We are indeed. Only the pairs are still DRKUSD & DRKBTC...

I was never able to understand a hypothetical situation in which there are 80% - 90% or more of all coins "locked in" the masternodes. When I asked a question or two on the topic I was called names for in a cult-like environment one is not allowed to wonder about potential perils, but at the end, I sided with coins101 whose take is that that "peril" of mine is irrelevant. (given decimals in one unit)

In this phase, DASH seems like a perpetuum mobile investment. It does not have any real value but the hope its brilliant technology would mature enough to be a store of value, a sort of digital cash, you name and that it will be of use. It does not have any real, widespread applications, and yet, it creates value in MN, as a payout.

It is at the same time fantastic and crazy to watch. I hope the "fantastic" will prevail.

Well, I am in Europe now and selfishly enjoy EURO travails and travels to newerwhere. As far as BTC, I'd accept $1,020.00 for BTC and 0.025 BTC / DASH as an entry point for the "Chinese illiterate farmers" to quote Zerohedge. (so all of that could finally skyrocket)

 

Why would you like a "compensation thing?"

It is much better to sit, rolling your thumbs and do nothing as the Masternode is giving you a hefty profit and hope your investment's value will go up, all of which based on tireless, endless work by the developers for free. (instead of paying less than 1 DASH per a Masternode)

Damn, what an arrogant, short-sighted nonsense.

This is a pure, valuation related poetry.   

Always at Coinmarketcap and always for the last 24 hours. These numbers may be lagging (if there's a big drop in volume in two, four, six previous hours...) but for a long term insight into the volume I prefer 24 hours cycles.

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/dash/#USD

The volume of DASH traded seems highest in ages.

The price is already going down for several minutes, as much as the MN count for several MNs... so if this was a pump, the dump is not coming from the same people. Draw your own conclusion, I have no clue what all of this means

That's nice, if no one is selling. Only that "masternode count" gives me 2691 (one down to 2690) - I guess this should be the most accurate number, no?

Is the MN # being updated in real time?

Hacking Team hack revealed* several of the greatest "dangers" for the totalitarian regimes all over the world:

- rise of digital criminals;
- global reach from the comfort of home;
- complete anonymity;
- digital anonymous currency.

What we all knew is now being clearly presented to the governments of Mexico, Italy, Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Chile, Hungary, Malaysia, UAE, the United States, Singapore, Kazakhstan, Sudan, Uzbekistan, Panama, Ethiopia, Egypt, Luxembourg, Czech Republic, South Korea, Mongolia, Vietnam, Spain, Ecuador, Oman, Switzerland, Thailand, Russia, Nigeria, Turkey, Cyprus, Honduras, Azerbaijan, Colombia, Poland, and Bahrain, all of which had purchased various spying software from these decent gentlemen of the Hacking Team, and that's it: we are the enemy. The people of the world.

So now, can someone of you kind people, smarter than myself, draw a parallel in between what our technology offers and Gandhi non violent resistance?


* source: https://www.documentcloud.org/documents/2160384-hacking-team-presentation-july-2015.html (p.11)

I am truncating both my previous post and the Renegade's just to make this easier to peruse...


While I'm not advocating going the route I'll mention later, I must state that "tiny sliver of humanity" (can it be tiniest from what we have now, several of us lunatics talking and even smaller number of brilliant programmers developing the tech) might be a myopic view as well as long as the "humanity" is deemed as legal, banks enabled and governments enslaved population as a whole.

However, there's the "second biggest economy in the world" we overlooked, the whole shadow economy, estimated at about 20% of the world's trade **, that would greatly benefit from what Darkcoin offers. Remittance business is part of it but "cleaner" so I wonder, why not put some efforts into this market or any other. As I stated numerous times, you support Greenwald and / or Assange, they acknowledge that and voila!, as a "side effect" you have a huge number of their followers suddenly being aware of an instrument that would help them help the cause they love. Man, the people FEAR supporting Wiki-leaks because of this fascist snooping but do not have an alternative Darkcoin might have offered.

If we moved toward the markets that NEEDS us, instead of delusionally striving to get on, what do I know, Amazon dot com and it's ilks (these mythical "big retailers" and / or "big exchanges" I am beating to the pulp, sorry) we'd be able to have a sense of progress, even if only 1 out of 100 "entities" accept us.

