yea haven't been able to use polo all day, was wondering what was going on. 

Yep, that's a very good point. However, if BTC continues the current trend, XMR x100 will mean "only" 75x profit... :-/





On another note, did I miss a missive, or it didn't come at all? (Shouldn't they be every week?)

Original post is here

Monero Monday Missives

October 27th, 2014

Hello, and welcome to our sixteenth Monero Monday Missive!

Major Updates

1. We have made major strides in the initial database implementation (you'll recall from our last Missive that our first implementation will use LMDB), and it is very nearly ready for broader testing. Specifically: the new blockchain is working for most things, but there are bugs with certain aspects of block verification that need to be fixed before it can be more widely tested. If you are particularly intrepid you can already grab it here: https://github.com/tewinget/bitmonero/tree/blockchain and compile it, and thus assist in identifying areas where it breaks down, although such reports are probably best submitted as github issues to tewinget's repository to reduce duplication. Once these and any other major issues have been weeded out the next steps would involve a bit of refactoring, fix cross-platform nigglies, and open it up for general testing.

2. The testing of per-kb fees on testnet, too, has gone exceedingly well. We will be adding the functionality to simplewallet (previously it required manual creation) and hope to deploy that for general testing within the next week.

3. Kitware staff, Ben Boeckel in particular, have spent a lot of time completely reworking our CMake build system and bringing it up to best practices. The fruits of those efforts can be seen on the Pull Request currently undergoing testing: https://github.com/monero-project/bitmonero/pull/180 (feel free to checkout this PR if you'd like to test). Now that the build system is starting to come together in its final form, we are hoping to use it to tag and release 0.8.8.5 during the course of next week.

4. In order to more efficiently deal with changes in the on-disk wallet format we are moving away from the old serialised+encrypted .keys format, and have a new format which is effectively encrypted JSON. This change allows us to note the wordlist language in the wallet format (so that the "seed" command can reflect that choice) and allows for cross-platform compatibility of the .keys file, which we are sure is excellent news for anyone that moves wallets between operating systems and architectures. You can test this in PR 179.

5. There have been a constant string of improvements and changes to the forum software to make it more usable and useful. In particular, new comments in a thread are highlighted within that thread. Additionally, unread threads (or threads with new unread comments) are highlighted by having a green dot next to them. Both of these apply to logged in users only. If you haven't visited the forum, you are encouraged to do so: https://forum.monero.cc

Dev Diary

Core: LMDB implementation is rough but nearly working (details above). Worth testing cross-platform, least of all from a build perspective.

Core: since we have already had to perform the rather annoyingly complex task of offloading MoneroPulse checkpoint checks to a separate thread (so as not to tie anything up during checks) we have begun extending this to other parts of the core that could potentially be or currently are pain points. This does not include the flat-file blockchain saving, as that is going to be deprecated with the move to LMDB, so pools will just need to hang on and deal with that nuisance for a little bit longer.

Build: CMake is looking a lot cleaner and easier to grok. It also fixes cross-compile (see: http://www.cmake.org/Wiki/CMake_Cross_Compiling) which means that binaries for all our major supported platforms can be built on a single system.

Account: multilang wordlists are now inherent to the wallet/account, so that RPC and CLI calls that retrieve the mnemonic do so in the correct format. This has, in turn, necessitated moving away from the horrible serialised data format for account data. Since epee's JSON library is beyond redemption, we have opted to use RapidJSON instead (which is headers-only and thus straight in the source tree).

Until next week!

PS. this Missive has the very great honour of being the first one to be finalised and very nearly posted from the air

- updated by fluffypony

Of course not, that is historical fact, although for a short time I think it was somewhat higher. LTC peaked at about $200m, and BTC at about $12b, so that's around 16%, or perhaps 20% for alts in total. (I'm not sure of the exact total during that peak, so this is a guess.)

What I'm saying is that if you look at the value fluctuations within that range, the correlation is not consistent with the theory that growing alts gravely threaten Bitcoin. It is not statistically insignificant either, it is highly significant. But it is possible, as I mentioned, that this observation only holds within the historical range and would break down at some higher range. I see no evidence for it, but I can't rule it out.

If I had to guess I'd say it is possible the Crypto Apocalypse theory only holds if Bitcoin were itself to reach a much higher valuation first. Given that all crypto is current embryonic, factors contributing to the overall success dominate, and benefit all viable cryptos (including Bitcoin) as potential participants in that overall success. This includes even direct competing alts showing Bitcoin how to do things better, or pushing it to do so. To tie this into the current conversation, to the extent that side chains are a reaction to alts, and side chains make Bitcoin better, than alts have helped Bitcoin!


