That is one of many reasons why I like Factom so much - even in quiet times it's possible that there come out great news without a warning before. 

P.S.: And that's also the reason why I never really want to sell. Selling can be a high risk in Factom. ;-)

I just found that, too and wanted to post it! It's really great!

Full text:

DHS S&T Awards $199K to Austin Based Factom Inc. for Internet of Things Systems Security

For Immediate Release
DHS Science & Technology Press Office
Contact: John Verrico, (202) 254-2385

WASHINGTON – The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) Science and Technology Directorate (S&T) today awarded $199,000 to Factom Inc. based in Austin, Texas, to advance the security of digital identity for Internet of Things (IoT) devices.  The project titled “Blockchain Software to Prove Integrity of Captured Data From Border Devices” was awarded through Securing the Internet of Things (IoT), Solicitation Number: HSHQDC-16-R-00035, the first call for proposals under the Silicon Valley Innovation Program (SVIP)  Other Transaction Solicitation (OTS) which launched in December 2015 to encourage non-traditional performers to offer solutions to some of the toughest threats facing DHS and the homeland security mission.

“IoT devices are embedded within our daily lives – from the vehicle we drive to devices we wear – it’s critical to safeguard these devices from adversaries, said DHS Under Secretary for Science and Technology Dr. Reginald Brothers. “S&T is excited to engage our nation’s innovators, helping us to develop novel solutions for the Homeland Security Enterprise.”

The Internet of Things is a convergence of mobile devices, information technology networks, connected sensors and devices. The DHS OTS call for security solutions seeks novel ideas and technologies to improve situational awareness and security for protecting these domains, including the 16 critical infrastructure sectors monitored by DHS.

“The start-up community is already developing innovative commercial solutions for IoT, so why not take advantage of that?” said Melissa Ho, Managing Director, S&T’s Silicon Valley Innovation Program. “DHS is engaging this community to gain access to products that will have a large impact to our enterprise, and we’re excited by the diversity of solutions this solicitation is able to bring to the Department.”   

The Factom Inc. Team proposes to authenticate devices to prevent spoofing and ensure data integrity by leveraging one of the most secure networks – the blockchain. Factom will create an identity log that captures the identification of a device, who manufactured it, lists of available updates, known security issues and granted authorities while adding the dimension of time for added security. The goal is to limit would-be hackers’ abilities to corrupt the past records for a device, making it more difficult to spoof.

For more information on future OTS solicitations visit http://scitech.dhs.gov/hsip or contact dhs-silicon-valley@hq.dhs.gov.   

1. I'm a normal Investor, nothing special, without relations to Factom.
2. I believe it's impossible not to be biased in some ways
3. But I have reasons for my view on Factom and other projects etc. I think about all that, instead of just reacting emotional on price-changes.

4. I'm not just cheerleading Factom. There were points I criticized (wallet) and I never said they do it all perfect in all aspects. I also believe that more communication would be good, but if I try to think out of their perspective I can understand that they don't have much motivation to discuss with "Price-Complainers" while they have to do real work.

5. In comparison to other projects I do research about, it's the best project in my opinion, also and especially regarding the price potential. I just don't think in short-term because real value in short-term is a "Crypto-Illusion" - and DAO is just a good example.

6. If I should write posts against Factom I could do that. But I would need a lot more of speculations to give a negative impression while I just need to express my honest opinion to write about it how I do it.





I don't say that there is anything wrong about it to criticize the delay. But it should be more than just the expression of "please, do something for the price!". I mean, what is the critique exactly about? That they don't work on but having a good time on vacations? Or that they are not able to finish it? Because if I should be right with my view on it, there is nothing to be critical about. Maybe just that they were themselves overoptimistic regarding the time-frame. But delays are normal. And we are not the ones who do the work. We just read posts and articles and twitter and check charts and trade or whatever. More precise: We try to make money out of the work others do.

And kind of interesting is: The complaining about M2-delay is always related to the market-situation. If the price goes up - everybody is happy, no one cares about a delay. If the price goes down some try to blame the team while there are thousands of aspects with effect on the price they can't control (and shouldn't care about).  

Just by the way: It could turn out as an illusion that M2 will do much for the price. If they release it while Bitcoin rises even more, the FCT-price won't most likely react much more than it did because of the Rongdu-partnership-news. A little up plus dumping on release.

