http://www.wired.com/2014/07/silkroad-bitcoin-isnt-money/

The legal game of ping pong we will play as we push for acceptance and market share. These decisions will wildly influence who uses things like NEM and how.

https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/09/how-to-make-a-purchase-in-the-ether-presale/

For those if you still interested in Ethereum, there is movement it seems...

Or alternatively if you are male, and prefer females, you can also redeem it for real NEM.

Ah I see, gotcha. Thanks.

On anonymity, consider this:

1) Drug dealers, pedophiles, _and_ Libertarians. Not everyone wants their financial transactions to be an open book for the government or the private industry (or the public either) regardless of their nature. The unfortunate side effect is the folks who do unsavory things. The question becomes do you sacrifice the individual liberties of the majority to hold the wrong doers accountable? The founding fathers of America would certainly say no (think Patriot Act and the like).  
2) Related to point #1, I think the point with more gravity is what governments will do. Currently they treat cryptos (specifically bitcoin) as an asset right? Buying and selling cryptos is like buying and selling expensive collectibles or something. When you buy them or sell them the same rules apply (I wonder are there luxury taxes on Bitcoin purchases?) The key thing here is if this movement gets enough gravity, how will governments approach it then? Threatening the tax base is the largest threat.

One could argue the most successful crypto will be one that allows government controls to function with ease. Consider income tax as an example. Most entities you interact with will supply some form of reporting to the IRS to validate the claims you make on your tax return. If a lot of this hidden from auditing they won't like that. So you can consider two reactions to that. "The finger" to "the man". Hey government eat it... but if we take that to the extreme, kind of hard to keep a standing army that protects the infrastructure that supports the currency without tax revenue. On the other hand, allowing controls that give the government the ability to easily do analysis  means they are more likely to work with it which could lead to broader adoption. It is pretty obvious from the news they understand this is something they can't directly squash.

Personally I'm not over the moon about the idea that my transactions with others is easily open to public curiosity, and data mining by corporate and government entities. I support the idea that to some very limited extent the government needs a way to tax an economic system as it becomes independent of fiat for the functions of fire, police, military, infrastructure, etc is reasonable. But I also like the idea that we can insulate ourselves from what I consider to be corrupt and awful policy practices by using a currency that isn't subject to total control by a corrupt entity whose actions are in the interest of self preservation.

I think my point here is we want to do _just enough_ to allow for integration in to the current government controls in so far as taxation, otherwise none of these bits are worth anything if the currency of the land is bullets and water and food. I'm not sure how you enforce something like a "sales tax" with everything at the discretion of each transacting party, as that would be the simplest mechanism (yay abolishment of stupid tax code). But I also think we want to do things to protect our privacy and hold government officials accountable to their actions with transparency in the currency and insight in to spending. Some of these things are diametrically opposed.

In the end anonymity is a different animal than privacy.

There are two realities if we succeed in a NEM. Anarchy when the governments fall while the rich factions of crypto form militias to protect data centers and electrical plants, spend a few hundred years living with feudal realms, and eventually consolidate in to hopefully a new democratic government or despotism. The alternative is streamlining and altering the existing government which surely would be the less costly in terms of lives and harmony. Those bits won't be worth much without the infrastructure (I'm picturing a bunch of Mad Max style citizens with laptops and solar panels and inverters taped to their vehicles).

Sorry guys I'm still a bit confused as to how fake tokens were floating on the exchange, can someone clarify? Do we need to be concerned about stakes we bought (do I need to validate the account I bought from?), or is this just going to get eaten by the dev war chest fund?

I wouldn't speculate that all the dumpers have already done so. I'd say there are folks that haven't flipped their share for an AE token yet for two reasons:

1) Too lazy to fuss with NXT. Plenty of posts littered in here to that effect.
2) Belief that they'll get more on launch day than now, so they'll wait until launch day to dump. Why bother with a token now when you'd have to wait two weeks. If you sit tight, exchange on launch day, then dump you'd be ahead of the AE guys.

