Someone informed me that the New Scientist article is still available with a slight typo in the url:

https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22229744-000-hackers-reverse-engineer-nsas-leaked-bugging-devices/

Note Michael Pettis's old blogs have been scrubbed from archive.org.

It will estimate 3 - 4 months to get to testnet, assuming it all goes smoothly.

With a lot of snags and setbacks along the way, it might take 6 months to get to testnet.

By sheer will power of my own coding ability, I won't let it stretch too far beyond that in any case (meaning I can just code and code ignoring every one else if necessary and reach testnet even with perhaps some errors that have to be fixed before going live net). Especially if I can shut up, which is part of the motivation for assigning someone else to talk publicly. Hopefully I don't need to go to Australia until after reaching testnet ICO. I am thinking I can hang on until then. Just need to get out to the gym twice a week and keep up my vitamin D3. Also I felt really good today. Who knows maybe I am starting to cure naturally[1]. I been on a no carbo diet now for a couple of months.

Perhaps there might be some demonstrations of progress along the way, but we need to be careful that competitors don't copy too soon. Need to think about what we can reveal without spilling the beans to the competition.

Of course everything will be open sourced at ICO. That is one reason the first ICO would have less demand than latter ones, because the open source code would not have been publicly reviewed for a long time yet.

Of course I have some others who will be doing peer review privately. One is a math PhD.

It is an entirely new code base from scratch and I have confidence in my abilities to accomplish this.

Again no one should put more than 5% of their net worth into this (that is for those who want to attempt to rise from average to wealthy on a single speculation), for most it shouldn't be more than 1% (and for wealthy individuals not more than 0.1%).

The angel investor amounts will be publicly revealed just before the first ICO so everything is transparent. The identities of the angel investors will not be revealed. They can individually reveal their participation if they wish.


[1] For those who don't know, I have a mild (sometimes worse, sometimes better, i.e. relapsing and relenting) Multiple Sclerosis. I described the effects upthread recently. I cope very well and am still athletic at age 50. Yesterday at the gym, I found I could still get to the basketball basket on a driving layup finger roll to the front lip of the rim fast enough to get around filipinos half my age (and note they are very quick, look at Manny Pacquio). So other than the recent scare with my vision, I feel confident I can avoid the Australia trip until after testnet launch. I was hitting driving dead stop fall away jumpers, leaping on one side of the rim and hanging in the air to other side with a reverse layup, etc.. My breathing was huffing and puffing (30 Centigrade with 80% humidity) but other than that (and my first step not being quite as explosive as it was in my 20s and 30s), I am still competitive.

Edit: the optometrist measured the vision yesterday in my non-blinded eye at 20/30 to 20/40 without a contact lens. With a 0.75 - 1.00 lens, my vision is 20/20 in one eye.

Martin Armstrong's computer and I have been telling you for past years that October 1, 2015 is the BIG BANG and now you all better start to listen.

How To Invest in AnonyMint's Project

I suddenly realized I need to open up the communication more because there is difficulty with communicating with potential angel investors.

I had always wanted to release a project without announcing AnonyMint's involvement. I wanted a project that could succeed on its own white papers, marketing, and technical merits, in order to avoid politics (attacking AnonyMint or thinking I am using AM's reputation to push one project over the other). Unfortunately it is very, very difficult to achieve this goal as explained below.

It seems I am having difficulty communicating with potential angel investors in order to be sure the innovations I design for anonymity (coin and network) and decentralization (solving the problems plaguing Bitcoin with scaling and also making mining centralization very unlikely) are developed and launched, because it is difficult for a myraid of individuals to each individually implement the required computer security. I think it asking too much from individuals and it is also not a very secure paradigm to have myself communicating to numerous individuals all of which I have assumed are running a sufficiently secure setup. If any one of them screws up, then my anonymity (plausible deniability since everyone knows I am working on "something") and privacy (encrypted communication) is destroyed.

Also all this communication is eating away at my time for doing actual development work (coding, white papers, etc). Thus I need to make one very long message now and try to clear up all points so I can go back to my programming cave and be mostly undisturbed while others handle the community.

