Oh gosh don't accept paypal! YOu need non-reversible money otherwise you just become a place where people can turn stolen paypal accounts into easily resold good such as iPads iPhones or whatever you plan to auction.

Also get rid of this idea buying objects with shares then auctioning the objects.

Sell bids, and do not buy any objects that you do not have enough cash on hand (from sales of bids) to buy.

It is bad enough that likely we will end up having to spend shares on staff for this thing. If it cannot sell enough bids to buy things to auction forget it as untenable.

Also this makes sure it stays tenable, since if people keep it secret enough that they end up buying each item for one bid per item at least the damn item won't have cost us more than $0.60 (one bid) to buy. If people want nice things to bid on let them buy enough bids to enable us to get nice things to put up for auction.

There is enough incentive already for the site operators to deliberately have promotion fail so they are the only bidders, without letting what they bid on be worth more than the amount of bids they their cronies their families etc bought.

-MarkM-

Why no link to your purported pre-existing project?

-MarkM-

Since the email is already being intercepted firing off a response to it does not sound hard, the same procmail or whatever tool that does the intercepting is designed already to do recipes that send responses as well as recipes that file the emails into different places or recipients or mailboxes or send them to scripts etc etc so respondng is trivial.

Figuring out whether someone paid something would be the hard part.

There would need to be some way of checking whether the address they were told to pay to did get paid to.

This could be an income for the forum by the sound of it?

Since it wouldn't probably be giving out addresses belonging to the email recipient as payment addresses but, rather, addresses belonging to the forum email interception system itself?

Would they be paying via a third party payment processor so that they have choices of what kinds of (crypto)currencies to pay with?

Presumably using a third party of that kind would be easier than dealing directly with one or more coin daemons?

-MarkM-

Is there supposd to be something visible at that URL? As I see nothing there, looks like some kind of empty google something page.

-MarkM-

Well Quark is another mine all the coins fast coin so in that sense I guess it is much like DOGE.

It just doesn't have the joke to make up for the massive early mining larceny.

-MarkM-

On that note I guess I might as well post these URLs:

http://galaxies.mygamesonline.org/indevcoins.html

http://galaxies.mygamesonline.org/plotdvc.html

http://galaxies.mygamesonline.org/sharesindvc.html

http://galaxies.mygamesonline.org/plotsharesindvc.html

In theory real options should help keep exchange rates more stable.

I am not sure MPOE style options really accomplish that since they don't actually involve going to exchanges and actually buying dollars using bitcoins nor going to exchanges and actually buying bitcoins using dollars. They deal only with bitcoins, no dollars actually exchanged at all.

-MarkM-

You are not screwed for real on any sensible options setup designed to avoid anyone being screwed.

The worst that can happen, barring hacks, thefts, embezzling and such, is that you miss out on potential profits you could have made had you taken some other course of action.

For example if the DeVCoin Credit Union has ten thousand dollars on hand and makes a deal with you to let you buy up to ten thousand dollars for X number of DeVCoins the Credit Union makes a definite profit in terms of DeVCoins, not only on the actual sale if it happens but also in the form of the price of the option, that is, the service charge it charges you for making such a deal with you.

The Credit Union would already know how many DeVCoins it had paid for those dollars, thus how many DeVCoins of profit it would make if you did end up exercising the option.

So it would in effect be trading a guaranteed locked in profit against a chance that maybe it could have gotten more DeVCoins for those dollars had it instead waited for a better offer (someone offering a higher price for such an option) or for an exchange rate more in its favour (an exchange where it could buy more DeVCoins for those dollars than you exercising the option would end up providing it.)

Similarly the person buying the option would only be screwed to the same extent any insurance screws people. They could end up having paid for an option they end up choosing not to exercise, just like with fire insurance you could end up paying for the insurance then not having a fire.

So really the only unlimited losses involved are opportunity costs. You could end up not buying a winning lottery ticket or somesuch on account of getting into an options deal instead.

