My intention (along with some that the others have already interpreted), has been to elucidate the asymmetry between the impact needed for price going down and price going up.

Currently, to force the price down 10%, one needs to sell 39,000 XMR. About ~9 people have this amount if they sell it all. Needless to say, it is unlikely that the price would go down unless many of them combine to sell large parts of their holdings.

To keep the price from going down 10%, one needs to absorb the 39,000 XMR by selling 100 BTC. There are 10,000 people in the world with 100 BTC, and if fiat holders are taken into account, the number rises to high 100s of millions(!).

Therefore, any 1 out of 100s of millions can keep the price up (or make it go up, which is analoguous), but it takes concerted (in)action of several out of ~9 to make it go down.

Hardly, because we are the liquidity. The ask side is dependent on people with XMR to list them for sale. Why I mentioned this in connection to [5-letter exchange starting with "C"], applies as well to cryptsy. We are needed to supply the liquidity to the new exchanges. They do not supply liquidity to us.

"Let me be a free man, free to travel, free to stop, free to work, free to trade where I choose, free to choose my own teachers, free to follow the religion of my fathers, free to talk, think and act for myself — and I will obey every law or submit to the penalty"

-- Chief Joseph (1840-1904) of the Nez Perce Indians, in his speech at Lincoln Hall in Washington, DC on 14 January 1879.

I am still interested in providing liquidity to the fiat market. To get the kind of people that we want involved (investments of 1000-100,000 €) there needs to be a lot of liquidity.

Out of my memory as an emerging silver trader in 2008, if the price moves 20% with a 5,000 € trade, it's all but useless.

Therefore in Silverbank, the price moves only 1% with a 8,000 € order (IIRC). Even this is not considered very good liquidity, because a modest 50 k€ order moves the price 6%, and of course quickly moves back leaving the buyer a 6% worse buy-in price.

Currently a 8,000 € order in Poloniex would move the price 15%, which is very lamentable and totally unacceptable.

The mechanism for going down requires everybody to simultaneously decide that the current level is too high. If there is even one who thinks otherwise, it does not go down.

Going up is much different. A few, even just one, people deciding to buy, make it go up.

Well since I published this, XMR is creeping up...

Sometimes it's good to do primary research. The thing I took for granted - that altcoins are shattered when BTC sneezes - has proven to be a myth of highest order:


I selected Sept 15 to be the start of data due to that being the start of BTC fall (admittedly, it was selected to give a bad picture about BTC). My intention was to show that alts fall in sympathy, and generally leverage BTC's move down. This had been my experience with XMR.

Now, the data seems to give quite an opposing testimony. Over this period of time, only two alts (XMR and BTCD) exceeded BTC's decline. When BTC declined by 34% (seen above as "66% remaining"), the basket of alts (I used cubic-root weighting) declined by only 17%.

What do you think of this? 

This would be for me, thank you. Or the one with top-30

First opportunity for the MEW to vote is now started!

Everyone can view the discussion, only the members may attend.

1,000 votes

Support for proposal #1.


Decision-making would be easy if the proposals had only pros and no cons. Here I am concerned about the correct balance between robustness and getting-things-happen. Some may hold the view that Monero is a hobby project and it's nice to see what happens. I do not have such a view - I am a person wanting to be an instrument of change in the world to the better, and also investor. My sense of urgency is therefore greater than that of someone with less stake in the project. When I played Civilization series, it took me long to think about the moves. I never thought that now is the time to take it easy. But the result was that I usually won.

So now the background is that Monero has been very active in the forum, currently holding 5/35 places in the Altcoin subforum main page. It has been also contested - 2/5 of the entries are ridicule threads and only 3/5 are supporter threads (currently: this voting, Monero Speculation, and Jojatekok's GUI wallet). With great visibility comes great responsibility. Monero's enemies have found it very lucrative to set up accounts posing as Monero supporters, to make Monero look silly, and even to accuse it of spamming the whole section.

A knee-jerk reaction by some supporters was to actually start preparations for doing it. I believe this is a worthy long-term goal. Currently, due to my failed attempts of trying to move out of BCT myself (to smaller, "quality" forums), I cannot yet support it. With the recent price action, it is likely that the number of users has shrank with the marketcap, possibly numbering only 5,000. Of this target group alone, I don't think I will find enough audience for my posting and cannot personally think of moving. I can only post the cream of the crop to one place, and if it is here, what is the reason for the other?

