LoL. There's already been 400 BTC worth traded in the last hour on Mintpal alone.

Great post this ! Totally agree with everything said and I've been amazed the last few weeks that more people haven't picked up on this point.

I mean, it's a total no-brainer. If the Bitcoin ETFs make it into Wall Street, it will be like going from showering yourself under a leaky drainpipe to standing under Niagra Falls.

Right now, the only formal fiat gateways to cryptos are basically Coinbase, Bitstamp and BTC-e IN THE WHOLE WORLD ! (Plus a few hangers on)

Not only that, it will be a complete paradigm change for crypto currencies. They will be seen to have defied all the adverse predictions of 2013 and 2014 and therefore have demonstrated an incredible resilience against negative press.

Good point also regarding DRK and the secondary markets where traders require to diversify their portfolios. DRK stands square in the middle of "to gain from that" territory.

Prices can go up as part of a downtrend and they can go down as part of an uptrend.

Think of a bicycle pedal. If you only watch the pedal, it goes down every half cycle but the bike might be going up hill, so if you use the pedal as a reference you'll be fooled 50% of the time.

That's what's been happening with Bitcoin the last few months. It's been going up and down as part of a long term downhill journey. However, it has now turned around. The pedals are still going up and down, but the bike is going uphill.

The medium term momentum for DRK since about May 30th has been down. But this is just stabilising now and looks like it may turn up again over the next week. Whatever it does, it's clear from watching the realtime trading that most of the demand is off the order book. What that means is that you can't safely dump this coin right now - even if trading technicals indicate a favourable window. The price just takes off too easily.

Still some chunks of liquidity left in the 21 range.

Get stuck in now or get left in the dust because it's about to evaporate.

All charts are now turning green. In particular the twelve hour has 1 bar to go before it's correction from last week's dump is fully in. 4 hour took one look into the abyss and turned back.

20 minute volume about to surpass 10000 DRK, whatever that is in BTC.

Even if it goes back down I would not be selling now for anything. There's too much latent demand waiting to pounce.

Whales moving in now.

Bitcoinwisdom just had to recalibrate its volume chart as it went off the scale.

Brief flurry of panic buying just commenced on Mintpal.

After dithering all day around the 19 mark, the 15 minute MACD turning over to the upside seemed to be the last straw for some buyers who had probably been waiting for the 4 hour chart selloff to commence.

However they were wrong footed, because instead of dipping into the red zone, we doubled back northwards in a cruel act of deception which left a few beached whales in its wake.

The surprise turnaround - reminiscent of an 80's Maradonna swivel - saw the immediate placement of an 1867 DRK shot right at the top of the bid stack indicating that strong demand for this coin is on a hair trigger right now.

Even as I write, a 751 meteor has come hurtling in from nowhere to snap up any new liquidity that had seeped into the spread since the initial rally 10 minutes ago.

This is clearly a jittery market that anxious traders do not want to let get away from them. Despite that, that is exactly what appears to be happening.....ooops, there goes a 2020 DRK shot mopping up more of the asks already.

Looks like we have engine ignition.....

 

Because technology is ten a penny.

It can be changed, revised, modified, new approaches adopted and refined as the project develops and the market knows that.

What can't be replaced or copied is:

[1] - the original inspiration behind the project

[2] - the will to make it succeed

[3] - to a large extent, the market investment

Having brought an asset into the top 5 market caps over a period, it isn't going to disinvest itself and re-invest in another en-masse unless it has a damn good reason to. People can bang on about the relative merits of technological approaches till the cows come home. But it isn't going to do jack unless it fundamentally affects the viability of the asset.

If all the developers on this project suddenly decide to up sticks and abandon it, people can start worrying. Until then, as long as there is a will and enough technical nouse around (which appears to now be on the increase as far as this project is concerned) there's no reason to do anything other than stay invested if you already are.

Whether ring signatures are better technologically or not isn't going to affect the relative commercial value of Monero.

Almost all coins are more advanced technologically than Bitcoin / Litecoin, even Peercoin but it doesn't dent their values.

An original is an original and acquires an appropriate valuation.

I think you're confusing the infrastructure of the clearing banks with the bookkeeping records of a commercial entity.

In an audit, it is the latter that auditors are concerned with, not the former.