What I count on regarding the price is:

1. If Bitcoin should reach a new ATH, form a new "bubble" like it did in 2013, there will be a time when money flows into other projects/alts. First Alt's lose if Bitcoin goes up. Then they win at least in marketcap. After that they shoot up because a lot of BTC-profit-taking won't be just between Bitcoin and fiat but into other Crypto-projects. And that will most likely happen even without any news or releases.

2. Real success of Factom. If they realize it how it's planned I see no reason why it shouldn't be used and grow and grow and grow.  

DAO is not "probably" dead. They will shut it down and try to get back as many funds as possible. Maybe that will be 100% but if, it will most likely be because of a rollback. There are also other potential solutions on the table but what I believe is: Priority will be the money, not credibility. DAO was a flawed idea right from the start. Even if the code would have been perfect the social and economical implications always were a risk for Ethereum and just a few didn't underrate that but warned.

And I don't believe that Ethereum is recovering. I believe that it's manipulated with a lot of money to prevent even more panic and that the majority underrates what will come. Even if there would be a perfect solution to get the money back without a damaging intervention the collected ETH will reach the market and bring pressure on the price. But it's not only that. It's in combination with bad press, a bad collective mood, decreasing trust in Ethereum as a platform for smart contracts, rising Bitcoin, and competitors that maybe are not even recognized yet.

Regarding the market-situation in general and the question if something is "not logical": The market is never totally rational. It's more the opposite because it's driven by greed and fear, not totally rational analysis (which is also impossible). At the same time rational moves of individuals can seem irrational for those who just see the chart. If a whale had to cut his losses because of a personal situation in combination with the DAO-disaster - it's rational out of his perspective. But the chart could be recognized as if it would be an irrational move.

I believe we see a turning point of the whole crypto-market, at least in mid-term. Bitcoin is rising while it's biggest competitor loses trust and most likely it also will lose marketcap. Ethereum will survive this but over the next days (maybe even weeks) there will also be a lot of hurting discussions how to solve this problem. And I believe (but I'm absolutely not an expert) that this is not just about the DAO-code. It's most likely also about the platform, about Ethereums design. If I'm right with that it's also an underrated issue and if that is correct, Ethereum was and still is totally overvalued.

Factom: ...could benefit. Reason is: In combination with Bitcoin and other projects around Bitcoin, the Bitcoin-ecosystem will grow and in best case it will grow into something that is superior to Ethereum in all areas, also regarding decentralization. I never believed that highly complex systems have much chance. I always believed that complexity should be a result of a natural growth of simple systems combined with simple systems - like Bitcoin plus Factom plus (....otherprojects...).

Why did the price for FCT went down the last time? I still believe it's 90% because of Bitcoin. And important is always: The (any) price doesn't say much about the real value of a project. I believe Factom is worth more than Ethereum. I don't want to say Factom should have a billion-marketcap (like I've said: I consider Ethereum as overvalued) but I believe Factom is really useful or at least it's near to be, while Ethereum may be more like an experiment to find out how to do smart contracts and how not to do it. That also has value but more like science has value: learning... Crypto is so young. I have no doubt that there will be other projects in future that will do what Ethereum wants to do but with the advantage to learn out of Ethereums mistakes.

That's also the reason why I don't see delays as a problem. Because it's not just about finding a possible solution, code it and release it. It's very important not to make steps that could be right for now but turn out as a weak point later. That's why it's about thinking about all possible consequences and scenarios, tests and improvements and so on.

If I compare my own view on Ethereum and DAO with Factom, my opinion is: DAO is a clear proof of a lack of professionalism (and I mean it's existence now, not just the flawed code). And I'm not speaking just about DAO-Devs. They are from the Ethereum-team. Ethereum = DAO = slock.it.

Factom on the other side: Maybe the Factom-team doesn't have a superstar like Vitalik Buterin, but they are professionals. They have a history in developing products for real use, are much more experienced and most likely they have a better overview about all important aspects. I always prefer elegant simplicity and perfectionism instead of rushed out dreams  that start as a hype but end as a horror-trip just two weeks after launch. But finding the best possible way and to do it as perfect as possible takes time. Better a delay now, instead of a hype that ends in a crash because of impatience and a development with focus on the market/price.

