Bitcoin Forum

I dont know what i should be look for how do i know coin is scam? people cant do premine anymore so how are they trying to scam us now? It seem to me every coin is scam how can i avoid this?

I hope you're joking. A rough estimate I'd say, is that 99% of all coins that have had a premine, instamine, whatever, has been a scam in one way or the other. Ripple isn't a cryptocurrency, plus it's centralized. Please don't compare a payment gateway such as Ripple to Cryptocurrencies. Ripple's marketcap is also worthless, since the owners of ripple control 80% of the supply, meaning that the entire marketcap and subsequent price-per-ripple is practically controlled by the creators of Ripple labs.

"Users must ‘extend trust’ to the Ripple gateway that holds their deposit. This manual creation of a trustline indicates to the Ripple network that the user is comfortable with the gateway’s counterparty risk. Furthermore, the user must put a quantitative limit on this trust and create a similar limit for each currency on deposit at that gateway. For example, if a user deposits US$50 and BTC2.00 at The Rock Trading, the user will have to grant trust of at least that much in both currencies to the gateway for the monies to be available in the Ripple network. It is not recommended for a user to grant trust to other parties unless the user fully understands the ramifications" - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_%28payment_protocol%29

"Ripple runs on a network of servers that creates a ledger, which is a distributed database storing information about all Ripple accounts.The consensus process is distributed.[37] While users may assemble their own UNL nodes and have full control over which nodes they trust, Ripple Labs acknowledges that most people will use the default UNL supplied by their client "

Ok, I looked at your history and how you criticized Bitcoin's confirmation times(which provide security against double spend threats), you have no idea how cryptocurrencies work. Ripple is not decentralized the way Bitcoin is, it's not a "cryptocurrency", it's a payment gateway. Over 80% of ripples have been given to the "founders" of the ripple project.

If you don't know what you're talking about, please dont talk...or rather type.

They steal your Sweetcorn: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vdd4rBlsj2o

large marketcap is no indication that tis not a scam   ::)

The Rules of Spotting a Scam

1 - Look out for liars, cheaters and thieves.
2 - If it sounds ridiculous, it probably is.
3 - If someone is trying to convince you a non-physical representation of a physical asset is just as good as the REAL, PHYSICAL asset, RUN!
4 - If they say, "It's safer than a Swiss Bank account."
5 - If they claim to eliminate "counterparty risk" while at the same time exposing you to massive systematic risk.
6 - If the lead dev claims there is "No Pegging" when their whole platform is based on establishing central market pegs.
7 - Are they currently driving one or several red Ferraris?
8 - Does the coin have an animal mascot?
9 - Do the devs claim to be "Libertarians" while at the same time establishing an oppressive taxation scheme on the poor without giving them due and proper representation?
10 - Inflation?  (aka "Dilution Without Limit" hahaha)
11 - Are they Communists?
12 - Are they Corporatists?
13 - Do they claim to be "decentralized" while saying at the same time that they "are a company selling shares"?

This “thought experiment” is the best I can suggest at the moment:

https://minkiz.co/posting/

Notes:

1. On reflection, I'd give even greater weight to a full commit history, maybe as much as +1500 / -1500.

2, Looks like PoD has turned out to be a busted flush as it seems to provides no effective protection from bad actors.

Cheers

Graham

I might be motivated at some point to check the dimensions/weights by conducting a Repertory Grid (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Repertory_Grid) analysis for say, a dozen altcoins.

does not every coin have premine this is bad?

Premine not necessarily bad practice or indication of scam when used to cover costs of coin logistics (hosting dns seed nodes, etc).

Cheers

Graham

Nxt's distribution was to 73, to be exact, after two months of little to no interest (this is before the terms IPO/ICO etc existed in crypto). Curious to know how you came to the conclusion for the rest? What indicates to you that they are malicious?

Always look for 'scammy' things. Look too good to be true? Probably is. Poor English and no escrow for IPO? Most likely scam. No screenshots of 'super awesome innovative product'? Probably a money grab.

Just use your brain, and look out for sketchiness. Also, look through the thread and see what others have to say.

;)

Do you consider Satoshi a "large potentially malicious holder" within Bitcoin?

Satoshi owns about ~5% of all Bitcoins that will ever be. The largest Nxt holders were given 5% (1 BTC donation of the 21 BTC collected = ~5%) .

The only power either have in a POW or POS network is to dump the price.

Isn't this what you meant by "potentially malicious" or are you implying that someone with 5% of the stake can control Nxt's network if they chose to?

Not sure what this refers to and is an obvious statement but it didn't answer my question. Supply and demand have nothing to do with whether 5% of a supply can control a POS network. The highest amount stolen and dumped was about 8 million Nxt. I doubt many even notice it. There is no large stake stored anywhere to steal so I don't follow why you have any concern.


What makes you believe there is no trust in Proof-of-Stake and it is in the doghouse?

Very few dismiss the best implementations of POS outright anymore on BTT. If anything, trust is growing thanks to the work of groups like Consensus Research who have debunked BS such as the so called "Nothing at Stake attacks" and continue to research in further improvements to POS (for Nxt at least).

Consensus Research > https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=897488.0

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=897488.msg10152632#msg10152632

Tl:Dr - nothing to write home about. There have been 2 more papers since these results that are in the thread.


Define large. You still seem to imply you think 5% of a stake can damage a network, where are these large stakes in Nxt's POS that you fear so much?

Also:

Regardless, the problem of large mining pools threatening a proof-of-work network is not yet solved.

To be exact you should say 73 anonymous accounts on Bitcointalk. It is fair to say that 50 or more of those accounts belong to one and the same group who created nxt

There isn't any definitive way to substantiate this either way so it is a moot point. But, by the same logic, you must believe Bitcoin was mined by Satoshi's small group in the early days?

