It's chump change now. But keep in mind KEY is limited to 1m coins. It won't take many users before it "locks up" a fairly sizeable chunk of KEY. For the price of KEY it'd be great if people get 100 KEY to be able to use it with other coins. Even "just" a 1000 users would tie up 10% of the coin supply. Even just 100 users means 1% of the coin is tied up. If it was much higher, it might constrain supply too much.

Of course it can be lowered later, but set it too high and it'll be counter-productive - just preventing people from using it.

+1

People can always find plenty of places to post their FUD, but here it's just distracting from proper discussion. If it was reasoned criticism, that'd be something else.

I wish I was still that young.

Whatever. What would be the point? Do you really think my comment will make any difference in countering all the fud here? What will matter for KEY is delivering. If that doesn't happen, then the price won't rebound much no matter what. I was very careful not to even hint at promising anything because it is not up to me, and I don't know enough about the current state yet. I avoided mentioning what experience I have and in what for the same reason, because I don't want to play up what I can or will contribute - that will have to stand on its own once something is released. Read into this what you want.

Believe I eat babies and rob old people for what I care if it makes you feel better.

I'm the one GamingUnleashed referred to, I'm assuming, unless someone else have been added too. And I have no plans to troll in any threads - I have a real life to live, and time is too precious to troll. Besides I'm a better developer than troll.

I was asked if I would like to talk to the KEY devs to see if I can offer some assistance and if it's worth me joining, and I agreed, though from what I can see the existing devs have things well in hand already (don't ask me for details - that's not up to me). Never hurts to have more eyes looking at stuff though, and I absolutely will do my best to contribute. I'm putting my money behind it, and buying some KEY (still small amounts) as well.

(Only other thread you'll find me in at the moment is the CRYPT thread. I mention that only because I'm sure people will go through my (short) bct posting history. I still hold CRYPT; not worth it selling now; if it doesn't rebound, I'll have lost ca 15BTC. I've offered to help on tech there too, but before anything could possibly happen there, MindFox needs to deliver, and at the moment KEY will be my focus; that's my final word on that matter in this thread)

Personally, I haven't bothered reading the whitepaper. It's not particularly interesting at this point. It's not what's going to make or break this coin. Whether or not Mindfox comes through is the first thing that matters. Assuming he does, then we can start digging into it, and providing criticism and ensure it gets improved if necessary. Assuming there are no fatal flaws that can't be rectified, then the next thing that will matter is whether nor not anyone puts in sufficient resources into marketing the coin. Frankly, marketing the coin is likely to matter far more than whether or not the anon feature is flawless.

For my part I'm not a security expert. I do have 30+ years of software experience, though, including handling security for billing systems processing millions of dollars. While I can't/won't evaluate the specifics of the cryptography, I'm certainly qualified to evaluate many "higher level" aspects of whether or not the implementation will be fit for purpose. I'm sure there are others here with relevant experience who will also be able to do at least initial assessments. If it passes initial "smell checks", then we can worry about whether there all the details are perfect.

The way I see it, this is an iterative process not least because I don't believe 100% anon is even theoretically possible.  I do believe in "sufficient anon", though, in that for every usage there's a level of anonymity that is "good enough".

The reason for secrecy in the initial development is because there's lots of money involved, and getting a feature "first" makes a publicity difference.

I agree that in the long run it's not beneficial.

The problems mentioned in that reddit post seems serious, btw., but they're easily mitigated by applying relatively simple changes. E.g.  split up transactions and normalize amounts combined with more volume. The example is somewhat contrived because it depends on having low enough volume passing through the mixing nodes to be able to deduce the amounts. This will still leave odd transaction amounts vulnerable (e.g. someone transferring 9.15153 will be easier to trace than someone transferring 10, because presumably the likelihood of other transactions of value 10 also passing through is going to be much higher). Implementation is also going to matter a lot since e.g. timing attacks is an issue with that kind of model - a proper version will apply random delays, and will intentionally process transactions "out of order", and make sure to interleave partial transfers from multiple transactions.

The central node issue is a bit ugly but can also be mitigated somewhat by splitting up transfers and mixing through multiple (hopefully independent) nodes (this is basically the Tor model, and is still vulnerable if an adversary controls enough of the nodes).

None of this is unfixable, and I don't think it's a major issue with taking first stabs on these implementations in private.

