Difficulty is very low right now. Wait for GPUs to come online or for more people to discover it's botnet potential.

And that could easily happen once GPU's get involved and then ASICs.  As soon as GPU mining begins, expect it.

Intermittent reinforcement schedules are proven to work well for payments.


I figured I would post this dialog for the benefit of Netcoin.

Yes think Twitter. And yes it is the best reward mechanism. I will propose Netcoin adopt this mechanism now that it is a proven success with the Primecoin case study.

If you sell now you'll be sorry. People who hold for later will get much more considering no one will be able to mine XPM so easily as to get a lot of it.

Watch and see. You'll be lucky to get 1-2 XPM per reward.

All I can say is you did an excellent job. The difficulty algorithm works better than intended. This coin has a chance and I'm glad I got in early because I could see each XPM being worth 0.1 BTC soon.

Any chance of getting people to use XPM as a currency or is it more a store of value like Bitbar?

How is it going to pop when there isn't anyone to dump it? Also the scarcity is going to rise anyway due to lowering rewards. It's a good time to buy XPM for the time it hits 0.05. You were warned.

I predict that before August 1st Primecoin will reach 0.05.

Now is the time to buy in because this coin has the PPC difficulty algorithm. The more it is mined the more scarce it will become and the more it will be worth to whomever is holding it. The time to buy is now, before the GPU miners and ASIC miners figure out how to mine this coin and difficulty skyrockets through the roof.

Once that happens 0.05 will be considered cheap and we may be looking at 0.1-0.2.
The time to buy is now.

Now how about Ubuntu?

Bitcoin would be fine. I have no problem with that. See https://btct.co/
In that case if it's not going to be better by design then what is the point? One example of better by design would be to make it decentralized so it's DDOS proof. Bitcointalk was under constant attack by the price manipulator which helped to cause the price crash in April 2013.
You know this because you're psychic? An idea which isn't tried or tested should be treated as an unknown. My idea is to build the better technology but I admit the result would be unknown just like with any new thing.
But it's already working. Bitcointalk already has incentives to encourage people to post to get out of the newbie section. I don't see why it's a mistake to encourage an active membership.
Because I believe the Bitcoin community is a community of entrepreneurs and that entrepreneurship is the key to the success of Bitcoin as an experiment. Why have a new currency if you don't want to start a business to create jobs? No one is going to give you a job and millions of people are looking for a job right now so I would think the idea of starting your own business is why most people are attracted to a forum like this in the first place.
Because people want to earn some Bitcoins. I don't see why it's all that complicated. What if you're from the developing world and someone offers a survey and you can earn a few bucks just by answering some questions? How else will people get Bitcoins honestly?

