Anybody else member actual cryptocurrencies? Like a fair launch, open to everybody, first coins attained by Proof of Work mining? ASIC resistant mining? A chart that starts at zero or very close to it rather than starting high and dwindling down while projects hemorrhage cash for operating expenses?

I member...

https://t.me/EpicCash

Epic cash has been the most profitable GPU mining option for many months even before the latest booms in altcoin mining and especially when dual (actually switch) mined on Nvidia GPUs (52% of the day on alts, 48% on EPIC).  

Learn more about Epic Cash here https://epicentral.io/   It's a One-Stop Shop with 16 documents in 16 different languages quickly capturing critical data about Epic Cash

This is now a self-moderated thread.  No time for text-diarrhea-troll-bots making skid marks all over my thread while touting their hyper-inflated DeFi shitcoins for "digital land." Such nonsense will be quickly dispatched from this thread!

The Epic Cash community is smart, thoughtful, and always growing.  Come check it out.

https://t.me/EpicCash

Epic cash has been the most profitable GPU mining option especially when dual mined (time sequential, not multi-plexed.. in other words 62% of the day on ETH, 38% on EPIC).  https://epicradar.tech/mining

Unfortunately, dual mining is currently just for Nvidia but we are expecting AMD support soon.  I would estimate within the next few weeks.  In the mean time, AMD GPUs can mine quite well using the dev-supplied native miner.

Epic Cash is also doing an "airgrab"  not an airdrop by definition because of how we interact in order to particiapte.  More info on the airgrab:https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5230747.160

The Epic Cash community is smart, thoughtful, and always growing.  Come check it out.

telegram is the best way to interact with us but we do have discord and a discord bot connected with tg.  

See you soon!

Hi.  Subject line says it all.  I started AMD but shifted Nvidia.  I'm considering building an AMD rig and interested in bottom line summarized opinions on best make/models of AMD GPUs.

For example, my rationale for Nvidia albeit this is a generation or two old by now:

EVGA 1080ti.  Hash density.  High quality manufacturer (EVGA).  Reliable. Very flexible to multiple new algorithms, default support for most new coins.  Among the best for speculative mining.

RX 5700XT seems popular for AMD from what I can see.  Pros/cons about other models?

Is there a certain manufacturer that stands out for AMD like EVGA does for nvidia?

Thank you for your thoughts.  

EPIC is gaining momentum.  2 cents to 50 cents earlier this year.  Retraced and has been consolidating and building back up.  Currently around 17 cents.  I speculate that this low supply coin can easily surpass $100 as onboarding and integration continues.

Energetic community that includes web developers, swap creators, keybase integration, 3rd party wallets, specialized mining pool support, auctions, social chat and funding platforms, and even some developers from Grin.

About these auctions, mostly art so far.  Also some sellers putting up silver coins.  The art has been from the community and has been really good.  One sold for around 4450 EPIC or about $2250 at recent ATH prices.  BUT...that's not all.  There is one painting being teased by a community member to put up for auction with a starting price of $800,000 which is a big deal because that will attract serious bidders and cause a big demand on EPIC.

Available on uniswap but with limited liquidity.  Vite is a good dex for it.  You can use the vite app.  More exchanges will come.  Additional ERC-20 swap options are also on the horizon.

The coin technology has been very well thought out and a lot of consideration went into it.  3-algo mining to shift between CPU, GPU, and ASIC priorities.  currently governance sets priority to 60% CPU, 38% GPU and 2% ASIC and this is expected to shift as time goes on.  These algorithms are flexible to adjust to ongoing market scenarios and network threats. 

It is FAST.  I have sent various amounts here and there and never waited longer than a few seconds to complete a transaction. 

Check out the telegram and other socials.  I think you'll be impressed.

What are your thoughts on the "BCH" war?  What I see is a splinter and dilution of assets.  When you add it all up, BCH that was worth around $500 is now about the same if you consider recent valuations of "BCH ABC", "BCH SV", and the original "BCH".  

And the "BCH SV" team wants to tell us that this is the real bitcoin?  uh... no.

The real bitcoin will soldier on like it has.  It has the most acceptance, the most infrastructure... You DO NOT just waltz in and declare your new alt-sh!t-coin as the new King of Crypto.  Segwit or no Segwit... to say that BTC is damned to its original form and not be allowed to transform for modern demands is senseless.

lol...