This thread is trying to serve as an example where quality much outweighs quantity. I hope that at present, all the advantages of a separate forum, save privacy, can be instated here as well, with much greater audience. The separate MEW website project with blogs and links should be done if a dedicated administrator can be found. Finding the right way to do these things takes time, but time for turning the tide of XMR is now. Therefore I am in favor of fully taking into advantage of BCT until we have the critical mass of users for the dedicated forum.

It also cannot be underestimated that while there is vocal ridicule concerning the way the MEW is "institutionalizing" Monero (with the hope of its quick demise as a result), it may also be that some of the $1,000,000,000s worth of people who actually read BCT, may find the governance model something they have vainly sought after until now, and decide to give it a go. Even if our primary audience is in the people that do not own any cryptocurrencies, it would be sad to forsake the opportunity of showing BCT that things can be made differently, and to make it shown brightly, we must practice it consistently for at least 3-6 months, the duration of this decision.

The IRC channel that we have, is private, but is not suitable for structured conversation, nor for presenting issues in a coherent way. I will certainly continue to use it, and encourage others to do so, as a complement.

I mean a table where there's a certain startpoint (for example Sept 15, when the BTC latest fall started in earnest). Then it lists how the altcoins have done during the decline. There's some talk in XMR threads that it has performed poorly, but some also say that it is better than most. A factual comparison would be really good obviously!

Of course the rapid fall has made me think about Bitcoin's chances. But without going into details, I don't think much anything has changed except the price.

When you think about buying or selling, then you should look at the price. And buy when it is low, sell when it is high.

When you think about the viability of a technology, you should look at the news, and since they typically provide a very distorted picture, go behind them, the fundamentals. If the fundamentals are good, you should seek to buy when the price is also low. If they are bad, you should seek to sell, especially if price is high.

Seems that there are enough people in the market now that think the complete opposite of what I do currently, concerning the relation of price and fundamentals  

First MEW voting round has just started. It is being done here in Bitcointalk, because of convenience. The subject of voting is an Internal & External Communications Strategy for midterm. The first Proposals concern whether we should decide to stay in Bitcointalk platform for now, or try to move out of it as soon as possible.

Non-members may read the discussion but not comment.

I am excited that the MEW is now put to discussion and vote for the first time! This is a great milestone

1,000 votes

To set up a new whole proposal.


Proposal text (#2 ver 1)

Whereas, BCT has been proven to be a great drain of time and energy for Monero users;

Whereas, directing new people to BCT is a shame due to high FUD content and low S/N ratio almost throughout;

Whereas, the possible surge of XMR, related or not related to the turnaround in BTC requires a fresh new start, free of the baggage of the past and attempts of outsiders to influence it (which is also forbidden by our rules);

Whereas, the situation at hand allows us to concentrate on there organizational activities better, due to the lack of financial resources to do something that actually costs money;

Now, therefore, we decide that the MEW will as soon as is practical, move its internal communication to dedicated forums, which also allow encryption, ease of moderated discussions and small workgroups. This move should be made in connection to the larger migration of Monero community to its dedicated forums.

1,000 votes

To set up a new whole proposal.


Proposal text (#1 ver 1)

Whereas, BCT has been proven to be an energetic platform for discussion;

Whereas, almost all the members of the MEW are active in BCT already, making its use very convenient;

Whereas, the recent fall in BTC price and the decimation of altcoins has lead to our userbase and fiat resources shrinking considerably and they must be put to more important uses than setting up proprietary forums and communication tools;

Whereas, the current altcoinworld holds a great deal of people that over time could be persuaded of Monero's speciality (especially MEW, which they don't have);

Now, therefore, we decide that the MEW will base both its internal and external communication as much as is practical in BCT (not stopping the use of existing proprietary channels, however, but also not pushing the new members to use them).

