I can't wait for the break of that one, and hopefully it will go all the way to 0.0018..

Market... 

As always, it can go up, down, or stay put.

I tend to think that we are in an uptrend, and also at a low end of the trading range, so up is a better chance.

More about Technology

The Crypto Kingdom is a rather large but sparsely populated land mass in conditions that resemble central or northern Europe. We know of great lands such as Rossiya, France and Polonia, and have trade with them. We have contact with faraway lands as well. Curiously enough, while the lands nearby are a source of much more visitors to us than we can afford to visit them, they have not expressed much interest to subdue us. The latest diplomatic incident with our neighbors was in the late 1400s.

This place is technologically backward and few people live here, and the peasants have grown increasingly hostile to taxation of any kind. They are protecting the core of the Kingdom (the Old Duchy and the CryptoTown in the middle) from the intruders with their attitude, but will also present an issue to our rule as we have the idea to enlarge our effective control to the whole area claimed as the Crypto Kingdom, and not claimed by any of the foreign powers.

The role of Technology (SCI) in our game is to bring about the advances that keep us in the historical schedule of technology progression, mending the gaps that the other nations already have, and who knows, in the future getting ahead of them in some fields. This will prevail for the realyears to come - at the new pace of time, we will reach the IRL time in 2028.

At the moment, our SCI production is about 100,000 SCI/realyear. Taking reasonable growth into account, it's likely that the 1600s will see the total of 1-10 million SCI produced.

Our challenge from design perspective is to create an interesting and incentivized system for spending SCI. The game has a strong collaborative element, and most advances should at least eventually become amalgamated to the body-of-knowledge and the game rules. The SCI advances are so large that they can only in a limited way to be used in competitive settings, because the competitors would need to be very large, ruling out almost everyone from the game, and the prizes should be so large as to giving advantages to some that the others would feel are unfair. So we need to design a system that allows the SCI points to be used in limited, temporary, proprietary advances, while also advancing the general good, and the latter needs to be incentivized as well.

Some design considerations are:
- Science should involve strategy, so there should be some visibility to the technology tree, if/when the advances lead to others.
- It should be possible to research many kinds of things, not only preplanned ones. This increases interest by true scientists.
- Some major advances should have a known outcome, whereas minor ones could have a more vague knowledge where they might lead. It is also possible to use die to decide if a certain path leads to a breakthrough or not, to increase realism.
- SCI establishments should get bonus when researching things that they are made for, while preserving the fungibility of SCI points themselves, so that the points don't expire and it would be reasonable to strike a balance between committing points and keeping a reserve for quick needs.
- The usual tradeoff between preserving the first-mover/early adopter advantage, while giving enough incentives for newcomers to join.
- It is preferable that (at least some of) the individual advances also have a first-mover bonus, otherwise the time element in committing incrementally to the advances is lost and becomes more of a balance-of-terror type of thing with clans buying whole advances at once, which is not as fun and completely unrealistic.

About technology trees in games (scholarly article).


In this framework,
a) is of course present

b)-c) it is conceivable that building will be cheaper, more flexible, more comfortable and even more durable as advances such as wooden ceilings and roofs replace the unweildy and expensive stone ceilings. Also the graphics allow 0.5 m precision instead of 1 m currently, but this advance cannot be unlocked soon mainly because of the editor/architect/time limitations (it is 8 times more atomic units, with a result of much more time spent on design, which already is a major cost item - also the cost of different kinds of buildings needs to be kept at bay - a middle-class home must be purchasable at <$100 always, otherwise the game is sorely outpriced).

Units we have in the form of Businesses, and minor modifications can be made as part of existing formulas, for example Restaurants could have several advances leveling them up, or reducing costs. Small advances can grant a temporary natural monopoly due to the others not knowing the trade secret. CUL/SCI establishments can increase production, and of course IND has only been started because of the advances, and more are required for every industry we start, printing press comes to mind.

One more thing that the advances can help is affect what can be produced by the PC/NPC in V.6 Skills&Businesses. Medicide is a major issue now, as otherwise our living expectancy is in danger to collapse. The waters in the two springs don't taste what they should, and new sources need to be found. We don't really know even how to dig wells!

d) player "abilities" are somewhat difficult, because a "player" does not equal a character, and boosting a single character by a global technology advance is funny and impossible to balance. The clans have not yet formed in an appreciable extent, and the Countryside is only coming and not even soon. The emergence of new Kingdoms is even further, because lesser -doms subservient to the King must precede them. This is an important avenue to explore though and in the 1700s and onwards might be relevant.