What I think will happen is that this is one more nail in the BCH coffin.  They have successfully divided themselves to be conquered.

I have come to love masternodes as soon as I saw them.  It wasn't to get rich.  It was about a few things such as the incentive to buy or mine and hold.  It is a good way to capture the importance of the old saying, "skin in the game."

But lately I see things like "No ICO, No Masternode" and it makes me realize people are lumping Masternodes in with ICO as if they are both scams.  The truth is that many are and many are not.  The ICO was and still is a fantastic way for blockchain projects to raise funds for their project.  Just as masternodes are still a great incentive model to attract investors and enthusiasts to the project.

But there is one more economical impact about masternodes that I want to mention and that is regarding Virtual Private Servers (VPS).  You see, many masternodes are ran through a hot/cold wallet setup where the cold wallet that doesn't have to remain open and can be secured offline is setup locally to the user.  Meanwhile, the hot wallet that is always on 24/7/365 is located remotely on some VPS.  This usually means job creation because someone has to setup and maintain that VPS infrastructure. 

So the next time you see that impressive 2-Billion USD market cap for masternodes (or whatever it may be now/yesterday/tomorrow... it has probably fluctuated between 1-3Billion)... Just remember that there's even more money being spent on things like VPS and the infrastructure behind that.

So what have we learned up until now?  Here are my thoughts:

1.  Centralization Vs Decentralization:

Does Centralization or Decentralization of POW mining really matter?  There are 2 obvious arguments but I would like to introduce a third.  The first argument basically says that we must have decentralized POW mining or else we will end up with something like BitmainCash (oops, I mean bitcoincash).  Probably enough said for that point.  

The second argument is that decentralization may not even matter in the short term or in the long term for POW mining.  There are various examples of coins that have had ASIC/Centralized mining introduced and for the most part, life goes on.  So beyond these first 2 arguments stating 1) Decentralized POW mining is the only way and 2) Decentralized POS mining is just a part of life...

The third argument that I would propose is that Decentralized POW mining is an inevitable goal that will be continuously strived for just as we aim to make a perfect circle or just as we aim to exceed faster than light travel.  Since decentralization matters on such an epic scale, mining algorithms matter and developers flexibility matters.  Therefore and as continues to be demonstrated with various new POW algorithms produced all the time: ANY POW COIN DEVELOPER SEEKING DECENTRALIZATION MUST REMAIN OPEN AND FLEXIBLE TO FORKING THEIR COINS TO NEW ALGORITHMS.

2. POW/POS... XRP? Blockchain Blockchain Blockchain:

So why not just get rid of POW altogether and shift to POS since it's so complicated?  Decentralization, that's why.  But really, that's besides the point.  Sure, ethereum is shifting to POS.  Various successful coins are POS.  Various successful coins are POW.  None of that really matters.  All that matters is that the implementation of blockchain is used successfully and that people agree to that.  Who would have ever thought that a 100% pre-mine coin could ever succeed?  The people at XRP, that's who.  

The point here:  Blockchain use case and success is what matters despite personal preferences.  Pre-mine doesn't really matter even if it can sometimes be a predictor of fraud.  

How's everyone feeling in this downward spiral bear market?  Ready to sell off for pennies to the dollar of what you paid?  I know I'm not... didn't risk more than I could afford to HODL forever until things get better.

Remember, most of the coins you are in have real people, real developers, real ideas, real lives, real emotions... in it just as much as you are and continuing to work at finding a way in the brave new crypto world.

So, how about it?  Ready for another 18-24 months of this nonsense before another brief 4-8 month bull run?  I know I am ready for the long road ahead... WOOOO!!!!

What would you say the #1 thing you want when it comes to digital currency?  I would say it is SECURITY and proof of security.  Anonymity is done.  Ease of use is done.  Time for security! 

Anyone can easily read the headlines and ready google searches and see the vast assets being thieved from insecure wallets and even online wallets secured with 2FA.  I say the #1 barrier given all the negative exposure for years on end is security assurance.  Solve this problem and we can move out of the infancy stages of crypto.

Paper wallets stored in safe boxes just aren't feasible.  Every day, hour, minute, second or whatever it may be that a QT wallet, online wallet, or any other store of crypto assets are hacked/stolen is another year farther away from finally legitimizing crypto currency.

