Was NXT the first IPO coin? + Interesting prediction of NXT from February 2013

[Daedelus]

LOL. "Idolized" was probably too strong a word but it's clear from his posts that he definitely admired Satoshi:

Yes, he has a project in mind that requires 'special conditions for it's existence'. He hoped BTC would provide these but saw that Bitcoin had failed by becoming corrupt by people interested only in fiat so he developed Transparent Forging as a fix. You should never be able to become a millionaire forging Nxt otherwise, by the same comparison, Nxt would have failed. You forge in Nxt because you want Nxt to persist and grow and you want to see the emergence of an economy based on Nxt's toolkit.

Below u'll find the 3rd part of Transparent Mining essay, the 1st and 2nd parts r available here - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=364218.0 and https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=458036.0. The essay is based on text written by BCNext, I paraphrase it in my own words to protect BCNext's real identity against text style analysis (as was agreed).

Bitcoin was a genious invention but implementation became corrupted by people whose aim was to make money, not bitcoins but dollars. BCNext was working on a project that required special conditions for its existence, he hoped that Bitcoin would change the society and prepare ground for the project. Half a year ago it became crystal clear for him that Bitcoin, as an idea of trustless money, had failed. A fix was required and it came in the form of Transparent Mining. "Transparent" is the key word here, it changes focus from "trust no one" to "don't let to cheat", because any cheating becomes obvious very soon (as soon as allowed by network latency). Nxt is just a work-around, it was launched to win more time and to conduct an experiment that was supposed to show if the society is ready for the main project of BCNext. He thinks that society can't be completely decentralized, and Nxt will let to measure level of decentralization after which a society can't function as a whole. Bitcoin relies only on math, but math can't solve problems arising because of illogical nature of the man. Mining in Nxt relies on cooperation of people and even forces it. Without cooperation Nxt becomes weak and can be easily attacked. It's like a system in unstable equilibrium, if people stop to care about cooperation then Nxt will fail very fast.
*snip*

Speaking of toolkit, businesses are being targeted..  

[plugitty-plug-plug] http://bitcoinprbuzz.com/bitcoin-alternative-nxt-announces-upcoming-release-of-nxt-version-1-5-the-complete-toolkit-for-business/ [/plugitty-plug-plug]

[Bizmark13]

A POS Block-Chain System shouldn't be calling itself a 'COIN'. They're DACs.

If I may, I think this is the misconception.. And why some people get so upset and irritated by these 'COIN' launches..  (Steady..).

The 'UNIT' running on the POS chain is exactly what the chain says it is,.. a STAKE in the system.

POS Systems should rely on making money through the services they provide. NXT's asset exchange, or BitShares in general both provide a utility to their POS network. And that IS worth something.

NXT's IPO was exactly that. A sale of shares in a fledgling DAC. I don't think of NXT as coins. They're shares.

I had not seen anything like that before. But there hadn't been any pure POS coins until then. Definitely a first for me on both counts.

Congratulations most certainly in order.. 

This is the "Promote the currency or promote the platform" debate I say both but long term value will come from the platform, as you say, in the AE and other things that are built on top.

Sounds very BitShares-ish.

From the NXT wiki:

Regarding NXT as coins: NXTs are not coins... or at least the creator of Nxt didn't want them to be seen as coins. They are tokens that grant privileges for supporting Nxt.

Deflation is not much better than inflation. "Real" coins should be created on top of Nxt, and be issued in quantities that keep their value constant. BCNext understands that this is very arguable. The community should decide if it wants to follow the path showed by him, or stick to the Bitcoin legacy of an unchangeable supply of coins with which people hope to become rich by doing nothing.

I guess what BCNext means here is that the value of a single NXT should reflect the value of the economy/network and the "coins" that we use in the traditional sense should be built on top using the monetary system.

[Daedelus]

Sounds very BitShares-ish.

I could find a number of heated debates that pre-date Bitshares being capable of being a platform of sorts but lets not go down that road 

[Bizmark13]

LOL. "Idolized" was probably too strong a word but it's clear from his posts that he definitely admired Satoshi:

Yes, he has a project in mind that requires 'special conditions for it's existence'. He hoped BTC would provide these but saw that Bitcoin had failed by becoming corrupt by people interested only in fiat so he developed Transparent Forging as a fix. You should never be able to become a millionaire forging Nxt otherwise, by the same comparison, Nxt would have failed. You forge in Nxt because you want Nxt to persist and grow and you want to see the emergence of an economy based on Nxt's toolkit.

Below u'll find the 3rd part of Transparent Mining essay, the 1st and 2nd parts r available here - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=364218.0 and https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=458036.0. The essay is based on text written by BCNext, I paraphrase it in my own words to protect BCNext's real identity against text style analysis (as was agreed).

Bitcoin was a genious invention but implementation became corrupted by people whose aim was to make money, not bitcoins but dollars. BCNext was working on a project that required special conditions for its existence, he hoped that Bitcoin would change the society and prepare ground for the project. Half a year ago it became crystal clear for him that Bitcoin, as an idea of trustless money, had failed. A fix was required and it came in the form of Transparent Mining. "Transparent" is the key word here, it changes focus from "trust no one" to "don't let to cheat", because any cheating becomes obvious very soon (as soon as allowed by network latency). Nxt is just a work-around, it was launched to win more time and to conduct an experiment that was supposed to show if the society is ready for the main project of BCNext. He thinks that society can't be completely decentralized, and Nxt will let to measure level of decentralization after which a society can't function as a whole. Bitcoin relies only on math, but math can't solve problems arising because of illogical nature of the man. Mining in Nxt relies on cooperation of people and even forces it. Without cooperation Nxt becomes weak and can be easily attacked. It's like a system in unstable equilibrium, if people stop to care about cooperation then Nxt will fail very fast.
*snip*

Speaking of toolkit, businesses are being targeted..  