Welcome to the first MEW economic* discussion and voting round.
*votepower-based


Dear sirs,

The thing to discuss and vote upon is the midterm strategic direction on where to take our communication, both internal and external. Midterm is 3-6 months. The result of the D&V round is a "Resolution". The following excerpts from our Articles of Association govern/relate to this round:


As Operational Executive, tasked to organize the voting in practice, I have made the following decision concerning how it shall be carried out:

- Discussion time is the stated 168 hours following the timestamp of this post. During this time we should optimally find a consensus on the result so that the actual voting will quickly reach the supermajority (not defined strictly, but indicates an economic near-consensus). If not, two proposals will be drafted and put to vote against each other.

- The official discussion will be made in this thread under strict supervision. No outsiders may take part of the discussion, only MEW members appearing in the official vote list may do. Members Executive David Latapie updates the list and it will be updated before the voting commences.

- It is encouraged to use any and all other communication channels for discussion as well, proprietary and public. Using them, it is possible to hear also the non-member feedback, which may be useful (remember, non-members account for 60%+ of the moneros, and 100% of the newcomers! )

- The Resolution will be in a (Whereas, Whereas, Whereas, ..., Now, therefore) format. This means that there are several items of background information for the resolution, including why it is important to make it, and why the result reached is better than the proposed alternatives. It shall be less than 1 page long in total, about half a page is good.

- Posting to this thread shall be made according to the rules. First the poster states his number of votes, and may post any additional introduction if he so wishes. Then he posts the reason of posting, which may be supporting some proposal (or part thereof), adding a new proposal (or part thereof), or "discussion" (including debunking existing proposals). If the post is about the practicalities of voting, instead of the content being discussed, use "interrupt", but sparingly. I will delete interrupts when they are addressed.

- If everyone understands that we are talking about issues instead of people, and in the end only the number of votes count, hopefully it is not needed to go any more to the depths of moderation.

Thanks. Changed to hopefully remove the bias, yet leave what I see it as an unquestionable factual difference (when a coin IS nearly fully mined, it IS seen as a premine, vs. SOME ppl currently in the forums when Monero has 0.0001% of world population as users, when emission curve is changed so that 20% first happens quickly than 80% rest, see it as a premine).

Hopefully my months and months of bashing altcoins have not gone to waste, and have solidly established me as an opponent of all sorts premine. It includes situations when a small premine must be accepted to avoid a bigger one. As you implied, we are not comparing holiday destinations. Rather all alternatives are a little risky, yet a coin that cannot live through dangerous times has no desire, nor right, nor chance, to live.



Everything is a premine if you arrive to the scene only when 60-70-80% (or whatever is your preferred %) has been mined.

Otherwise good point, I also haven't seen such a mechanism that would actually work.

Let's close this one here in MEW thread. My next post is about the topic I selected for the first to be voted upon.

Overall, I would keep the mentioning of coins that are and belong to further than TOP-30 at a minimum. Not only this is a Monero thread, but also any mention of shitcoins, scamcoins, copycoins, p&d-coins, and fly-by-night coins may make some people buy into them, even with a small amount, and thus perpetuate their existence.

PLEASE, I come to Monero threads to get to speak about Monero. Just that other coins exist is not a reason to let them be discussed here.

Please someone make available the general index of altcoins vs. BTC how it's been doing in the time of carnage. (over the course of a few weeks, and also since the dropping through the latest floor)

I would say 10-20 largest altcoins would be good for the index, but I also heard indices with established methodologies exist.

MEW - Operational Executive speaking

1. The official documents

MEW has the following documents:
- Articles of Association (AA)
- Initial Decisions with Nominations (ID)
- membership list with ranks and votes (Votelist)

Furthermore:
- Every voting will be made a memo that lists the voters and the result.
- Every Executive (and preferably everyone else who actively works in MEW) will summarize his actions periodically.

To have all these important things posted duly, we'd need a bulletin board. The logical place for such a board is this forum. Possible ways for finding the board are to:
- have it as a thread with very little other content (hard, since interesting content draws discussion)
- post it only in the name of MEW main account, so that it can be searched by poster (not all do this habitually and may miss it).