I don't dismiss the theory at all, I merely question it.

I think it is possible for a better crypto to dethrone Bitcoin without invalidating the entire concept, just as Bitcoin dethroned previous failed or aborted attempts at cryptocurrency and far surpassed their success. If something far surpasses Bitcoin's success, then Bitcoin will turn out to be just as irrelevant as those earlier efforts, except that all are relevant as stepping stones that lead to the next. Given that roughly a factor of at least 1000 separates Bitcoin from fiat, there is a lot of room at the top.

Quite possibly none will ever exist, or doesn't exist now, so this is not intended as an endorsement of any current or even foreseen alt. I just acknowledge the possibility and question the theory that anything challenging or surpassing Bitcoin invalidates the entire concept. In fact it could very well take the concept to a far greater level of success, just as Bitcoin did.

I'm so tired...
Guys can you please post that missive so that I can go to bed?... 

When I try to run this version of Monero Client.net it gives me an error. "Accounts cannot be created by this release. Please use v0.38.1 for account creation."

Network
Hash Rate: 18.49 MH/sec
Block Found: 2 minutes ago
Difficulty: 1162983830
Blockchain Height: 279336
Last Reward: 13.5105 XMR

Monero is alive  

24-hour Volume: 293 BTC / 160686 XMR
Price:0.00195467
https://poloniex.com/exchange/btc_xmr


VOTE for MONERO Please - https://www.cryptsy.com/coinvotes

EXCELLENT points guys!  My faith in the concept of a non-transparent blockchain is restored.  But will Monero be the One?  It sounds like ZeroCash has a lot of people very interested but it hasn't been released yet.  Is Boolberry the next best thing in CryptoNote?  What does BBR have going for it that XMR doesn't?

The two major departures are:
(1) The PoW as it uses block header hashes as a scratchpad. This was intended to get a faster hashrate for verification purposes. It resulted in scrypt-like differences in CPU v. GPU hashpower. This itself led to concentrated distribution due to closed source private miners acquiring large portions of the network.
(2) It removes old ring signatures from the blockchain under a checkpoint. This is questionable because it pre-supposes consensus. The BBR dev himself referred to it as "Not the best solution, maybe we gonna find something more nice."
I like the alias feature, though it should come with some fee in order to prevent meaningless bloating.

I should add that BBR also already has a good GUI. It's in beta, but it's an "official" beta whereas XMR has several unofficial GUIs in beta. XMR won't make one official until the GUI development contest ends on July 1st.
Overall, I would say BBR is more experimental with respect to the CryptoNote reference code (i.e. BCN) while XMR is more conservative. Think of it as Litecoin vs. Peercoin. LTC went with simple changes to the reference (BTC) while PPC changed some things starkly -- namely PoW to PoW/PoS hybrid.
Of course, not everything has worked out for either coin. LTC has trouble justifying its existence and use while PPC has to deal with centralized checkpointing and hoarding. There are no direct parallels, but this can help non-technical people get a sense of the difference.
Make your investment allocations based on your judgement of merits, but it's silly to call a pretty different coin "Monero on steroids" because it's not Monero.

zerocash has data size and compute time issues which make it unsuitable for many uses cases of xmr.  
it also has the trusted mint problem, last i heard.
for those reasons i doubt that it can attain sufficient liquidity to displace monero as the dominant provider of dark liquidity.

If the anon fad is over, then hype will have less impact on price.  Technical merit and community effort will play a larger role in determining the outcome.  Lows are always the best time to invest.  If the froth is gone, volatility declines and appreciation is more reliable.  The end of the bubble is always good for the high-quality enterprises.  Their fly-by-night competition is weeded out by the depressive lows.  Fewer fools throwing money around means less malinvestment.  I.e. investment goes to the most fit.  Because monero is the most fit, monero will benefit.

Let us recap the situation and the contenders:

ANC - Zerocoin has serious UX problems due to high computational complexity and data-intensive operation.  Also, it is moon math, and only time and extensive review within the cryptographic community will lend confidence.  A promising crypto in the zygote stage.
DRK - Snake oil, plus instamine, plus ponzi, large entrepreneurial community, late-term fetal development stage.
XMR - High-quality well-tested crypto, large development and entrepreneurial community, mid-term fetal development stage.