I suppose someone is going to argue that if DeVCoins become worthless then the Credit Union would lose a lot. But fergoshsakes it is a DeVCoin credit union, to it DeVCoins are profit, they are value, they are "worth". Its entire accounting system is based on how many DeVCoins it has, and if it has more now than it had before that is profit.

(Its shareholders might not think so, thinking gosh I should have invested in a dollars credit union instead of a DeVCoin credit union, but so what, either they were okay with that or they would not have invested so there would not have been a DeVCoin credit union in the first place. As long as such an institution does exist and it does gain more DeVCoins than it had it still gets to report that to its shareholders as "profit". The fact that dollars went up in value relative to DeVCoins or that a lottery ticket it did not buy did win billions of dollars or even billions of DeVCoins is fundamentally irrelevant.)

Maybe the best way to get an Olympian perspective on options is to think about the case where you print/mint yourself two different currencies then offer options between the two. Looking at it that way maybe you can see that frankly you come out ahead no matter which one gets to be worth how much more or less than the other one if you can manage to sell any at all of either one of them! (Well, enough to cover the cost of printing/minting the stuff anyway.) Plus you get paid a fee for the options themselves too! I guess ideally you would charge in bitcoins for for the options themselves, so that regardless of whether foo or bar comes out as worth more you got yourself some bitcoins regardless! (Or charge meals for the options themselves, so that regardless of whether foo or bar turns out to be worth more you got yourself some meals regardless. Etc.)

-MarkM-

That is why we need software for doing arbitrary pairs.

It would let us do DVC/BTC or BTC/LTC or BTC/DVC or LTC/DVC options, and any other currency or institution or site or group etc to do whatever pairs they wish to do.

It has been suggested that one can use smart contracts, which Open Transactions can do. But contracts are not an asset one can trade on the Open Transactions markets.

A lot of people seem to think it is important to be able to re-sell their options, though I do not know whether options began from scratch historically as an asset that can be traded rather than as, say, a more private deal between two parties.

Smart contracts would at least let two parties lock themselves into an option. Maybe they don't need to be able to re-sell that option? Could it suffice merely to be able to choose whether or not to exercise the option instead of trying to turn it into a thing one runs around trying to re-sell to other people?

-MarkM-

No, as soon as you buy stuff with it - real stuff like fiat-denominated gift cards - you have done barter so tax will probably be involved.

It is unreal stuff like shares and game-gold and crypto-coins and magic swords in virtual worlds and such that might manage to skip the taxes for a while until cashed out into something more 'real'. Check with your local licensed accountants and lawyers for how it works in your jurisdiction.

I am getting the feeling that maybe on planets where I am licensed to practice law the government will make plenty enough just doing business that it won't need taxes. Maybe not though as maybe Charles Gallagher was right that every new government expenditure results in a unit of beaurocrats and that such units once raised cannot be disbanded thus will continue to drain the economy long past any actual need for them.

One way to hedge the shares is to not issue direct shares. Make Devtome operate the way the other planned websites are intended to work, receiving shares itself but then paying its people its own way probably even in its own currency. It could then set the pay for a round up front, based on how much it has in its coffers before the round begins. Heck it need not even use the same rounds as the shares.

-MarkM-

No no this is great, my lowball buy offers are getting sold to, this is a time for stocking up on NaMeCoins.

Darn it could be better though, evidently I didn't place enough lowball buys down into a low enough range, I ran out of bitcoins along the way and now it looks like all my lowball buy offers have already been eaten because I didn't place enough of them going down into a low enough range. I need some of my highball offers on some coin or other to get snapped up so I can continue placing buy offers for NaMeCoin...

-MarkM-

Yeah I did reset to defaults to see the defaults but still all four voltages for that ASIC were blank.

So I tried setting all four to the same defaults the other one was showing but still the table to the right was empty/blank.

This RMA sounds good guess I will try that. Well first check cables and such since I will have to open it up anyway to get the board out. I was starting to think I wouldn't need those special screwdrivers, I guess they will come in handy afterall.

