Bitcoin Forum

Because stupid money follows p&d groups.

http://statelaws.findlaw.com/arizona-law/arizona-pyramid-and-ponzi-scheme-laws.html

In Arizona, investment fraud can happen in a number of ways. A Pyramid or Ponzi scheme is an illegal way of making money using an endless stream of recruits or investors. Some Pyramid schemes involve a product while others do not.

In Arizona, a business is considered a Pyramid Scheme when participants earn more money from bringing others into the program than from the sale of goods, services or intangible property. Pyramid Schemes are successful because potential recruits are told they can make quick, easy money. In reality, it is almost mathematically impossible to make any money at all.

Because DARSH holders make more money by capturing more victims, so they use very aggressive cult-like marketing tactics to sucker people in.

Fortunately this kind of Ponzi scheme is illegal in Arizona, and the process have it stopped has already begun.

I still don't see how darkcoin falls into a ponzi scheme...

http://www.azleg.state.az.us/FormatDocument.asp?inDoc=/ars/44/01731.htm&Title=44&DocType=ARS

"Pyramid promotional scheme" means any plan or operation by which a participant gives consideration for the opportunity to receive compensation which is derived primarily from any person's introduction of other persons into participation in the plan or operation rather than from the sale of goods, services or intangible property by the participant or other persons introduced into the plan or operation.

In order to run a Masternode, an investor needs to buy 1000 DRK/DASH as collateral. These coins remain in control of the investor, but he needs to put them into one of his addresses and associate that address with the node.  The network checks that the node is running and that the funds are not moved, this classifies as a valid Masternode and then it is eligible to get paid.  With each mined block on the network a Masternode from the active Masternode list is selected and gets a payment, when all masternodes on the list are paid, the payment cycle starts again.

DASH ROI

You can estimate like this:

- Currently Masternodes get 40% of the block reward.

- The minimum block reward in DASH(DRK) is 4.65 DASH at this moment. I will assume difficulty is high enough so that we are dealing with the minimum reward for a worst case scenario situation, sometimes there are blocks with higher rewards. The minimum DASH block reward decreases by 7% annually to avoid abrupt block halvings, that already happened earlier this year so 4.65 DASH will be valid until next year.

- Average block-time in DASH is 2.5 min, so there are ~576 blocks per day. So 576*4.65DASH*40% = 1071.36 DASH alloted for the whole masternode network currently, we need to divide this by the 2300MN active masternodes. This gives us

 ~Monthly masternode income = 13.97 DASH
 ~Current Minimum DASH Annual ROI = 17%*

https://i.imgur.com/kHW81Vc.png

OK, I'll help.

How is that a ponzi scheme? seems like a bigger proof of stake if anything. Also, you can sell out your drk used for MN at any time you wish.

"Pyramid promotional scheme" means any Masternodes are a plan or operation by which a participant gives consideration for the opportunity to receive compensation which is derived primarily from any person's introduction of other persons into participation in the plan or operation rather than from the sale of goods, services or intangible property by the participant or other persons introduced into the plan or operation.

http://www.azleg.state.az.us/FormatDocument.asp?inDoc=/ars/44/01731.htm&Title=44&DocType=ARS

Any reasons?

Let me show you:


BTW LOL 'superlegitaccount.'   ;D

lol yeah I'm pretty proud of the name for my trollaccount  :D

Now back on topic, I don't see the ponzi man. By your logic proof of stakes are ponzies too?  Masternodes are basically proof of stake with a minimum amount of network weight, in this case 1000drk.

I can't make a general claim that all PoS coins are Ponzis.  Some see all cryptos as Ponzi-esque, some don't.

So let's stick to the specific case of DARSH.

DARSH meets Arizona law's criteria because of the large 1000drk initial buy-in, as well as the ROI table they published.

I really can't believe their lawyer OK'd publishing that ROI table.  I doubt they ran it by him first, but could be wrong.  Or maybe he's as as dirty as the rest of the board.

The high yields offered by the Masternode investment produce qualify as a pyramid scheme because they create an incentive to bring more people into the scheme.

I don't know how much more clear I can make it.

Fortunately whether or not you "see the ponzi" is not important.

What is important is that the proper State & Federal authorities "see the ponzi."

And we're drawing them a very detailed picture...  ;)

I think recent forum wars brang even more attention to DRK than it has before.

http://www.fbi.gov/phoenix

FBI Phoenix
21711 N. 7th Street
Phoenix, AZ 85024
Phone: (623) 466-1999
Fax: (623) 466-1108
E-mail: phoenix@ic.fbi.gov

White Collar Crime Supervisor
201 E. Indianola Avenue, Suite 400
Phoenix, AZ 85012-2080
Phone: (602) 279-5511

http://www.azcc.gov/divisions/securities/complaint.asp

Complaints
 
The Securities Division of the Arizona Corporation Commission is responsible for regulating the securities industry in the state of Arizona.  One of our main functions is to oversee the firms and individuals that engage in the offer and sale of securities to the public. If  you are a victim of financial fraud, please send us your complaint information.

https://www.azag.gov/complaints/consumer

The Arizona Attorney General’s Office has jurisdiction over Arizona's Consumer Fraud Act

Consumer Complaint Form

If you believe you have been the victim of consumer fraud, complete the online form below.

For more information you can contact us by phone at (602) 542-5763 (Phoenix), (520) 628-6504 (Tucson), or toll free outside metro Phoenix, (800) 352-8431, or by email at consumerinfo@azag.gov. Please provide your supporting documents by fax at (602) 542-4579 or by mail at 1275 West Washington Attn: Consumer Information and Complaints, Phoenix, AZ 85007 and include your name and complaint number if available.

http://www.ic3.gov/complaint/default.aspx

The Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3) is a partnership between the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National White Collar Crime Center (NW3C).