Also if I'm willing to pay for the research results with my Bitcoin stash or Litecoin stash then why shouldn't the forum allow me to do it? It's revenue for the forum and for the members and it's much better than advertising which tends to be totally annoying.
I say we don't know what is balanced until we try stuff and analyze the results or we conduct a poll. I think we should try something, see how they respond and then decide.
You have no understanding of how economics work. If the active membership are the only people who truly are involved with Bitcoin, are you saying only 200 members on Bitcointalk are (rich)? Because I don't see it. I don't see it like that on reddit where peopel tip each other either. I think anyone who has a Bitcoin wallet will have some Bitcoins in it eventually and if they do not then something is wrong with the community that forces people to purchase Bitcoins at an exchange.
Based on what? Until you test out certain ideas we don't know what the effects will be. When the first mining pool was set up I'm sure people thought it was a stupid idea to charge transaction fees, just let people donate to the pool. For some pools this might work, for other pools there is a fee, and both seem to have plenty of users. So I don't think people are afraid of fees just so long as the fees are very small and trivial. If it costs some mBTC it's not a big deal. If it costs some uBTC it's not a big deal.
The principles or goal would be to encourage active membership and to encourage use of Bitcoin as a currency. I'm not claiming that any specific idea is guaranteed to work but that any idea should be tried to see how well it can work. If you don't agree with the goal thats another matter.
By better I mean if you're going to do something then why not take advantage of the strengths of Bitcoin? Right now even Bitcointalk doesn't really seem designed for Bitcoin. It's just an ordinary forum populated by Bitcoin users. It can easily be DDOSed because it's centralized, it doesn't promote Bitcoin use as a currency and only promotes speculation. As a result we have a lot of rumors, speculation, and not enough people actually transferring Bitcoins around.
It probably wont get to the size of Bitcointalk but you never know. For certain types of discussions it will be much better. Bitcointalk is like a stadium and you can reach a large audience here but when you want to have deep technical discussion or discussion business then it's not so good.
It solves sockpuppets because every time the sockpuppet gets banned they must pay again. It prevents scammers because $1 might get them into the VIP section but if threads can be locked then they'll have to pay fees to get access to the locked threads as well. It's access control by rings.
I lose time. Do you think people have unlimited time?
Volunteering is great but be realistic. While you volunteer who is going to pay your bills?
So you make it profitable and now you can spend all your time doing it, which makes you a lot more active right?
So because they don't see it happening then we can pretend like Facebook is free? Websites aren't ever operated for free though and Facebook is just clever and sneaky about how they get money.  To have a sustainable organization, you need to be able to profit through some mechanism and the same applies to the community. If mining is not profitable it will not be sustainable, and eventually it ceases.
It should be that to verify your account you need a wallet. I don't see why we should give the same treatment to people who are so new that they dont even have a wallet yet. Those people should be directed to a how-to guide on setting up a wallet. Otherwise we will be flooded with the same basic questions of how to get Bitcoins and how to setup a wallet.
The funny thing is I've stumbled upon some spammers who make an account here on this site with no intention of ever using Bitcoin for anything.
But that is what Bitcoin allows us to do that we couldn't do before.  The best way to show what Bitcoin can do is to show what it can do.

A community also makes money off the back of your labor. Everyone makes money off of each other in symbiosis. You want a sustainable community, so if it's going to last then everyone has to be able to make money somehow or once again how will people be fully committed if they have to work at McJob to pay their bills? The more you allow people to grow the economy within the community, the better it is for the community.

Absolutely right. Spammers typically want to make money and by making it cost money to spam, you'll get less spam. Also if they need a Bitcoin address to spam then at least they'll have to know what Bitcoin is.
The thing is, people do want to spend and just don't have a lot of options other than a new mining rig because that is all that gets advertised. This is why most of the money of miners is going into losing ventures like BFL. I would rather people diversify and have shares in stuff like forums, websites, exchanges, anything which can make them a long term profit rather than everyone trying to get ASICs and mine like they can do that forever. These people are almost guaranteed to lose money from mining and there isn't anywhere better for them to go because what else can they invest in?
You never know. If a new forum is built (on the software design level) it should be designed to scale in such a way so that the forum is open source like many other forums and that any website or blog can adapt the technology .This way it does scale, but it's also a forum designed to take advantage of cryptocurrencies. Small machines forum is not designed for this. It's not designed for Bitcoin which is why when Bitcoin is DDOSed this site goes down. If the forum were designed for the kind of attacks it's going to face from malicious individuals, or designed to take advantage of the strengthens of the technology why not?

So let's find strengths and weaknesses and come up with some new ideas.
Do you have any solutions which take advantage of the strengths of Bitcoin?
That is nearly 10% of the entire Bitcoin community. How many people have downloaded the Bitcoin client? 3,416,343 all time. Considering the fact that probably only 1 million are active users, and if we get rid of bots and assume 80,000-100,000 are active users here, then that is where I get 10%. If that scales up then yes a site like this could have millions of users and probably will.


I think it is about content or why would we reply to each other? Also it's not just these discussions but the new alt coins which get released, the new apps, the new businesses started, the news from friedcat, that is what I mean by content.



Would a digital signature permanently linked to a Bitcoin/altcoin address work as a means of verification? When the account is sold it would not have the same digital signature or coin address but it would have the same alias so only the alias should be able to be sold. Would this work?

There isn't enough freedom for truly free speech which is why people have to settle for anonymous speech. Anonymous speech is valuable in a certain context, I don't have to know exactly who holds certain views to find it valuable to know a lot of people hold certain views. If we don't have free speech then it's less likely we can know the true views of anyone, and without anonymity at least on the Internet we would not have any way of holding certain conversations on certain topics because it would be impossible for people to have an honest and open discussion.

