The Witch was quite good. It's more of artsy horror than the 'slasher/things jump out at you' type, however.

Actually very little point of dumping at current prices, unless crumbs means something to someone out there.

Joining the campaign... sig/avatar and so on.

Whomever is doing the escrow would validate investor amounts, then return the coins to the investors.
I thought that much was self-explanatory. As to how they validate things, it varies by who is doing the escrow and how the ICO was paid into to begin with -- email addresses are checked, validated keys, etc

As for the escrows, sometimes (usually) they use multi-key accounts. I recall one ICO using a lawyer with one key, the other held by a CEO of a crypto company -- all listing their real names. Sometimes it's a legendary member who has escrowed for years here with a perfect trust rating.

In Elastic's case, Lannister holds one key, EK holds the other... and I was given a key I didn't want -- and no escrow, so they can use the funds as they get them however they wish. Of course that isn't ideal to a lot of people.

And if you actually read what I posted, "everything is legit" is basically the opposite of what I was getting at.
And something else that should be obvious by now ... nobody cares either way.

Protection if dev runs away before releasing a working coin/wallet, malicious code found in wallets, or dev decides things are going horribly wrong and decides to end things themselves. It varies depending on what is entailed in their starting plan.

As for premines vs ICOs... it's all the same thing. Every dev is taking some coins somehow ... be it hidden premines, known premines, or ICOs. ICOs aren't necessarily worse, it's all the same thing, really. Just that ICOs can be more lucrative for devs, and investors (sometimes). ICO = dev holding a lot of his own coin, so incentive to raise price (to sell) + dev holding a lot of BTC so a means to raise that price. Then it just comes down to holders knowing when is the best time to get off the ride. If you want to call that a scam, so be it --  if using an outsider's perspective, every crypto is a scam, including btc. Market manipulation alone turns crypto into scam-land.

By now you must realize that nobody here (or barely anyone) has it in their mind they are playing the crypto game for any other reason than to make money. I am talking about investors, not devs -- they don't care if a coin has a purpose. They don't have this weird notion that such and such coin will really replace btc (which is barely used in the first place). Most don't care if the dev has an unusually large amount of his or her own coins. It's not a great idea for a coin's longterm health, but longterm here is like 3-6 months.

It's about watching whales move the charts and trying not to get killed in the process. It's all a game, and if you view it in any other way, you are really wasting your time here.

I haven't kept track of Elastic in some time, but I posted early on in their threads asking questions. There were always a ton of red flags... I can deal with some red flags, but it was like my red flag meter was on overload.

Getting answers to things like the dev team, or a real plan, was like pulling teeth. And yeah, EK would answer until he was blue in the face as to why escrow was a bad idea (to him) -- yet the whole time we are wondering why this random guy was the one doing the answering and not the supposed dev of the coin (Lionel).

Either extreme mismanagement, like on the brain-dead scale, or scammy behavior. The worst thing were the answers I got via PM from EK, in regard to Lannister ... supposedly he's just some random guy,  who EK didn't even know ... yet for some odd reason he hands the coin over to him to manage, along with one of the main keys to the ICO funds. No idea why EK thought that info would make me feel any better about investing over there.

Cashed out at 2-2.5xish myself. I didn't put enough in for it to really matter though, either way, sell or hold.

It is weird though how pretty much everyone who invested into the ICO basically bumbled into profit once the ICO was called off. It's like we accidentally made money.

I prefer coins with real growth (if there is such a thing) and proper development. But to be honest, we aren't talking and eth, or nxt, or a coin with lots of coding or a large dev fund.

We are talking about yobit. And a branded coin that really has little to do with chess right now, besides the name. And some past history during the ICO that was a touch on the shady side of things. The coin is playing in pump/dump land, so don't be surprised if that is what you see.

Well, I don't consider most activity on yobit 'legit'. That said, it takes a remarkably small amount of btc to pump this thing... I think 2 btc would get it at or over 300.

It doesn't even take whales to pump this, just a small fish. Or a dev with some spare btc and an awful lot of chesscoin. To do it properly, just need to wait for a new wallet release/new exchange/new feature as catalyst.

I haven't been paying attention to the price, but it looks steady around where it always is. If there was a dump, guess the coin rebounded to normal levels pretty quickly.