Mind you, a project once it is out attracts other people, other businesses, creates other ideas so, what do I know, a Meetup in Hong Kong or Manila could ask the venue (hey, they have 10 - 20 - 100 people coming regularly) to accept a new form of payment, a coin, be it Darkcoin as well. You do not live in a bubble like we here seem to be living, stubbornly insisting on a wrong approach. (mass adoption)

No one is going to adopt us unless the alternative does it firstly. You know, after our lunatic fringe, the first adopters etc., and only the power of numbers can force / create an environment that might enable serious growth in "conservative" businesses, for the lack of a better word. While this is a bit stretched to include in this discussion, ponder Apple vs. Taylor battle. Apple is one of the most fascist corporations in the world, creating a bevy of fanatics following their every marketing nonsense but they crush you as you would a bug if you don't obey their policy. Only that blonde, because of enormous power of her followers was able to force them change their ridiculous stance on that three months free stipulation.

We are no one, no where to be seen. We must look for allies in our natural habitat, among the people that need what we offfer.

Evan is genius, right. But how many truly revolutionary features he and the team can come up after:
-- InstantX;
-- DarkSend;
-- Masternode Blinding;
-- Decentralized Governance?
are already out? Instant-aner-XY?

All those great innovations did not create even a ripple effect in the crypto ocean. No one gives a flying fuck, let us face it no matter how painful the truth might seem. I am sending the money (USD) to a fucked up country in the vicinity of Greece, week after week now, and I have to pay $10.00 to $20.00 fee for any amount, no matter how small and my friend has to pay additional 4.25% fee on the exchange rate. How to improve that? How to embed, yes, Darkcoin / Dash / XY into a normal economy (exchange for fiat) because the dream of Dash based economy is an utter nonsense, when we think about a year, five, ten or more years from now...

How do you sell "DASH", tell me, when someone familiar with the BitCOIN or DogeCOIN asks you what is it? How do you start, it is not a coin, but... it is currency no, not the currency, digital cash... all that in the world (our, so-called "developed") in which 99% of all cash is digital, in the world in VISA performs the same function as InstantX for ages, in the world in which studies are coming out how wasteful Bitcoin mining is.

How to utilize Masternodes to do some Useful Computing? How to make all of this USEFUL for these that NEED, either MN's ability to compute, or this technology's ability to - almost for FREE - instantaneously transport the store of value from one side of the world to another, without prying eyes of criminals or criminal governments etc., etc., etc.

Darkcoin had its identity. It might have been wrong -- not for me for even if it really symbolizes something dark, even better, we are all, the whole fucking world are in the dark, under enormous shadow of less then friendly governments, no matter how they call themselves -- but had its identity. This DASH ("we are not the coin") thing does not.

I still honestly want to be proven wrong, but I would not badger on this issue unless I deeply believed DASH was a mistake of the century, that hastily done, under false pretense re-branding process. And now we pester over some video that needs eternity to be done and that would, only because it has taken so much time, provoke negative reactions once it is out.

The technology is RADICAL and REVOLUTIONARY. Everything around it is not.


** more on the shadow economy: http://foreignpolicy.com/2011/10/28/the-shadow-superpower/

Hey, at least I have a proposal, no mater how far fetched and unpopular it might be. It wasn't me who said, "THEY HATE US".

I hate to sound like a parrot but to me this time is kind of tipping point so allow me to share some more thoughts. I write this out of respect for Mangled Blue, Coins101, Tungfa, Tao, Tante, Renegade Man, qwizzie, Artoodeetoo, toknormal, oaxaca, Minotaur26, Alex-Ru... and several other members whose contributions I admire. Emphasis is on "several" others. I'll get back to it.


I do not care if "crypto hate us" I wonder who LOVES us? There are only 3,045 members on Dash Talk (from 1,850 on November 5th 2014) and here we have only these several people talking among themselves here. And I see this little motley gang of enthusiasts being increasingly delusional. Forgive me this harsh word, I do not use it as negative as it may sound and count me in, regarding that "delusion," because had I had a grain of salt left in my brains I'd leave this dash thingy the very moment it lost its character and became what it is today.

Look at this example, Tao's passionate argument against "some negativity creeping through our normally positive thread," and focus on this bit:


ALL Tao has been doing since commencement of this Twitter et al. activities was to PROMOTE Darkcoin / DASH.

But now he asks "what are we in a rush to promote?" If there was ever a negative statement, that would spook me away this instant, is that sentence. (not to mention that famous Ben Hur, promotional video that takes forever)  Alas, "WHAT" in it is much worse to me, it frightens me. 18 months into development but the project does not know what it is. Of course no one is buying it. We can all mull over LTC and find gazillion issues with it (I, for one, never got why that thing even existed) but it is CLEAR what LTC is, a "lite" version of BTC.

