No, honestly believe that Max is the real deal. I don't think he's lying or a scam artist. I do think that Max is trying to remain optimistic in the face of this decline.  But understand that HOLDers are much more than Max.  I was connected to the Random Tandems Discord channel and there were about 100 people when the price was going up.  

The huge question is whether that community has the patience the maturity to not panic and hold together.  If we get through this, there is a good chance that on the other side, we'll look back at this as just the beginning.  All coins go through this, including bitcoin.

Advanced HODL Technology Experiement - Success in My View

It is easy to be demoralized when you see the price dropping.  I know that, I feel the same.  I was so excited and it is kind of a let down.  But is important to realize that the experiment has already succeeded in the most important way.  The hardest part of any coin is moving out of the noise, and CHC in the top 100, which is a remarkable achievement by any measure.

And the masternodes are still growing at a good pace, which means the network is that much stronger.

The big question in my mind is this: can HODLers control enough coins to stabilize the price?  This is the big question.  We don't know for sure because we don't know how many coins are in HODLer control.  

What I see is over the next few weeks the price continuing to fall, until we reach the point that the HODLers can accumulate that critical mass of coins.  From that point, there would be nothing stopping systematic price rise because the available coins would be constrained.

At this point, it is the long hard work ahead.  I'd like to see CHC on Shapeshift.io and supported by Jaxx Wallet, just for starters.  We need to focus on the utility of the coin and go the way of DASH.  

As I've written elsewhere, the key difference with CHC is the community.  The coin has good features, but that doesn't matter, so long as the community stays strong, the coin stays strong.  Like fiat, it is a matter of belief.

BTW in case you could not guess, I'm HODLing forever.  I have my five masternodes running now, and I've generated about 50 CHC thus far.

Musings on Chaincoin (CHC)

We have this explosion of alt-coins.  Each coin is trying to carve out space for itself, some successfully, and others, no so much.

Every new coin begs the question "Why is your coin better than bitcoin?”  Defenders of a new coin invariably focus on features of their new, shiny coin. Their arguments are almost exclusively technical.

I’ve been listening to the LTB podcast for years, and as the parade of hucksters come through selling their coins, the conversation is almost always the same.  In fact, it is so predictable that I sense that LTB hosts have extreme fatigue due to being pitched over and over on why the features of coin X are better than coin Y.  If you've listened to LTB podcasts, you know exactly what I mean

So, the hosts become cynical because the answers are full of bullshit 99% of the time. The real answer, when you strip away the nonsense, is usually that the developers want to be millionaires.  But that isn't very enticing to the masses, so they have to invent some BS elevator pitch that sounds believable, so long as you don’t look too closely.

What the HODL revolution has shown is that this war of alt-coin features is short-sighted.

Right now, I’m sitting here grinning from ear-to-ear because it is so fucking funny that everyone is missing something so important: CHC long-term success (which I think is very likely now) isn’t a matter of the features of the coin.  Of course, the fact that CHC is masternode-capable is very important.

However, the community is more important than features. And the CHC community is intense and committed. I am certain that others will try to repeat what CHC has done.  Mean time, get your popcorn and watch CHC give DASH a run for its money.

The fact that CHC is a masternode is crucial, in fact this is the key reason that Max singled out Chaincoin as a likely winner going forward.  But perhaps even more important is the community around the coin.  I haven't seen anything like this, and I've been obsessed with cryptocurrencies since early 2013.

To learn more go here:

https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCEHdzmWuq-zAK864Px8_GmA

These guys have been up 24 X 7 for the last few days (in fact they better get some sleep or they'll probably keel over dead) 

Cavet emptor: I have four Chaincoin masternodes, and I’m purchasing another right now.  So, you can assume that I’m a zealot and take this with a grain of salt.  

Most of you reading this know about HighOnCoins (Max).  I’ve been watching his Youtube channels for a while, maybe a month.  If you haven’t seen HighOnCoins, he’s a quirky Korean-American, broadcasting out of a shack on the coast in the bay area.  He is really funny, and he’s not afraid to be himself.  He doesn’t try to pretend anything, and he’ll do things like drink beers or whatever on Youtube without any inhibitions.  So Max is not a poser; in fact, he’s the opposite.  

When I started watching, Max was talking about making money trading shit-coins, and he’d usually run down a list of the pros-and-con of coins.  At the time he was talking about PIVX.

So Max began to notice that coins that support the masternode concept were doing better than others.  Masternode is exemplified by DASH.  Max was talking about “whoring” masternode coins as a general strategy.

So, after missing a few of HighOnCoins episodes, I come back in and Max is explaining that Chaincoin is really another chance to get in on masternode-style coin.  Chaincoin is unusual because a masternode costs only 1,000 CHC, so it is an opportunity for average people to afford a masternode.

After thinking about it, I really fell in love with the idea of a masternode.  It is a brilliant concept that can help stabilize the price of the cryptocurrency.  This is because the masternode has the ability to “lock up” coins, preventing precipitous drops that occur in a typical pump-and-dump operation.  But more importantly, it opens the door for a new paradigm that Max calls pump-and-HODL, which he coins Advanced HODL Technology®.

