Since it matters to you, I'm a holder of BTC, LTC, PPC, XPM, NXT and a few outliers. I like technology as well and know all about Sunny King's vision of a crypto-economy and far-sighted designs behind Peercoin and Primecoin.

That doesn't change the fact that crypto-currencies are empowering for more reasons than technological innovation. "The emotional pull on a weak person's heart" may be your attempt at interpreting a practical effort to overturn a century of economic oppression for an isolated sector of the US population, but its a pathetic one at best and mindless trolling at worst. The words toys and pram spring to mind.

As someone who is half Icelandic and who lived there during years of 100%+ inflation, I don't concur with your conclusions - either as to what's going on with AUR or MZC. Sure, they may well be 'dumped' after they're pumped, but that doesn't mean there aren't long term prospects for the types of initiatives that are being taken by these two projects - regardless of what particular technology they end up using.

I hope you take your own advice and stay away from all crypto's

Be advised that the de-centralised nature of cryptocurrencies makes the phenomena of Aurora and Maza inevitable - if not desirable - and their success or otherwise has nothing to do with council minutes, coin cloning, access to iPhones or otherwise.

Money these days lives in computers whether your a high street lard-ass or a mountain goat. At least a cryptocurrency is a damn site more accessible, meaningful and worthwhile for a native American indian than an American Express account is, especially when it's been purpose built for them.

Regarding the relevance of Litecoin and Bitcoin and why they didn't choose these, I should have thought that would be obvious to anybody who remotely understands what cryptocurrencies are about and how to lever their power. For a start they'd have to buy them. Secondly they'd be subject to the mood swings of cryptocurrency economies far larger than their entire nation, thirdly there's a huge symbolic significance and national empowerment that comes from having an independent currency that is uniquely associated with that tribe.

You're entitled to nit pick about official declarations and council meetings, but to those of us that have the least bit of incling as to the potential behind such initiatives, it's clear what's going on here. Also, the fact that it's in the Telegraph, Russia Today and New York Times (apparently) is justification enough for folks to throw a few BTC into it whether they identify with the cause or not.

That "scam" label is for jealous losers who didn't get in at ground level and can't contain themselves without venting a whole load of fickle nonsense on public forums. I'm sure if you'd stuck 0.5 BTC in at 5 satoshis you'd have stayed under your rock.

In the meantime I suggest you either make your points constructively or go and crawl back under it without further delay.

I agree. More confidence is needed.

Wait a few more days and get in @ 0.003.

It's currently sticking out like a lighthouse on Coinmarketcap at a gain of 134% with a cap of only $1 million and a coin supply of only 88 million. So once people figure out that Maza is currently 565 times cheaper than Aurora, even factored for coin supply and with the same potential upside, not even on Cryptsy yet, I shouldn't think you'd have too long to wait 

I don't believe it's possible not to notice 850,000 missing bitcoins for months or years.

Even if Gox didn't notice it, traders making withdrawals would have. That's who really are the eyes and ears of Gox and thats where the red flags would have started. The fact that they didn't makes me sceptical that 850,000 coins have actually gone "missing".

To withdraw funds there needs to be a blockchain transaction. So if there was a steady flow of withdrawals out of Gox up until the point they suspended withdrawals, they would have been coming from cold wallets with positive balances.

I don't know.


I would have thought that would be obvious - because they'd have to buy Bitcoin but they're going to get Aurora for free. Adoption is worth big money in the cryptocurrency world and no-one has so far come up with such a strategic and well targeted adoption method for any coin. Icelanders are going to benefit financially from facilitating such a widespread adoption IF there's a good takeup. However, that becomes less of an IF everyday that the valuation increases and a virtuous cycle ensues between adoption propensity and coin value.


Why does anyone put money into any foreign currency ? Forex markets are huge because you're basically buying into a country's economy without having to live there. Apart from anything else it's going to garner some major publicity if things continue on this path - the kind of publicity that not even Bitcoin has been able to get it's hands on apart from to cite one coin-loss disaster after another.


No. Those are not the only choices. Remember that most money is neither spent nor converted but simply sits in bank accounts or stocks as a store of value. Auroracoin has a fixed supply and is equally distributed to the entire population. That gives it a massive advantage over ISK which has an unlimited supply and is de-valued on a regular basis. So Auroracoin gives people a new option to store their ISK.

When all is said and done, it may well get "dumped" but the significant thing here - and this is something that applies to all crypto's - it will never disappear. Cryptocurrencies are unlevered base money, unlike bank credit money. So this experiment is going to be interesting whatever the outcome of the exchange rate.