Thus I am contemplating a change in organizational and communications strategy, which I hope to coordinate and announce within a day or two (maybe three maximum).

I am trying to find one individual capable of implementing the required security setup and who is willing to be the communications hub for the controlling group of the project that will incorporate my innovations. I will be able to communicate securely with this individual and to make my contributions to the project anonymously and securely. Everyone else will be able to communicate to this individual using normal means of insecure communication. In other words, this anointed individual would become the public face of the controlling group of the project, thus relegating me to a publicly silent anonymous contributor role. My communications to the community would come in the form of math and text in white papers, source code, and contributions to text and concepts in marketing and communication communications. But never sent directly from me, and often copy edited to remove my particular writing style.

I'd still be there behind the scenes, but I would be doing my best to turn control over to others (who prove worthy and trustworthy) as much as possible, because a project like this can't be just one person in control. It must be a community wide effort.

So I can't pay the math PhD and do other development needs without funding. And the angel investors and the community needs communication about details.

Thus to move this forward, I have one individual in mind for this role if he will accept. If not, I will look for another individual. I might even have two, one as a backup to other. Again I hope to announce this within a couple of days or so. The individual must not be an US citizen, so we can sidestep SEC regulations. This individual may or may not attempt to remain anonymous when communicating with the community and angel investors other than myself (will discuss with that person).

So what I want feedback on now (in private message or in public post your choice) is who will be interested in availing of being able to place a small BTC angel investment in this project with this new project communications paradigm?

I'd say investments should range in the $3000 - $20,000 range, but perhaps less than $3000 will be accepted. We don't need too much angel investment. If I don't need to go to Australia for fecal transplant before launch of the project, then that is perhaps $5000 - $10,000 less that isn't needed. My health feels fine today. Getting out to the gym yesterday seemed to rejuvenate me. My eyes are still a bit sore, but hopefully they will fully rejuvenate with more frequent gym days and less frequent 16 hour work days.

I'd love to see say 5 - 10 angel investors, so that there is a solid base of support and interest at the earliest stage.

Who doesn't wish they had sold that pizza for BTC10,000 back in 2010. Taking on a little bit of risk in something that looks very promising is how you go from being average to wealthy. Speculators take small punts on projects with huge upside. This project fits that description in spades. Nearly no overhead. No manager leeches like Ethereum. Purely funding coding.

Angel investors receive a special offer. They receive M x their investment in $us dollar in terms of coins at the first ICO, where M is the number of months (divided by 2) that elapse between the placement of their investment and the first ICO. Originally I wasn't going to divide by 2, but the reality has shown me that development takes longer than I anticipated thus realistically we must divide else we give too great of a % of the project to the angel investors which would thus appear to be a premine which would kill the project. I am also wondering if the community thinks divide by 3 would be more fair than divide by 2?

In other words, let's say at the first ICO, the community values the project at $1 million market cap with 10 million coins projected, thus a price of $0.10 per coin. So someone who invested say $5000 in late August and assuming first ICO in January, would be getting a M = 2, thus $10,000 of coins divided $0.10 = 100,000 coins. Obviously I think the first ICO will valued more in the realm of $10 million market cap so the angel investor would get only 10,000 coins. I am hoping for that sort of result and am striving to make sure the first ICO will be very enticing.

If development takes longer than anticipated (which can happen because of all the issues), then angel investors in August or September might end up with a M = 3 multiple by the first ICO. Does anyone feel this is insufficient motivation for the risk of investing early?

Angel investors can also get early insight into details so they can be better poised (i.e. prepared and informed with ample time to think over) to make a decision to buy more coins in the early ICOs at lower prices than latter ICOs.