File a Complaint

http://www.stopfraud.gov/report.html#computer

To report computer-based fraud:

Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3): File a Complaint
Online Form: https://complaint.ic3.gov/ctf.aspx

    IC3 accepts online Internet crime complaints from either the person who believes they were defrauded or from a third party to the complainant.

eConsumer.gov: Report Your Complaint
E-mail: econsumerwb@ftc.gov 

    eConsumer.gov is a portal for consumers to report complaints about online and related transactions with foreign companies.

http://www.stopfraud.gov/report.html#investment

To report Commodities, Investment and Securities Fraud:

U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC): Center for Complaints and Enforcement Tips
Online Form: www.sec.gov/complaint.shtml 
Phone: (800) 732-0330

    You can file a complaint or provide the SEC with tips on potential securities law violations though the links on this page.

The Federal Trade Commission also works for the consumer to prevent fraudulent, deceptive, and unfair business practices in the marketplace and to provide information to help consumers spot, stop, and avoid them. To file a complaint or to get free information on consumer issues, visit the website at www.ftc.gov (link is external) or write or call:
 
Federal Trade Commission
 Consumer Response Center
 600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
 Washington, D.C. 20580
 1-877-FTC-HELP (1-877-382-4357)
 TTY: 1-866-653-4261

Because Darkcoin is the master race of cryptocurrencies. icebreaker, you're as clueless as the guys claiming Bitcoin is a Ponzi scheme. Troll harder.

Any reasons?

When we started we saw a few issues that Bitcoin has and have attempted to solve them. One of the main issues we were trying to fix was fungibility. Fungibility is defined as the property of a good or a commodity whose individual units are capable of mutual substitution. That is, it is the property of essences or goods which are "capable of being substituted in place of one another."

Bitcoin isn’t perfectly fungible. This means that over long periods of time, Bitcoin will lose it’s fungibility due to coins being tainted by their use. Coins in the Bitcoin system carry their history around with them and that will make them “tainted” as compared to other coins.

While solving this problem, I eventually found we could create a secondary network within Darkcoin, this network would provide services to keep all of the coins fungible and at the same time could offer other services as well. Services such as protocol 2 factor authentication, instant transactions and now scalability.

Personally I believe the 1-tier approach used by Bitcoin and other currencies isn’t as powerful as a 2-tier approach. I also believe the no one besides a few people have even yet to understand what a 2-tier cryptographic currency is capable of.

The Bitcoin developers and community are talking about expanding the maximum blockchain size to 20MB. Currently the Bitcoin network can handle 7 transactions per second. This will allow their currency to 140 transactions per second, but will also result in up to 1TB per year in blockchain storage (until they successfully implement pruning).

Eventually Gavin Andresen sees blocks getting to 100MB+, with tens of thousands of transactions per block. See http://gavintech.blogspot.com/2015/01/twenty-megabytes-testing-results.html and https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1CuOEM9uwO5w-RwWGCCZpVGVFwhHHHegxJZqTP5KyapI/edit#gid=0.

After giving it some thought, I came up with a scalable architecture that supports billions of transactions per day.

Specifications of this strategy:
•The blockchain will automatically become much more anonymous than Bitcoin is.
•Fees per transaction will be very, very low. Let the micro-payment revolution begin.
•Zero-centralization
•Scalable to billions of transactions per day
•Requires a 2-tier network
•Very low blockchain bloat

I make no promises about this idea working though, I’m very early in the research stages, but it does look quite promising. If it works, it means we have solved the ultimate problem with Bitcoin and have made this technology accessible to the whole world. This strategy is just too good to let sit for very long and I need to do some exploratory coding to prove it works.

You deserve a serious answer, which I didn't see in this thread.

1) Darkcoin is rebranding this week to Dash (digital cash), which removes a lot of negative connotations. This is having an effect. Many investors that had stayed away because of the name, but who respect the technology are now willing to invest. There is also a lot of merchants that have stayed away for the same reasons that anecdotal evidence suggests will be much more receptive to adoption.

2) The coin got a lot of attention in the last week on a Let's Talk Bitcoin episode devoted to Darkcoin in which they interviewed the lead developer. It really highlighted to a lot of new people just how advanced the coin has become and the development roadmap ahead. https://soundcloud.com/mindtomatter/ltb-e196-distortions-towards-privacy-or-many-hands-makes-light-work

3) New version coming out (on testnet now) that introduces the new branding, new UI, and "blinding" functionality that will drastically improve anonymity.

4) Many other theories (like the Evolution theft being converted to Darkcoin), but I doubt these rumors.

5) Just by making it to the point that it's on Litecoin's doorstep for the #2 spot has a lot of new people researching the coin (like yourself) and that feeds off itself. The more that investigate, the more that invest, the more the price increases. Repeat.

To me, these are the main reasons.

DARSH

Because DARSH holders make more money by capturing more victims, so they use very aggressive cult-like marketing tactics to sucker people in.

Fortunately this kind of Ponzi scheme is illegal in Arizona, and the process have it stopped has already begun.

Now back on topic, I don't see the ponzi man. By your logic proof of stakes are ponzies too?  Masternodes are basically proof of stake with a minimum amount of network weight, in this case 1000drk.

Just letting them know we know 'where the bodies are buried' may be sufficient to convince them to pull a Friedcat (IE take the money and run) and get out of XMR's hair.