For this reason we still need anonymous discussion. That is not the same thing as anonymous complaints. Discussion is the ability of people to share their thoughts without consequence (we need this), but complaints which can cost a person their career or send people to jail is free speech with consequences. Direct consequences should bring direct accountability to whoever made the complaint in some form or another even if just to let us determine that their evidence is bogus and their facts are false. Pseudo-anonymous gives us an alias or ID to allow us to do that.

I agree with what you're saying and I have some thoughts.

Evaluation isn't merely speech, but requires discernment and judgment. If you're going to make a qualitative judgment then it is more like voting and I agree that should not be completely anonymous. The way it should be is that the professor in question shouldn't know which student voted which way, but the *computer system* itself could know. Access controls could be put in place so that the professor does not know. In fact no specific person would have to know until there is a dispute and a valid reason for access, but the *computer system* should always know.

For example if you look at it like pulling scrambled identities out of a hat and seeing which way each one voted, I think this is completely fair. You could get the polling information, and it could be pseud-anonymous in that only the computer would know, but there would also be accountability because if something goes wrong it could be unscrambled rather easily. I don't think the professor needs to know how each specific student voted. I don't think a human being has to constantly monitor it, but only act as an arbitrator. In a dispute the arbitrator should be given access to the identities.

I understand also that complaints should not be truly anonymous. A complaint is once again something which is a qualitative judgment which has a cost/risk to the individual being judged. I do think that the person being judged doesn't always have to know they are being evaluated, but I also think that if they are evaluated the people who evaluated them must be known by a third party. So I don't advocate a black box, I advocate a grey box where you can put your vote into it and have the ability to voice your concerns. without your boss, professor, or whomever knowing exactly who you are. This does not mean the computer system should not know who you are. It should always know who everyone is.

To reverse it for example let's say the professor really is corrupt and students need a way to report this corruption, there should be an pseudo-anonymous channel to allow them to report this. In this case they would be considered an anonymous-source. However this can be made pseudo-anonymous by attaching a digital signature, so that now they have an alias and are not truly anonymous but pseudo-anonymous and their reputation can now be mapped. If they give bogus reviews under their pseudo-identity then the computer would know this and since they have to be a legit student to have a pseudo-identity the computer could revoke their ability to give reviews if it is found out that they are abusing it. The professor does not have to know which student said what, the professor could dispute that the student giving that bad review is biased and the computer system can look up a history of reviews to find out if the student is biased or not.

It's really no different from Ebay or Amazon. The reviewer should be reviewed by the system and held accountable, and the people being reviewed should be reviewed by the system and held accountable. Unreliable pseudo-anonymous sources will be flagged and labeled as such. Reliable pseudo-anonymous sources will be flagged and labeled as such.

If I'm the professor being reviewed I just want to know I'm reviewed by people who are honest, competent, reliable and as unbiased as possible. Anyone can smear me pseudo-anonymously, but it's a lot less likely that people who don't have a history of doing that will choose me out to smear, and if that did happen there would still be patterns which could reveal sub terranean network organization. If I'm a reviewer I don't see why my reviews could not also be pseudo-anonymously peer reviewed.

Thank you for your post. You've made me think.

Anonymity allows for free speech. Privacy affords liberation from coercion/blackmail.

Each are valuable.

How about this additional proposal, the forum should offer shares on https://www.litecoinglobal.com/

Shareholders could then sign in with their shareholder information and use their shares to vote on different features, or to get special privileges. This will encourage people to not only spend their Litecoins but to become investors in the community. When the site profits they profit, when the site is under attack their investment is under attack.

The shareholders should not have to see any ads ever. There should be a limited amount of shares released. This way the site can immediately fund itself in an IPO process and I'll go on record and say I'll buy shares if this happens.

If it's just going to be an exact clone of this forum then what is the point? We can all just stay here. If it's going to be something never done before then I'm in. My interpretation of the function of a forum is to build a community. The cryptocurrency community is primarily technologists who are trying to make money. And when I say make money I mean literally. Shouldn't a new forum contribute technologically and also bring people into the process of creation? We can talk, I'm fine with that but I think if Bitcoin or any of these cryptocurrencies reach their potential it will be because millions of people are involved in the economy. Right now we don't have enough involvement.