-MarkM-

Actually I hoped it wasn't really dead but that if I can find that turn everything on again script it will turn the thing back on.

Too much to hope for eh?

Do these things have warranties?

-MarkM-

It is too bad that MPOE is not free open source, as options do sound like just what we need.

I ran around enquiring about the possibility of generic options code a long log time ago, I wanted something where you basically tell it here are the two items of a pair, I want to enable options on that pair.

No luck though.

I also tried working through a bunch of concepts using "long coins" and "short coins" but the big probem with een the best of those ideas was that people are nowadays spiled by options that give you massive leverage so the idea of having to lock up collateral equal to the maximum amount you could lose was a major turn-off for people.

But realistically, look at Lex Cryptographia even, you do need surety bonds aka collateral of some kind if you are not going to depend on the ability to send in the marines or the sheriff or whatever.

MPOE's method of doing options is a kind of zero sum system in which MPOE itself cannot possibly lose, and all potential loses are secured/covered by third party investors who in effect loan capital to the system or to the option writers or something.

It seems a shame to have to re-write the wheel from scratch over and over and over again which is why I tend to prefer to just get it over with by doing free open source in the first place. There should be code for all those kinds of things off the shelf as free open source so that any currency can easily equip itself with such important tools of finance.

-MarkM-

I had also already an idea for how authors could maybe even out their incomes.

Basically figure out how many dollars or bitcoins or whatever you need your writing to be worth, also known as how many dollars you need each share to be worth.

Then place your sell order at the price that, based on how many devcoins this round's shares turned out to be, makes that many devcoins work out to that same amount of bitoins or dollars or whatever that you demand for your shares.

So on a round where one share turns out to be twice as many devcoins as you expected you can afford to sell them at half your usually demanded price, whereas on a round where a share is only half as many devcoins as you usually expect you can list them for sale at twice the price you normally charge for them.

Over time this should result in a scattering of sell orders that have not yet been accepted by buyers, if exchange rates have not in general been climbing, but also the periodic peaks in exchange rate should nonetheless eat them up eventually.

The net result over time should be that you tend to make about the same amount of bitcoin or fiat or icecream or whatever per round. Except maybe on the rounds where you could afford to throw them away below market price because you got so many that round, but cannot actually throw them away that cheap because exchanges always give you the best price available so even if you try to throw them qway fr below market price you will still get market price for them.

On the other hand though, for buyers dirt cheap coins are great!

So as a buyer I kind of have to think like huh what is wrong with devcoins being extremely low exchange rate? Those times are the best times to buy! I wish they would go back down to 30 Satoshis each or less right now so I can stock up again ready to make a fortune when they go back up near or beyond 200 Satoshis...

Why am I even complaining that people drive the exchange rate down? Its not as if I do so much writing that I have more than enough devcoins already to sell up near or above 200 Satoshis, for me the way I manage to have lots of devcoins to place as highball sell offers is by having people throw their coins at my lowball buy offers.

Thinking like that it is easy to start thinking huh what is wrong with low exchange rates, aren't low exchange rates awesome, aren't they the very thing that makes high exchange rates so goshdarn lucrative?

How would anyone even recognise high rates as high if there were not low rates to compare and contrast them to?

Please throw away your devcoins cheap, my buy offers only extend up to 50 Satoshis right now, I need to sell more to get more bitcoins before I can raise my buy offers higher so throw coins until you erode away all the prices above 50 so I can buy some coins darn it!

Or buy buy buy to up over 110 or so so my sell offers will get acted upon so I will have more bitcoins with which to increase the height of my pile of buy offers!

-MarkM-

Maybe when Devtome gets shares itself directly then uses Open Transactions or Cyclos or whatever to divvy up its wealth among its team members the "problem" will not be so acute, because people who actually want fiat could maybe just get paid in fiat instead of DeVCoins.

The "bank" or whatever could have an inventory so it knows the average price per dollar in DeVCoins and the average price per X number of DeVCoins in dollars that are in its inventory, so what the exchange rate happens to be on any particular occassion would be less directly relevant since it already bought the dollars it has in its inventory and knows how many DeVCoins they actually cost on average.

