You probably heard this line before: "Bitcoin is a pyramid scheme!". I think it's pretty much disproven, but there is some credence to it. Indeed, the earlier you were to the party, the more you profited. In addition, pyramid/ponzi schemes tend to inflate your actual earnings on paper by displaying theoretical earnings. This is something that Bitcoin does a bit as well: would all holders cash out, there's no way anyone would get what they thought they'd get based on the calcualtions made before. So, to some extent, there was some "pyramid-ness" to it. But all in all, it is now much worse than with any other speculative asset. Being apyramid scheme is more of a spectrum, you can maybe point at something like Bitconnect and say "that's a pyramid scheme", but that was a very obvious one. In other cases, it's not that simple.

Masternode coins are all the hype right now, or at leas were a few months back. And while their base premises look somewhat ineresting, they also bode some questions. For one, I never really understood the technical use of a masternode in a pure money centric blockchain. Why pay a full node, especially in a PoS system? Their provided extra security doesn't look like much. Not to mention the fact that most masternodes are run via VPS and therefore are hosted on a handful of servers. Decentralization much?

I can't shake the feeling that masternodes are mostly a tool to get users to keep their coins bound in some way. It is a way to pay interest. Or at least, that's wat it looks like, because it is not really "interest", it is more "getting a piece of the inflation pie". Because interest would mean, holders would get real, tangible value, but what they're getting is a handful of freshly printed banknotes in a system, which isn't necessarily growing in value as a whole. Granted, this is the fact for almost all cryptocurrencies, but in other currencies, the ability to print money is not as blatantly abused as it happens with so many "high-ROI" masternode coins.

So, to sum up here, masternodes keep holders holding, make them sit on a stash of unrealized profit. This keeps a lot of coins from entering the market, meaning, liquidity is atrificially low, inflating the price per coin even further. Should a decent number of MN holders throw in the towel and sell their MN bonds, the market would absolutely collapse.

And the worst of them all are projects, where the early adopters get an even bigger piece of the pie. This is a classic among pyramid schemes. In fact, for those who were in and out early, pyramid schemes generally worked out quite favorably. It's the later people, those who come towards the end, before the system collapses, which are hit the hardest. And this is something that makes pyramid schemes so dangerous; they look alright, until very suddenly, they just stop working and everybody involved is caught with their pants down.

I am not saying that all masternode coins are pyramid schemes. In fact, I think some of them are quite legitimate. I like Zcoin, I think their team has proven time and time again that they are legitimate.

Other projects look very problematic, especially those which focus on high ROI, of rising MN collateral needed for latecomers, stuff like that. I won't name names, but some of them throw around patents, as if that would mean anything in an opensource community. They are clearly not meant to impress the knowledgable, but the gullible, the newcomers who have no understanding of the space and the general principles behind it.

Stay safe out there. If something looks too good to be true, it usually is.

Hello there,

As we all know, black swan events are the looming shadow over everything crypto and it wouldn't be the first time that a faulty random number generator led to the loss of funds. Using a hardware wallet is a good decision, but we have no real insight in the generation process of the passphrase needed and as far as I remember, at least Ledger has no manual inputs, like wigglin the mouse or what-have-you to increase entropy. Should they have a vulnerability in their RNG, a lot of peeps are sitting there with their pants down.

To mitigate this, I was thinking of taking the BIP32(that's the right BIP, right?) word list, a die, a pen and a piece of paper.

As a die, I would use one of those roleplaying game dice in a sensible denomination, like eight sides or something. I haven't come that far yet, because in practice, I have a big problem: The last one or two words are a checksum(dunno how many, honestly). So, I would either have to bruteforce the whole thing (four digit possibilities, "typing" on a Ledger Nano S – No, Sir.) or somehow find a way to find out the checksum with some calculations (on the cheapest solar-powered calculator possible). Typing anything of this inot a computer is a big no-no for obvious reasons.

My question is, is there something like this already out there? And if not, has anyone enough insight into the generation of the seed phrase to know how complicated/impossible for a mortal human being it would be to generate the needed checksum, i.e. is this a possible endeavor or completely bonkers BS?

I am aware of the Glacier protocol, but they are using dice only to create entropy. There is also the option to create a brainwallet-type like that, but that would include generating the pubkeys/addresses on a computer. i want something to put into a HW wallet.