I don't believe there is a right decision. It seems as if there are only choices between bad and worse and it also seems as if they are willing to risk Ethereums credibility to get the money back (a rollback is on the table).

But even if they would find a most elegant/perfect solution to not hurt Ethereums credibility and to get the money back: All those ETH's will reach the market in a short period of time. And that will also be anticipated. I don't see a positive scenario for Ethereum (and the price) in mid-term.

Other projects will benefit in my opinion. That may seem cold but that's the "game". Besides the learning effect (which can also help Ethereum in longterm) a lot of money which would be focused on Ethereum won't go into Ethereum the next time but find it's way into other projects.

I don't believe that this disaster will have much impact on others besides the panic that was in the market yesterday. It's not a Factom-problem or a *whateverprojectsname*-problem.

This is worth reading about Ethereum and DAO:


Thoughts on The DAO Hack

(...)

Is Ethereum/Solidity Suitable for Secure Smart Contracts?
It's clear that writing a robust, secure smart contract requires extreme amounts of diligence. It's more similar to writing code for a nuclear power reactor, than to writing loose web code.

Yet the current Solidity language and underlying EVM seems designed more for the latter. Some misfeatures are:

A good language for writing state machines would ensure that there are no states from which it is impossible to recover.
A good language for writing state machines would make it painfully clear when state transitions can and cannot happen.
A good language for maintaining state machines would provide features for upgrading the security of a live contract.
A good language for writing secure code would make it clear that there are no implicit actions, that code executes plainly, as read.
The current language does not fulfill any of these commandments, and in fact, the last one, involving implicit recursive calls, is what did The Dao in.

The SlockIt team even had the designer and implementor of Solidity perform a review of their code. If he cannot get something like The DAO to be secure, no one can.

A re-think seems called for.

(...)

http://hackingdistributed.com/2016/06/17/thoughts-on-the-dao-hack/



 



(...)

The only reason the proposal exists at all is because the Ethereum developers have personally invested in the DAO, multiple posters have argued.

The conflict threatens to bring down the credibility of the entire currency. Not only was it possible to hack the system and move millions of dollars worth out of one of the currency's main backers – raising questions of its technical competence – but the developers have proposed intervening potentially for their own financial gain in the inner workings of the entire system – raising political questions over how it is run.

http://m.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/17/digital_currency_ethereum/

You don't seem to understand what happened. DAO is done. It will be shut down. Available ETH-Funds will flow back to DAO-holders.

Conclusion:

1. It's not a question if DAO is done. It's a fact.
2. It's not a question if all the ETH will reach the market. It's just a question of time and we don't speak about years.

And when it comes to "solutions": There are options on the table that will most likely hurt Ethereums integrity in some ways. It looks as if they see the money as priority which is already a proof of mistake by design. What I mean with that is: A 150 Mio Dollar Smart Contract in such an early stage on a platform that is obviously not ready for it was more than just stupid. I didn't see the hack coming but in all scenarios the DAO would have been an economical risk for Ethereum. The current situation is kind of a worst-case.

Plus: The question if Lisk will benefit or not shouldn't be answered with a focus on direct money-transfers from Ethereum (or DAO) into Lisk now. It's more about the bigger picture and a larger time-frame. If Lisk can establish itself as a professional and trusted platform while Ethereum definitely will lose a lot of trust (ongoing dynamic), Lisk will benefit. Not necessarily because many will sell there Ethereum to buy into Lisk (which is also possible) but a lot of money won't even go into Ethereum anymore but in other projects instead. And Lisk can be one of the top-players in this game.

No, I don't believe it will have a "losing-trust-effect" on Crypto in general. It's to 100% a problem of Ethereums design and the DAO-smart-contract. There will be a lot to learn for Ethereum and a lot of other projects but real bad impact it will only have on Ethereum. The reason is that it seems as if there is no good solution, only the choice between two or three bad ways.

Not directly related to Lisk but a very(!) interesting article about the DAO-hack and Ethereum in general (also listing some weaknesses of ETH):

Thoughts on The DAO Hack

(...)

Is Ethereum/Solidity Suitable for Secure Smart Contracts?
It's clear that writing a robust, secure smart contract requires extreme amounts of diligence. It's more similar to writing code for a nuclear power reactor, than to writing loose web code.

