I've really got nothing to hide about it.

to be completely clear:  I think the capabilities of OT are routinely overstated and misstated.  Notice that there is lots of abstruse language surrounding all it's advertised features(federated, etc.).  Whenever you encounter something like that, there should be some kind of credible source of information to clarify.  In the case of OT, there is none.  That's a sign you're dealing with Marketichture as we call it in the IT world. For instance I have a complex idea called Confidence Chains and it has specific qualities.  Anyone who is curious to know exactly how it works can easily find this paper on the web.  My claims are based in hard science and I'm currently working on making these claims abundantly clear, so much that an average user can watch Confidence Chains being formed in different power structure scenarios.  From there a prototype will be developed.  With this basic software, people will be able to implement altchains of different types, p2p digital assets, p2p exchanges, p2p auctions and lots of other fun things.[1]

We've had digital vouchers for a long time.  As far as financial crypto is concerned, there's nothing new there.  It would be cool to have a Open Source digital vouchers system.  There are many interesting applications you could implement with such a system.  As it stands I'm still not convinced that there are no proprietary hooks in OT.  I have very good(and provable) reasons to make this claim.  We, the community have no insurance against the problem.  Even if Chris were being 100% sincere(and I don't believe he is) we still dont have this insurance.  What are the investors investing in?  Last time I checked the company was formed in some offshore tax haven.

[1] I'd like to add here that the software will be Apache/BSD licensed.  OT is GPL licensed and Chris had explained to me many times that this gives him the singular advantage of being the only one who can modify the software for commercial purposes.  In other words, you 'contribute', he profits.  Fact is his understanding of these laws are patchy at best.

I can certainly respect that, but I need to be able to make accurate statements about OpenTransactions without getting personally attacked.  OT seems to come up on just about every subject, primarily because Chris is going around making unfounded claims about it.  If you review the thread, I was not the one coming out with personal attacks.  I was simply defending my name. (note: Chris has since deleted this slanderous attacks)

and btw- anyone who wants to meet me in real life can find me at the Bitcoin NYC meetups.  http://bitcoinnyc.org/

I'm always happy to chat on topics of financial crypto, alt-currencies, altchains, etc.

There are some unresolved debts between us, but aside from that I don't have any issues.  You might find it funny to hear that I came up with the name 'Monetas' and Chris was supposed to return the domain name to me.  I'm here to share my knowledge with people.  Part of my knowledge is about the real nature of OT, Monetas, etc..  I am probably among a handful of people who actually does know what is inside OT, and I can prove my involvement with the project.  Chris doesn't like that there is someone walking around who is 1) informed 2) credible AND 3) not invested in his project.  So maybe if you stay tuned you'll hear other funny things about Monetas and OT.  Chris is quite a character I'll grant him that.

I'm not interested in destroying anything someone has built that is positive and helpful, however I am interested in dispelling half-truths and lies that might exist in the region I operate in.  People are starting to catch on that the claims made about OT are not exactly straightforward, but they don't know the extent of it.  Just to be 100% clear, I left the project because I felt that Chris was not being straight forward with the community, not to mention I felt some of the other member were sketchy to say the least.  One of them is legally prohibited from entering the US.  I just simply didn't want to be involved.  I thought that this space was too important to turn into a cheap money-making scheme.  I don't put down people for trying to get financial support for something like this, I might be seeking my own soon.  But there is a right way to do it and a wrong way.  Chris tries to make me out to be a grumpy sulking type, but really I was the idealist in the equation.

 I don't think I need to respond to each and every one of 'FellowTravelers' statements here.  Many of his statements are flat out incorrect.

 Fact is there is proof floating around as to the nature of his activities.

 I will continue to make accurate and possibly critical statements about OT, Monetas and Chris Odom mainly for the benefit of the community.  It doesn't really take much work to look into the character of the people involved with him, his company, and his project, and find out who they really are.  For example, just recently Chris claimed that the Confidence Chains concept was a Bitcoin Pyramid Scheme.  Perhaps I'm not so much 'out to get him' as he suggests, but maybe I'm one of the few people who actually DOES know what he is doing?  So if you're interested in the inside story on OT, maybe you should listen to someone who has worked with the project?  rather than the various Chris Odom sock puppets, web spam rings, etc. that he sets up?  Perhaps Chris is not progressing the Digital Currency space so much as looting it.  just a thought.
 

 Regarding Open Transactions, here are a few points that might help you in your assessment of this technology:

 1) is anyone using it for real applications?