Someone got a bit impatient - someone bought up to 25k (not much volume though) on Cryptsy.

Did you read what *I* wrote? It doesn't look like it. Several people have explained to you the reasoning behind mining the coin you support rather than mining something else and dumping. And no, you're not telling us a better way.

That is true if you are only looking for short term gains. For my part, I only mine the coins I invest in, and I don't give a shit if the mining itself is profitable. The point is to contribute at least in some small way to the stability and viability of the coin because it helps my investment.

So you are right for miners who only mine and don't care what they mine. But that's not the only reason for mining.

The thing to keep in mind is that a lot of us have averaged down our investments substantially over the lengthy period of dips, as well as by putting in more money.

While I agree with you it will be hard to get into 200k territory, for me the breakeven point is 20k. And if get to even 60k, it's getting to the point where I'd start slowly covering my investment and be left with a not unsubstantial amount of profit. If it gets into that kind of territory, it'll be tempting for at least some of us to set aside some of the profits to rebuy after a correction, "just in case", and at the same time effectively setting floor substantially over where we are now.

(This is of course dependent on Mindfox coming through with a good anon solution)

The biggest challenge is *how compromised* you can accept the system to be before enough information leaks. E.g. if it takes leaning on thousands of nodes spread around the world to get sufficient control to compromise anonymity then that's not 100% secure, but it will be secure enough that an sufficiently powerful adversary is more likely to resort to "rubber hose" attacks (that is: strap you to a chair, and beat you with a hose until you give them the info they want) than trying to take control of the system.

I'm not sure if we can even theoretically get 100% anonymity , but we don't have 100% secure crypto overall either - we have just decided on tradeoffs (key lengths that means it will take all the computing power on the planet "forever" with current technology to brute force it).

Even for security against law enforcement, it "just" need to be too expensive and difficult to be feasible. The only truly tricky adversary is the NSA, and not too many people give a shit whether or not the NSA is monitoring their stuff apparently.

Ultimately I think a lot of this is down to appearance. TOR is a favourite with people with shady intent, yet there are numerous well known attacks (involving controlling enough nodes, typically), or simply leaning on node operators to cooperate with "requests". It's popular because people trust that it will be mostly safe, and certainly better than the alternative, and because it has good PR (from a "protect yourself against law enforcement" viewpoint).

There's nothing inherent about a specific share class that gives you board members. It is the charter and/or shareholder agreement that determines whether or not any specific class of shares have voting rights, and if they have voting rights, the proportional weight of those votes. E.g. for Google, it is class B shares that hold the majority of the votes (each class B share counts for 10 votes, while class A shares only count for 1 vote each - ensuring that Brin and Page together has a straight up majority, and class C shares does not get a vote at all)

As a bit of a digression the most share classes in a pre-IPO company I've had shares in was 5 (A through E), all with different rights, ranging from different voting rights, to claw-back rights, anti-dilution rights, rights of first refusal and other crap...

There's also nothing requiring an IPO for this kind of setup. On the contrary, most companies that take investors never IPO at all, ever, but remain private, and only solicit investments from a small group (in fact, most coin "IPO"'s are likely to violate various investment regulations, as most places there are stringent restrictions on reporting before you can offer an investment product or share offering to the public).
 

Ok, so if you're just drawing parallels, then that changes things a bit.

But my main points were that 1) there are many forms of investment that does not require the issuance of shares at all, so it's perfectly possible that these investors are genuinely investors that have put money into the dev team in return for specific return. Debt financing in particular, with or without some form of convertible note or option, is very suitable for crypto coins (and whether the dev team made use of the "not quite a pre-mine" high early block rewards, or simply bought a bunch on the cheap very early on, or whether their "assets" are in the form of other planned revenue sources is relatively irrelevant - as long as they have/had something of monetary value to offer, debt financing or a convertible note would be a possibility with or without an actual corporation) and 2)  that it is common for investors to exercise control over this type of decision, either via board seats, or for that matter via shareholder agreements (e.g. typical VC dictated agreements I've had to deal with often includes a long list of things the investors have veto rights on individually or by majority vote of a group (or share class in a corporation)).

