It's a great time to buy. DarkCoin is not a hype and pump/dump coin. It has attracted attention through actual value by means of the soon-to-be-beta (actually-in-alpha) DarkSend functionality (in addition to 11 different hashing algorithms which make it ASIC resitant, Kimoto Gravity Well (KGW) which makes it safe from multipools for example and adjusts difficulty every block and a great professional developer). This new feature will allow you to send coins anonymously directly from the wallet without passing by TOR (darkweb) or through a mixing service which requires trust in the operator of said service and also involve fees (2%). It is a trustless solution straight from the wallet and it will be the first coin to achieve such a feat. It experienced natural growth, going from around 0.00005 BTC when first hitting markets to 0.0025 BTC without any kind of useless hype (e.g. Maxcoin).

If you look at the price now though, it is quite a bit lower, ranging from 0.001 to 0.0014 depending on the market. What happened? One of the exchanges on which DRK trades (C-CEX) had a malfunction/hack which allowed a user to gain access to hundreds of BTC for free, which he couldn't cash out. He figured out that by buying DarkCoin, he could then transfer it out of the exchange easily, this caused a huge spike in buys since he put in around 300 BTC worth and bought up all DarkCoins up until 0.0075 BTC or 7.5 millibits. He then proceeded to transfer all those coins to another exchange (Poloniex) and started dumping as much as possible, as quickly as possible, with no regard for price. This caused a chain reaction which lasted for around 4 days. At first the coin recovered admirably to the dumps, staying very close to its regular price after a few dumps. After two days though, the price couldn't hold up anymore and we suspect that a lot of very early adopters started getting scared and began dumping as well.

Through some investigation and through a mixture of guilt, the "hacker" (who claims he actually isn't a hacker and the BTC simply appeared due to a mistake), came back and contacted the right people to start giving back the BTC he had taken from the exchange, since a lot of other people were affected and had their funds frozen. Of course he had lost a lot of value by filling very cheap buy orders for DRK so he can't possibly give it all back but the important thing is the dumps are stopped now and the coin has stabilized again. It has found solid ground and is starting to rise again. This rise will be fueled by the 3rd DarkSend alpha test which is happening tomorrow and after that, the developer (eduffield) has said that the beta will come soon as the code is very solid.

You have a unique chance right now to buy into a coin which really isn't supposed to be available at these prices anymore due to its real value. Only reason it's low right now is because of the situation I explained above. It belongs on the top of the charts as much as other coins with added functionality such as Peercoin/Namecoin for example. It's not a simple clone like 99% of other coins and it's here to stay.

TL;DR - Great time to buy

Not a very good argument. The thing about a blockchain based system is that it literally cannot be shut down. That means I can send shares to whoever I want, whenever I want, without anyones permission.

Are potential buyers discriminating against me because my name is Bitye West?

I haven't had one message or inquiry about my 800 XCP for 8 btc offer.

I have a total of 6856.81 XCP.  I'm just looking to sell enough to cover my initial investment of 6 btc.

I don't think anyone has even come up with a solution for a simple Decentralized limit order book. Seems to me that a Decentralized exchange can be gamed with common latency arbitrage / high frequency market making techniques..

Has anyone checked out this decentralized exchange protocol built on the Bitcoin blockchain yet?

Here's the Counterparty block explorer with a list of the assets created so far:
http://blockscan.com/asset.aspx

The Counterparty protocol supports dividend payments too.

It would be awesome to see a company like Asicminer float an asset on Counterparty's decentralized exchange.  Might solve problems with centralized exchanges like btct.co or bitfunder.com.

100btc

If GET_QUANTITY is the quantity of GET_ASSET you would like to receive

Shouldn't GET_ASSET be the asset you would like to receive (buy)?

So if I want to sell 800 XCP for 8 BTC I would place the following order:

C:\counterpartyd>python counterpartyd.py order
usage: counterpartyd order [-h] --from SOURCE --get-quantity GET_QUANTITY
                           --get-asset GET_ASSET --give-quantity GIVE_QUANTITY
                           --give-asset GIVE_ASSET --expiration EXPIRATION
                           [--fee_required FEE_REQUIRED]
                           [--fee_provided FEE_PROVIDED]

GET_QUANTITY is 8
GET_ASSET is BTC
GIVE_QUANTITY is 800
GIVE_ASSET is XCP

EXPIRATION is the actual block number I want it to expire at? example: 283905

What do I input for SOURCE, FEE_REQUIRED, AND FEE_PROVIDED?

$ counterpartyd.py order --help
usage: counterpartyd order [-h] --from SOURCE --get-quantity GET_QUANTITY
                           --get-asset GET_ASSET --give-quantity GIVE_QUANTITY
                           --give-asset GIVE_ASSET --expiration EXPIRATION
                           [--fee_required FEE_REQUIRED]
                           [--fee_provided FEE_PROVIDED]

optional arguments:
  -h, --help            show this help message and exit
  --from SOURCE         the source address
  --get-quantity GET_QUANTITY
                        the quantity of GET_ASSET that you would like to
                        receive
  --get-asset GET_ASSET
                        the asset that you would like to sell
  --give-quantity GIVE_QUANTITY
                        the quantity of GIVE_ASSET that you are willing to
                        give
  --give-asset GIVE_ASSET
                        the asset that you would like to buy
  --expiration EXPIRATION
                        the number of blocks for which the order should be
                        valid
  --fee_required FEE_REQUIRED
                        the miners' fee required to be paid by orders for them
                        to match this one; in BTC; required iff buying BTC
                        (may be zero, though)
  --fee_provided FEE_PROVIDED
                        the miners' fee provided; in BTC; required iff selling
                        BTC (should not be lower than is required for
                        acceptance in a block)
$

Just a warning to buyers: XCP burners (basically early adopters) have formed a cartel (chk xcp thread) and jacked up the price artificially by 10x-15x times. Please don't accept these prices as the coin is still a prototype and isn't worth that much yet. They are a greedy cartel