In that case we want the same thing, I just think why not be more ambitious about it? If it's supposed to replace Bitcointalk it has to be ambitious because if its just an ordinary forum why would anyone bother? It has to be the best forum and have some technological innovation.

Are you sure about that? Complex isn't the issue. Gamification on the other hand is bad why? This forum already is gamified. There are bounties everywhere, people working on projects, and doing all kinds of stuff. You could call it games, but people are being paid to play with virtual money and to mine alt-coins so those games make real money but lets be honest, it's still a game. Bitcoin is a virtual currency, Asicminer is a virtual company, the virtual stock exchange is a game that just happens to have real value.

I agree the majority of any forum should be free to use. But do we want tipping? Yes. Do we want contests and tournaments? Yes. Do we want polls, or even paid polls? We need that stuff to collect statistics so once again I say we need it and it can't always be free. People aren't going to take a survey for free, but if all you have to do is take a survey and earn Bitcoins because someone is willing to pay the forum for it then isn't that better than an advertisement? It's better for the forum and for the users right? And the same or perhaps much more money is generated which can circulate back to the forum members if for instance they own shares and receive dividends.

I do underatand the concern that the site could become too commercial. There has to be a balance. Perhaps this thread can allow us to find that balance.

Donations and advertising are not sustainable though. When the site gets DDOSed or when it gets too popular what then?


Most services can't survive on that model because there was no such thing as micropayments until now. We don't even know what could work yet. And some services only survive on that model, look at Spotify which is more popular than you think. The only problem with Spotify is that it doesn't run on Bitcoins.

I disagree with that statement. I think active users matter more than just people who never post or never take part in anything. How do we encourage people to be active without providing incentives? We keep hearing no one wants to spend their Bitcoins, but we never encourage people to earn or spend. Why not create a culture?
I think if we can keep the spam in the newbie section then that is a good decision. I think there can be surveys, lotteries, tipping and other mechanisms to encourage people to actually apply their Bitcoins and get active. You know, actually make a wallet and actually start using the technology as a currency rather than just talking about how cool it is or how to buy some.
I disagree. I think if the forum were better than this one then most of the active members from this community would go to the better technology. That is why I think you need good technology. You want to get the active members first, because they are posting every day. I do understand you can't only have active members, so a newbie section which functions like the newbie section on Bitcointalk would be fine.
I recognize my view is just one view. I don't expect every idea I offer to be implemented. But I do think the idea I offered to solve sockpuppets is the best solution offered. I do believe some of my ideas will have to be implemented because there is no better solution to the problem. If you can make the forum friendly to newbies, encouraging members to actually gain experience, encouraging an active membership. encouraging commitment, then I'm for that.  
I agree. Maybe I was over ambitious.
And this is where I disagree. I think a new forum could generate a lot more than 1 Bitcoin a day. I think it all depends on the technological design of the forum. I think it also depends on the quality of the membership, the content, and how active the members are. You can encourage an active membership which creates quality content and easily generate 1 Bitcoin a day if you had the kind of membership size you see on Bitcointalk. But let's be honest, it's unlikely that would happen overnight even if the technology were better, I just think if you're going to invent another forum, why not actually invent something no other forum can do? Kind of like with alt-coins, if you're going to invent a new coin why not innovate?
I'm pretty sure they already know who the high value targets are. High value doesn't mean easily accessed.
The less fortunate? I'm not sure what you mean. The option seems to be keep the door open so scammers and spammers can pollute the forum, or lock the door and charge a fee for entry. I say we should have a public area and a VIP area which gives the best of both worlds. I don't think you can do it all open without someone trying to mess it up. I've seen threads get ruined on this forum by one person shitposting.
I'm doing it to make things better for myself and the community. There is no reason why I should lose to help the community when, if I can win helping the community win. Why not just adjust the incentives to encourage people to help each other? Devcoin is doing exactly that, and it seems to work at least to get people to accept bounties and fund projects.
How do you know they'll go elsewhere? Those users sign up for Facebook and jump through way more hoops to do so. They sacrifice their privacy and civil liberties to be part of something cool or to try the cool new technology. I think these users will jump on the Bitcoin train when it becomes cool enough, but they wont know how to buy the coins, or how to use it, or what the coins are, and in my opinion the best way to teach is by making them use it. Actually make a wallet, and sign in with a wallet address, why not?