***************************** EDIT: *****************************

While I've been writing this, Auroracoin has increased in value to over $40 per coin. That makes the airdrop worth over $1000 per Icelander. What do you think the Government and central bank are going to do about this ? The value of the airdrop is now valued at 15%-20% of Icelandic government annual tax revenue.

This is MAJOR stuff which they can't ignore. On the other hand if they ban it (using a totally un-enforceable ban) they risk making themselves as unpopular as the worst of the bank-crash cartel and another popular uprising. The emperor's clothes are coming under 1000 spotlights just round the corner.

+1000. The OP and followers have no clue as to what's going on here and the historical implications of this project.

The idea is brilliant.

I am half Icelandic and have lived in Iceland for years at a time. I may or may not be entitled to a quota and haven't bought any, but whatever I don't care because the idea is immensely powerful and certainly justifies the current marketcap.

What people don't realise is 3 things:

[1] - the cryptocurrency concept is an idea who's time has come and will be recognised as such by Icelanders. If there's one phrase they know the meaning of it's "Central Bank Devaluation".

[2] - Iceland is the one country in the world where an idea like this has a practical chance of taking hold. That's because of the unique documentation of their genealogical heritage and it's public nature. A database that is usually only available to closed off sectors of government is in the public domain (at least if you're an Icelander) and thus makes full and equal distribution a practical possibility

[3] - as a game of chess, the creators of Auroracoin have out-smarted the Central Bank of Iceland because the bank's exchange control policies will unwittingly force the coin into circulation by making it difficult to cash out into dollars.

On the other hand, if people cash out into Krona, the coin will stay in Icelandic hands.

Make no mistake, this is going to have some impact - I don't know to what extent, but it will be a major "dent" in the fiat mirage, the fact that a popular currency can be created from nothing and have a tradeable value.

That is just insane.

Imagine making a legitimate trade on Gox years ago and withdrawing fiat, then being sued for it back years later. I just can't imagine that would ever get anywhere. For a start there are a host of countries involve where local legislation may apply and money protection laws etc.

Gox wasn't a ponzy scheme, they were just under capitalised. By trading on there, customers of Gox could not be said to be "participating" in the mal-running of the business, so I think the OP's point is purely hypothetical and an imaginary stretch.

There is no comparison with Madoff - the two cases are not remotely like each other. Madoff was running an illegal business model. Gox's business model was perfectly legal, it was just badly managed to the point where it became catastrophic.

All right people.

Get stuck in...

http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/the-collapse-of-bitcoin

NxT
PPC
XPM
QRK

LTC (Because of brand)

Of the really alt alts:

Vert looks interesting (I haven't got any)
Darkcoin looks interesting (I haven't got any)

Here we go.

$20 million being invested no less.

http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2014/02/25/secondmarket-bitcoin-exchange/?hpt=hp_bn1

EDIT: (Oops, I forgot to add the obligatory "to da moon !")

I'm not a Maxcoin hater.

I invest in coins for their technological interest, not because of the loudness of Max Keiser's bullhorn. Sure, Max's bullhorn can pump a coin and you'll make some money. They when it stops you'll loose it again unless you dump.

That isn't really what Max Keiser was about for me and I find it a bit miserable to watch.

I enjoyed Max's show and used to follow his twitter feed for great nuggets of economics info and links.

But then I got an overdose of Maxcoin propaganda rammed down my throat and now hardly go near his twitter feed cos you've got to wade through all this Maxcoin nonsense when I'm perfectly capable of going to Cryptsy and  seeing what the market thinks of it which is about 100 times more relevant.

I hope he gets back to doing what he does best and stops being the Arthur Daley of cryptocurrencies.

LoL. You can get 100% return in a few hours by picking the right pump and dump alt coin.

I never saw the appeal of World Coin (apart from endless cries of "great community" which kind of smacks of desperation). It's not even particularly fast any more by today's standards (see for example Coino, Quark, Doge and a host of other coins). Not that speed is important anyway (in my opinion). Anything under 2-3 minutes is enough for a crypto currency.

The fact is that all Alt coins are just proxies for Bitcoin, so it doesn't matter which one you're in - they're all the same with different names and websites. Their values are measured in Bitcoin and the only reason people buy then is so that they might end up with more Bitcoin.