   A:  not many people have even managed to get the thing running on their own machines.

 2) does it have any credibility at the theoretical level?

   A:  it uses concepts from well known researchers such as Ian Grigg, David Chaum, Ben Laurie, however none of these people have ever referenced the project.  In the case of Chaumian e-cash, the technology was laughably glued onto the digital vouchers part and doesn't apparently do anything.

 3) why does it appear to be much bigger?

   A:  unfortunately in today's world of software we have developers and people who have calibrated their behavior around the fact that people take interest in Open Source.  These new open source developers really have practically nothing in common with RMS, Linus and the other greats of open source.  Really they are businessmen who use Open Source as a marketing technique.  They attempt to appear to be in this class of people, when really they are in the class of people like P.T. Barnum.  For instance, RMS doesn't write books about picking up girls on the side.

 4) is it Peer-to-Peer?  Federated?

   A:  one of Chris' glaring inaccuracies is his claim that he never said OT was Peer-to-Peer.  Originally the project was labelled 'peer to peer currency'.   Later he switched this claim to 'federated' but it's not really clear as to how it's 'federated' either.  He explained recently on IRC that it's 'federated' because I can move the transaction content to another server.  Does this make web servers 'federated' as well?  The real story is it's a Digital Voucher server and there's really nothing new about it at all, other than it's an Open Source digital voucher system, which would be cool if I weren't concerned that Chris was trying to hide patents in the project.  Secondly the overall maturity of the code is greatly overstated.  For one it's in C/C++ and is difficult to compile.  He routinely announces on various marketing channels he designed(this IS one of his actual talents), that various features have been released such as 'smart contracts'- have they been tested?  proven in any way?  I heard at one point he was trying to get a Java developer involved to code it in Java but his absurd sense of self-importance forced this person to move on.  After unfortunately investing time parsing his rantings, you ultimately leave frustrated and even somewhat upset that this person is posing as a legitimate contributor to the digital currency world.  What is OT?  It's not difficult to duplicate all this functionality in Java with far less code.  No serious developers have done that yet because there is no reason to.

 Personally I am less interested in ideas like Monetas, and more interested in how we can make financial technology available to all.  It's very difficult to commercialize these ideas successfully.  Thus I don't think that any technology with the slightest commercial aspect is going to be a candidate.  This includes both OT and Ripple.  Regarding Chris, I view him as an unfortunate distraction.  The fact is this space is crawling with criminals and con-men.  It's a fact they are attracted to ideas that offer anonymous cash transactions.  I am not one of these people.

   The paper I've been posting is my latest contribution to the Digital Currency space.

  It DOES offer peer-to-peer.  It can be anonymized.  Im currently in the process of fully proving it by building a simulator application: https://github.com/BlueMeanie/ConfidenceChainsSimulation

  if you are interested in peer-to-peer currencies, this idea would interest you.  I'm more than happy to answer questions about it.  My hopes are that it can be used to build distributed exchanges, distributed asset types, etc.  I'd say that a working model is several months away at the least.

  -bm

what did I say that was inaccurate?

 
How does everyone come to an agreement about what a particular sub-currency is supposed to track?

Ian Grigg worked out many of these problems with Ricardian Contracts.  http://iang.org/papers/ricardian_contract.html

Ricardian Contracts were also thrown into the Open Transactions mix.

-bm

the system you just described relies on traditional financial products.  You've just made it a bit more abstract by basing the interest rate of your bonds on some ticker(who publishes the ticker?).  What about assets that don't have an easy to determine price?

my system is very simple.  It's allows you to issue and exchange assets(potentially more, auctions could be implemented for instance).

and how is this guarantee constructed?

there is a key difference.  Bitcoin inflates, more are generated by miners.  Thus you can't PEG IT [1] to a REAL ASSET because then the miners would be generating real assets(or a promissory note for such).  You need a kind of digital coin that guarantees strict issuance qualities(and certainly quantities).

secondly there are serious issues with latency on the BTC blockchain that make an exchange infeasible.

My system allows you to generate digital assets.  It's your job to convince people that they can exchange these digital assets for REAL assets at any time.  The system offers good tools for this purpose.  One of them is DISTRIBUTED AUTHORITY, as in I can give authorization to 12 people who would never cooperate to corrupt the currency, and then advertise this fact to potential users of my digital currency.  You can set up these authorities easily, automatically, and they can even be defined complex functions, for instance based on membership in a social network.

-bm

[1] you can offer an exchange rate.