There are so many coin projects right now that it seems certain a great deal of these coins will not last or be successful.  As many of these coins require POW... what will happen when so many coins go dead?  Resources used, money spent on electricity and gear will all be for naught.  Is this the 'bubble' people refer to?  I think it's very likely to be.  It happens all the time in economics.  Anytime there is a glut of resources disproportionately allocated the bubble inevitably collapses.

We have already had tastes of this.  in 2014 people pretty much turned off many cards as the air was let out of crypto after Mt Gox.  Some people sourced highly efficient GPUs like the Nvidia 750Gtx.  Many bitcoin ASICS shutdown.  rinse and repeat... we get the same thing in 2018 after a peak in 2017 and a mad dash to acquire 2x priced GPUs old/new... anything goes/went.  And just as fast the tables have turned and we see 1080ti's trading hands int the 350-Euro range. 

There are beacons of hope from places like Mineority and other enthusiastic GPU miners... could keep the hope alive too.

I've been a proponent and predictor for vast improvements to GPU mining.  For the most part, I still see this happening.  But I also see the bubble...  I think there will be a realization that many of the efforts put towards POW will be lost on dead coins. 

Cryptocurrencies have more of my attention.  I spend hours daily looking at cryptocurrency news and information.  However, it is interesting to note that I have only allocated less than 10% of my investment funds towards cryptocurrenices.   

What is your investment diversification strategy?  Do you break it out by ratios/percentages?  How much of your portfolio is in cryptocurrencies, stocks, bonds, mutual funds, etf, precious metals, etc?  What sectors do you like/dislike and why?

Here is my approach to diversification:  10% of my investments go to my privately-owned crypto business which is ran as a single-employee S-Corp business including mining and trading of various crypto currencies.  the other 90% of investments goes to personal investment and retirement savings such as stocks, bonds, CD, etc.

I don't really have much compared to some people but it's still important to diversify.

So far, I prefer tech stocks and ETFs because they seem lower risk compared to bio-tech (which I also invest in... they just make me more nervous because they seem riskier... like more can go wrong).

Thoughts?

And so the story goes... Something that is just eating me alive about crypto in general is this idea lately that we are just saturated and will cave under our own weight of creative yet inefficient work.  This feels like it could be the bubble people speak of.  Like we have gotten so good at the things akin to our nature: technology development but... the mass adoption side is slipping.  We are producing SO much but we don't have consumers for the product.  We market to people just like you and I but we are missing the bigger audience.

So, I would just like to explore the topic further.  Clearly Dash is to masternodes and Bitcoin is to cryptocurrency.  A comparison in time could also be made at Ethereum.  That is, if Ethereum was 'the' cryptocurrency mover of 2017 (ICOs, smart contracts, games, etc) then Masternodes stand to be the story of 2018.  

So to discuss it I would like to consider, among other things:

1.  Why masternodes draw such interest

2.  Other relative comparators (i.e. bitcoin, ethereum, litecoin, atomic transaction, security <or the lack thereof>, governance etc)

I'll start off by saying I think MN draw interest because of the appeal of POS but with a better structure.  With POS it was cool but sometimes there were these really lame qualifiers such as having to have a wallet open in order to stake.  And then who knows how much you would get depending on whatever your balance or luck was.  Sure, it all worked out okay but with MN you don't have to have a wallet open.  Most people do a VPS or pay a margin on VPS/MN provider services for the MN.  I think this is really cool because it expands the business aspect of crypto.  We are creating jobs in some cases.  I know I pay a small fee for VPS services and it makes me feel good about generating such business revenues and I tend to think about the thousands of other people doing the same thing.   Of course, some folks are super cool and run their own home server VPS.  

So the gist of "why" to me comes down to a more defined structure which reassures people of the validity.  Of course there is a more defined governance capability as well... maybe someone else can comment to that better.

On security, maybe someone can break this down for me:  How dangerous or risky is it to keep private MN keys in plain text files?  It seems like this is pretty standard even with Dash as far as I know... but what are the security hazards?  I assume we are safe as long as we implement other security such as wallet encryption, hdd/ssd encryption, host-base security, etc.  Am I on the right track?

Thx all for any discussion.