IRC should have a feature for listing files, also a Google Drive and own website, even push email-list are possibilities. I invite all members to discussion concerning these. We want to select more than one, but not an overwhelming number of official channels for one-way information. Then we need 1-2 channels for group discussion. I am not at all sure that the IRC selected is an all-purpose tool. For discussions that require dispensing of thought, a forum would be better. Luckily there is a no-troll Monero Forum already available, I have been told. The management of user rights is a pain anyway, since we are talking about a large number of users.


2. MEW prong #1 - Providing a stake-based voting system

We are currently getting the basics right for voting. If something needs to be passed quickly, the rules allow 51% of all votes to do it in no time at all. If the issue is both important, popular, and in a rush, we don't have a problem with reaching a legitimate conclusion, but the voting experience for most of the small members will be quite tough as they are simply ignored once the required number of votes is reached.

What we do need now, is the tools for fact- and votepower-based discussion. IRC constrains the expression of facts due to the format. Forums should need moderation in the order of posting etc. to make the discussion go on smoothly. (Even ordinary meetings have had chairman always, there is a role that needs to be fulfilled if something is to be achieved.) Then the voting itself has several options how to make it happen.

As soon as the general forum for discussion is generally available, there will be at least one of the proposals up for vote.


3. MEW prong #2 - Providing a decentralized yet coordinated power platform for ideas to enhance Monero economy

This also needs much nurturing. What we are doing here is not according to the way that everyone has been conditioned to do since childhood. Many members have approached me with offers to help in whatever is possible, which is good, but currently I am not that much up to my task that I could have given them the work. With our Agora program incubator running, it will be easier for these people to do something.

Some have approached me with a specific peripheral project, and I have tried to direct them to work with others. This has caused even resentment. Folks, please, I cannot work in every project, more likely in no project at all. I would be much more content if I could do all my current responsibilities instead of taking projects where I would not be a good match really.

I wish (just for balancing the previous examples) that some people would also grasp much more power than the average guy, and would form strong groups inside MEW to push their agendas and projects. This would energize all to be more vigilant. But please do this activism only in connection with the increase of our "governance tools" of chats, forums, voting systems etc. Trying to pull to different directions when no such systems are in place is damaging and destructive.

To grasp the magnitude of change, the previously 7-membered core team now has a helper named MEW with over 50 members. Organizing such a bunch of people in any school of organizing though available, is not easy, nor happens overnight. But it will happen sooner than you think, and yield surprisingly good results.


4. My doings past and future

- I will be putting things for vote as soon as the voting system is reasonably ready
- David is appointed to be my hotel manager in Malla, soon 2 other guys who are interested in cryptocurrency join him
- The XMR emission change cat is out of the bag and situation is causing confusion and price/adoption weakness until it's resolutely resolved.
1) No one is proposing to increase emission, that's just FUD. The only proposal is to make the curve slower, but ending in the same number
2) If emission is not changed, and adoption does not increase quickly, XMR will be perceived a premine in 2 years
3) If emission is changed, XMR will be perceived premine now, albeit likely will a smaller % of relevant people
4) Trolls feast on the topic, saying "doomed if you do, doomed if you don't". Forget them! Just read the Initial Arguments (being prepared) from both sides, and take part of the discussion, and vote, and act responsibly.
5) The economic majority decision is most likely the better one, and will lead to best adoption in the future. (In the extreme parlance, would you like 1/3 of the holders to sell their coins? No, of course not. So why do you insist on taking the risk that 2/3 do it??!?) Current price has already discounted the worst situation which is continued uncertainty and trolls keeping us from taking action. Let's not let them!
6) No matter which way the vote goes, I will continue as a large owner of XMR. No other coin comes even close to XMR and BTC in overall evaluation, and I have no desires to own anything else except them. Perfect is the enemy of best, and by sticking to perfect only (instead of best available), I would have never done anything worthwhile and profitable.  
- Partly due to BTC weakness that has decimated the purchasing power of my net worth, I will seriously consider sending a bulletin to my list, with the intention to make OTC deals and commissions. I have said this several times already, but not done it. Last time I sent was more than a year ago. If I do, and mention XMR, the liquidity impact to the market with hardly any asks will be huge.
- Please ask me if there is anything!

My mission for the next 48 hours:
- Make the MEW internal communication more functional and open the first thing for vote