Was any of the funding for APICoin used in the development of this project?

That you don't understand the problem domain is more a reflection on you than on OT.

The reason you're not hearing much about OT is that Monetas is spending a lot of time working on voting pools, which are a hard problem to solve and also a backend technology.

When exchanges start using voting pools to handle customer deposits, there will be a great many OT users who won't even realize they're using it.

Bitcoin is developing in a way that makes it naturally more resistant to those parasites.

I hope they stay away for as long as long as possible.

Let them stay in their own little sandbox and eventually 100% of the paper that nobody else wants.

BTC trading volume near an all time high on the monthly scale, with a clear 5 year long uptrend isn't good enough for you?

http://data.bitcoinity.org/markets/volume/5y?r=month&t=a&volume_unit=btc

OT is not capable of forming the kind of distributed consensus needed to create a currency like Bitcoin.

Triple signed receipts are fine for recording contracts, though.

The same value can not be held simultaneously in the main chain and in a side chain.

Close, but not quite.

Which three times are you talking about?

Generally speaking, there are two different ways in which a miner can behave: they can operate in good faith or they can grief.

Griefer miners have to pay a real cost for their bad behaviour - they expend significant quantities of electricity and capex depreciation which they will never recover.

What if a Bitcoin miner decides to grief the Namecoin blockchain? Mine empty blocks, intentionally orphan valid parts of the chain, run difficulty up and then pull out, attempt double spends of Namecoins, etc.

Their electricity and capex is paid for by the Bitcoins they mine. Sure, they have to spend a little bit in bandwidth to run a Namecoin node, but that cost is insignificant compared to the cost of mining Bitcoin.

This is why merged mining doesn't provide the kind of security that people think it provides. The only security comes from the goodwill of the mining pool operators, without strong economic incentives that make good behaviour much more profitable than bad behaviour.

Just like proof of stake, and also just like central banks.

How many time has the Bitcoin exchange rate retreated back down to the value of a previous peak after achieving a new one?

When a Bitcoin miner starts merge mining Namecoin, how much more opportunity cost do they forfeit compared to the case where they only mine Bitcoin?

The time, electricity, and capex needed for mining Bitcoin doesn't count because that cost is paid for with Bitcoin. From the perspective of Namecoin's security model, it's not an opportunity cost.

If a Bitcoin miner wants to attack Bitcoin's ledger, they have to pay a real cost for it. If a Bitcoin miner wants to attack Namecoin, the cost of the attack is effectively free.

We know how easy it is for Bitcoin miners to attack other double SHA256 ledgers, because they've done it before.

At best, merge mining creates security equivalent to proof of stake.

Read these:

https://gist.github.com/oleganza/8cc921e48f396515c6d6

https://download.wpsoftware.net/bitcoin/pos.pdf

I'm insinuating that you have no idea what you're talking about with regards to counterparty risk, centralization, or distributed consensus.

The reason I know this is because of how you worded your previous comment - your scenario was a "100% merge mined" sidechain.

Of course that makes sense, right?

1. Hashing is what makes Bitcoin secure
2. More hashing equals more security
3. Therefore any chain that has an equal amount of hashing power as Bitcoin will be equally secure.

Sounds great, except the first premise is false, therefore so is the conclusion.

Hashing isn't what secures Bitcoin - opportunity cost is what secures Bitcoin.

Anybody who doesn't understand that is not qualified to evaluate the security properties of sidechains.

Please explain the mechanism via which merged mining solves the distributed consensus problem.

Bullshit.

Find one credible source who will go on record saying that sidechain units carry zero counterparty risk compared to bitcoins.

Actually the sidechains whitepaper was fairly explicit about saying the opposite.

Reducing counterparty risk is a worthy goal, however one can't build solutions to a problem that one refuses to acknowledge.

Anybody who thinks that counterparty risk for promissory notes can be eliminated is delusional.

Managed? Sure. Reduced? Absolutely. Eliminated? Never.

I see something happening here that's been a long standing problem in the Bitcoin space, especially in "Bitcoin 2.0" circles.

Quite a few people, sometimes out of ignorance and sometimes out of malice, blur the lines between money and promissory notes.

At the very least, it won't take two days to move funds into and out of them.

It's hard to tell from this post whether or not your explanation is correct.

In your scenario, "you can buy *a lot* of stuff with a few bitcoins at a relatively low price" is true if by "price" you mean the price of a bitcoin in terms of stuff. A higher velocity means a higher P in the quantity theory of money formula, where P is the price of stuff in terms of money.

Ideally, I'd like to see a development roadmap for the protocol, with clearly-defined criteria for determining what goes in and what does not.

Unfortunately a prerequisite for that is a common agreement on goals.