The plan has been (unless we receive severe admonishment to do otherwise) to launch a coin with a series of ICOs, not just one. Each ICO would follow the prior one by a month or perhaps two (needs to be decided by the community). Each ICO would be 2X more coins than the prior one. Each ICO will be an auction format, where participants place a bid & qty in a transparent auction and then at the close of the auction, the top bids are filled and the rest refunded from the escrow agent (of course the community must select a trusted escrow agent who has a great reputation or perhaps we can design some sort of block chain escrow that is automated). The point of this is everyone can see the bids and adjust their bids during the auction period, so that there is a market pricing effect. We want an honest market result. This also insures the controlling group can not get any of the funds until after each (monthly or bimonthly) auction closes, thus the controlling group can not bid in the auction using other bidders' funds. This provides a mathematical proof that the controlling group can not own more than a certain amount of coins by the time all the planned ICOs are completed.

For example, assuming there will be 10 millions coins sold in ICO, the ICOs might be:

   32,768 x 10
   65,536 x 10
  131,072 x 10
  262,144 x 10
  524,288 x 10
-------------------
1,015,808 x 10 = 10,158,080 coins

The calculation for the maximum coins the controlling group could retain if they used all the proceeds of the auction to purchase their own coins of each subsequent auction is as follows.

Assuming the market driven auction price of the coin was constant across all ICO auctions, the controlling group could purchase 0 coins in first auction, 32,768 x 10 coins in 2nd auction, 65,536 x 10 in 3rd auction, 131,072 x 10 coins in 4th auction, and 262,144 x 10 coins in 5th auction. Thus the controlling group could own at most 491,520 x 10 coins or 48% of the ICO money supply.

Assuming the market driven auction price of the coin increased by 100% of each subsequent ICO auctions, the controlling group could purchase 0 coins in first auction, 16,384 x 10 coins in 2nd auction, 32,768 x 10 in 3rd auction, 65,536 x 10 coins in 4th auction, and 131,072 x 10 coins in 5th auction. Thus the controlling group could own at most 245,760 x 10 coins or 24% of the ICO money supply.

Assuming the market driven auction price of the coin increased by 300% of each subsequent ICO auctions, the controlling group could purchase 0 coins in first auction, 8,192 x 10 coins in 2nd auction, 16,384 x 10 in 3rd auction, 32,768 x 10 coins in 4th auction, and 65,536 x 10 coins in 5th auction. Thus the controlling group could own at most 245,760 x 10 coins or 12% of the ICO money supply.

The point is that no matter what happens with the prices of the ICO auctions, the maximum stake of the controlling group can be mathematically calculated.

The above calculations assume that the controlling group offers no bounties and pays for no development from the time of the first ICO until the last, which is not going to be the case. The controlling group is going to be attempting to spend the funds as quickly as possible to distribute the capital back into the community and drive the development of the coin and related ecosystem network effects as much as possible in order to drive up the price of the coin. The controlling group ideally wants to end up with about 1% or less of the money supply (and be abundantly wealthy enough from that). Selfish ecosystems don't scale and thus the controlling group would be the loser. I am not going to participate in any scam nor pump and dump. One of the reasons for doing ICOs instead of distributing the initial coin supply via mining, is so the capital of the community doesn't go to electricity and hardware manufacturing companies which return us no network effects. Instead the funds will be spent on development! So we have all the ease-of-use wallets, decentralize exchanges, etc. that we need. We can also integrate with other ecosystems such as Bitcoin and any others that have a large base (Nxt may still have a large base of investors for example).

I think one of the issues that plagued Monero for example is they don't have a lot of funds to spend on development, because the didn't raise any funds in an ICO. Thus no one is in charge and thus nothing really gets done fast in terms of new innovations, GUIs, etc.. Monero is starting to get some of those developments now, a year after. And there are much bigger developments that need to be accomplished that I presume Monero can not afford to develop, for example replacing (or improving but realistically replacing is what will happen) Tor, I2P, and Bitmessage with anonymity networks that are provably anonymous. That sort of development is a huge scale project that Monero could never afford to fund.

Also distribution of the ICO by mining is not really fair at all. Those with the most technical insight get most of the coins. How is that a diversified distribution? For example for Monero, I read that the guy who optimized the hash algorithm, first mined $150,000 of XMR for himself! There are these GPU miner coders who latch onto the launch by mining and make a business out of making secretly coded optimizations. All this crap interferes with a transparent market! We need transparent markets that any JoeBlow can participate in. More wide participation means more popularity, more network effects, and more ecosystem.