The time element is an importart design consideration in the technology subgame. The others mainly function in the present, meaning very little forward thinking is required to participate. With technologies, the optimal interesting situation would be that there is an actual tradeoff going on with how much SCI to commit and where, and how much to keep in reserve to enable strategic commits to finish an advance, or participate in a new advance when it comes.

Therefore, there needs to be an implicit interest rate in SCI points - some rules that encourage spending them sooner rather than later. The IRR (internal interest rate) of various game activities is nominally 0.2%-0.8% daily, but practically even higher, even 1-2%. The Prince of Soul recently calculated that after all his donations, he was still making 1.2% daily during the time the game was active.

A beautiful way to achieve the time preference is the distribution of land in the order of SCI commitments. With the exception of the roadside, the land value does go down when going further, but it also does it so slowly that it is not necessary to act daily in FOMO.

The raffle would not embrace any of these mechanisms that make the game interesting, nor be realistic. It could well be used in allocating land to the poor for instance, but in connection of SCI points I don't see the advantages.

I think I am not getting enough attention that I deserve in this thread, so please read this link about how I see XMR.

Considering that this was founded to be a parody of that one ...

Okay good. So everybody continue doing the good work

In general it might be good to read the OP so you know what's it about and what's not (hint: a smiley in the topic modifies both attributes)

See the list of grievances that sparked the Declaration of Independence.

In the post-9/11 world these sound like somebody getting hurt by evil talk on his way back from the Sunday School...

Some people feel that they need to get the definitions correct

The usage of SCI points in V.4, and the plans for Town expansion



This is how our town looks like (scale = 4,050 * 2,700 m ~ 11 sq.km). The current nominal population is only about 2,000, but it will go up drastically after the new players join in, and the Quarry & Building company workforce are again counted as population. Also as per the custom, only working-age men are counted, and the peasants living in the middle boroughs are not, so per modern standards, we are already living in a town of about 10,000 people.

To encourage diversity, the Boroughs we have, have been encouraged to take varying directions in development:

(1) Old Town is the historical homestead of the King and the Nobles, restaurant life, and the tourism, and still accounts for 45% of the building area. It has lately been plagued by high land values, hindering the new construction, though.

(2) New City has a fully-built monumental centre and the new Triple Towers development increasing commerce and population, with also many parks. A curiosity is the lack of paved road between it and the Old Town, because the land in between is rough. The site of New City was chosen to be the first new borough mainly because its excellent quarry properties in 1520. The King has a site chosen for Summer Palace but the plans have been delayed.

(3) Culture & Science was opened in 1540 to allow more quarrying, and also because the Old Town had expanded to that direction. The Boulevard was immediately lengthened starting from Culture Square in the OT, all the way to the (then planned) Palace of Culture & Science. This borough is now designated to the University (and may be renamed such), with the major landowners pledging to give privileged prices for those willing to establish Colleges there. At times, it has been more developed than New City, but lately as Triple Towers were built and Portal collapsed, C&S is behind.

(4) Free Land (Swamp) was opened in 1580 to experiment with free land. The site is not quarriable and not very suitable for living but as it is close to the OT, it needs to be claimed. Problems there are with the ground that requires extensive pedestals to keep buildings from sinking, and common sense tells that the health issues there might be linked to the environment. Nevertheless, for people with lesser means, building a 5 million house on free land is significantly more lucrative than paying 20-50 million for the land first.

(5) San Pietro was opened in 1580 but did not enjoy any success at first. Only when the namesake was built there and the area became known during the Earthquake aftermath, it started to incite interest. As a surprise move (everything that we don't propose nor even think is a surprise), the Round Table selected 5-N to be the site for the Clubhouse. Now there are the plans almost ready to build a monumental centre in 5-N and a tightly packed urban area in 5-C around the San Pietro as well. Most other chapelries are not yet quarried and need be, because so much stone is needed for the construction, which is affordable to be produced onsite.

(6) Neither the north side of (2) nor the west of (4) are developed, so there is no great hurry to open this borough except for quarrying purposes. No details about the geology exist.

(7) Versailles was sold to the King decades ago for the purposes that he would build a Chateau there. The area is a natural park, and as such will not be quarried. The stone requirements are immense, though. The estimates for finished building have ranged from 50-100 billion. The area as its totality is also a haw, with royal and diplomatic immunity. Embassies and the palaces of the Court members will be built there as well. It is unlikely that any serious construction can even start in the nearest real-months.