Basically if people don't want DeVCoins and so determinedly don't want them that they will just throw them at buyers instead of stating a price they want for them and waiting for a buyer who is willing to pay that price, then why give them DeVCoins at all? We would drive down exchange rates less by just giving them dollars instead without the exchanges being involved, and since the profitability and market cap sites and so on do nto take over the counter sales of coins into account their deperate throwing away cheap of coins need not have an effect on the "official" exchange rate such sites show.

If we know ahead of time how many DeVCoins people want to throw away cheap we can be ready for them, with a private little exchange in effect, oh well mister author, we know you prefer fiat so we picked some up for you already, no need to throw away devcoins cheap, we sold them at a good price so you are getting more fiat this way than if you just threw it at the buyers...

-MarkM-

Looks like my "october" Saturn might be at end of life already.

Less than three months of mining lifetime, that makes ROI even more difficult to achieve than the basic "difficulty" does.

I upgraded the firmware to one 99-1 tuning, because I could not find the thing that used to exist that would turn all the whatzits back on.

It seems to be showing that ASIC 1 is totally dead, no voltages no nothing.

ASIC 5 is still there.

The last few days the power supply had taken to turning itself off, I guess the Saturn must have increased the load on the power supply a lot before fthe ASIC finally died.

This is not seeming to bode well for the Neptunes if this is the kinf of lifetime we can expect from them...

The thing had actually worked well originally, I seem now finally to abe having the kinds of problems so many people started up with right out of the box.

Anyone have any idea what the thing was that would turn all the dies or ASICs or whatever back on?

Or are these newer firmwares supposed to include all that stuff themselves already?

-MarkM-

But dumping isn't just related to pre-mining.

Mostly it has to do with just tellign an exchange "sell these" without telling it "at no less a price than ______" (fill in the lowest price you are willing to accept).

Basically if you sell to an existing buy order you consume buy side depth, but if you instead place a sell order on the sell side buyers have to buy from you instead of you selling to them, and it is the sell side not the buy side of the order books that gets consumed, so the price used by all the profitability sides market cap sites and so on is not driven down.

Dumping is thus smply dumping your coins onto the buyers instead of placing an offer on the sell side waiting for them to come to you.

Often there is a large gap aka "spread" between the highest buy offer and the lowest sell offer, so you often get a significant amount more for your coins by placing them on the sell side too, as you are above the "spread" instead of driving the bottom of the "sread" even further downward.

-MarkM-

s/The creator, used /The creator used /

Also it is not exactly like bitcoin as it makes 96 coins per block and does not lower that over time but instead stops boom directly down to zero at some specific block number.

Not sure if its block timing target is exactly the same maybe it is but its difficulty adaptation is probably more adaptive (adaptive meaning faster, and maybe up up to 10% down up to 50% or somesuch).

Don't worry about missing this DOGE pump, there have been others and likely will be others in the future.

Place your lowball buy offers ready to catch it cheap on th way back down.

Then as those sell put the resulting coins way up in extreme highball offers and working downward to about where the top of the last peak was, to catch it on its way back up hopefully higher next time around.

Volume of IXCoin is probably low due to buy offers being insultingly low.

Once people start offering a buck or few bucks or several bucks per coin people's wallets will start to open a little more I expect.

-MarkM-

One thing with Ashop is the penny auctions seem to be anonymous.

You click on "register to bid" and all it asks is your bid code and a nickname.

Not sure how they plan to later be sure who used which nickname.

Unless the bid codes are tied to the username who bought them and the so caleld nickname is expected to match that username or somesuch.

-MarkM-

Thanks I upgraded both but with different notes. I just am not sure how convenient the notes from time of original confirmation will end up being to admins who later try to contact people.

Oh and to who-ever thought setting up a penny auction script would be worth 45 shares you are crazy, this has been easy so far, probably even easier than writing a thousand words.

-MarkM-