Nothing else has enough promise*liquidity to be a contender.  Of the three, XMR and ANC are respectable.  XMR is substantially ahead of ANC in terms of technical development, mind-share and liquidity.  DRK is substantially ahead of XMR in those terms, but it is technically unfit for most legitimate purposes.

If I may play devil's advocate for a moment....

Why should anyone besides criminals care about a non-transparent blockchain?  I can imagine that a big holder wouldn't want their big holdings potentially traced back to them whenever they send coins.  Any other (practical, non-philosophical) reason?



What coin emission issue is this?

Welcome aboard Wekkel. Poloniex is a good exchange for Monero if you'd like to get started.

The price is attractive right now IMHO. I have been buying the dips to hold since early June, and just bought another 5k when it returned to 0.002 yesterday.

As well as the Devs, you may want to look here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=700400
and here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=776479.msg9049932#msg9049932

for Monero supporters.
Q

I bought 14BTC worth of XMR at 0.0035, so right now I'm about 6 or 7 BTC down.

Still holding.

I've got about 30 BTC elsewhere which I'm using for BTC/USD trades, but now I'm thinking should I use all or some of those funds to double up on XMR sub 0.002 and soften the losses already made?

Or is that patently a recipe for disaster...

how is an anonymous (monero-type) sidechain backed by BTC not interesting?

I think the answer is no. First of all it is questionable whether you would really want to hold wealth long term on a sidechain. The security assumptions (even when it comes to things like network hash rate, but in other more fundamental respects as well) are questionable. It is more plausible you might want to use services or features on a side chain by moving your bitcoins there and then, relatively quickly, moving them back to the more secure main chain. For example, this might be be used for mixing, by moving your coins to a sidechain with ring signatures, transacting and then moving them back.

But this ends up being a lot like using a Bitcoin mixer, with many of the same issues such as simultaneity. For example, imagine you are making a donation to some controversial organization and you want to delink the bitcoins you are donating.

So you go ahead and move your coins to a ring-sig sidechain, move them around a few times, and then move them back. Unless other people are doing this at the same time, when you move your coins back to the main chain, you will get the same coins back that you started with.

Alternately, perhaps the organization wants to be all anonymous and stuff, so it publishes an address on the sidechain, and you donate to them there. They then withdraw the coins back to the main chain, and they get the exact Bitcoins you sent to the side chain.

Obviously if there are a few other people doing the transfers at the same time, there is a degree of mixing, but it is fairly limited.

I don't think a side chain with a specialized purpose can achieve the same degree of anonymity as a coin designed for that purpose, where the entire chain is being mixed and remixed continually. That is an emperical question though. It is possible that a Bitcoin side chain could get more usage and greater trust of its security for long term holdings than Monero will have. More usage would address the mixing issue to a some extent and trust in the security would address the need to constantly move coins back and forth (though there still may be a loss of network effect here). None of this is clear at all.

I also think it is possible the market may simply reject the notion of adopting the Bitcoin currency for everything. It will be an interesting experiment to decouple new features from using a different currency. We may well find that the reason for altcoins is not the features!

I have been extremely blessed to be able to be under Monero rain recently.
Even today I got all my buy orders filled the lowest being at 0.00195.
I am planning to reset some buy-orders in case the dumpsters want to continue dumping onto me.  


And my hands are strong.

It was definitely alleged that stolen XMR from Moolah/Mintpal were being dumped. I don't have the link but someone posted that on twitter before all the details about the bankruptcy came out.

The rumors of an imminent regulatory crackdown on crypto may have something to do with it. Although I don't expect Monero to be affected one bit (if the rumors even turn out to be true) some other projects could very well be affected, and the market is not necessarily so discriminating.

I'm going to take a stab at this.  This post might convince you I'm not a completely biased shill.

I probably share some views - the fact that the game is being seriously considered as a bolster to the Monero economy makes me cringe.  And many of rpetlia's posts just come at me wrong.  For this reason I've opted out of the MEW even though I have donated to the development team.  Depending on the nature of Cryptokingdom - if it's more than just 2d half life it might be a lot of fun.  But we'll see.  


Here are my reasons.

. Monero is more open to criticism than most other altcoin communities.  (Not a moderated announcement thread, etc).  I still butt heads with the shills but ... as altcoins go.  It's better than the average circlejerk.