Tell me what demographic of newbie does not have a Bitcoin address and does not want try using Bitcoin as a currency? If you're not part of the blockchain as a miner and don't have a Bitcoin address?
What demographic does not have a Bitcoin wallet address? If they have at least that, then we know they at least cared enough about Bitcoin to do that. A lot of people making shitposts and spamming just sign up to do that and don't even care about Bitcoin enough to download a wallet or get an address. I've seen people literally make one or two posts about nothing and then start spamming.
Finance is about making money but it's also about community. This is a finance community where everyone here should want to make money. Why else are you playing with virtual money if you don't want to make money? The goal is to make the virtual money function like real money? So we have to actually use it. You're presenting a false dichotomy where someone has to either be fighting in their self interest or for their community as if they oppose each other. The most rational position is enlightened self interest where you fight for yourself and your community. You should be able to make money, so should I, so should anyone in the community, and if the community fails we should lose money, but that is how it can work. At the end of the day everyone is connected by the success or failure of Bitcoin and the price volatility affects us all if we all have a stake in it. If someone doesn't care about that then I would be more suspicious of them.

I think both problems are linked. People spam to make money correct? People are attracted to Bitcoins because that is a new money? The Bitcoin miner is in it to make money right? Whether you think of it in the literal sense of generating a new money, or the purely economic and self interest of making profit, the whole point of Bitcoin is to make, spend, and transfer value. I keep reading that everyone wants to hoard and no one wants to spend, but then I read from you that this is not a problem.

I think the only reason it's not a problem is because there are only 1 million or so people who know what Bitcoin is. I'm saying these forums are not going to scale up just like Mt Gox couldn't scale up, and for the same reasons. These forums are not prepared for 10 million members, or 20 million members, and wouldn't know what to do with that many people, but the truth is, if properly designed the sky is the limit.

It's all about content. In my opinion the forums with the most active membership will create the best content, provide the most opportunities, and as a result attract the most new members. I think Bitcointalk is that forum right now. I think to get people away from Bitcointalk will be hard unless you attract the most active (VIP) members from Bitcointalk onto a new forum and then convince them to be active in the new forum.

It should be called basic income, not welfare.

That would be fine for Bitcoin. What about getting them to accept Litecoin?

I think new software should be programmed from scratch. No off the shelf software is going to be designed with cryptocurrencies in mind. You could do micropayments and all that with off the shelf software but the level of control would be limited. What about escrow for instance? I don't think it's a big deal to code a forum from scratch so why not do that and make that design open source so other forums can easily integrate cryptocurrencies into them to build up the economic eco-system? If you're trying to build up market cap this is how you have to do it, you have to give people an excuse to earn and spend coins even if it's for stuff like accessing certain threads or parts of a forum or purchasing special features. This allows the programmers to actually get paid for adding these features in cryptocoins.

Like for instance you have VIP features and you let forum members purchase them. Or maybe make it so anyone can write a plugin and let people buy the ability to access those features and then give a percentage of the coins to whomever developed it. The wallet could even be built into the forum itself if it's build from scratch.

It should be left up to whoever made the thread. If I make a thread and decide to make people pay to access it then I should get a percentage of the revenue and the forum should get a percentage allowing me and the forum to make money. This tread could be technical analysis, the launch of a new alt-coin or whatever. This would make it so that people will pay for access to the latest news on the topics they really want but it also would allow people to get paid for providing that service.

You forget we are talking about money here and not charity. I thought Bitcoin was about people working to earn them and spend them? I thought Bitcoin is supposed to be a currency? When are we going to start treating it like a currency and using it like one?

Don't people pay for newspapers and magazine articles?