This would certainly be my preference. I think part of the price is because of artificial scarcity because there is limited supply on the exchange. We haven't seen the introduction of 75% more supply in an instant. Remember the early days of the AE on NXT and the dumpers did their dumping for a bit and I think things have now consolidated (long term investors cashing out weak hands 2:1). More demand chasing shrinking availability as long term investors hold more coupled with the alpha demonstrating progress will probably set the new bar at a 30K floor. The other 75% of coins will need to shake loose their dumpers first on launch day. My guess is we see a bit of a drop in PPS on launch possibly outweighed slightly by the increase in supply, a small rise in market cap if not a small dip, and a surge once it stabilizes. I think if one were looking to get cheap NEM it is possible that you'd pay slightly less on the open market in the first week than on the auction though not less than today's AE I'd guess.

Or glut in supply drives price per share down .

Too rich for my blood, I have 4 kids to feed . My reality of NEM is in the 0.x range.

Wow dood with 2.12 % of 1/4th of the currency at 21.2 nemstakes, whee.

Application Programming Interface

It tells other people that might use or interface with your system how to do it. So if some other person or entity wants to write some other application, say a mobile app, that talks to NEM (let's say an auction house that uses NEMs Asset Exchange under the covers), it tells them how to write code to interface with it. I'm sure others can do a better job than I did.

As for serial numbers, I think it comes down to your philosophical belief in things like Dark coin. Should people be able to transact anonymously? In a Libertarian sense I say yes, but it would also make black markets and illegal activity much more difficult to police. It's a double edged sword. Again, crypto geeks will probably have a better idea about the block chain and what the analogy is there with respect to a coin being minted. I'd guess not since the denominations are not pre-set.

I'm sure we could find volunteers local to the area? Who said it had to be devs? Socialization is everything for cryptos don't you think? We can't rely on people seeking this stuff out for themselves on the net. You have to put it in front of them. I'm not saying it needs to be a trade show necessarily, but we need folks socializing this stuff. Just be smart about it. Pay for a booth, use a local NEM person willing to travel out of their own interest (I'd consider it for example) armed with prepared material by the community. It doesn't have to be lavish.

Edit: I think my point here is that I talk to a lot of people daily that don't quite get this whole "bitcoin" thing. When I explain things like frictionless transactions and native currency exchanges from buyer to seller their eyes light up and they say "yeah my brother has to wire money to his daughter in university over seas and it's such a total drag! that sounds great". Then give them a way to easily do that from their mobile, and they are hooked and they tell a friend and so on. So maybe while not trade shows (those people already get cryptos right?), we need some sort of community awareness thing. Maybe parents attending university orientations or something... put a booth up next to the Greek community and give them a QR code for the app in the app store .

The task we are charged with is helping people see the relevance to their lives. Why should I use this if I can just use the money in my pocket today? To show them this has use, and isn't just some funny Internet money. Libertarians get it, and underworld figures get it, and certainly the governments and banks get it. Everyone is fighting for the hearts and minds of the common man who ultimately is the one that decides what is to prevail. What useful functions can it serve for mere mortals? This is a cultural shift. People have to trust it. They can trust it when they can see how easy it is to move between fiat and nem. Banks and governments won't make that easy for us. Things like VirWox / SLL, Cryptsy, and the 10 other sites you need to jump through to move between the two is one of our big headaches. I know my mom would never be willing to deal with any of that. I don't think you can move to people using it exclusively until they feel at ease moving between what they do today and something new. I could be wrong.

^ This: There will be a time and place for donations. But anything that helps increase liquidity and get coins in to the hands of the every day Joe and not crypto nerds is our mission if we are to uphold "new economy movement". Anything else is a disservice to the people stuck using fiat that governments print at will.

ABSOlutely. If you can imagine friends out in the wild that want to get each other back for an evening out or whatever, maybe they can do it through their mobiles. My grandma has a smart phone and no computer... look at the demographics. If we assume that the more people that use and accept NEM the better, then we need to acknowledge the increasing demographic of mobile devices. Especially given mobile means on the move means spending money. Add in the "bump" feature of things like Android where I can just transfer you money with a bump and a swipe or something and the "tokens" gain value as a symbol of exchange, even if not directly tied to fiat. Meaning, folks might use them as "wooden nickels" to keep tabs of who got dinner last or whatever. That they could even be used in this fashion would give them value and support the network.