Discussion, over at Dash Talk about its mission and vision has these two interesting bits:

"Dash’s mission is to deliver safe and reliable financial solutions to consumers and merchants in a decentralized manner - providing greater economic freedom to its users."
&
"Vision statement: People and businesses use Dash as digital money for everyday financial transactions."

To which Alex-Ru replied with:

"Dash is about creation of payment system of the future, created by decentralized community to replace current financial system for whole humanity to prosper."

I was screaming from the top of my lungs (as GreyGhost over there at DT) how losing its IDENTITY (as Darkcoin) might kill this technologically great project. Thus far I can't say for sure I was right (after all I still cling on my MN) but every passing day I see that bland, tasteless, wanting to be loved by all but ignored by (almost) everyone DASH as the ONLY one in that crypto space ("that hates us") without its character. Damn it, even that Dogecoin that I do not get at all, or that ripped for pillage Ripple have their IDENTITY but we don't.

I would rather be a laughing stock for a day or a month or even several months and yes, admit a horrible mistake, ditch the DASH name, go back to Darkcoin if I wanted it to be a real, revolutionary financial instrument that focuses on other lunatic fringes all over the world, that need privacy, be it freedom fighters in Tibet struggling against communist destruction of their ancient land, be it supporting Occupy, Snowden or Assange in that other totalitarian system (the U.S.) or to focus on immigrants and displaced all over the world that do not have bank account but have mobile phones (hint) etc., and build it from the scratch or find some other name that would DEFINE IDENTITY of Evan tech vision in two, three, succinct terms, one simple sentence max.

Than we'll have a platform to really push Self-sustainable Decentralized Governance by Blockchain as yet another brilliant idea that can change the world. But hoping to "change the world" from the top (mass adoption delusion) is as deranged as sending a petition to Obama asking him to do "X" or "Y" while you are his (his masters) victim.

And on a personal, gut level, of how I feel about all of this, I sense a paradox of a crypto century. Whomever was pushing re-branding of the name Darkcoin under the false pretense that its name will kill it (coupled with that other wishful thinking of "big retailers" "adopting DASH but not Darkcoin" and "big exchanges" "listing DASH but not Darkcoin," neither of which had happened and is not likely to happen) had created a new name, a lukewarm detergent sounding bland nonsense that might end up killing it instead.

Nomen est omen, do not forget this ancient truth, you children of today, Nomen est omen.

 

DASH historic prices, for the sake of accuracy:

$3.60 on March 4th (as Darkcoin)
$3.02 on March 12th (DASH announced)
$3.11 on March 19th
$4.16 on March 21st
$4.98 on March 24th
$5.30 on March 25th
$4.60 on March 29th
$2.86 on June 30th

all prices are from Cryptsy

So I guess this will remain a mystery. I draw some guilty pleasure out of it, for someone's MN has "hijacked" my payment but the one my MN "hijacked" from someone else was 100% higher.

What does this mean:
Total Paid (Last month)    19.848 DASH (6 times / 1 missed / 1 hijacked)?

I added the color for dramatic effect 

The whole world is in clutches of corporate fascists but it would take an eternity for majority of the people to react and change that. Fear leads them and the status quo is all they want, fearing the worst. In Greece, I am almost certain, they will vote "YES" for the 'troika' and their pillaging proposal thusly giving a legitimacy to this ridiculous charade called "austerity" so the looting of their country's resources can continue.

That's only because they can't get (enough) of their money out of an ATM / bank TODAY so why would they think about their future and the future of their children YEARS from today.

Bank of Greece, Athens (GR) was one of the banks allowed to print EURO during the "Changeover", move from local currencies to EURO. ("In 1996, the EMI Council decided that all the printing works in the European Union that were producing national banknotes should be involved in making the initial stock of euro banknotes."

Initial production volume of EURO printed, for Greece, was at 4.2%. They still might have these printing machines, so if they are creative...

 

I don't trade, Tante - I only speculate on FOREX, over 51% of the time successfully - and yes, providing this thing does not end up in the dust, even one MN would bring you (at this rate of return and at this dollar price) roughly $9,542.23 a year income on 20th year from now. (assuming you NEVER sell a single unit MN provides and keep creating MNs out of the profit; compounding really starts kicking in after 10 years)

So even with this price you are (I am, we are...) well positioned.

Alas, I just hate seeing an investment losing the purpose other than money. (and even more so if it loses the money) I made some real money on silver years ago (during the spike in April 2011, when it went over $40.00), sold it and never came back.  I am still a huge believer in silver's value but the price does not reflect it because it is in clutches of Morgan Stanleys, J.P. Chases of this world and manipulated shamelessly. It lost its purpose. The people did not stand behind it and it now lingers aimlessly...