What would you say are the most important "why" consideration for ending ASIC? My thoughts:

1) Decentralization.  Many would argue that bitcoin decentralization is already dead and I agree.  However, there is still opportunity for decentralization in alt coins and even for bitcoin to move forward towards a more decentralized model.  We can learn from bitcoin what comes of massive ASIC farms: centralized control to one manufacturer.

2) Bubbles.  Bubbles are made from vast gluts of resources.  Really, this goes back to the need for decentralization and illustrates the importance of ubiquitous mining sources such as CPU and GPU.  We are seeing several bubbles burst in cryptocurrencies "secret" miners that are likely ASIC or FPGA are mining coins on private pools and control more than half the network hashpower which creates huge problems:  centralization to control of resource and formation of massive gluts of resources that WILL lead to a bubble bursting.

So "how" do we end ASICs?  

Algorithms have to modulate or otherwise improve.  The problem is huge and in need of serious attention from coin projects considering algorithms and from those who develop algorithms.  It can be done but there is a lot of work ahead...

It's been said a million times, "Crypto is the Wild West," and a lot of people (my self included) like it that way.  However, we also don't like all the thievery and scams going on.  So that's what this message thread is intended to discuss.

How could we implement justice for criminals in this crypto space in such a way that we would still have all the opportunity of the Wild West while also safeguarding exchanges, stage coaches, and private citizens?  I mean, we don't want to pay government taxes for crypto police, do we?  But maybe there could be some other way to fund private investigation and justice for criminals... Uh-oh... shouldn't there already be a crypto coin just for this purpose?  YES!!! A coin to reward the Crypto Marshals of our cyber space!

So that's one idea.  What do you think?

Alright so... I was into this coin called Soldo and it was reported that a theft had occurred of a large amount of coins.  Around the same time, I was watching Crex24 and I saw a lot of coins being dumped but the weird thing was that they were being dumped at a price just under the "Ask" listed.  So the Ask was listed at 1451 Satoshis but trades were constantly going through at 1450 satoshis.   I tried to place sell orders at 1450 and even 1400 satoshis but it never worked. 

This is some sort of market manipulation, right?  Or some sort of cooperation with whoever runs the exchange to allow one particular person to sell at a certain price?

A short time ago in a blockchain copy/pasted with minor yet significant edits...

-----------------------SCAM NODES---------------------------

Episode I

The Phantom Auction

Turmoil has engulfed the global blockchain as petty thieves sell masternodes fraudulently.  The validity of massive launches of crapcoins, ICO's, and antiquated cryptocurrency ideas is in dispute!

Hoping to turn a quick profit with a further onslaught of crappier crap coins, the greedy fraudsters have stockpiled Petabytes of abandoned code after running away with money from auction and presale scams.  Meanwhile, thousands of would-be cryptocurrency investors are left with dwindling resources and sharp doubts for the future of cryptocurrencies. 

While the Legendary and Senior members of bitcointalk and reddit endlessly debate this alarming chain of events, a coalition of true bitcoin believers form to rescue abandoned master node projects which once offered so much promise. 

Wallet code is analyzed for threats, countermeasures are taken to isolate scammed coins from being used in the future, new social platforms are established and Coins like Absolute, Eden, and Northern seem to offer a new hope to thousands of crypto supporters who believe in the blockchain...

pew pew pew pew pew pew pew pew pew

The hide post/topic feature is identified in the requirements document here: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1bHlm4NQkSzaBTT5tLIqQBmV92wSsbdOX5r-dRR9Dgg0/edit

There is also a post requesting the feature as far back as 2014. 

My question is, how feasible is it to add such a feature and can we expect to see it anytime soon?  I would love the ability to filter out or hide all the ICO topics lingering in coin announcements (IMO ICOs should be a child board anyway)

Thx for the awesome boards here.  Still love it and don't see that changing.  Hope I don't sound nit-picky  thx

I used to be able to print entire threads to one easily searchable page.  I understand the rationale for taking this away has to do with workload pressure on servers. 

Still, searching and finding data in very long threads should be easier.  I know we can still search within threads but the results are limited to very few hits when there are many more matches available in the thread.

Just my 2-cents.  Thanks for the awesome forums.  Not sure if there is a better place to post comments like this.  Please let me know.