I have been thinking about the idea of pump-and-HODL intensely for the past few days, and I’m honestly unable to shake it, because if you think about it, it make sense on so many levels.  It provides a means for a whole community to become prosperous together, because pump-and-HODL is not a zero-sum game.

There is no need for anyone to lose, and there is nothing illegal about it.  The Chaincoin community can work together to try to artificially decrease the available supply of coins by locking them in masternodes.  This sounds illegal, like insider trading, but AFAIK there isn’t anything illegal about it.

This is kind of like the Prisoner’s Dilemma: so long as everyone works together and doesn’t act selfishly in short-term interest, everyone wins.  So, a big question is this: can the Chaincoin community remain cohesive and pull this off?

Well, right now, I believe the answer is yes, and that’s why I’m scrambling to free up capital to buy more Chaincoins.  The reason is not the coin technology, but the intensely cohesive behavior of the Chaincoin community, nominally led by Max.

This intense cohesion and lack of selfishness is obvious by the comments on Max’s Youtube channel.  I was watching Max’s presentation yesterday after the big drop in Chaincoin price, and the outpouring of support was breathtaking.  These people are true believers, they love Chaincoin and they support each other (and Max) to a degree that is very refreshing and honestly surprising.  These people are tired of the selfish zero-sum game and they are dying for something different.

What this means is that there is a very large pool of smart people that have an intensity of emotions about this.  They are determined to make this work, not so much because they want to be millionaires, but because they want the experiment to work.  Ideologically, if this does work, that is if Chaincoin continues to gain in value, it will mean the beginning of a new era where lack of selfish behavior, where working together as a team, pushes out the old paradigm of pump-and-dump.

It means the end of the race to the bottom, where everyone is fighting each other, and ushers in a new world where we all work together for mutual prosperity.  I absolutely fucking love this idea, and apparently I’m not alone.

The bottom line is this: when you see this kind of intensity, with this many people so determined, it is very dangerous to bet against it.  This kind of community will continue to stick with it.

This isn’t a get-rich quick scheme, and nothing will happen overnight.  It doesn’t have to.  We don't have to piss ourselves if we don't get immediate gratification.  We can be patient.

Max has said he won’t ever sell Chaincoin, even if it goes to one penny.  I hereby make the same promise, I’m holding Chaincoin, period.
One thing that Max mentioned is a great idea: so long as you have at least one masternode, you can use the masternode profits to make more masternodes.  I have four nodes now (soon five), and they’re making about two coins per day.  At this rate, I can easily bring online two masternodes per year without investing any more cash.  This is great, because it means that so long as you have at least one masternode, you will never be priced out of making more.  The power of compound interest is at work here in a big way, but this is enormously safer than investing in stocks and bonds, because the returns are guaranteed by math, instead of stupidly relying on the responsible behavior of the Federal Reserve and Wall Street.

So this is a retirement plan: start masternodes, and re-invest the Chaincoin to make more nodes, and look forward to retirement income years in the future.  So long as you are patient, this practically cannot lose.  The return on investment is almost certainly better than any “normal” security, with the possible exception of investing and holding some other cryptocurrency; however, this approach doesn’t require you to be correct about guessing winners and losers.  

I'm happy, it allowed me to get another masternode.  I had been priced out, but I was able to afford 1,000 at about 0.0012/CHC, setting up my new node now. 

Any HODLers that can extend me an invite to the Advanced HODL Technology slack channel, I'd be grateful.

I'm a believer in the HODL movement and I have about 1.2 BTC to add to the GREAT WALL, but I need to know the proper price points.  If you can extend me an invite, PM me with the the necessary credentials.

Right now, I have three masternodes and I'm going to try to use the earned coins to build even more over time.

BTW I'm a software engineer and I know all about setting up cloud-based masternodes, so I can bring my technical skillz to the table.

I know Bittrex is planning to support CHC, but I don't think it is yet available.  Poloniex for sure doesn't yet offer CHC yet, but I think long term there is a good chance they will because the volume of CHC is big enough to make it interesting.

It looks like the GREAT WALL of HODL at 0.00065 survived.  I just added a buy for 1900 CHC at that price level to strengthen it.  BTW poor Cryptopia seems like it is really straining under the pressure.  It is slower than the second coming, today at least.

Correct 0.002 BTC thanks for the correction. 

No way, look how resilient CHC is compared to the crypto market as a whole.  Note that bitcoin is down sharply at 2180 on Bitstamp at the moment.  Even in the face of this kind of negativity, CHC is holding at about 0.002 BTC (about $4.36 USD).  That isn't dumping, that's advanced HODL technology at work.

You guys should watch HighOnCoins to get a feel for whether he is a scam artist or the real thing.

What you may find surprising is he is coordinating the GREAT WALL prices to keep the price from dropping.

While no one can predict the vagaries of the human mind, I think it is highly unlikely that HighOnCoins would suddenly go crazy and dump, because that would be idiotic. Why would he kill the goose that lays the golden egg? He (along with all of us in this forum) have a chance to make a scary amount of cash over the coming years from masternode income. 