A Genius's Vision in Jeopardy (?)

In our realm, I do believe Evan is a genius that comes once in a decade (or more) and this belief is my ONLY reason why I am staying with the investment I lost faith in, wanting to be proven wrong.

The shit (silence) going on with the video many of us forked some money for to be made is currently my biggest beef with the non-tech portion of the project; after the same people had buried the best brand ever, they are not making any visible progress with the video project. ("It is not Ben Hur, damn it, it's just a simple video")

But when I see your ideas (you're one of the most respected people in our community and for sure one of the people I respect the most) here and the time frame in your reply I became depressed. It seems like wishful thinking, almost myopic refusal to see the truth. "The ad campaign should happen within the next 3-6 months," statement by itself almost made me close the MN and leave this community for good. The video was supposed to be ready a while ago...

And in today's world, in which no one knows what would happen on this coming Monday, to hope "real adoption happens in the next 2-5 years" makes no sense at all. You, better than most, fully understand we (the people) are all being treated as enemies by our respective governments, all of which are hopelessly enslaved to the moneyed Overlords and do only what Voltaire said ("In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one class of citizens to give to another.”): steal and pillage from the weak, imprison defenseless, cheat on the world, kill at will and spy on us for their masters.

Satoshi Nakamoto Revolution

Crypto-currencies, starting with "Satoshi Nakamoto" and his Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System original paper started what had a chance to be a revolution, a "revolution of human consciousness,"** and our only hope, as humanity, to fight the Financial Crime Cartel and its sociopath insanity. What Evan has created (Darkcoin) resolving (almost) all the BTC problems has also given us a real tool I was ready to die for, rather to work for all my free time - a powerful, human oriented cash, money, store of value, means of exchange, that gives us freedom from the snooping eyes of Big Brother and its minions. A tool to build a new economy on. I simple want to buy a fucking book or sell my services without being traced by hundreds of sycophants in thousands of governmental and para-governmental institutions, not to mention their fascist, corporate Overlords and live and breathe free.

Let have some normalcy restored (yes, I'm invoking that proverbial, myopic, short-sighted and perhaps ultimately lethal misconception of this technology being used solely for nefarious purposes, a notion that killed the brand and with it my passion for this project and let me only as a suspicious investor) and let "them" prove that I am "guilty" if I had purchased a book, supported Wiki-leaks or Occupy or whatever that's legal by using Darksend. Fuck them all. Paypal, Amazon, all these idiotic criminals we seem to be unable to live without (in the so-called West, namely the U.S.) shot down Wiki-leaks finances and we had a chance to build a new society with those that are already sacrificing their lives and / or livelihoods for it, for that better world.  

“Get very clear about the kind of world we would like and then start living that way,” Dr. Marshall Rosenberg wrote and he was correct.

We should have been (and we still have that chance) on the forefront of fight, offer the people to fund, support, purchase from, all these people like Snowden, Assange, Manning, Binney and many others, we should've been a tool for Occupy not only to fund itself but to have a means of communication without being spied on (that was a PEACEFUL, LEGAL protest, let us not forget that, a movement of the people the Overlords crushed mercilessly, treating them like cockroaches), we should've offer our support to the people like Hedges, Greenwald, Pilger and build a lunatic fringe that might be able to change the world. (and that would be, if anyone of these people would embrace us, a real marketing activity as well)

A lost chance (?)

And what we did instead? We, almost deranged, want a megalomaniac "mass adoption" from the VERY SYSTEM that deems us enemies. (and that while Bitcoin is hardy adopted at all, on a large, global scale of trade) How short-sighted, how blind for the realities of this world. A merchant cowering before the lowest IRS bureaucrat will put our logo to his or her store and accept our digital cash just like that? Give me a fucking break.

I think we have lost a historical, once in a life time chance to be a part of something big, to create something big. Instead we opted for a compromise with a devil. Sure, this thing might end up being a part of a mainstream, adopted, tweaked and twisted, and even successful and we'll all be happy slaves of the system that gobbled us up for our MN are giving us some meager or modest or spectacular income (and this is my investor's speculation) but a perspective of this outcome saddens me even more than the perspective of my MNs value goes to zero.

Sic transit gloria mundi, I always say

GG

** "Without a global revolution in the sphere of human consciousness, nothing will change for the better in the sphere of our being as humans, and the catastrophe toward which this world is headed -- be it ecological, social, demographic, or a general breakdown of civilization -- will be unavoidable.”
Václav Havel, Czech President,
(addressing a Joint Session of the U.S. Congress in Washington, D.C. on February 21, 1990)