Abstract:

(note: already posted to Newbie forum)

Bitcoin's popularity has grown exponentially in recent years as a new form of digital
money that transcends geography and national governments. This paper describes a
system for 1) Asset Issuance meaning the creation of digital property 2) and Asset
Transactions meaning the exchange and trade of that property. Many of it's internal
structures are derived from Bitcoin technology, thus many innovations in the Bitcoin
world carry over to this platform. It is truly Peer-To-Peer, meaning there is no central
server required. A very high level of transaction integrity and security can be achieved.
It has several advantages over Bitcoin, namely speed of transactions and no need for
'mining'. The system is suitable for a wide range of applications, it is powerful enough
to do high volume securities trading, secure enough to trade precious metals, and simple
enough for Community Currency implementations. In this paper we will describe the
core algorithm of Confidence Chains, in other proposals we will offer more details
regarding asset issuance and related features.

PDF:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwUFHE6KYsM0ZkxLVmFwbXQ3ck0/edit?usp=sharing

Signature:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwUFHE6KYsM0MjY1Rk8xWGdLZUU/edit?usp=sharing

the assets cannot be seized unless all the authorities are seized.  So if you properly distribute the authorities, you will have insurance against seizure.  IOUs are not a good way to describe the system, it's a block chain(with transactions exactly like those of Bitcoin) that is supported by explicit consensus rather than proof of work.

"The issuer could practice fractional reserves.  The issuer cannot be anonymous."

how can you have a completely anonymous issuer?  how will people redeem the assets?  anonymity is supported as far as it's worth to owners of an issued asset.  "Fractional Reserve"?  sounds like you're trying to conjure monetary boogey men here.  Care to explain your accusation?

I think that many ideas about decentralized currencies are simply impractical if not impossible.  Many talk about this idea of a decentralized currency, but they've never seen one, or can't think of how to make one, or even roughly what they look like.

Ben Laurie thinks Decentralized Currencies are Probably Impossible.  http://www.links.org/files/decentralised-currencies.pdf

OT is not Peer To Peer.  Many of the claims of this project are incredibly misleading.  It's simply a client/server architecture that uses Crypto to confirm receipts of transactions.  It an amalgamation of Chaum e-cash, Triple Signed Receipts(http://iang.org/papers/triple_entry.html), and a few other things(such as the so called 'smart contract engine') - all loosely scotch taped together under one term.  As far as I can tell there is nothing new there.  Note that, despite the claims of the founder and primary progenitor, none of these things are in a completed stable state.  There are other platforms out there like it:  http://www.voucher-safe.org/tiki-index.php .   It does not offer you much insurance if the server gets shut down(there was some poorly founded proposal about sinking the funds into the block chain using a 'voting pool').  The owner describes the system using unclear terminology, perhaps this contributes to some of the confusion regarding this project.  I tend to think that some of the claims surrounding OT are purposely confusing.  It's not surprising that there is a company formed around this technology already.

Adding BitMessage to OT does not make it peer to peer any more than it would make your banking website peer to peer(if you communicated with it using BitMessage).

Hello,

 Digital asset issuance is the key to creating a distributed exchange system.  You can't use traditional Bitcoin, because Bitcoin requires mining and hence inflation, so the miners are creating assets worth real money out of thin air.  Who will redeem them?  This is the problem that my software solves:  https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwUFHE6KYsM0ZkxLVmFwbXQ3ck0/edit

 It's important to note that with Confidence Chains, the supply is potentially STATIC ie. does not inflate or deflate[1].  Thus you can safely denominate real assets.  You issue a thousand grams of digital gold, it remains a thousand grams of digital gold, no reward to miners etc.  Thus all that is required is to keep a thousand grams of gold in your safe, and to give it to anyone who wishes to redeem their gold.  Of course, if you're a banker, you might want to charge a little extra to purchase the credits in the first place.

  ex.  buy 10k USD worth of gold coins.

        make 10,000,000 units of Digital Gold Currency

        sell them for 10.5k USD total (.5k profit)

        offer to exchange the units for their original gold value at any time.

 You could even exchange them informally, they are worth GOLD and this value cannot be changed.  The credits can be exchanged WITHOUT the consent of the DGC issuer.  Potentially completely anonymously.  The issuer, or any other party(eg. govt regulators) cannot shut down the currency.

 See above for how you could build an exchange using Confidence Chains easily with this technology.