Yet the current Solidity language and underlying EVM seems designed more for the latter. Some misfeatures are:

A good language for writing state machines would ensure that there are no states from which it is impossible to recover.
A good language for writing state machines would make it painfully clear when state transitions can and cannot happen.
A good language for maintaining state machines would provide features for upgrading the security of a live contract.
A good language for writing secure code would make it clear that there are no implicit actions, that code executes plainly, as read.
The current language does not fulfill any of these commandments, and in fact, the last one, involving implicit recursive calls, is what did The Dao in.

The SlockIt team even had the designer and implementor of Solidity perform a review of their code. If he cannot get something like The DAO to be secure, no one can.

A re-think seems called for.

(...)

http://hackingdistributed.com/2016/06/17/thoughts-on-the-dao-hack/





Edit: Another major issue is this:


(...)

The only reason the proposal exists at all is because the Ethereum developers have personally invested in the DAO, multiple posters have argued.

The conflict threatens to bring down the credibility of the entire currency. Not only was it possible to hack the system and move millions of dollars worth out of one of the currency's main backers – raising questions of its technical competence – but the developers have proposed intervening potentially for their own financial gain in the inner workings of the entire system – raising political questions over how it is run.

http://m.theregister.co.uk/2016/06/17/digital_currency_ethereum/

If mocking a project is a good reason for you to buy, I could make you a nice list with some other coins which were/are mocked you need to invest in.

We could start with Paycoin. ;-)

Take a look at the chart now. It will benefit. ;-)

Edit: Most likely Lisk got a hit because some who were invested in DAO had to cut their losses. But besides the fact that it wasn't a good decision for the dumpers to sell Lisk, the selling in DAO and ETH is most likely not over and Lisk will benefit in "long"-term. At least my personal opinion. Just never do a DAO!

A very(!) black day. DAO was hacked. Glad that I didn't touch it:

https://steemit.com/thedao/@xeroc/ongoing-attack-on-thedao---eth-draining-from-the-pot


Edit: https://twitter.com/The_DAO_Project/status/743726761985249280

Most of all Alts go down if BTC goes up. But while they lose a little bit in Bitcoin in short-term, they increase in $ - value and with a delay they benefit even more.

And Lisk has it all. You talk about a "downfall" but that's not true. The marketcap is rising. You say that all of the original ICO-Investors sold, which is also not true. I'm one of those who bought into the ICO and I sold in between, but I'm back in with more now. Others did the same. And it may go down even a little bit more if BTC rises, in my opinion the chances are high that it will explode at one point. And good is: That can happen if Bitcoin goes up and it can happen if Bitcoin stabilizes in the current range and it's even more likely (near to safe) that it will happen if Bitcoin goes back down.

With less words: In short-term Bitcoin may hurt the price in Bitcoin. But in mid-term, all Bitcoin-scenarios are fine for Lisk!

And here is the video:


Factom at the Distributed Trade Conference 2016
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7xseZ-Veg4k

It's a good mix of a healthy chart (besides that up and down on the first day because of the DDOS-Attacks) in combination with much potential for a lot more.

What's interesting: Bitcoin still goes up but ppl more and more seem to refuse to sell. Something like that can act like a catapult. Safe to say is: There is a lot of up-energy in Lisk and the chances for a falling BTC and/or good news like a big exchange, or whatever, in combination with the high attention Lisk already is one of the safest bets right now. 

Does anybody know if it's a big exchange?


Lisk added to http://BitBays.com . #lisk #china
https://twitter.com/LiskHQ/status/743045819713126400

One reason why ETH seems strong is that a lot of ETH-value is locked in DAO. But over time this value will flow back into the market and it will bring pressure on the price.

And Lisk holds it's price. It's at a higher marketcap now than before and still trades above $0.43.

That's a very good base for more.

Additional to my previously post something about the price in general:

In my opinion, the latest price drops are not that much related to Factom, and also not that much because of a delayed M2. My theory is:

1. The last months there were a lot of highly successful ICO's with many thousands of Bitcoins. There was Lisk, there was waves, there was DAO and some others. All together we speak about hundreds of millions of Dollars. That's why there is less liquidity in the market and that's also the reason why a lot of projects could announce good news but the price didn't react that much and/or fell back soon. That was the case in Factom but also XCP and some others.