( 8 ) This area is a likely candidate to be opened as soon as Quarry works again.

(9) This is a most likely area to be opened, because it is situated in the corner of (3) and (5), and can support them with stone, and later provide a place for more affordable houses etc.

(10-21) The current rule is that the Town must make available land in unlimited quantities for quarrying and development, so that there always are chapelries for sale for 1,000 million. At present, this rule is not followed because we have needed to constrain the scope of activities available in V.4. As the Quarry opens, it is possible that speculation or actual growth leads to the opening of these boroughs, in which case the direction of expansion depends on the direction of existing developments, geology and other factors.

(22-23) Previously I have said that middle boroughs cannot be opened before there are scientific advances. With closer examination, as the map reveals, it is not a significant difference in population density if some of them are opened. Historically, it has taken a long time to achieve a density that would bring problems. The (currently) slight traffic issues in the Old Town are not related to domestic population but the visitors that must all come to a small area with their carriages, because everything is located there!

Therefore, with some general advances that New Liberty has already hinted about, opening the (22) and later (23) would be possible. The (22) is hilly land, with only the Esplanade in the centre levelled. The (23) is flat and peasants use it for growing vegetables for the consumption in the town. With about 6,300 SCI points, we could start from opening of (22), and our proposal is as follows:

Land is sold per quadrat, and all the quadrats not already belonging to the King's Esplanade (1,260 total) are for sale. Everyone who has SCI points can spend 5 SCI to redeem a quadrat. When all quadrats have been redeemed, the advance is completed and the Borough is annexed to the Town and the landowners can start building there. All the roads etc. are the responsibility of the landowners (building roads of varying width is not an issue in V.4 as the current /OV with its 10x10 grid does not even exist there visually - although the ownership is still limited to the said grid).

Since in the beginning we have 3,000+ SCI points and it's obvious that the land facing the Esplanade is dramatically more valuable than that which is not, we first arrange an auction for the "first taker rights" where the ones who pay the most extra (m) can choose how to spend their SCI first (price per q). The proceeds are divided between the King and the Town, as it is with all land sales.

This is just a proposal: before implementation, one thing that needs to be done is to map the contours. Then the quarry issue - if quarrying is disabled, we fear that a serious dearth of affordable stone hits us soon. Also 5 SCI might be too little.

Furthermore, we would like to see the situation where at the time of completion of this project, there would be more pressing ways to spend the SCI so that it becomes the game of tragedy of the commons (who will spend the final SCI needed, on land that is not going to be useful in the near future) or a glorious triumph of cooperation. The same idea is behind the suggestion to let the roads be built by the owners.

The Tower Suite is btw. the highest hotel room in existence (once built). It is 12 m high in the middle and about 80 sqm in floor area, facing south/west, with private access to the very large roof terrace with views all around. The Ducal Suite in the 3rd floor of the Grand Hotel is much larger and 40 m long with several beds and baths, but only 4 m high.

Wow - the last time a Restaurant was purpose-built in town was 86 years ago. El Bulli is still the best restaurant with public access, and has been in the TOP-5 all its history.

El Bulli cost of construction, including land, was IIRC about 400-500 million, the Gilded Goose clearly looks like a billion-project, fitting for the prominent location in the corner of the Great Hall in the Round Table House, the Great Hall/Tower Suite in the NF New Hotel, and the New Department Store. None of these buildings are yet constructed, but if the Old Town did not have the 100+ year headstart, they would easily outcompete the ones there in stature.

I exhort the restaurant owner to have a look at the seasoned staff of El Bulli and embark on purchasing a similar set. Restaurants are one of the most skill-intensive businesses, or the most, when talking about the high end, with the best possible CHEF and BUTler being essential.

It is possible to buy/sell staff in /SERV, just not hire or fire anyone, or establish new businesses or delete old ones. Hiring of low level staff becomes possible again in V.4.

Your explanation does not explain much at all.

If you think of the media, it's no different than if I owned a media. I have a certain set of beliefs I want to propagate, and the media is a tool for propagating them.

Zionists own the media, including Hollywood. It is nothing extraordinary for them to use it to further their goals. Just see what they are propagating every day in every media outlet.