Of course, it could also be this guy is just talking out of his ass. I hope not - I hold more Crypt than I ought to


No insider trading can be inferred from the chat without knowing 1) whether or not the whales acts on that inside knowledge to alter their buying or selling, and 2) what jurisdiction any agreement is under, and/or what exact form the mentioned investment takes. That's why it matters.

That of course doesn't mean that it isn't or couldn't happen, and it doesn't mean they couldn't be up to something highly unethical without breaking laws. Certainly, one of the possible "returns" the dev team could offer their investors in return for debt financing would be the inside track on a "guaranteed" pump, for example.

Note that the most negative action the investors could take in this case *at this point*, though, would not be prevented by insider trading laws most places, or at least be practically impossible to prove: They can slowly and steadily accumulate, and simply use their decision making position to delay a release to get more people to panic sell. Carrying out a steady trading schedule is allowed most places, as long as the trading pattern isn't materially altered as a result of inside information. And there are near infinite justified reasons possible for delaying a product release.

Of course, if an artifical pump starts, then there's plenty of opportunity for shady dealings, such as giving investors inside track on when the artificial support will vanish. But I have a hard time getting too upset even if that happens: Everyone involved knows this is an unregulated market as of yet, with a long track record of shady shit happening, and a large element of gambling. Anyone buying into this without being prepared to deal with the risks have only  themselves to blame. And at the same time, most of us appear to be quite happy to reap the benefits when we get in/out at the right time of some pump and dump...

If people want to sell their coins, let them. Why does it matter? It gives others a chance to buy in cheaper.

And you're right we need results, not words, but results takes time and when people keep repeating the same questions, "soon" is a reasonable answer.

You answered your own question, in the same sentence. When I'm working on a project, the first rule to get shit done is to stop participating in pointless threads. *Especially* when facing FUD, because FUD is not stopped by talking - every word you throw out will just get twisted and do nothing to defuse the FUD. It is stopped by showing results.

(of course, that is assuming they actually do end up showing results; it is of course also possible they haven't done shit, but my point is that there's nothing strange with silence in this kind of situation)

This is hilarious. You claim they don't know WTF an investor is, and then you make totally ridiculous claims about what a share class implies. First of all, to even talk about share classes, you need an incorporated entity. Incorporation is not necessary for an investment. For an example of investment without allocation of shares, look at e.g. RDD, where investors essentially debt-financed early development with repayment happening in RDD (and so high risk, but also a reasonable chance of getting in at a very low price).

*If* there is a corporation, then the share class means *nothing* without reading the founding documents and/or shareholder agreement (exact documents depends on jurisdiction), which specifies the rights of the respective shareholder classes. But in general a share class would pretty much never (I've *never* seen it in any companies I've been involved it) have something like what you call "Power to Delay Announcements". What *would* give you power like that, is to hold a sufficient portion of shares to control one or more board seats. But again, that presupposes investment in *shares* in a corporation. Many other forms of investments are also possible, such as the aforementioned debt financing used for RDD.

Don't know. Don't care. Not even registered on btc-e.

Why is that weird? If they're the one putting up the money, then it's natural they want to line everything up the way they want it before going ahead. Ever run a startup with VC money? I have. Largest company I co-founded took in about USD 30 million from VC's. You can bet your ass they insisted on having a finger in every major launch decision, but you know which investors are always the most troublesome?

Not the VC firms investing $10 mill each, but the guy who put in $10k. That's the guy that will be calling you to yell if you don't do things exactly how he thinks it should be done (the reason is for most "$10k guys", $10k matters; for most VC fund partners, a $10 mill investment will be one of a long list where they expect 90%+ to become worth 0, and it's not their own money)

I'd imagine any whales involved in this will be "$10k guys", not people investing other peoples money. So they will want to be heard.


As pointed out: mr_project - one of the team members - works at or runs a studio. So why not? If the commander and anon features are worthwhile, then getting the word out fast and wide will matter, and presumably it's cheap and not taking time away from the guys actually doin the coding.

According to the comments, one of the team members (mr_projects) runs a video production studio. There's no reason to assume he's a coder, so this is a way he can contribute to PR once they release, and there's no reason to assume that takes effort away from stuff he can't contribute to anyway.

Stop whining. Did you pay him to carry out the development? No. He does not owe you anything. And a premature delivery might give a short boost, but this coin has had enough bullshit - I'd take a longer wait for a better result any day.