2. The Bitcoin-price. People speculate on higher BTC-prices which means they are very carefully with buying alts and many who are in Alt's even sold and many will buy back too lower prices.


And most important: A rising Bitcoin-price, maybe even a "hype" (like 2013) would have bad impact on all others first. But with a little delay, money goes back into Alts and projects with a relation to Bitcoin will benefit even more - like Factom.

Yes, Customers don't even need to know about Factoids. But if a customer wants to buy 40k Entry Credits, Factom transacts FCT's to his EC-Address --> Conversion.

And if the customer buys 40k EC's for $200 while it only would need FCT's for $40 (40,000 * $0.001) the Factom team could buy more FCT's than needed or they just keep the profit in Dollar.

The question is not if they make profit with that. They do if ppl buy it. But the Factoids-price has no influence on that. You could say that they could buy more FCT's for $200 at $1 each than for a higher price. But that would be usual speculation on the price. If they do that, it would 1) show their certainty that the price will be higher in future, otherwise it wouldn't make sense out of their perspective, and 2) everybody can do that. And 3) It can be done at all prices.


Let's say the price for 1 FCT is at $10. A Customer gives them $200 to purchase 40k EC's and they transact/convert 4 FCT's while they were able to buy 20 FCT's for $200. Again: That would only make sense if it would be speculation on even higher prices in the future and it would be the same at all possible prices.

Under the line they have no benefit from lower prices. And I have some doubts that they speculate much with FCT's. They hold a lot since they've started with Factom. But of course: Factom-Inc is for profit. They are a company and want to make profit and they sell a good for a higher price than they buy it on the market.

My concern is more: I don't believe that many will buy EC's at such high prices. If I would like to use Factom to record data and I would know that each entry costs $0.001 I wouldn't pay more than that, at least not if I need many Entries. So, I don't know why they sell EC's at obviously higher prices and if that is successful. My way would be most likely more to sell it at $0.001 to encourage the use of the system.

But: Most likely the Store is just the pick of an iceberg without much meaning at this early stage. I believe that there are other deals with bigger companies with a high and stable demand etc. But most likely it's all more testing before the system is totally finished.

The thing is: Some here are concerned because the team does nothing to promote Factoids and get disappointed and impatient if the value is going down. They would like to see more communication and more moves that might lift the price while the team does not care much about that. But most important to understand is: The best they can do is to do their best for the code, for the system. And M2 needs most likely more time because it really has to be as perfect as it can be. Unlike to other projects they can't just release something that doesn't work and do bug-fixing together with the public. This is not some kind of little "SuperNewAnonShitCoinClone". They already have partnerships, Factom is already used. It has to be totally stable and reliable. Otherwise no company would use it.

And I said it several times before: That's why the focus of Investors should be also on that points. It's about the question how much potential the base-idea of Factom has. If somebody says: "Wow, that could be a really big thing!" the next question is, if the team has the abilities to realize it and if they not just have the abilities but are also professional and diligent etc. And they are. Everybody who has doubts should look into the github.

Plus: They also do a lot of PR. Just not for the market and Factoids. They promote the system, they teach about blockchains and Factom with the goal that many know about it and maybe will use it once it's ready. Just take a look on how many conferences they speak (especially Tiana Laurence). Plus: They are most likely in a lot of negotiations they don't/can't speak about.

If they are successful, all that together will lift the price and since we talk about big data and unlimited potential use cases, it really could go very high. And if I should make a guess which Crypto-projects will be first with real customers, real use, a real business-model, my guess is still: Factom.

Wow, first I believed it's just a small and unknown exchange without much volume. But: Junbi is the Nr. 1 in volume for Litecoin:

http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/litecoin/#markets

They can sell EC's for a higher price then 1/10 cent while they convert (for the customer) FCT's to EC's at a value of 1/10 cents - the difference is the profit. And that is what they do in the Store (but I highly doubt that it's for bigger companies and partnerships). Either way, that has nothing to do with the FCT-price. They can do that with FCT's at 90 cent and they could do the same with a price at 9 Dollar. Low prices are no benefit for them. Btw: You could do that as well.