Hey, so I've been thinking, with all this talk about mass adoption flying around and nocoiners calling bitcoiners a cult, maybe the truth is somewhere in the middle. There is definitely something religious about believing that Bitcoin will be the world currency at some point, but I also don't think that it will die off if the majority decides not to bother with it.

Thinking back to the first time I got in contact with Bitcoin, I didn't really think of it as being the "future of money". I kinda drank the kool-aid with the last massive pump. Not that I thought that would be the beginning of Bitcoin taking over, but maybe as a foreshadow of what was to come.

We tend to see things black and white and this is no exception. I have the feeling that even amongst bitcoin maximalists, there is a sentiment of "the whole world or nothing at all", that either at some point, Bitcoin will be the one money to rule them all or it will wither and die eventually. Being who they are in their somewhat religious state, they obviously didn't really bother too much with option two.

But these two paths, boom or bust, are not the only ones available, aren't they. We already have a Bitcoin economy, although I would argue that it is disproportionately small in comparison to Bitcoins current marketcap. Why not just expand on it? Why can't there be a future in which bitcoin exists as an alternative to fiat money?

Why does it seem like everybody is so adamantly pushing for one of two extremes? Isn't it more likely that the truth will lay somewhere in the middle?

This is just a test honeypot thread for s p a m  b o t s, don't mind me. I have a theory that they look for certain patterns in the thread header, then spam it.

Let's see how well it works, shall we

Hello all,

this is the SUMO price discussion thread. This is mostly meant to keep the Ann thread a bit more on point.

Link of the Sumokoin Ann thread (moderated):
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=4466988.0

Let me open this by quoting two posts:

Why such a dump ?

Because it was no organic pump. A small coin with no really big news going up by that much in the current climate...
All indicators tell you that this was either an individual or a small group blowing up the price once Cryptopia trading was enabled again. So, someone pumped up the price, unloaded the Sumo they either mined or bought at tradeogre and left. Without support, of course this was what was going to happen. Don't expect it to go back there for quite some time. Unless someone decides to push up the price again, you'll have to wait until the overall market sentiment turns bullish again.

Why such a dump ?

Because it was no organic pump. A small coin with no really big news going up by that much in the current climate...
All indicators tell you that this was either an individual or a small group blowing up the price once Cryptopia trading was enabled again. So, someone pumped up the price, unloaded the Sumo they either mined or bought at tradeogre and left. Without support, of course this was what was going to happen. Don't expect it to go back there for quite some time. Unless someone decides to push up the price again, you'll have to wait until the overall market sentiment turns bullish again.

(…)

 Some whales or semi-whales capitalized on the anticipation and dumped it on the head of those who expected an Indodax-pump.

Many whales bought in a month ago when Sumokoin was already in a position to win the Indodax vote.
(…)
Either a dev or some whale obviously orchestrated/paid to have Sumokoin win the vote on Indodax - (…)

Well, that's pretty much what I said: a group of people manipulated the price. The Indodax listing was a catalyst at best. We are not in a climate where good news create good upward moves in general. The bearish sentiment is still overpowering, which means bad news are overemphasized and good news are ignored. Going against the market sentiment is suspicious. There's a good chance the STQ pump was orchestrated as well, btw.

Feel free to add to the discussion.

Hello,

either I am too stupid or this is buried too deep, so I'll just do it this way:

I am looking for information regarding Tron, especially technical information about their consensus mechanism (TPoS). Is there a conclusive description somewhere? Or a whitepaper? I know there's the one they allegedly copy/pasted, but I can't seem to find it.

From what I gathered so far, all I'm seeing is a DPoS style system similar to EOS, or am I missing something here?

Regards.

I've been thinking about this a bit now. I am aware of projects like Hyperledger, but all non-monetary blockchains I know of are private, because they obviously are vulnerable.

In classic blockchains, the monetary part is extremely important to support network security; messing with the blockchain is extremely expensive.

Private blockchains solve this problem by only allowing certain actors to write blocks. Bad actors can therefore be identified and shut out.

I think there are ways to make non-monetary, open blockchains work. I haven't come around to writing my ideas down, but with some luck, I'll have some time in the next months.

What I would like to know is, are there other projects working on something like this?