 A working prototype is a few months away.

best, -bm


[1] inflationary, deflationary, or demurrage currencies are possible with Confidence Chains, and most importantly the RATE of inflation/deflation is determined by group consensus and not direct FIAT.

my system solves this by allowing for ANY asset to be published.  Once these assets are issued, then they can be exchanged.

Thus, if you want to exchange USD, 1g Gold Coins, 1g Silver Coins, BTC and Litecoin, you issue 5 seperate assets.  There must be someone who interacts in the real world, accepting gold coin(or redeeming gold coin) for the digital assets.  It is perfectly safe to do so as it is impossible to forge or alienate the assets without somehow gaining control of ALL the authority nodes[1].  So to bootstrap in an easy way, you simply buy some of the BTC assets.  Note that this isn't BTC itself, but a parity asset that is WORTH BTC.  You can then market those assets for the other five.  Thus you have something similar to Mt. Gox ie. a way to get BTC for USD or Gold(and vice-versa).

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwUFHE6KYsM0ZkxLVmFwbXQ3ck0/edit?usp=sharing

-bm

[1] and only then you have the ability to deny transactions, not forge them.  A good practice is choosing diverse authorities who are unlikely to collude.

Hello,

  I am working on a technology that can be used as a distributed exchange.  In other words N Authorities can determine(by shared consent ie. voting) what statements enter into the transaction record and in what order.  This is really the key problem with currency exchanges.  Without non-bias, then the trades can be privileged to a particular party creating a bias to the market.  The network is P2P, it uses a block chain technology very similar to Bitcoin.  https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwUFHE6KYsM0ZkxLVmFwbXQ3ck0/edit

  The technology also allows you to issue assets and exchange them eg. Digital Gold Currencies.

  So in order to implement an exchange, you simply create a transaction type that allows for two primary statements:

   POST  : post an offer to exchange X of asset P for Y of asset Q.  The offer is signed with an RSA key.  The Signer must have the X of asset P in their account.  X of those assets P are not spendable until the POST is ACCEPTED or voided.

   ACCEPT  : accept a POST.  The signer must have Y of asset Q in their account.

  With these two simple primitive actions, all other familiar features can be derived such as Exchange Rates, etc.  The atomic operations MUST be stated and responded to in an completely unbiased way to have a fully functioning marketplace.  No other technology can offer this in a decentralized way.  If any of the N authorities goes down, the network continues unabated.  Authorities can be added or removed without failure or disruption of the exchange.  Trades are virtually instantaneous(can support thousands of trades per second), and p2p optimization is possible(nodes can change their placement in the network to get better response time to a given exchange node).

  Im currently working on a simulation of Confidence Chains that demonstrates how the transaction record is negotiated by N parties.

  https://github.com/BlueMeanie/ConfidenceChainsSimulation

  thanks, -bm

X POST.

Abstract:

Bitcoin's popularity has grown exponentially in recent years as a new form of digital
money that transcends geography and national governments. This paper describes a
system for 1) Asset Issuance meaning the creation of digital property 2) and Asset
Transactions meaning the exchange and trade of that property. Many of it's internal
structures are derived from Bitcoin technology, thus many innovations in the Bitcoin
world carry over to this platform. It is truly Peer-To-Peer, meaning there is no central
server required. A very high level of transaction integrity and security can be achieved.
It has several advantages over Bitcoin, namely speed of transactions and no need for
'mining'. The system is suitable for a wide range of applications, it is powerful enough
to do high volume securities trading, secure enough to trade precious metals, and simple
enough for Community Currency implementations. In this paper we will describe the
core algorithm of Confidence Chains, in other proposals we will offer more details
regarding asset issuance and related features.

PDF:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwUFHE6KYsM0ZkxLVmFwbXQ3ck0/edit?usp=sharing

Signature:

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0BwUFHE6KYsM0MjY1Rk8xWGdLZUU/edit?usp=sharing

there are people working on projects like this.

I saw this site a while ago, very interesting.

the thing that sticks out most re. Ripple is that they have not released their source code yet, even though they claim to be open source.

 have a look at the Bitcoin wiki on Transactions : https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Transactions

Hi MegaDaninski,

  I am currently working on a simulator to provide tangible proof of the concept.

  https://github.com/BlueMeanie/ConfidenceChainsSimulation

  Eventually I will develop a open source project in Java.
 
  Do you have a specific application in mind?  Confidence Chains can be used for Community Currencies, It's possible to issue them without any server at all using the technology.  It's would be great to have you involved.

  There is also an upcoming paper on Confidence Chains patterns.

best, -bm