The bottom line is for a currency to actually be valuable it must be incredibly liquid. It must be highly accepted and easily exchanged so anything we do to that end whether its JSON/REST mobile APIs or QR codes the easier the better. This can't be understated. Even if it could be used as virtual currency (think Linden Dollars or money for an auction house in a game), it would gain value. These things are all easy to do if we properly create APIs for the targeted technology, and if we do a good job with grassroots adoption (maybe even viral in a game). Included in this is definitely gamification or similar.

Speaking of Ethereum, can any well educated crypto minds elaborate perhaps on some of the key differences/similarities to NEM? As far as my research has led me, I'm quite comfortable saying NEM will be the best Bitcoin 2.0ish platform when it launches next to NXT and perhaps Ripple (though a different beast from a political standpoint). If I read correctly, Ether is going to be PoW still?, obviously a difference there, but what about what it does and doesn't do with Bitcoin 2.0 that NEM does? Never hurts to evaluate the competition and beat them to punch . It is the other major blip on my radar next to NEM. Certainly the community is very well established as others point out, and as DOGE showed us, that can be everything.

If we have a stake, and bought a portion of a stake on the AE exchange, can we still bid in the auction?

I recall seeing that too, and also wondered what the fate of such accounts would be and reasoned one of two things:

1) They will need to dump down to two and the days leading up to cashing in there will be a glut and a price drop (don't expect this as #2)
2) They will shuffle the stakes around in 2 pair chunks to other accounts.

Are we doing taint analysis? This isn't necessarily against the rules is it? You'd need to do the same analysis as the stake holder sheet.

Wow, after reading about how PoS and forging works in NXT, I think POI is a much better idea. I don't have a mountain of NXT so there really isn't much of an incentive for me to leave the server portion running. To me, the more people that contribute to the network the more secure it is (decentralization), and as the currency dilutes, more people will be in the same position. More people will hoard to create stake and that defeats the point of a currencies fluidity and consolidates the network to the people that already have a vested interest. If you want to use the currency as a store of wealth (gold, you don't transact in it, just keep it for stability), fine. But, for a "fiat" to succeed by its' very nature, a lot of people need to want and use it.

Maybe I don't fully understand PoS, but this just doesn't feel all that terrific. Still, better than PoW I think...

Also, on the one hand, I like the idea that perhaps increasing one's node(s) with infrastructure results in a direct benefit (like adding infrastructure to a utility and increasing customer base). If I want to be a big participant I can do it on my own dime for fun and it benefits the network. On the other hand, it seems like it might encourage centralization again if folks wanted to build huge node farms then we are back to ASIC farm dangers again. So it is almost like you need some sort of "difficulty" co-efficient like in mining where the participating nodes have scale to a point and then diminishing returns. I have no idea how you'd enforce that as any method I can think of easily bypassed (by IP? by client ID?, etc.)

Enlighten me if you know better. I'll need to pour over the NEM POI docs.

Argh, the NXT exchange rates are killing me man. Good thing the AE prices for NEM are dropping (or perhaps staying relative to the NXT inflation).

Hey,

A bit late to the party here, obviously. My research for the next iteration of crypto has lead me here. I'd definitely like to be on the stakeholder list.

I'm tired of my government printing free money with 0 accountability at the expense of those of us that actually take responsibility at home and balance our budgets (after all, I can't print money when I'm in a bind... well not legally). I'm tired of a few special interest groups of power in the banking world manipulating and controlling everyone else without any accountability. It pisses me off frankly. For me, crypto is as much religious as it is interesting and fun. It isn't about getting rich or mining for me, it is about investing my time and money in something I feel is fair, secure, and open. After spending years investing in stocks and money I grew very disillusioned at how crooked the system really is. Even precious metals and the like are totally silly. Before learning about crypto I was ready to put my money in bullets and water. This is my last hope for unscrewing the corrupt geo political alignment that exists due to the centralization of wealth. NEM seems as good of a fit as anything. I'm a relative new comer to crypto but now that I'm in I'm obsessed, and looking for something a little more progressive (the next evolution if you will) to pour myself in to.

I'm a web specialist/j2ee dev/sys admin/sys eng/generalist/whatever for a fortune 50 hospital =). Would be happy to contribute where I can. I write transactional Java code, maintain hypervisors, and undervolt/overclock my chips, design web pages. My interests run the gamut from mundane to quite complex. If it is IT related, I probably dabble.

Regards,