So, if you search for "Octaex" on Twitter, you'll find a lot of tweets about how people are unable to withdraw $ARO.

From the Aronium thread:

Yep, OCTAEX, big time scam.

260 ARO lost, could be worse.

I'm not sure whether this is a problem exclusive to $ARO or whether it affects other currencies as well, but the apparent lack of communication doesn't look well either way and I would be highly suspicious.

Anyone knows more?

[Adamant]

I like lloking for the underdogs, the outsiders and the unknown. Especially in ICOs, you want to find the dark horse that everyone else misses, unti it's too late: you are in, the others aren't and suddenly want your stuff.

With ETH ICOs being all the rage right now, I'd like to look at some projects which do not take the simple ETH token route, but try to find their own path.

Any hints?

I've found this so far:

I'm not really an ICO nut, but this one caught my eye:

Adamant

I gotta say, in a world where almost all ICOs are run through Ethereum, many of which are promising a mainnet "eventually", having a project which not only uses something else than Ethereum, but also already has a working network is pretty refreshing.

Lisk, which Adamant is based on, did quite well back then, as did a lot of non-token, non-Ethereum ICOs.

We'll see whether times may have changed, but I always went with the underdogs and it paid off in the end.

Another, more recent example was Dragonchain. It had its ICO in a kind of depression state, where everybody was pretty much fed up. Additionally, it had no Hardcap, which people disliked as well. Turned out to be one of the big, big winners.

So, my bet is on Adamant, because it is pretty much a dark horse at this stage.

More of my thoughts on it here:

Can I just say how glad I am to see an ICo which is not just another ETH token?

My personal thoughts:

Pros:

• Working prototype
• Proven consensus system (Lisks codebase)
• Relatively small hardcap (12 000 ETH or roughly 8 000 000 $)
• Most of the tokens will be distributed
• Sniffing around indicates, that this is a legit project (E.g. interview on the Lisk blog, yet no official endorsement)

Cons:

• I'm not sure whether an independent blockchain is really needed for this project
• It's still a token solution, meaning, you'll have to jump through hoops to get the tokens to pay, as opposed to payment via established currencies

General thoughts:
There is a number of projects working in that direction, which on the one hand is competition, on the other hand indicates a general interest in the idea. From what I'm seeing, Adamant is pretty far ahead, compared to others (Hush, ODN, et. al.).
With SHIFT, Ark, RISE and Blockpool, Lisks codebase has been utilized quite a bit. Projects like EOS will be using a variant of DPoS as well, so there might be more interest in projects going that route.
All in all, I feel the positives outweight the negative aspects, so I'll put a little bit in there.

Ref link:

https://adamant.im/ico/?referal=U10700721906004344123

Ref link shill: https://adamant.im/ico/?referal=U10700721906004344123

Can I just say how glad I am to see an ICo which is not just another ETH token?

My personal thoughts:

Pros:

• Working prototype
• Proven consensus system (Lisks codebase)
• Relatively small hardcap (12 000 ETH or roughly 8 000 000 $)
• Most of the tokens will be distributed
• Sniffing around indicates, that this is a legit project (E.g. interview on the Lisk blog, yet no official endorsement)

Cons:

• I'm not sure whether an independent blockchain is really needed for this project
• It's still a token solution, meaning, you'll have to jump through hoops to get the tokens to pay, as opposed to payment via established currencies

General thoughts:
There is a number of projects working in that direction, which on the one hand is competition, on the other hand indicates a general interest in the idea. From what I'm seeing, Adamant is pretty far ahead, compared to others (Hush, ODN, et. al.).
With SHIFT, Ark, RISE and Blockpool, Lisks codebase has been utilized quite a bit. Projects like EOS will be using a variant of DPoS as well, so there might be more interest in projects going that route.
All in all, I feel the positives outweight the negative aspects, so I'll put a little bit in there.

Ref link:

https://adamant.im/ico/?referal=U10700721906004344123

Hello,

I tried to get my Ledger working with Electrum, but it didn't work. I have the distinct feeling, this is a Linux problem, because it wasn't exactly plug and play (but that's ok, I mean, Linux and all. I know what I signed up for…).

