The sockpuppet scare is irrational.  As we've seen with NEM and NODE, nobody created dozens or hundreds of sockpuppet.. especially back in the beginning of 2014 when both coins had no worth.  Biggest sock masters that were caught only had around 5 socks and there weren't many of those masters nor did they compromise the overall distribution.  No sock master has anywhere near the power of (to beat a dead horse) a NxT whale who had 5% of NxT at launch (one would have to create 160 sockpuppets to match that, assuming that NxT whale didn't have whale socks increasing their share even bigger).

The reality is that NEM's distribution has been a success, IMHO.  Looks like we have 2600+ unique persons involved and there'll be more after the auction.

It's less hype than anonymity but it's still hype as you responded.

IIRC - it's quite common in Kenya and other African countries for SMS money (M-Pesa and other services).  That being said it is Africa.  Kenya only does around $100 million remittance (that's for the whole year).  

M-Pesa (which services all of Africa) only has a capitalization of $16 billion.

(not much bigger than Bitcoin and there's an education / technological issue in convincing Africans to drop their M-Pesa for Bitcoin or any particular alternate, especially when many do not have an internet connection or smartphone access).

I haven't received a vertification mail yet.   

Where?

It's a hard toss between Helsinki and Tallinn.

This is the no envy movement but I detect some envy.  

The hype speculation was before the alpha.  Now we have the alpha and get to play with PoI.  PoI is like the Dreadnought of cryptos.  PoI is no fad but a huge progression which gives NEM unlimited potential and PoI makes PoS and PoW obsolete and it's a first mover advantage.

Nobody expects to be a bagholder but it happens all the time.  A lot of sad stories on this forum where people lost houses and inheritance due to investing in LTC, Doge and other alternates.

mind you too many people get consumed by greed and they ignore all the warnings.

Yet if OP was in the same circumstances again he would had done the same thing again.  The proof is all those people who invest early in alternate coins and then make thousands (or more) and decide to sell.

I don't understand the rationalization but we live in a world where most people are into instant gratification.  I'm not really sure what thousands of dollars can get you in this world, beyond a toy like OP's motorcycle or the stories of people who sold to buy gaming computers.

Yeah this is what happens to every alternate POW.  Professional miners (whales) selling outstrips any demand for the coin.  The crashing price has an inverse effect on decreasing demand as nobody wants to be a bagholder for a coin they think is going to go down forever.


Crypto currencies have changed since 2009 or even 2013 for that matter.   Too many people are getting into this game just for the sake of a few quick bucks.

Between NxT losing value and people dumping NEMstake, think we'll see $500 NEMstake soon?  Cheap.      

Sissy type?   

Any predictions when NxT will get a honorary mention on this thread?   

NxT isn't premined as there was no mining.

That's the downside to PoW.  It's one thing when people were hobby mining in 2010.  In 2014 -  Professional miners dominate it now and they're lmost never long term holders.  They have overhead bills (electricity / bandwidth / hardware) and they tend to dump at the first opportunity and then move onto the next PoW coin.

PoW is so laughable but what's more funny is people still throw their money at PoW coins

When the incentive is there then people will sign up.  As of now, although this is a catch-22, there isn't really any exciting discussions ("but how can there be any exciting discussions if there are no people", hence the catch 22).

Strong assumption that the only country in the world is the US.  It's inevitable that something like Darkcoin would be spent to facilitate human and organ trafficking in countries like Albania and Moldova, never mind fund terrorism in the Middle East.

Anonymity is a fad.  As well these technical explanations make absolutely no sense to the technologically illiterate or semi-literate.  For me, Bitcoin is already anonymous in that I never have to show any Government ID to create a wallet.  I don't see how having an optional ledger (or however Darkcoin works) results in more 'anonymity'.  It technically just removes all transparency and makes Darkcoin as bad as the banks and also invites illegal activity.


I'm bored to tears of all these strange people who want to bring in cryptos and make them worse than real life $Fiat.

They have former Goldman Sachs.  Which you might otherwise excuse, saying someone's past shouldn't matter, but at the same time there's only so many people in the world who have worked for GS (we're talking tens of thousands in a planet with billions of people).  It's not a coincidence that one would show up in coin which appears to have huge funding.  There's plenty of developers and organizers without that sort of background.

That's not the reason why I dislike Ethereum.  To me Ethereum is a copywrighting coin like Mastercoin and Maidsafe.  Worse yet, they seem to be a copywrighting equivalent to Ripple.

  They spam YouTube with these awful rhetorical rambles about politics and bankings which last over a hour and only get a few hundred views.  They pump out equally boring articles which nobody reads.  They have all these developers and people who don't work for free..  so where are these guys going to get their compensation?

IIRC - Ethereum (before it got in trouble with the Ontario & Canadian Government) admitted it wanted a $30 million IPO.  I'm sure that money would be put to great use.  Vitalik already vacations around the world but I guess he needs a Tesla automobile and a mansion in Thunderbay (or whatever constitutes a nice area of Ontario).

https://forum.ethereum.org/discussion/107/why-30-million-why-so-inflationary
(or, alternatively, just google "Ethereum 30,000 BTC" without the quotations)

It makes you wonder the point of even investing into Ethereum if it's a grand version of Mastercoin.  I put in $1000?  Ok that gives me 0.000033% of Ethereum...   making it $10,000 to get 0.0003% makes no quantifiable difference for what is an extreme high risk investment (the people who invested into Mastercoin and Maidsafe know this.  They would had made more money off Doge, NxT, Darkcoin, et al).  Ponzi schemes ran by wealthy investors and greedy developers is just exactly what we all want *sarcasm*

Then there are the technical issues.  I'm not a programming but I can say this: programming languages like Java, C++, et cetera, weren't born overnight and took as long as a decade or more to work out the kinks.  I doubt Vitalik was busy programming his revolutionary new language when he was twelve.  Not only will it take time for Ethereum language to be completed but there's also an education issue in that Ethereum language developers currently don't exist and they'll have to spend years to master the language and then pump out the code. 

Ethereum, if you noticed, has exiled itself from Bitcointalk after it couldn't take any criticism.  They've also banned and deleted many users from their own forums.

Stay classy Goldman Sachs

I sent Mac Red a message but I have yet to hear back from him, but it's only been half a day.
 

Where is the -50%?  NEM is $1237 right now versus $1600 a week ago.  Measuring in $Fiat is inaccurate since NxT itself has lost a cent in the past week and NEM is traded on the NxT exchange.

I also saw the reddit thread. 

I'm not sure why Vitalik Buterin has such a wide cult following, even being more famous than a real Bitcoin developer like Gavin Andresen or even an alternate developer like Charlie Lee. 

Vitalik's fame was some obscure magazine which was only actively read by hundreds.  It seems probable that an old theory is correct - Goldman Sachs needed a "hip young mascot"  ("to appeal to the young Facebook masses") for their crypto currency, so they went with Vitalik.