Also note that on launch, the community will be skeptical and thus early ICOs will receive less interest than latter ones as momentum builds and developments proliferate. This is why the price will likely be higher of subsequent auctions even though the supply of coins is increasing. The first ICO will probably be with the coin on a testnet, so that will be for those who have more insight and confidence than others. The second ICO would be pushing it out to the public network and working out any kinks, so still there will be some doubters. Maybe by 4th ICO, the various GUIs have matured, decentralized exchanges have been integrated, etc.. Thus I am thinking bimonthly is better than monthly, so there is more time for developments to accumulate (aggregate) between ICOs.

The model for distribution of coins has been most of the coins distributed at the start and fewer and fewer later on. This means all cryptoland has been essentially a pump and dump! If we want to distribute the coin widely then we should increase the # of coins distributed in latter ICOs and work hard to accelerate developments and momentum along the way. In that way we show the community that we are about long-term investment and not quick pump and dump for the early investors. This shows we are confident in our superior technology and our ability to drive developments forward for an ecosystem and network effects.

There will be mining of course and debasement due to mining, but this will not be detailed now because it is somewhat different due to the different design of a proof-of-work system that has the attributes that I mentioned in my prior post. The salient point is that the debasement due to mining will be very small, at most a few % per year. So most of the coins over the medium-term will be due to the ICOs.

If anyone can see a flaw in the strategy, please point it out to me in a public post or private message.

Investing as an angel investor at this time would be a way to diversify some of your investment out of BTC for the coming collapse in BTC prices. Your angel investment is locked in $us dollars.

Also note the first ICO is likely to come later this year or early next, thus the subsequent ICOs are likely to come after the project March/April bottom in the prices of gold and BTC. Thus another reason the subsequent ICOs are likely to be at higher prices than the first and second ICO.

Timing is very important and looks like all the timing is falling right into place. We got lucky.

Hopefully the above message demonstrates what sort of rational, fair, analytical, mathematical, astute, insightful developer I am. It is time we do things smart in cryptoland.

P.S. Some practical advice about your BTC. Apparently Gavin is going for a hard fork in March, so the chaos coming to Bitcoin land might contribute to the coming low which I am thinking will be back in the double digits, or at least below $150. Again I think BTC is a private asset in Armstrong's model, thus will be roughly correlated with the coming final capitulation in gold down to < $700. It is everyone piling on short, that drives the extreme low and then the short covering that sets the bottom. The bulls will have been separated from their capital by then, so they will be hiding in some corner licking wounds. So my thinking is you want to sell or hedge your BTC about now. We might get one more run up to $325 +/- $10 at most or we might not. Hedging crypto can be done on Bitfinex or Poloniex. I won't vouch for the reliability of any exchange. A third option is to purchase Nubits. I studied the model and it seems it might hold up, but again I can't vouch for it. Or just sell and hold $us dollars.

Must reads to understand the militias:

http://www.nbcnews.com/storyline/michael-brown-shooting/oath-keepers-turn-michael-brown-protests-ferguson-missouri-n407696

http://oath-keepers.blogspot.co.uk/2009/05/keeping-your-oath-not-just-following.html

Go to the Martin Armstrong thread to learn more about what is really happening in the global economy.

Neither is better. I checking out of Hotel California.

I corrected MA's typo and clarified his intent as follows...

http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/archives/35858

MA's model was correct on India:

http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/archives/35864

I know of Miles Franklin. He was reasonably close with Jason Hommel, whom I had befriended in 2006.

He is correct about everything he wrote, except he is wrong about the Fed doing another QE and continuing ZIRP. The world's capital is going to be rushing into the dollar for 3 reasons:

• Safe haven.
• The world is awash in dollar debt (due to the carry trade & booming debt economics from the $trillions in QE), thus short the dollar, thus must buy dollars as their exports crash, meaning a spiraling up effect on stampede into the dollar. They will buy dollar denominated assets such as the US stock market driving it up past 32,000 maybe even 48,000 by 2017.9. You really should buy the DJIA at the bottom of the correction underway now.
• USA interest rates will go up, attracting more capital.