[plugitty-plug-plug] http://bitcoinprbuzz.com/bitcoin-alternative-nxt-announces-upcoming-release-of-nxt-version-1-5-the-complete-toolkit-for-business/ [/plugitty-plug-plug]

Interesting insight into BCNext's creation of NXT. Thanks.

Looks like I need to update my NXT software too. I'm still running on 1.3-something.

Sounds very BitShares-ish.

I could find a number of heated debates that pre-date Bitshares being capable of being a platform of sorts but lets not go down that road 

Just out of curiosity, but as a NXT dev, what do you think of BitShares? I mean, obviously you probably see NXT as being the superior system but do you think BitShares has some interesting features as well?

I'm more of a NXT guy myself but I've always felt their market-pegged assets were quite interesting for example.

[Daedelus]

Sorry to break this to you but if you're not running 1.4.x, you are on a fork. So any forging you might have been doing will disappear when you update.


I am not a Nxt dev   Not even one of the founding 73 (~103). I defer my opinion to someone who I think is year's ahead of the curve at the moment..

The humankind knows several ways to counteract Sybil attack and all of them can be categorized into two distinct groups - centralized certification and resource testing. BitShares uses an interesting approach, it's an alloy of the both, people can do their own certification and trust becomes a resource here. Quite often alloys have better qualities than their separate components, you guys should spend more time on formalization and analysis of your method to get rid of big part of accusations voiced upthread. Perhaps you could borrow some stuff from http://www.math.cmu.edu/~adf/research/SybilGuard.pdf, that paper sounds similar to BitShares delegates without bells and whistles.

Bitshares merges resource testing (POS) with centralization (voting for 101 delegates). I am not convinced it is anything different from the system we have today. It introduces politics onto the blockchain (expect more arguing and FUD for votes) and couldn't it be said that today's world is effectively run by 101 powerful entities? Bitassets are derivatives contracts reliant on the bitshares network. In Nxt, I promote assets as risk^2 for this reason: if the network fails you are left with nothing (not necessarily true for Multigateway however). In Bitshares, they were promoted as the opposite. The network fails, you have nothing. If there is any fear of systemic failure, the bitassets market starts to break down. Why accept or buy something that is denominated in something that might not be here in a week/year? I don't like crypto's with inflation. While clunkier, a direct link between work done and payment in bounties seems a better system. So suffice to say I have never bought any BTS.


CfB is interested in this mixed approach, and with Vitalik publishing his thoughts on 'cryptoeconomic security' and BCNext above stating that maths alone isn't enough, I think we will see more discussion in this area and that it is a tenant of Economic Clustering (you pick the node you bootstrap from because you trust them and have a economic incentive to be on the same chain to be able to transact with them). You have more direct control of who you choose to trust by nominating them for your node, BTS requires you to accept the majority even if you voted for none. If you are going to introduce 'cryptoeconomic' rules using trust as a resource, I prefer Nxt's approach where you have 100% direct control of that element.

But I am not a dev   and I am trying to see through the fog into the future as much as anyone. I could be wrong in my interpretation.

[Daedelus]

Looks like I need to update my NXT software too. I'm still running on 1.3-something.

P.s. You can download a bootstrap blockchain from peerexplorer.com if you can't copy your nxt_db folder across to the newest version.

[TheMystic]

If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck...

...call it a goose as that is what everyone started to refer to it as 12 months later?  

But it's not a goose in that respect. We weren't using the term IPO or ICO back then, but it was the same thing. How was it different?

As discussed above, IPO/ICO are terms used by scammers with the aim of maximizing donations before delivering nothing. Hence all the "never invest in IPOs" by those that got burned. BCNext plan was:

The plan was to accumulate users, not money (remember I asked for tiny amounts?)

BCNext never called it an IPO/ICO and asked for donations to be made to a spendable BTC account so he could send the small amounts back if Nxt failed.

I don't think there will be decent amount [of Bitcoins], as I said you should send small amounts, it's just for distribution of coins.  

Nxt's 'IPO' had far and away the opposite of what most people in crypto today think of. That is the main reason Nxt is referred to as an IPO in my experience, to try and create the same association with the recent IPO scams. Very few know it was the first and less still do their own research.

Nxt was capped donations with low funds raised+delivery of ground breaking technology. Most IPOs are raise as much money as possible+deliver nothing.


Fun fact: There were over 100 users who expressed an interest and sent tiny amounts to the donation address to be part of the initial Nxt distribution. Only 73 bothered to claim their stakes (eventually, initially I think it was 71). Amusing when you see trolls (no one in here) talking about Nxt as though it was always a sure thing  

If I understand you correctly, you are basically objecting to the term "ICO/IPO."

I'm not trying to be difficult. I'm new and don't really know much about NXT. I'm just trying to understand what you're saying.

[Daedelus]

If I understand you correctly, you are basically objecting to the term "ICO/IPO."

I'm not trying to be difficult. I'm new and don't really know much about NXT. I'm just trying to understand what you're saying.

Yes, IPO/ICO are terms that have significant baggage and used to evoke an emotional response (negative in the case of crypto). Like bureaucrat and public servant, you could say they are the same but the public servant would probably object as bureaucrat has negative connotations  

[TheMystic]

If I understand you correctly, you are basically objecting to the term "ICO/IPO."

I'm not trying to be difficult. I'm new and don't really know much about NXT. I'm just trying to understand what you're saying.

Yes, IPO/ICO are terms that have significant baggage and used to evoke emotional an response (negative in the case of crypto). Like bureaucrat and public servant, you could say they are the same but the public servant would probably object as bureaucrat has negative connotations  

I understand what you're saying. Thanks for the explanation.