Got mine back a while ago. Assumed everyone else got theirs back by now too.

Okay, thanks for that offer, but I'll have to pass. And I seriously suggest you go back to troll school and get a new schtick.

By the way, if you actually read what I wrote, I stated you were not wrong, just that you stated your argument in the most moronic way possible. Seeing as you are here to troll, I realize facts don't matter much, but might as well target the correct person to troll ... I assumed they covered that in Trolling 101.

Actually he's not incorrect; but he stated his argument in the most moronic way possible. That 'serious guy' might as well drop his serious schtick... it's like he went to trolling school and failed, or had a brain injury. And no need for the moderated route here with this coin; it's too under the radar to bother moderating.


The issue that could be argued is if the dev selling the coins early was purposefully shady (and I already stated my opinion on this, based on the bela swap valuation change), or was done with good intentions, but it went horribly wrong.

It's safer to never fully trust what any dev says, for any coin here. Assume there will always be a bit of shadiness somewhere along the line.

And no need to trust the dev, just trust that he wants to make money ... if so, he'll need to figure out how to raise the price/volume to sell his own coins. If that happens, that is when you cash out.

Yeah, it's 2 M not 20M,  as the ICO was called off. 2M bela (or even split as 2 x1M) just means those people got 2M freebie coin total.

Or at current prices equivalent to .2 btc. Not nearly enough for anyone to bother with a pump, as it'd cost more to pump the coin than they'd make back.

Whomever bought the coins yesterday up to 13 sats, with those tons of small orders, might have a decent amount however. Regardless, it's the dev who is the big chess whale here. Let's see if he has an actual plan.

2M chesscoin does not make a whale. The person who would pump the coin would be the dev.

I don't expect to see innovation here. No idea what is even on the roadmap anymore, or if any of that stuff was ever feasible to begin with  -- android app should have been doable, since all they had to do was rebrand the bela app. I don't see anything on the chesscoin website actually about chess -- dev might want to start with actually having a way to play chess from the site/wallet, use the coin as a faucet per game, if nothing else.

But innovation and so on matters less in this situation than one would think. The real determining factor is that the dev has a huge amount of coin, hence an incentive to create enough liquidity in the market so he can cash out at least some of it. How he goes about it will be the interesting part, but that's the real reason not to dump right now. At these prices,  might as well see what the dev is going to do.

I expect most of those bounties have been given out already. 1.5m sounds like a lot, but it really isn't. Currently if every single person dumped their sig bounties,  the price wouldn't drop below a current order at 10 -- in fact, it wouldn't even completely get filled.

Dumping may or may not occur, but the bounty people wouldn't put a dent in the price really. Also makes no sense for them to even sell right now at these prices.

That doesn't really qualify as a pump. I was watching that too, looked like a bot was buying 100 coins at a time, non-stop ... for a while I wondered if someone simply set their bot incorrectly and it was mistakenly buying small amounts of coins until it hit around 13.

A proper pump typically involves an event -- buy on rumor, sell on news, that whole thing -- new exchange, new partnership, or at least new wallets/website/app ... something, as a catalyst. Of course it can be out of the blue, those very temporary spikes, but that didn't really happen here either. Coin dropping then rising to a level still below the previous day's high isn't a pump.

Still early and dev sitting on a ton of coins to move, so I'd expect him to do something eventually. Ideally it doesn't involve a tiny spike and then a massive dump to smithereens.

Yeah, when I saw how much I got, I was surprised. It's one of the benefits to doing the freebies on less popular coins, more bounties to go around.

I'd suggest contests or something of that sort for those who were newbies and did the sig thing, just so they have a chance to get more freebie coins too.  Then again, not all 'newbies' here are true newbies, so for all we know they already got a pile of coins.

Whales are a relative term when speaking about a low volume coin. Doesn't require tons of btc. The dev is the biggest whale, and until the coin hits a higher volume/mediocre price, I'd think there would always be at least one 'whale' out there active with the coin.

It doesn't mean they believe in the future of chesscoin by the way, it just means they believe they can raise the price/interest to the point where they can sell with enough liquidity in the market.

Dip here was predictable, although I wish I predicted it better... went a little lower than I expected.