This whole affair is simply disgusting. It appears that the Darkcoin developers are trying to kill this coin for its name. The reality is that the Dashcoin name belongs to the Dashcoin community and not to whomever made this deal with the Darkcoin developers. My take is that the Dashcoin community should simply fork the coin and keep calling it Dashcoin.

Edit: I find trademark bullies simply very disgusting.


Anyone who owns Dashcoin should consider legal advice, and not dump the coins.

There is of course the "out of the blue" possibility that Darkcoin may take another "Dash" to the downside. Darkcoin still has over 3x the capitalization of Monero and the markets seem to respond to any drop in DRK by buying XMR. I say anyone in the XMR/XBT market still needs to play very close attention to DRK/XBT especially if they are planning on buying XMR.
 
Edit: One of the reasons why I was not surprised by the recent XMR upward move is because I am watching DRK closely.

There was a fair amount of XBT selling by the IPO that coincided with the bottom in XBT/USD. This is nothing more than classic "weak hand" selling of XBT.

On GNU/Linux (Kubuntu 14.04) bitmonerod takes 6,263,272 K so 8GB should be enough barely.

The reality is that if Darkcoin / Dash crashes Monero will be the lead anon coin. So it will also be the comparison indicator. It will not, for better or worse, be "an obscure cryptocoin".

Yes. This is very true; however the whole DRK mess can change things. My take is that DRK/XBT will be have a bigger impact on XMR/XBT than XBT/USD.

DRK just broke 0.01 on the downside

... but there is selling.


One thing is clear one does not want to be caught "short" XMR if people start emptying their masternodes. I say keep a close watch on Darkcoin now Dash. It still has over 4x the market capitalization of XMR.

Here is an example of the law in Spain. It bans bearer (not just cash) transactions that are payments from consumers to businesses, so it would also apply to crypto currency. Spain in a country where tax evasion is the national sport, followed by football (soccer).  http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-11-19/spain-cash-transaction-ban-begins-as-rajoy-targets-tax-fraud. https://www.boe.es/boe/dias/2012/10/30/pdfs/BOE-A-2012-13416.pdf My take, knowing the culture well, is that this is doomed to failure since people with just use the "black money" for many day to day expenses that fall well below the threshold.

Getting a favourable ruling from FinCEN on the masternodes as MSBs issue is the one way to put an end to this. Furthermore this needs to presented to FinCEN by a member of the DRK community with a significant stake in the success of DRK and not by someone who stands to profit from an unfavourable ruling, eg an XMR holder such as myself. As for the "go dark" argument we both know this is simply an admission of defeat in this context.

This comes down to 1) The regulators won't do this and 2) It won't matter anyway. The real issue here is this is a real structural weakness in Darkcoin that is not present in its closest competitor, and there is nothing that can be done about it.

Every time I raise the question of regulating the masternodes as MSBs the response is 1) This is a US only issue which it is not and 2) We will "go dark", pardon the pun, to solve the problem. This is nothing more than an admission of defeat and justifies the argument that government regulation of the masternodes is the real Achilles Heel of Darkcoin.

Edit: There is also the argument that "all anonymous coins will be made illegal anyway", which is again a further admission of defeat.

The question becomes what happens when one trades time for the percentage of compromised masternodes? Over a short period of time yes it may take 95% of the masternodes, but what happens where the attacker collects data over say a period of 6 months or longer using a much smaller percentage of compromised masternodes. I am talking here of a regulator or a group of regulators who persuade a fraction of the masternodes to provide the regulator(s) with data at essentially no cost to the compromised masternodes. All of this is of course separate from an attack on the proof of stake aspect of DRK (the 1000 DRK masternode requirement) using "borrowed" stake.

The weak point would be to regulate the masternodes as MSBs. Collect enough data from enough masternodes and over time one could start to unravel DRK transactions even with blinded masternodes. How resistant are blinded masternodes to this type of Sybil attack?  

In countries with exchange controls expect them to treat XBT or XMR the same as USD cash. In many cases this will mean either illegal or a very unfavourable exchange rate through "official" channels.

In the United States and in Canada there are requirements that one report cash or bearer instrument transactions over a certain size and in certain circumstances but they are not illegal. In certain parts of the EU there are restrictions on merchants accepting cash for transactions over a certain amount. I also suspect that it is a matter of time before cryptocurrency regardless of how anonymous it is will be treated the same as cash is this respect.

As for cryptocurrency being made illegal in those countries with convertible widely traded currencies such as the US, EU, Canada etc the chances are very low and all indicators are against a move toward banning cryptocurrency. What we are seeing and will see is the regulation of all the intermediary players and service providers. It is for this reason that DRK has a much higher regulatory risk than XBT, or XMR, since the masternodes due to their limited number are a prime target for regulation. I would say the same for semi centralized structures such as delegated proof of stake, and currencies such as Ripple and Ethereum. In those countries with exchange controls for example Iceland, China etc., the changes are very high that cryptocurrency will be made illegal or already has.

Spending some time understanding how government regulation actually works, will go a long way to understanding  what the regulatory risks actually are. I stand by my position that a pure POW decentralized crypto-currency such as XBT or XMR has very little regulatory risk at the protocol level; furthermore there is already a fair amount of information on where the regulators actually stand. This in not the case at all with a very large proportion of the alt-coins and assets on the market today. The key thing to understand here is that any amount of centralization no matter how small will likely attract government regulation.

Sure like US currency is illegal in the United States.

XMR.to is likely an MSB just like BitPay is. So is Poloniex. That does not make a coin illegal. My point is that a FinCEN ruling that DRK masternodes are MSBs will likely have a very significant impact on the XMR/XBT exchange rate, since XMR would not have that regulatory risk.

Edit: Why would one pick a technology that is subject to regulation over one that is not?

It is quite possible that we test a 50%  Fibonacci at 0.001417 or even test and / or break the ATL; however there are a lot of uncertainties and many of them are on the upside and quite unrelated to any particular group of buyers. Here is an interesting out of the blue possibility: Anyone can apply to FinCEN in the US on the MSB status of Darkcoin masternodes. If FinCEN were to rule that DRK masternodes are MSBs, what are the chances of purchasing XMR under 0.002? Seriously anyone following the XMR market should pay very close attention to DRK/XBT on both a technical and fundamental level. If DRK makes a break to the downside and one is caught "short" XMR watch out!

I have said it before and will say it again. Bulls make money, bears make money, and pigs get slaughtered.

The greed was obvious among the bears back in December when people were selling at 0.0011 hoping to buy back at 0.0008. The XMR bear market in the end was driven by greed not fear. In this market there are still a lot of bulls masquerading as bears and hoping to buy lower, and my take is that they will end up paying a lot more for their XMR.

Let us not forget that those of us who were busy buying during the end of the bear market can now simply sit back, stay out of the market and do nothing.