What barrier for entry? The whole point of creating the barrier is to create an economy around the forum so that the market cap grows. How exactly will anyone be able to earn Bitcoins if no one ever thinks to try to earn them because the trend is trading USD for them or trying to mine them? Until we get out of that attitude of having to buy Bitcoins or mine Bitcoins it will never be a currency and remain nothing more than a speculator toy commodity. If it's not used on forums with hundreds of thousands of users then why have Bitcoin exist in the first place if it's politically incorrect even among so called supporters?

I say let the thread owner decide if it's a free thread or a fee based thread. Let the thread owner set the fee to the thread. This way you wont have any spammers in certain threads at all. In fact I'd say you probably wont have spammers on the forum except in the newbie section.
Now you're onto politics. But what is the point of anyone working if we all have the exact same privileges in the end? And if you don't give people anything to work for why do they want to use Bitcoins? Isn't the idea to get people to use Bitcoins the way other currencies are used? So you gotta give people stuff to buy on the forum and stuff to earn even if to you it seems trivial. The forum can use fees to make money from all this in addition to ad revenue and forum users like yourself could make money from starting threads, making good posts, or doing the bounties on the job board.

I don't see why we shouldn't encourage a culture where people want to earn Bitcoins and actually contribute to the community.
Everything I suggest should be optional. It should be if me and others decide to create a VIP section and you wont pay the fee then you just can't access it. No trolls, no spam, no sockpuppets, no newbies, because we created the thread or that section and agreed by consensus to put a fee for access. Some people would greatly appreciate this feature enough to pay the fee.

Most people are newbies who don't really want to dig deep into Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency and they should be in the newbie section. Why should they be allowed to access sections where people have invested their life savings into Bitcoin, or who are working on projects, or who are legitimately trying to learn about technical analysis?

If you just want to chat about the weather or talk to other newbies that part of the forum should always be open. The VIP areas shouldn't be open. If you want to know the most valuable technical analysis report then perhaps you should pay to access it. Why expect good trading advice to be given to you for free or expect anything to be given to you at all? Doesn't that go against the whole point of Bitcoin?

New users will just stay on the newbie section just like new users are in the newbie section on this site. What is the difference? You earned your way out of the newbie section on this site did you not?

It reduces noise. It removes the sockpuppets. It increases the quality of posts. It allows all users to make a profit from the forum. It allows for lotteries, bounties, access control, per click fees, pay per view, VIP accounts and privileges and more. Basically if you earn your way up then you wont be a newbie but if you want a free ride you won't get far.

Tell me why it's good to give everyone a free ride when we know that wont grow the economy for Bitcoin or altcoins? We can't all be miners expecting to just plug in an asic and generate unlimited coins. Some of us have to work on projects, start businesses, do the bounties and other kinds of work.  There are threads on this site where people are writing stories for Devcoins, there are people trading for all kinds of stuff, there are people starting projects or businesses and that is what Bitcoin is about. In my opinion it's not about people just talking about Bitcoin but never really trying to earn any and it's not all about speculation (buying and selling Bitcoins like it's a commodity).

So what I'm saying is the forum should be more about doing business and less about uninformed speculation, pump and dump, trolling and all that crap.

The idea never said newbies shouldn't have access to some part of the forum. They should be restricted to the newbie part. How is that any different from Bitcointalk right now? Only my idea would take it to the next logical step and make people earn the right to progressively higher levels of access. Why should you get free access to something you don't really support or believe in enough to earn?  Also the site has to be paid for somehow so charging for access is just a logical way to do it while also growing the economy for everyone (including you). How do you think we will reach that $5000 a Bitcoin without doing stuff like this?

Who said anything about a dictatorship? When you take a bus or train you pay but no one says it's a dictatorship. But somehow you expect a free ride and for the forum to run itself. You want everything for free? That is not sustainable nor does it make sense when it's a money forum.

If free were sustainable there would be mining pools and exchanges which don't charge any fees but which work only on ad revenue. No one says the exchanges are a dictatorship, or the mining pools.  I say if we're a money forum and it's all about trade, exchange, and gaining experience with using Bitcoin then what better way to help people do that then to require them to do it in order to gain more access?

With no reason to buy this coin, the coin is dead. The primes aren't worth much.