And even if Max lost his mind and went crazy, flailing about like a madman dumping coins, going against everything he's been saying, he simply doesn't have enough coins to make a huge impact.  Based on some things he's mentioned, I have been able to infer how many Chaincoins he's holding, and if my calculations are right, it would be in the noise level for this market.

I myself bought yet another masternode this morning (rather I have the coins, still waiting to transfer them out of Cryptopia).  It cost me a few thousand dollars, I sold the rest of my ETH to do this.  I really think I did the right thing, I believe CHC will rise in value faster than ETH, and there is the extra safety of the masternode income.  But no one can predict the future, so who knows, if I'm wrong I'll come back and eat my words here.

Some amazing facts: right now Chaincoin at position 39 has higher market cap than the following:

NXT
Wings
Peercoin
Namecoin
Counterparty
Storj

These are just a few, and if you think about those coins and their vaunted histories, what is happening with CHC is remarkable.

I think this is the power of Advanced HODL Technology(R) as HighOnCoins calls it.  I think he's getting the domain name for it, and some people were talking about making Tee-shirts, kind of like those UASF shirts you see around.  I like to call it pump-and-HODL, because you definitely are seeing the "pump" part with media blitz and aggressive price management (aka manipulation).  The only thing you don't see is the dreaded DUMP.  There is no DUMP because it makes more economic (and moral) sense to HODL and let the masternodes do their thing.

Friends, I have something strange, and I'm wondering if anyone else is seeing this.

When setting up a masternode, when downloading blocks for the first time, in my debug.log is a lot of ORPHAN BLOCK warning messages during the initial load.  I mean a *lot* of messages.  It almost seems to "stall" at certain blocks.

If I restart chaincoind, the system gets past the problem and it proceeds, only to start generating ORPHAN BLOCK messages later on.

So, to load all of the blocks, I have to restart chaincoind at least a couple of times until it "catches up" to the present.

Is anyone else seeing this, and if so, does anyone know what causes this problem?

Honestly, these Chaincoin masternodes are kind of tough to set up, even with step-by-step instructions, it takes a nerd.  I know HighOnCoins is working on a tutorial and even some scripts to help automate the process and I'm looking forward to those instructions.

I'm still using AWS with a separate t2.nano instance for each masternode (BTW I am setting up a third node right now).  I think that probably a lot of Chaincoins are on Cryptopia but not making it into masternodes, simply because it is such a pain in the ass to set up.

Once there is a step-by-step for running multiple masternodes on a single machine, I might consider doing a Raspberry Pi, mostly because I like the idea of NOT paying Amazon monthly fees, even though they are low for t2.nano.

Bingo, I think the CHC community is much more cohesive and they're more into this as a kind of experiment.  HighOnCoins is leading this and he's basically asking the question: why does there have to be a "dump" phase after every "pump"?  Why can't we switch the paradigm to pump-and-HODL?  I thought about that a lot and concluded that he's right, with masternodes there is no downside.  Dumping is stupid reactive behavior.  We don't have to act crazy and piss our pants just because the price is going up a little.  So HODL until at least $100.00, and even then only sell masternode coin profits.  ERGO: NO BIG DUMP COMING.

gochc, there is a way to set up multiple nodes on a single VPS.  HighOnCoins mentioned it, he says he's working a tutorial to do just that.  So hang tight.  I myself am using multiple tiny VPS instances (t2.nano on AWS).  Eventually, I will consolidate.

You have a point about the masternodes, I didn't really think about the case where the people buying in cannot afford them.  I know that is a big problem with DASH, which I really wish I had held. I had DASH at the very beginning but I sold it for BTC.

One thing about CHC though, the masternode is only 1,000 CHC, which makes it very affordable, at least now.  I bought two nodes for about $1,600 a couple of days ago.  There are ROI statistics here:

https://chc.masternodes.pro/

Right now CHC is about $2.75 USD.  So you'd have to pay $2,750 for a masternode.  Here is what you'd get:

TOTAL MASTERNODES
1141
DAILY CHC EARNED
1.76
DAILY INCOME
$4.83
WEEKLY INCOME
$33.81
MONTHLY INCOME
$146.93
YEARLY INCOME
$1,762.95

I think that's a very good ROI, not many "normal" investments can do that.

But the big concern is this: does the price crash and you lose your capital?  So long as the answer is "no" or "unlikely" then there isn't much downside.  Regarding price crash, it is very resistant because of the masternode lock-up effect.

But, this is something that no one knows for sure.  So what I'm doing is just buying CHC with what I can afford to lose.  I sold some of my ETH to by CHC, and it is worth it to be part of this experiment.

The big difference is that, per Max of HighOnCoins, this is pump-and-HODL.  There is no "dump" phase, because that is unnecessary. 

Dumping is caused by greed and panic.  Don't get me wrong, there are those that will panic, but Max has GREAT WALL buy orders at price levels to serve as a safety net.  Right now the GREAT WALL is way low at .00059 (see Cryptopia).  The GREAT WALL will move up each day.  So this is price manipulation, but this time there is no "dump" phase.  I love this idea, I don't think this has ever happened before.