Gold bugs think the world will print away the debt obligations, thus QE forever. Nope. The debt is a noose TPTB designed to take control over the world with. They increased the debt with QE to maximize the control they get when they crash the global economy and the people will be on their hands and knees in deflation with matching totalitarianism and skyrocketing taxes and interest rates.

Why would the Fed do QE when the DJIA is booming and capital is rushing into the USA? They will use that opportunity to raise interest rates so that pension funds do not go bankrupt. The Fed did QE for domestic policy reasons. The QE ended up abroad as carry trade. The Fed caters to Wallstreet, financial institutions, and banks, not Mainstreet. This domestic policy excuse allows TPTB to turn the rest of the world into a debt-enslaved wasteland as the dollar appreciates from October 2015 to 2017.9.

You will beg for hyperinflation because what is coming is 100 times worse.

Note India and Asia (and perhaps all the BRICs and NICs) will bottom 2020 after a waterfall 4 year correction. After that, they will grow and become the financial center of the world by 2032. Because they don't have the social programs (unfunded acturial liabilities) that the West has and they have more youth than elderly. The elder Asia countries (Japan, Korea, China) can leverage the high birth rates in their junior neighbor and trading NICs nations.

Europe and the West will decline and decline and decline through 2032, losing their place in the world.

Even India is participating in the turning of gold into a useless relic:

http://www.armstrongeconomics.com/archives/35876

Now I have to finish the white paper on the consensus network.

It is proof-of-work, but it is a separation-of-concerns innovation that breaks up the responsibilities so that not everything has to go on the block chain. In that way, in theory it becomes scalable and also enables instant confirmations. In theory this prevents mining centralization, and makes it sure you can always push your transaction to the network, i.e. censorship proof. Hopefully it also provides for more fault tolerance to a fragmented internet, but I still need to work through a lot of the details before I can completely characterize the attributes of this design. I am still somewhat in invention mode of some aspects of the consensus network. I have to get all my ideas about the economic details written down and threshed out. I had started to do that, then got sidetracked on the anonymity paper, because the PhD in math needs to work on the anonymity and EdDSA implementations so I had to prepare that first. I already coded Ed25519 implementation, but we need also Ed41417 or Ed521 and I need peer review on all that code as well.

I hope the consensus network design will be more innovative than the anonymity. I was surprised that I stumbled onto to the anonymity innovation. The anonymity alone is enough to release a coin with. So we shouldn't delay too much. I have a lot to balance, because of my health issues. I felt much better after getting to the gym and not being on the computer from noon to 10pm. Maybe it is just trying to do too much as one person. Let's see how organization proceeds...

So now back to my main area of responsibility which will be the consensus network. So I really can't give you a firm summary yet. Also I'd much prefer to not talk in public, as any of this will be released anonymously and then let the market decide from the white papers.

I will talk less about this, so please don't ask me any more questions about it. Not to be unfriendly but for one reason just because I am a US citizen (for the moment) and I feel this is problemmatic. For example, I can not be the controlling group for any such coin due to SEC regulations. That is why I recruit others and I will work on the technology. The other reason is that if anyone does successfully topple Bitcoin, they are going to be subject to so much scrutiny. I am 50 years old. I've had a bizarre life. I don't want to be on public display. I will exit stage left and let others take over. There are many capable people. But only a few people are capable of getting something started from the ground up. I see my role as the instigator.

Edit: I wrote a unique proof-of-work hash in 2014 that can be reused. There is considerable professional cryptanalysis done on this hash I did, because I tweaked a NIST candidate. This will be another innovation. I believe it has advantages over Cryptonote's proof-of-work hash. But let's reserve that judgement to actual bench marks and market performance.