There is a fundamental difference

There isn't a fundamental difference.

1) Nxt has rolling decentralized checkpoints so the network won't accept any reorganisation of the blockchain deeper than 720 blocks, let alone the 350,000 blocks needed to carry out a history attack, as defined by Kushti.

2) When nxt was hacked from BTER, they cleared out the account. How much did they get at the height of its popularity?  50million or 5%. Nxters keep their nxt in their own accounts so they can use the asset exchange, digital goods store, encrypted messaging etc. And trading is moving to decentralized options like multigateway and instantdex. So where are the huge concentrations if Nxt that you fear?

I get the feeling I am being trolled in an attempt to promote your vapourware coin..  :-\

Hello, Wakie Wakie, how is life in dreamland?
Lets assume both cases are true. So the guys behind nxt had 95% of available coins for satoshi to archive the same % stake he must single mine all coins until now and for the next 100 years.
Fundamental difference alright.
https://i.imgur.com/1F3sL4r.jpg

How has difficulty changed in Bitcoins POW since 2009? How long would it take a small group to mine 1,000,000+++ bitcoins today? Is it possible for that group to achieve this on their ordinary home computers?

Wakey wakey. Any advantage early adopters of Nxt compared to today are valid for early adopters of bitcoin. But no one complains about the same issues in Bitcoin..

1) It is hard coded into the software not to accept blockchain re-orgs after 720 blocks. It is a simple as that. Once a block has 721 confirmations, it is set in stone.

If someone buys old keys that once controlled 90% of the stake, rebuilds a chain, then broadcast it, it will get rejected as it is asking all the nodes of the network to re-org 350,000+ blocks.

Usually next response is to fork from 719 blocks ago and "build a better chain". Details of how this is achieve are never described as (shown by Kushti's work), so called stake grinding/multi-branch forging tends towards POW as the number of branches grows exponentially in your search for a better chain. So no luck there either.

2) Large holders can cause mischief, but you have evaded every question asking for clarification of large. Nxt doesn't have any large enough holders to cause mischief, which you seem to tacitly agree to. Maybe you should switch your statements to "newly launched POS" where stakes are very concentrated?

1) Economic clustering is the solution to this. Vitalik calls this 'Weak Subjectivity'

2) I agree, new POS have a danger of being dumped to death. I guess you have adopted my suggested phrasing or more likely just continue to couch your answers in a veil of "all POS are equally bad" without actually stating it.


Seeing as you have no apparent desire to apply your general characterizations to Nxt in a direct discussion, I think we are done here.

Developers are one of the important things to me in any new coin that comes out. Keeping an eye on their GitHub repos to see if they're actually coding instead of just promoting is a good idea.

Why do you state commonly understood economic ideas as though they are a revelation? Nxt solution doesn't use security deposits, you sound like you are describing Nxt.

Again, raising undefined problems and undefined risk conditions. Along with generous servings of claims of an unlaunched coin you're promoting.

Why don't we having a specific discussion where each response is related to the questions and response of the previous post? Can Clotho-Hydro do that too?

More vagaries and cherry picking... I'll take that as a no then.

at this point I'm scared to check any new wallets

Beware of Increasingly Sophisticated Malware Infection Attempts
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=935898.0

-nothing unique
-cloned features
-substantial premine
-instamine
-newby dev account
-dumb devs who ask community for everything, i.e cant code or compile a wallet for that matter
-threads full of newbie accounts, all of them are dev.
-shit roadmaps which usually offer nothing new or nothing at all.
-ico, ico/ipo=shit

They can do premines of course they can there are loads out and continue to be released everyday, the way to notice a scam coin is just open up the alternative announcements they will soon come flooding  in, you are right to think that most are scam coins if they are not scam coins they are shit coins and will lose all value the minute the dev and his mining buddies start dumping. I have stayed away from them for quite awhile now after getting rapped up in a few that i got burned on.

Apparently anything I'm involved with is a big no-no

unfortunately there is a lot of alts where peoples lost time and money

at this point all new coins are scam coin. everyone is just want in and out for a quick bucks or get caught holding bag, simple as that. any promise and technology now is just nonsense, it don't work or already exist.

Listen to the guy for once he is not lying, anything that he is involved in is most definitely a crap coin at best but more than likely a scam as he was the first to mine it while others are trying to get there wallets set up.

He scammed 1+million from ecash and then dumped them on guys who paid over 1000sat this guy got that down to 70sat in the morning he is one of a kind tos*er and is not to be trusted.

Lol you're a fuckin idiot

Well, there are a lot of opinions here. I believe there are a lot of cryptos with good intentions and a lot of 'scam' coins too.

The key to not getting scammed is patience and research. Don't get over excited about a single feature or concept and run and buy it.

Here are some example questions:
How long have they been around?
What does their history show in terms of price and support?
Are the features gimmicky or substantial?
Is the Dev active?
Does it have a supportive community?
*Have they gone beyond the technology and looked at what it will take to really become successful? (This is an important one, one of the pitfalls is that a feature or technology alone will drive the coin into success, in reality it will take much more than that.) Follow up question, are they taking action in those other areas?

You should never invest more than you can afford to lose.

Just assume each coin is a scam until proven otherwise. For the most part, they all are. As a general rule of thumb, a coin is a scam.

two easy ways to spot a potential scam:

1. has an ICO
2. offers some sort of cloudmining and/or other stupid stuff

1. Not all ICO coins are scam. Actually I would say at least 60% of the ICO coins are/were legit coins, of course in many cases the idea behind the coin was bad, or not viable in the long run.
2. Some of the stupid stuff wasn't entirely bad idea and again many of those devs not intended to scam anyone.