(It is not a universal law that newspapers need to be full of insecurity and that type of shit. It is only that the Zionist want you to live in insecurity. I am not insecure. But I don't read their shit   )

And the compulsory disclaimer:
Zionist != Jew. Zionists in my understanding are typically mostly not even ethnic Jews, and the supermajority of Jews certainly are not Zionists. Zionism is a purely political supremacy movement.

It refers to the "mainstream media", all the big and small media corporations that invariably are in Zionist majority ownership and factual control, throughout the western world. If you know of any other industry more so, I'm glad to hear.

So "mainstream media" as a term is a joke, I as a white married Christian am surely more "mainstream" in my country than the media 

Why do you think I am involved in crypto in the first place? Quoting the Declaration of Independence (of the United States):


The United States is found on the principle that the people have a duty to not allow tyranny. Clearly the current living conditions (in the United States) are far more tyrannical than the ones that forced the independence in 1776, and are listed in the Declaration. If I was American, I would be among the true patriots, following not only the spirit, but also the letter of the Declaration of Independence in not allowing tyranny in my life, and a good place to start is where it is most apparent, in the realm of money.


ADD: I regard violent means of overthrowing the tyrannical government as dysfunctional. Gandhi is more my style. If you never step down from the moral win position, the enemy spends all its power fighting you and exposing themselves, and even if you die, you win.

The Chapelry 5-N is quickly zooming to be the foremost chapelry of all town. Princes North Face and OZ have commissioned the following joint development including:
- A large hotel
- 2 restaurants
- A large office building
- North Face "household" offices
- 3 townhouses 200 sqm each with terraces and gardens
- 400 sqm public park
- a yard for carriages


From Esplanade


From South

(Not all doors are in place but you get the idea).

Other developments in the Chapelry include a 5-story department store with 3,000 sqm commercial area, the Round Table House already shown on the thread, and the Gilded Goose restaurant rumored to have a 100 sqm window reaching 25 m high, aiming to serve the Knights and guests of the Round Table opposite side of the street.

Do you know how to unsubscribe a thread without deleting all own posts?

The State of Monero in its first anniversary, April 18, 2015

Risto Pietilä, Operational Executive in MEW - Monero Economy Workgroup


Greetings,

Let us start from Bitcoin's first anniversary. There is no public post from satoshi commemorating it, and the project did not have that many public reasons for celebrating either. The difficulty had finally risen from the starting value of 1 a few days before, but the community numbered only tens of somewhat active people. Bitcoin did not have reasonable exchange value and the market cap per coins issued was about $8,000.

What happened in the following year seemed like a miracle in comparison - by its second birthday, Bitcoin was widely known around the world in techie/progressive circles, 10,000s of people had first hand experience, hashrate grew by orders of magnitude and the market cap zoomed to $5,000,000.

I would say Monero has pretty much avoided the "1st year" (or compressed it in the pre-exchange era lasting for 1 month) and zoomed directly in the 2nd year. The community is very active, and 10,000s of people have at least speculated with Monero. Just like with Bitcoin then, the use of Monero has required skill, it is a new technology, and tools to use it are only becoming available as the community develops them. The market cap is also in the same range as with Bitcoin then, with the main difference being no ninjamine - I am not accusing satoshi of doing anything immoral such as purposely hiding his project for a year, because the evidence does not suggest this - nevertheless it is good to recognize as a fact that satoshi owned 65% of all bitcoins in its first anniversary, 20% in the second, and still owns 7% (figures are minimum, additional mining with non-recognizable equipment cannot be ruled out).

From the perspective of distribution of coins and quality of the community, which I regard the topmost success factors in the cryptosphere, I am proud to believe that Monero now at least equals Bitcoin in its 2nd birthday.

Now we come to the technology. The obvious advantages of Bitcoin have only slowly become parts of the public knowledge. In any non-moderated discussion or comment section, there invariably are commenters who shout that "Bitcoin is a ponzi" (while not fulfilling any of the qualifications, starting from the lack of central issuer, or payout mechanism). Also "the Chinese will press the button and create more money" (no debunk needed) or "your balance may go poof any day" (happens sadly often, but has rarely anything to do with Bitcoin technology itself, and can mostly be avoided with precautions).

The negatives of open transaction ledger have become more apparent after Bitcoin gained wide recognition in 2013. Payments (so far) are difficult to preemptively block, but criminals and dissidents are now realizing that an untamperable public record of all your financial dealings is not really any better than a record of all your dealings in a bank account. The only difference between those is whether the public can access the information. The parties that you would rather not have the access have it in both cases.