Whether a particular blockchain's transactions are transparent or opaque has little to do with how it's users get audited. Blockchain transactions are so wildly different in nature from traditional banking ones that there will be far more hurdles to jump before you get to ease of auditing. For a start, you don't have a counter party in any of them.

That fact right there puts most crypto currency income and expenditure beyond the reach of regulators and auditors - not the fact that you can't look something up in Block explorer. So if Darkcoin has a problem, Bitcoin has as well. There is no record of the payer or payee - just a bunch of cryptic numbers and letters that don't prove anything. So from an "audit" point of view. Bitcoin is no use. It does not provide the auditor with any information - the company's own records have to do that.

I suppose the nearest equivalent is a retailer who dumps their cash tills into the bank every day. The only record on the bank reconciliations will be "cash receipts". No names or addresses.

ok, I'd better go away and read some details before I do any more ranting. Apologies if I've flown off the handle on wrong information, it's just that this is a good project that's trying to thread a needle through a commercial vs technical priorities minefield and I don't want to see any good ideas blown up.

Will digest and come back 

So is my understanding about this all wrong ?

Would a "3000 DRK node" not receive more traffic than a 1000 DRK node ? They'd process the same traffic but just get paid more per transaction processed ?

I thought they were. Otherwise what's the reward for ? Owning more DRK than the next person ? That's called interest.

I might have misunderstood the strategy and will be more than happy to be corrected on my misunderstanding.

At 1000 DRK per node, the number of nodes is going to be peanuts anyway compared to the number of transaction clients. If there's a "too many nodes" problem than that should be solved technically by a hard limit, not commercially by the 'free market'.

(I'm not saying the total number of nodes can't be governed by the free market - that was a good idea - but the traffic weighting thing is not IMO).

Thats right - and so it should, since you've actually increased the redundancy of the network by 10 times and therefore deserve 10 times the maintenance reward.

On the other hand if you DIDN'T increase the network redundancy then you shouldn't get paid any more or receive any more traffic, full stop. Doesn't matter if you've got a bigger stuffed wallet on your node.

You mean it's just to save people time in setting up multiple nodes ?    (Holds head in hands).

Jeez. The whole POINT of paying the dividend is as a reward for network maintenance. If you stick to the principle of 1 wallet for 1 node you get a nice homogeneous, non-lumpy, well distributed network whose strengths and weaknesses are spread out. You also make whales work for their money.

Lumping a whole load of traffic towards one node more than another just because the hosters paid more money is MADNESS !!! DO NOT DO THIS PLEASE !! DO NOT EVEN CAP IT AT 2 !!!

The loss of network redundancy is like paying a price 100 times higher than it will ever save any hosters in setup time. Not to mention the bad press we'll get for compromising on technical priorities in favour of commercial ones.

I can't. It's the thin end of a very dangerous wedge who's whole principle is flawed.

What exactly is the objective of weighting the master node according to wallet size ?

Ah.

I thought it was the ability to pool 1 master node amongst multiple contributors to the 1000 DRK.

Now I see your point. It allows for weighting of individual master nodes on the network so it's not homogeneous in terms of redundancy. On the face of it that seems a crazy idea that does directly undermine the network integrity, but what is the thinking behind it ?

This is where people have to be absolutely clear about separating technical priorities from economic ones, otherwise things can go right off the rails. Both have their place but they mustn't step on each others toes.

This is great stuff.

Markets can do what the f*ck they want, but if anyone ever needed any confirmation that something real is going on here then this is it.

I said before that this period is a 'right of passage' phase for DRK and the longer it goes on the more unique and difficult to challenge it will be. (In particular the news about the emerging additional manpower on the dev team).

Congrats to devs for getting to the bottom of the recent issues and being so transparent about it. It might cause a ripple in the markets but if it does it's a price well worth paying for the progress thats being made.

Well I took the opposite view.

Decided they were about 50 times safer on the exchange than on a DRK blockchain which is work in progress right now  Also, I'm on MacOS 10.6 and I think the DRK wallet needs 10.7 or higher possibly. It won't launch on 10.6.

Gox is not a good example of exchanges. It was a known risk for months before it actually blew. Poloniex - don't know much about that one.

I'll maybe upgrade to Mavericks and get a wallet once the dust has settled on the Masternodes stuff.

I keep all my DRKs on the exchange so I don't think that will work.