they should only judge the project by the code end of story.

There are a number of times I have seen posts accusing a new closed source coin of being run by "just a server". Even if it's not a scam people will make accusations until it's open source.

Not to stir the pot too much, but when fuserleer did originally post how eMunie was going to work, I and a few others pointed out how his design did not solve double spending, and since then there has been a lot of flashy ideas (and over-broad claims of people stealing them left and right as an excuse to divulge no details), and essentially zero content. Programmers are hardly immune from being mild sociopaths (*cough* ANONYMINT *cough*), so as I recommended in the "is emunie a scam" thread - I don't believe it is a scam, but don't invest into a black box either.

I pick revolutionary :)


Accusing someone of being a scammer is fine, provided there is evidence.  There isn't any evidence, and as far I'm aware society at least likes to think it adopts an "innocent until proven guilty" mindset....the interwebs is a different story, but that is probably due to the fact that you are less likely to get a back handed slap and busted ribs accusing someone on the web as opposed to doing it face to face down the pub.


1.  Funny that in 18 months no single person has come with any accusation of that happening.
2.  Closed source doesn't mean centralized, there have been a number of betas (I'm sure you have been part of some) where all of my machines have been off, and the network has continued to function.


I will when I'm ready, it's ready and I'm confident all is in order, not when members of the community demand it or attempt to force a knee jerk reaction by aggravation.


Whats wrong with protecting my name against unfounded accusations, you and anyone else would do the same thing.

Also the donation, c'mon...if I wanted to look the nice guy I would of made a big song and dance about it and made sure everyone knew how awesome and cool I was......I never posted about that anywhere, and my only postings about it have been in the relevant threads.....straw clutching a bit there.


Correct....almost.....judge by the product, the execution & success of it, not just by the code.


I remember those discussions well, and most of which were constructive.  Those initial discussions soon turned to FUD, accusations and whatever else, and I quickly realized that BitcoinTalk is NOT the place to attempt to have intelligent, civil discussions about technical matters.  That doesn't mean there aren't discussions, or technical content shared around the community......it just isn't shared here :)

My question would be why are you back around these forums? Is eMunie getting ready to launch?

Q1 is planned, so no not quite yet.

The reason for occasionally visiting is political.  I wanted a sentiment update basically from the "wild west" on the project....I got what I expected :)

Oh I forgot to mention in the previous post....

Open source before you are ready is a bad thing....look at Ethereum, pipped to the post by Counterparty, then over the past week they have been running around in a flap assuring everybody that Ethereum will have stuff Counterparty doesn't, investors are safe etc etc.

How can that be, it is open source, so they can't guarantee to have anything that no one else has unless they develop those components as closed source until they are finished....*shakes head*

lol

Ok, tell you what I will do, next time you are interested, pm me and I will kick you in the balls and call it a day

haha ok, that would actually save me some time!

I dunno, your forum never seems to work so if there is any public discussion there I wouldn't know. Whatever gets cross-posted here seems all more of the same, a few images and wild claims, but no technical aspect. Considering the amount of development time you've put into the project, describing one extremely important aspect (double spending protection) in at least some technical detail would have seemed quite prudent by now. The few programmers capable of even copying such a high level idea are all working on their own projects anyway.

sorry i disagree

First in spirit I agree with you however you can talk to people all you want and it can mean nothing.

The code on github is what I personally look for.

I make my own evaluation of it, I make my own wallets, and I don't care what promises are made for the future.

If you are not able to evaluate code yourself or test it.....well than I guess these suggestions are better than nothing

However here are a few tips if you are not used to reading code to help you in this world of alt coins......

I see a lot of , is SELF MODERATED THRES......

I guess they don't want people saying anything negative......

Another thing to watch for is.........code vanishing from github !!  Then appearing later , maybe on a different repo !!

Leaving you wondering.....what changed in between??

Finally watch out for coin gen generated coins,  they keep changing stuff up but i notice a lot of them have the checkpoints.cpp disabled and the actual bitcoin checkpoints in there commented out and the genesis block is the same as bitcoin !!

Here is an example  (not picking on anyone here just pulling up the last sample I remember seeing of this a day ago)

This coin here has it's source on github..... https://github.com/OfficialTitcoin/titcoin-wallet

note the genesis block in the main.cpp file line 34 https://github.com/OfficialTitcoin/titcoin-wallet/blob/master/src/main.cpp#L34

is the same as bitcoin !!  (bitcoin source) chainparams.cpp line 152 https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/src/chainparams.cpp#L152

here is an example from the checkpoints.cpp file of the same coin gen coin with checkpoints commented out

see lines 31 to 55 of the suspect coin https://github.com/OfficialTitcoin/titcoin-wallet/blob/master/src/checkpoints.cpp

compare this to lines 56 to 67 of bitcoin , looks familiar !! of course since it is the same !! (just commented out of the alt coin)

https://github.com/bitcoin/bitcoin/blob/master/src/chainparams.cpp#L56



The code is the key --- on github from launch --- and able to be built (compiled) by others to verify the released wallets match it.

After a coin is up a few days/weeks an abe block explorer is handy to make 100% certain that there were no hidden coins.

(meaning that someone could release clean code on github and wallets with a hidden premine) which is pretty easy to hide if you know how......


I keep my identity private for good reason.  If that turns you off from any project I have worked on or launched I am sorry but that is me.

I think the code is the most important thing.  Recently I heard comments of Gavin say I did not care if I could trust Satoshi I cared if I could trust the code (not an exact quote just from my memory).

My real point is knowing someones identity , credentials, reputation ect... is no guarantee you won't get burned !!

My heart is with the person who started this thread.  I hate seeing people paying hundreds of bitcoin for ipo coins that drop 98% in value and the developers don't even vanish they just say 'sorry I'm working on it, or it did not work out"   I don't want to give examples here, you can look around for yourself...... They used real names (i guess) and really violated no law I am aware of unless someone could prove they planned it as a scam (conspiracy or theft by deception in the United States) pretty hard to prove......

I am not a fan of going to the cops either.  I think these people should be sorted out by the community. 

Finally I wrote an article a while back about scam coins , maybe someone here would find it of use.


https://cryptocointalk.com/topic/14773-how-to-avoid-scam-coins-and-why-proof-of-developer-is-not-the-answer