While the general populace is still rather uncertain if the benefits of Bitcoin warrant them to try it out, this "new" information on the drawbacks of Bitcoin is spreading quickly among the people already in Bitcoin. In these conditions it is not very surprising that the BTC/USD rate has also declined and many of the leaders in Bitcoinsphere are actually short!

Monero has had intense experience of the mysterious codebase handed over to it by the CN developers, which according to David Latapie, is 86% rewritten for security reasons, while preserving the original idea by satoshi, and invention/implementation by CN, the ring signatures. During the 1 year, it has been tried to prove broken, both internally and externally, yet with quite meager results. Of all the coins in existence, my understanding is that Monero offers the most proven, most secure way to implement practical and easy-to-use anonymity.

Going to the 2nd year, the risks of some catastrophic failure in the technology are still present, but greatly reduced compared to the early days when the core team themselves only took the measures to understand the code, and there were issues with miner optimization, attacks believed to originate from the CN team, intense FUD, etc.

Pricewise, the record is mixed. Because Monero instantly grabbed the attention of many prominent bitcoiners, and went to exchange very soon, yet did not have any pre/insta/ninjamine/IPO/PoS or such things that quickly can meet the demand, its price rose quickly. The hangover came in the autumn, coupled with the depression in all crypto. Emission that in the summer could not meet the demand, was still sold to the market, and in the end, even the supporters turned to the idea of "selling now, buying back cheaper", the same that in my observation is prevalent in Bitcoin now, after their even longer and more depressing downtrend (don't get hurt!).

Such condition cannot last indefinitely, either the coin is abandoned and becomes worthless, or eventually there is a turn. Since the core team and the community showed very little signs of capitulation, it was only a matter of time, and the time came, and now we are by and large at an all time high in marketcap-measured-in-BTC, while barely started in unit-price-measured-in-USD. I don't very much care about other people's opinions (collectively reflected in these metrics), but if I did, I would regard the former as a proof of the potency of Monero and the latter as a proof of the short-term upside.

Short term, is however not the way I advise to treat Monero. Or depends in the definition. In the outside world, short term investments are a few years. Even a short-term stance towards Bitcoin has been successful, if the term is 2-3 years instead of months or weeks. Monero's development - while labeled as slow - is much faster than Bitcoin's, and that is much faster than most things outside crypto. I advise to be realistic in that anything with a $5 million market cap is likely to fail, and the total loss of investment should be almost the default. But also, the marketcap of any serious monetary system is not $5 million of current Monero, nor $5 billion of current Bitcoin, it starts at about $5 trillion of the current gold. A short-term investment of a few years is best achieved with sell targets after every rise in price (eg. 20% after every double). Even if the investment is long term, a periodic distribution of the stash is advisable, just with lower percents. Only when Monero achieves purchasing power stability can it rid itself from the speculative character, and the purchasing power stability can only be achieved at a very much higher valuation. Speculation need to be taken into account as a fact, regardless of the wish that it would not exist or be prominent.

For the following 12 months, I see that Monero needs to, and likely succeeds, in achieving the status of the "leader of the altcoins" and the "hedge of BTC". There has not been any new alts since Monero that strive to this position, all the new production is either lame clones or 2.0 coins, which serve a different need and segment. The alts currently above XMR in marketcap (filter premined&non-mineable) are Litecoin, Dogecoin and Peercoin, none of which has shown much development or innovation in the last year, and all of which being copies of BTC, suffering from the public blockchain.

The developers are clear in the development issues and they will be released when ready. While some say that mainstream adoption requires GUI and whatnot, I am strongly on the opinion that mainstream is not the target group for a currency that only has a few 10k owners atm. Increasing the valuation is a target that can be achieved by explaining the merits to the people who have money (new money VC-type guys). Increasing the adoption happens quite naturally among the BTC-owners once they have time to think about things. All alts are regarded as shitcoins by many, solely because of ignorance. The same time that, applied to my thinking, lead me to convert from mainstream to silver, and from silver to BTC, and from BTC to XMR, works also on these people, slowly. I envision that this process will start on this 2nd year of Monero, and the results are already visible as an increased marketcap by the end of the 2nd year.

Since you seem to be capable in evaluating that, both in connection of Zio and ZH, you should read the one that gives you more inspiration and deepens your insight.