One or two have a very slight snowball's chance in hell of replacing Bitcoin if it ever falters - IMO PPC, XPM and LTC do in that order. That's about it. Meanwhile there are 3 categories of possible alternative cryptocurrency networks which could co-exist with Bitcoin. These would be:

[1] - store of value coins (Ones which are not used for day-to-day trading but are held as high value reserves). For me that's PPC, XPM (which were designed as such)

[2] - 2nd generation networks (which support all kinds of meta applications such as de-centralised exchanges, contracts, coloured coins etc). So that's NxT, Etherium, Mastercoin etc

[3] - liquidity coins. These are massive supply currencies who's value bobs about and which are used for buying groceries and throwing around in large amounts. So that's things like Doge and Tips

The rest may have specialist functions and may have markets, but those are the ones that stand out for me because they are unique - not clones, have properly designed roles in the crypto-economy and are who's value is not based on irrelevant criteria such as "it's fast" or "great community".

If a tiny company like MT Gox can single handedly "destroy bitcoin" then it wasn't worth very much in the first place.

I doubt that's true anyway. It's just the gossip story of the moment and since the market is tiny and doesn't have anything else to concern itself with, that's what it's decided to obsess on for now.

Brother JohnF also noticed it and posted a remark to that effect on his "Bitcoin Channel"...

http://www.thebitcoinchannel.com/archives/33713

You're a ray of sunshine aren't you. Trying to make people feel better ?

If thats the case, why don't any of the exchanges do this ? Not one single cryptocurrency exchange anywhere in the world uses the blockchain for any of its trades.

Even Coinbase doesn't do it if it can avoid it. Watch this video - you'll see demonstrated how incredibly easy it is to do account-to-account transactions as opposed to blockchain-based ones. The presenter even demonstrates sending bitcoin to **email addresses ** when the receiver doesn't have a blockchain address.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOoffwOJbY8

No. We will not. Please go back and read my previous posts about this. Confirmations and blockchain transactions have nothing to do with how Bitcoin sales will be conducted on a large scale. It doesn't matter what type of currency is in use - US Dollars, Euro's, Bitcoins, Litecoins, squirrels, pigs, barrels of oil, Storepoints - ALL these currencies get handled and WILL be handled by payment processors (as they do today).

Point of sale transactions are instantaneous - because we are not actually doing a bank transfer at the point of sale. Even if a coin appeared with 1 5-second confirmation time, it would still never be able to match the speed and functionality that Visa / Mastercard payment processors provide.

You'll still be paying with a 'card' it's just that the money will be coming from a cryptocurrency account managed by the appropriate payment processor. (This is already happening - look how the cryptocurrency exchanges work right now).

Whenever you don't pay with physical cash(paper money) you are paying with an account - either charging to a store account or a debit account or a credit card account.

The emergence of Cryptocurrencies on the scene will not change this. You will still be paying from an "account" - it will just be a cryptocurrency account.

We will not see blockchain transactions at the point of sale on any kind of scale (e.g. large stores and supermarkets) where there is a high turnover of sales.

The blockchain's unsuitability for point-of-sale is not under debate. It is not a POS system. It's bank.

Why do you think the cryptocurrency exchanges don't do realtime blockchain transactions for their trades ? It's not just a question of speed (although no exchange would ever be able to work with trades which ran at 'blockchain' speed) it's a question of functionality.

Day to day trades and transactions need to happen one step removed from the banking system - whether it's fiat or crypto - and then be 'committed' to the associated bank accounts / blockchain accounts once completed. There is no blockchin transaction speed or functionality that could ever match what payment processors provide and even if it did, the way that the blockchain operates is far too inflexible for use at point of sale. It's great as a 'bank' but point of sale operations are simply not the same animal as bank transfers.

There are so many examples which spring to mind if you've ever worked in a retail operation. Here's another one of the top of my head - a hardware retailer takes an order from a known customer with an account. The order needs to be modified because some items weren't in stock and some were. The retailer calls the customer to see if they would accept a substitute product with a minimal price difference. The customer agrees but wants the retailer to complete the order, reverse the old and charge the new amount to their account.

So now the **retailer** has to do the charging. This type of stuff goes on ALL THE TIME in retailing and can only done using accounts (ok, it may be a cryptocurrency account but its not going to be a blockchain transaction because the retailer would then need access to the customer's blockchain address and could run off with coins untraceably).

There are millions of examples like this that demonstrate that blockchain will never get anywhere near retailing without payment processors. That isn't a bad thing - it's a good thing - I'm just saying, we should be realistic in our expectations of how cryptocurrencies will develop and who needs to be convinced abut their viability as a store of value. Payment processors are pivotal in this whole game.

Without them, cryptos are going nowhere.