@jeffthebaker, I added an edit above explaining a bit more about SD, you might want to take a look.

Also, as disclosure, I'm not part of Stemit Inc. or a developer of Steem. I'm just a community member who was an early miner and is now running a witness node. I'm glad I was able to help answer your questions though.

Right back at you brother.

Steem Dollars will be able to be converted to Steem (there is a built in market on the blockchain, there are plans for the web site to support that as well), but they will also be able to be withdrawn directly as Steem Dollars, sending them to another crypto exchange, a merchant to pay for goods/services, to your own wallet, etc.

If you are familiar with BitUSD, Nubits, Tether, etc. then you can consider Steem Dollars to be in the same family (though each has somewhat different underlying properties). That is, a cryptocurrency that is designed to maintain a value close to $1 per token.

I'm not sure I understood your last question, but I think the answer is there is no difference.

In the case of Monero, hypothetically, the "issuer" would be whoever is orchestrating the scheme to funnel investor money for their benefit with some investor expectation of a future return.

Whether someone is "orchestrating" Monero as a scheme to do anything depends who you ask. Like if you ask ceti or Spoetnik, its all being run behind the scenes by Risto or me (or I am Risto).

It's obviously nonsense, but if someone were to make the case, that's the argument they would make.

In the case of this thread, it is clear that there is a scheme with two coins, one with an ICO (i.e. clearly funneling investor money with some investor expectation of a future return), and various relationships between a number of involved parties, some anonymous. The scheme is laid out, at least in general terms, on this very thread for all to see (or maybe the posts I read are on another thread).

1. Even if this were true, it wouldn't help your argument. Monero could be illegal and your propose scheme could also be illegal. Your statement proves nothing.

2. It isn't true. TPTB's proposed scheme, viewed from the perspective of "economic reality" in its totality, incorporates an ICO that will be used to raise money to support a collection of related efforts by related parties, including the JAMBOX effort. it was also stated that the ICO coin coin will be a vehicle which can be used to acquire JAMBOX tokens from people who want to sell them (and suggested this might be the only such vehicle). This ties the components together in a scheme that structurally has no viable analogy with Monero. So the two are structurally different and incomparable. On this basis it is entirely possible that either, both, or neither could be legal.

I'm reasonably confident you won't, and can't, find a "legal bypass" that allows investor funds to flow into developing something that has the reasonable expectation of somehow benefiting the investors (and if it doesn't, the investors either won't buy it or are being scammed). I'm also reasonably confident that not everything that is illegal will be prosecuted, so everyone will have to make their own judgements on this. TPTB seemed interested in these issues of legality, more so than me in some ways.

There are actually many reasons for it, which you can read in the white paper. The system has a lot of complex interlocking pieces.

But in reality earnings will not be locked up, because Steem Dollars are fully liquid, so that is the immediate earnings. The portion of rewards that goes toward increasing your Steem Power could also be viewed as karma or activity points or premium account status or whatever you want to call it, with the added option to liquidate that slowly if you plan to exit the system or just don't value your status that much.

"Power down" converts your Steem Power to liquid Steem. It takes place over 104 weekly payments. However, if you got a free starter account with minimum Steem Power, you can't power that down that until you reach 10x.

Withdraws work like any other web wallet, but you can only withdraw liquid Steam or Steem Dollars (the latter doesn't exist yet but will be paid out starting July 4), not Steem Power. You could send it to your own wallet, an exchange, etc.

You can theoretically use use your password/private keys from the web site to do all this stuff via the CLI wallet to interact directly with the blockchain and bypass the web site (you can even make blog posts from the CLI wallet, though it is somewhat painful; voting isn't too bad). I guess at some point there may be a GUI wallet, other web wallets, etc. 

Okay it might. How does that help your argument here?


I'm pretty sure you're engaging in appeal to hypocrisy. My relationship with Monero and the legal analysis of Monero is not relevant to your claim here of there being a "legal bypass", especially if you claim that Monero is also not legal. Surely you must see the futility of that line of argument. If not then I guess TPTB has associated with someone who can't think very clearly.

Again, I don't see the relevance of Monero. If there is a relevant principle involved I'd guess it can be considered in the context of this project without reference to another.

Likewise, my personal interests have nothing to do with this project as far as I can tell.

And that would be relevant to this thread how exactly?


You'll get no argument from me about crypto being nefarious.


In my particular case sure, it's more about thinking it is interesting technology (mostly PoW cryptocurrencies -- I don't consider most of the rest very interesting) and less about doing fellow man a service, though I don't mind do that either. I also enjoy the competitive multiplayer game aspect of crypto (mining, trading, etc.)

What I do in particular isn't relevant to anyone else though.

TPTB said he was from New Orleans and now living in the Phillipines.

Well look at the posting times on the TPTB account (link above). They are really all over the 24 hour period. That could be multiple people or it could be someone who doesn't sleep on a consistent schedule.

Work out the details of your own business plan, I'm too busy to dig into specifics, nor are my opinions even relevant. What matters is what you (and other participants), investors, customers, prosecutors, judges, and/or juries believe. At the moment I have none of these roles with respect to your venture.


I never claimed otherwise, though frankly I doubt this is possible. Most illegal investment schemes (now) involve some form of complex obfuscation and the law is designed to, and does, ignore form (i.e. paradigm) in favor of a view toward what is actually being accomplished. However, the abstract law and what is actually prosecuted are two different things, and different people may care more about one or the other. Participants have to make their own judgements.

I never made any such claims.

But since you are HONCO and not TPTB, I'll point you TPTB's posts about "economic reality". Trading tokens from one form to another may or may not change the economic reality. The specific mechanism being used isn't necessarily important, but it also could be. As I said I made no specific claims.

That means next to nothing: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=504237;sa=statPanel

Why speculate though? If people are going to use sock puppets, and they are, then it doesn't really matter who happens to be driving any particular puppet at any given time. People can switch puppets and puppets can always be passed around (which might be one explanation for the above linked chart, who knows).

You're unavoidably dealing with a forum nick and nothing any more tied to a "real identity" than that, don't assume otherwise.

No, they are not required to vote, but spending must pass by a quorum (I think 40%). The quorum requirement probably won't be hard since there is high concentration of ownership.


No, there is a minority-protection rule (called splitting) where you can withdraw your investment if you don't like what the majority is doing.

Of course these are just the rules for this particular DAO. Other rules are possible.

Actually I disagree about it having nothing to do with Monero Speculation. Competing solutions are relevant.

Please don't requite the large image though.

Yes that was the meaning of my second paragraph. But in practice I don't think that will happen short term. I could be wrong though.

Seems interesting but as I understand it most current TheDAO participants are looking for it to fund Ethereum-based projects, and I doubt TPTB wants to build his product on Ethereum (up to him though).

There is nothing about TheDAO that requires it to fund Ethereum projects though, it could fund anything, in theory.

Since your comment, the original is now already down to $5K from $9K. The way this works is there is a pool of money that will be paid out as the megareward July 4, split among all the posts, comments and votes between launch and July 4th. There will be many more by then so each post will be earning a lot less.

After July 4th the payments will be continuous at a much lower rate (as opposed to the one-time megareward) so most of the rewards will also be lower. Very popular posts may still get nice rewards.