Anyway, a bit more detail:

- Running a Debian distro.
- Plugged in the Ledger, went through the setup (i.e. PIN, passphrase and so on)
- Downloaded Chromium and installed Ledger Manager
- Ledger Manager didn't find the Ledger
- Downloaded the udev rules, did some poking around and got it to work.

Now, The Ledger Manager, Ledgers wallet and Myetherwallet can find the Ledger, but Electrum still can't.

Yes, I've set "Browser support" to "No". Just to be sure, I checked both settings, because, you know…

This is not exactly an "Oh my god, I just buried 12 BTC, please halp!!!" issue, but I'd prefer to work with a wallet I'm familiar with.

Any ideas?

Hello,

I'm still sitting on some BCH from the split. I don't really want to move the BTC to a new address to be ultrasafe, but BCH is kinda high now, so it looks like a good opportunity to get rid of it.

Using electron cash, is there still a danger of replay attacks?

Hello,

I tried the search function, but didn't find what I was looking for, so I'll try it this way:


I want to create a watch-only wallet. Thus, I created a new wallet file, then chose the watch-only option, then put in my master public key.


However, I run different versions and apparently, Electrum changed the formatting of Master Public Keys at some point. Now, I get a "TypeError: Odd-length string" message and the created wallet file basically consists of nochting more than the pubkey.

So, I checked and new public keys look very different.

What I have here, is a key, which starts with "xpub…". New public keys don't.

Is there a way to change the format?


And, I realize, that the TypeError COULD theoretically be due to some newlines or other excess input, but I ruled that out by testing and experimenting (including a different old Electrum version on a different computer, which created the wallet just fine).

So, this was just something I was thinking about:

- Take an old smartphone

- Have a custom ROM of some Android, which contains nothing but wallets and a QR scanner, install it

- Open the phone and physically disconnect anything that can broadcast (wifi, phone, bluetooth). Not positive if that is really possible, though…

- Now you have an airgapped device. Do input, as well as output via QR codes. or by hand.


Yes, maybe not worth the effort. Just buy a trezor / ledger… Still, if your tinfoil hat is itching, you might trust a self-setup as described above more than a private company.

I think the topic header says it all.

Do you know of any?

Thanks in advance.

If you want to see what it looks like when a bunch of newbie sockpuppet accounts try to pump up a thread in the most obvious way possible, take a look at this:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1880303.100

...what are some other sites which do the same? I only know of https://www.cryptocompare.com/coins/#/btc but there are probably more, right? Would be good to have a list.

So, Veltor got a real shitstorm on their hands:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1583655.1480

Coinmarketcap shows the drama:

http://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/veltor/

Now I don't want to discuss ethics here, or whether or not their decision to turn this into an ICO is justified.

What I find more interesting is a problem this incident shows, which most, if not all blockchain projects share to some degree:

While the network may be decentralized, development isn't.

Most blockchain projects are developed by a relatively small group of people, who hold a lot of power. The bigger projects, having bigger teams and a knowledgeable community which can take over development in case of one or a group of devs leaving, are more safe, but still: Even Bitcoins price was heavily influenced when Mike Hearn left as loudly as he did.

Now, this is a problem without a good solution. In theory, all those projects are opensource and changes to the protocol will have to be approved by the majority of users by using a new version of a client or by any other means. However, I would argue, that most users don't even read the whitepaper, let alone the code and therefore, have to trust those who do, which, in case of smaller projects, may in fact be only the dev him_herself.

This is not really news, but it's something that needs to be discussed more often.

As you can see on the chart, Lisk is forming a wedge:



35k has been repeatedly tested but held quite well until now. However, the wedge is pretty blatant, which indicates, that something is going to happen, most likely tomorrow or the day after that.

Any predictions?

I've been throwing this chart around for quite some time now:

http://coinmarketcap.com/charts/#btc-percentage

I was under the assumption, that the recurring pattern of Alts spiking, then quickly retract and go into a long bear market, would eventually reoccur. I still believe this will happen at some point, but now it looks like the chart tells another story: BTCs percentage has dropped lower than the chart would indicate.

I am not sure what to make of it. It may well be possible, that, even more than before, we need to look at single Alts, like Ethereum and Ripple, which make up a big proportion of the 40% cap. For example, it may well be, that while the other Alts go into the predicted bear market, Ethereum manages to keep its momentum.

I'd be very interested to read some opinions on that matter.