. The first non scam cryptonote.  Explaining all of the history might too long winded for me to do here.  But basically cryptonote was a completely new codebase centered around mathematicaly provable anonymity with interesting origins.  The Monero people have had professional mathematicians and developers review the codebase to ensure that it actually is anonymous.  

. The level of having standard anonymity on all transactions in a coin (in my mind) increases the anonymity by as much adoption as the coin has.  Instead of the powers that be being able to narrow down trying to track or trace the 5% of transactions that are anonymous they will have to attack the entire userbase to get any information.  

. Monero is not a pump and dump.  If you look closely at most coins - it's a game.  Get in early, create a restriction on supply (in comparison to the availability of early supply) to force the prices up quickly so early holders can dump fast.  Throw in some features after you've got your early coins to drive demand.

    Darkcoin for instance had a massive insta mine where the first blocks were dumping out tons of coins.  After being released they re-defined the number of coins they were going to release to be much less.  And in addition they created demand for the coin by forcing mixers to have 1,000 coins.  (All done to force the price up relative to the price of obtaining coins in the first 2 - 4 weeks).  

    XC is similar - all of the coins were mined in a 100 day PoW.  After the PoW stage the features that were thought to add value began to be implemented.  This game is all about driving wealth for those who not only get in early.  But have inside information about what direction a coin is going to go (features added, etc) AFTER massive initial supply has gone to the original adopters / insider information people.

    The main reason Monero price is struggling now is because it hasn't done this.  It's releasing like 20,000 coins per day I think?  I would prefer the release schedule of BBR - but BBR was a late adopter (1 month after).

. Monero avoids gimmicks but does focus on future proofing.  

    BBR made the decision to prune ring signatures.  Which if I understand correctly makes it impossible to mathematically prove previous transactions were actually anonymous without the code base (or something along these lines).  I 100% want to figure out how to make the blockchain smaller per transaction - but I feel like being conservative about keeping proof of anonymity is a decision that bodes well for the future of the coin.

    Monero is working on a database to reduce blockchain size that BBR will probably implement.  They are also working on a comprehensive front end.  Rather than quickly finishing they are cleaning up the code base as they go to make future development less expensive.

    Monero didn't get caught in the SuperNET hype.  I could be missing something here - I honestly could.  But the best I can understand the SuperNET is more like an exchange that is built into the wallet that can use another coins features by triggering two trades.  Trade Bitcoindark for BBR -> send BBR to person -> trade back to bitcoindark (someone please correct me if I'm wrong).  Based on what I've read on both the SuperNET and the BlockNET I'm 99% certain they are both gimmicks.  Both require code implementations into a wallet.  It won't bode well for a coin that legitimately has a future - to buy into a gimmick that was created primarily to allow a developer to offload his coin assets to create a demand.

The fact that (from what I can tell) several holders of Monero's are bitcoin whales and were there at the very beginning of the coin means that the price has always been high compared to other coins.  The volume if you shrink coinmarketcap down to Monero's inception reveals that there is a LOT of trading going on compared to other coins over the course of time.

To wrap up - I'm fairly confident that if nothing on the cryptocurrency market changes (there are no significant contenders - which I DO BELIEVE there is room for one to come absolutely dominate the market but it would have to be a work of genius) then Monero is the clear winner in the anonymity PoW race.  I believe the value crypto is strongly tied to psuedo anonymity & perhaps full anonymity when people discover they can have it.

Edit:  In my opinion the two things needed for the darkmarket are coin longevity & volume.  They care less about speculation than stability.  Monero hasn't been around long enough for longevity.  Volume is as good as it is on any other privacy alt - but not near enough.  Speculation or other venues will probably have to grow it significantly before the darkmarket becomes interested (my .02)

hey guys,

I have some problems with transactions. Lost today 17 moneros with a transaction from monero wallet (Monero Client v0.31.0) to bittrex wallet account and 25 moneros couple of days ago. In total 42 moneros. I spoke Bittrex but they couldn't help me.

"
I have no idea. Have you made sure you are on the latest version of everything? You'll need to reach out to the XMR community, it's not on the blockchain so there is nothing I can do. I don't have enough experience with the xmR wallet to be of assistance.

Thanks,
"

I just send 5 moneros to bittrex wallet, that worked without problems. It seems that I have problems with transactions 10+ moneros. Can somebody check it/help me out?

So I'm trying to diversify a little bit, who can talk me into invest in this coin. I don't want to read all the thread.

Disclaimer
I'm posting this same message in other coins, the ones that have my attention