The word premine does not apply to this coin because we're not mining, it's POS. The team held 5% at the beginning to pay the early devs, now what is left is 1% of the coin supply (200k). That's not too much IMO.

It's certainly not "the safest" because that is difficult to prove. We're aiming at becoming the most privacy-supporting payment method, where people can exchange cash for Spectre and vice versa, without being monitored. It's a community project, everyone who wants to help can be part of it.

Yes I think we have the possibility to become one of the big players and challenge Monero. We have the right devs, and we have the necessary funds. It's only a matter of time.

You probably want to use a terminal multiplexer of your choice (see https://askubuntu.com/questions/8653/how-to-keep-processes-running-after-ending-ssh-session).

Then build spectrecoind using the instructions found in doc/build-unix.txt in the Github repository (https://github.com/spectrecoin/spectre) and start it. Afaik it should be staking by default if you keep it running.

What would you have recommended to the Spectre team though, in retrospect? Only a hundred people participated in the ICO. Only few Bitcoins were raised. There were 2 options, a) try to give back people their money, b) continue with the project as intended anyway and distribute coins according to the stated terms of the ICO. They decided to go with option b). They have always been honest, did what they said they would do. They continued without a lot of funds (in fact most of it has been spent already), and now we have community funding because the results are good.

What could they have done better?

The reason for the low ICO price was doubt in the honesty of the project (being called scam). After the first version was released and we got listed on Cryptopia, the price went up to 1000 and quickly 2000 sat. It didn't go back to 80 sat because that would mean a market cap of barely 16 Bitcoin, not because the price would be manipulated.

So do you say that even though a project has always been honest and always delivering and continuing to innovate, it will not be successful? I highly doubt it.

Why do you think so? Originally, "whitepaper" is a term that comes from a scientific background. Some early projects had a scientific whitepaper, because they had a scientific background that explored the possibilities of blockchain technology. Investors liked it, so people started imitating it. Nowadays, what is called a whitepaper is nothing more than a brochure of what the coin offers. Maybe some technical details. No quality control whatsoever, no guarantees of correctness or coherency. Most so-called whitepapers have a very low quality.

This project does not have a scientific background, and we don't claim to have. We have a practical background. We know the technical details, and we do have a vision. We do not have a brochure of it yet. If you like to know some technical details, or if the vision is unclear, you are free to ask and someone will try to answer it as good as possible.

In the meanwhile, I am trying to give a more detailed overview of what the coin offers on this wiki page: http://coinwiki.info/en/SpectreCoin
JBG is working on extending the website to include more info as well. And at some point, we will have a brochure called whitepaper that will summarize it once again.  

... who are now funding development. Everything has two sides!   We have a great dev already, hopefully another one will join soon. They will build a great product. That's how things "take off", not because of hype or marketing, but simply because the product is very valuable. More often than not, innovation is driven by financial interest, which is the case with some very big bagholders.

Your question cannot be answered because there is no "whitepaper".

One reason could be that there are simply few people who have heard of Spectre yet.

Also keep in mind that not all funds are displayed in the block explorer, it does not display those stored as private balances.

5% is not too much. It works as an incentive to support the network. I don't see how using or spending coins would have any benefit for the security of the network.



Yes, that would be great for Spectre!   Because Spectre is extremely difficult to take down, as everything is running between Tor nodes. In order to take down Spectre, they would need to take down Tor!   And as Tor (with OBFS4, which we are using!) even works in extremely restrictive countries like China or Iran - good luck with that.  

There is no max. Each year, 5% will be added. A max supply doesn't really make sense with a POS-only coin.

See: http://coinwiki.info/en/SpectreCoin#Specifications

I've added a comparison with DeepOnion here: http://coinwiki.info/en/SpectreCoin#DeepOnion

The marketing scheme is really the only thing that's brilliant about DeepOnion IMO. And marketing being over-proportionally good most likely means that it is highly overvalued.

Because mandica was missing in action and we had to update (and moderate) the ANN. Now she is back! 

There is no particular reason, no. Could be a market correction based on the new project situation (wallet update a few weeks ago, full-time dev), or a pump by a P&D group. Who knows?

You can find the list of the official team here: http://coinwiki.info/en/SpectreCoin#Official_team

If the price keeps this level, JBG is thinking about getting an additional developer on board, who is a colleague of him and also a cryptographer / coder.

JBG's account here is spectre_jbg as listed in this beautiful Wiki article.   http://coinwiki.info/en/SpectreCoin#Official_team

Totally agree! But it's not "simple".  Actually, I have proposed the same thing to jbg a few days ago. One thing that we would need to make sure is that staking works with ring signatures, which is an interesting novel concept as far as I can see it. Jbg said spontaneously, it should be possible but requires some work (obviously). We're totally aware of this problem and I hope it will be added to the roadmap.

Eh, yes you are right in that regard, sorry. I confused it with DeepOnion, which is another shady coin that suffers from a similar issue. This one isn't trading yet.

So, you agree that I'm right? Not a single word against my arguments.  



And this is the funniest part of all: HOW can you possibly have an "official launch of the blockchain network" when you are already selling the coins, sending them to people, letting them stake and have it traded on exchanges?    I mean you said you would not make a new chain. So what exactly is going to be launched then, that isn't running already?  

You are just repeating the words from legit ICOs here, without having any substance in it.

By not keeping your hands on people's faith. Legit ICOs are a "one-step" procedure because once the funds are distributed across the blockchain, no single person can control it any more. That's the main point of blockchain technology, that it's trustless. In order to achieve this state, ALL legit ICOs run like this:

1. Collect the money
2. Emit the coins (in one step)
3. Optionally, burn the coins that haven been sold.
Result: No way for the creator to scam, except by abandoning the project, in which case someone else could continue development.

You are failing on even two points, 2 and 3. You are only collecting money. But then you don't emit the coins in one step, but partially while it's already traded on exchanges (first way for you to scam). And, you also said you won't burn the unclaimed coins. Even worse, it will probably be more than 50% of all coins in a PoS system, which is total death to the concept of being trustless or decentralized. So, second way for you to scam. Almost a proof because you're selling something that doesn't really qualify as a "crypto currency" because it's centrally controlled by you, and always has been since its creation.

And of course, being completely intransparent and "we will only answer that question to you privately on Slack", no Block explorer, total supply is secret (??) etc. does not help improving the situation.

I am happy to announce that the fundraising goal has been reached!   Big thanks to ontopicplease and all other investors who donated (mainly original ICO investors). We now have a professional full-time dev, JBG, who will be bringing this project forward with higher intensity than ever before. We have a lot of goals, and JBG is very open for all kinds of suggestions the community carries to him. He will soon confirm it here personally.