Edit#2: we also need to improve upon Tor, I2P, and Bitmessage. Not only ease-of-use sucks, but also they are fundamentally not reliable anonymity nor even privacy in all scenarios. These are not sufficient for anonymous internet. I discovered the key flaw in Tor and I2P (and not just that it can be Sybil attacked because it is free, which is another flaw that probably needs to be fixed). So I know what needs to be done there also, but I haven't decided whether to do the anonymity network first or the coin first. I am just working as fast as I can. An improved anonymity network can help all crypto-coins including Bitcoin, as well our general use of the internet. The anonymity network work may be the most dangerous. TPTB are very afraid of hidden services economy selling drugs and any other services that TPTB want a monopoly on. They strike with a vengeance against Silk Road, Pirate Bay, etc..

Are you an idiot? I think so.

You deserve your fate, because you can't understand basic computer science.

We've already told you that John Conner can not possibly achieve what he claims, because there is no way for a P2P network game theory to converge on consensus. Even Wikipedia documents that fact about virtual synchrony does not provide Byzantine consensus.

Go ahead and masturbate yourself idiot. Smart money will go where the truth is.

I try to help you understand then you try to turn it into me needing to play politics. I don't need to play politics. I can kick ass with my actual abilities, which very few people can do.

I am tired of this political bullshit. You will learn the hard way.

I regret now informing the community about VNL. Just let the idiots lose their money.

2015.75 baby! Right on time, here comes the acceleration.

Anyone still doubting MA's model.

Why would I waste my time with $2100 (denominted in VNL which means it would shrink towards $0 before the bounty would be received) when I have this:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1049048.msg12118600#msg12118600

People who can't think deserve to lose their money.

That is the last I will say on this matter. It is up you the reader to be a fool or not.

I have a PhD in math from the USA looking at it later this week. And I am trying recruit a prominent person in this forums who has the math and crypto-currency knowledge to evaluate it.

As well, my preexisting two angel investors are both programmers, so they can also evaluate it.

So I should know by next week or so, if there is an unfixable flaw or not. I am reasonably sure I've combed over it with a fine tooth comb already myself.

It also means I am not the only one holding a copy, so killing me won't stop this from being released.

My experience recruiting Europeans has been they are extremely spoiled rotten. They have a very relaxed and laid back attitude about work, and/or extremely self centered. Doesn't mesh with my hard driving, teamwork style. I have a PhD from the USA who is closer to my age. I prefer that. No more young snots for me. Wasted too much time on their nonsense and aggrandized egos already. What happened to the era where young guys wanted to be an apprentice and respected their elders   The era in which the old and wise could give back to the younger generation. The world is upside down.

Notice how no one cares what he is really about.

Dumb ass Americans being lead to their fate of full spectrum dominance by big business and the military industrial state which Trump will empower with steriods.

Finished the white paper on anonymity. I'd say Monero and Bitcoin are both doomed. I am sitting on an innovation that is going to shock the community.

My eyes took a beating until 3am trying to finish it.

I thought I had achieved my goal some weeks ago when I wrote down the rough algorithm and math. But then when writing it down carefully with all the equations in the white paper, I found a flaw yesterday morning. I worked and worked on it all day and into the night. And I was thinking I had failed. I couldn't delink the ____ from the _____! Every way that I tried failed!

Then suddenly at 1am I figured out how to rescue and achieve my goal for the ON CHAIN anonymity. I could barely see by that time.

This is not an obvious innovation. It was a hard fought epiphany. It is as revolutionary and shocking as Cryptonote was. It is math and math guys will love this.

I am proud of myself. I didn't know if I could achieve this, but I did!

I am now officially an autodidact cryptographer. I've earned my stripes finally after 2.5 years of trying to come up-to-speed.

P.S. Slept well, eyes rejuvenated, heading out to gym. Will try to get back to a more sane work schedule now that I've achieved one of the main milestones.

Of course I wish you all had defaulted, kicked out the banksters as Iceland did. But I know you have a lot of retirees there and quite a lot of Greeks who like to receive handouts. Also TPTB would crush your economy if you did default.

Armstrong was thinking Greece could default and become a safe haven receiving a stampede of ingress of capital (and investing in the devalued Greece), but the USG, Russia, and China have a big militaries. No way they would allow a safe haven that reduces TPTB's hegemony.