BitShares scam2.0, Still scamming

[RaginglikeaBoss]

unconfiscatable, unrehypothicatable, un-bail-in-able, uninflatable and unbetrayable

It is safer than a Swiss Bank when it comes to all the corruption associated with the modern banking system.

Much safer than a Swiss Bank from being Enron'ed, MF Global'ed, Cyprus'ed, and Mt. Gox'ed.

It used to be, back in the Day, that Swiss Banks were famous for their privacy and immunity from unscrupulous acts by governments and the global banksters.  Not anymore.  All the Swiss banking laws have been updated to comply with The Global System which no longer recognizes a banking customer's privacy or even property rights.

Nowhere am I saying that there are zero risks.  BitShares (and other cryptos) just provide a new form of safety that consumer's should consider for diversification against these risks.  And since the "Safer than a Swiss Bank" is aiming to get the attention of non-crypto-savvy consumers, it is a perfectly reasonable attention getting headline.  Naturally, when used, it is important to make sure that the other risks are clearly stated.

But we haven't used this slogan yet in any advertisement anywhere.  We just discussed it on bitsharestalk.org as a possible way to reach the unwashed masses.  A few of The Usual Suspects grabbed it from there and tried to make something of it out of context here.  Nice try.

Just like the general public knows (or should know) that they should diversify against the risk of any single investment vehicle, crypto's provide diversification from many the common mode risks of the Global Financial System.

Surely you know all this.

While I may have lost all faith whatsoever in BitShares, I do respect your articulated response.  I may not agree fully with it, but it's a welcome change.

[CoinHoarder]

Actually, you can't remove them from power because Bitshares DPoS is vulnerable to Sybil attacks and even if it wasn't, you still don't know what potential voting alliances exist to manipulate the elections via strategic voting.  13% of stake in DPoS allows for them to control over 50% of the elections via strategic voting.

13% stake can be easily overruled by the remaining 87% of stakeholders. Most delegates are known people in the community and Sybil has been mostly mitigated. If someone formed a strategic alliance to rig the voting then that would be dumb on their part, because it would greatly and negatively affect the value of their stake once the other shareholders caught on. They would certainly catch on eventually.. secrets are impossible to keep secret if they involve multiple parties.

"Sybil has been MOSTLY mitigated"  Lol  Except for that one time when one person convinced everybody he was five independent delegates/witnesses... Except for that one time when god knows who else has managed to convince everyone he was multiple independent parties.

As I said, anyone gaming the system by making multiple delegates will eventually found out and voted out. You kind of just proved my point. Over time it will be less and less likely that numerous delegate spots are controlled by one person. Furthermore, even if someone is able to gain multiple delegate spots without the knowledge of shareholders it is not a huge deal. The worst they can do is exclude transactions from a block (which would quickly be noticed by stakeholders anyway) which would delay the confirmation of a transaction until the next honest delegate produces a block.

The fact is that it is impossible to mitigate Sybil attacks in Bitshares without requiring every single delegate/witness to submit their government ID.

That is not true. Delegates are chosen by what they can provide to stakeholders. Those that can provide the better services/development/marketing/etc will be the ones voted in.

Follow the links next to each delegates name: http://cryptofresh.com/witnesses

You will see that all of them are doing something for stakeholders. Running some service, programming, marketing, user support, documentation, etc... if this is one or even a few people, then these people are doing an inhumanly possible amount of work. Delegate pay is not enough for one person to hire a team to do this work for them, along with each delegates forum, social media, and in-person presence. It is simply not possible to hold many delegate spots unknowingly to stakeholders for an extended amount of time. Maybe Dan Larimer truly is a robot though and holds all of the delegate spots himself...  

Even with this enacted you cannot prevent multiple individuals from forming strategic voting blocks. These strategic voting blocks will always be present in Bitshares and everybody won't catch on to their existence.

Many blockchains are implementing stakeholder voting features, yet you pick out Bitshares to take the brunt of your FUD. Even Nxt, your crowned champion of a cryptocurrency has enabled a voting feature. As I said earlier, if someone forms strategic voting blocks to go against the will of other stakeholders, then that is a really stupid thing to do. The other stakeholders will catch on and sell their stake, hugely and negatively affecting the price per coin. It doesn't make much sense to form strategic voting blocks against the will of the community because of that.

This is the inherit problem with DPoS verses PoS.  With PoS, you actually have to own the stake to control the chain.  With DPoS, you only have to convince others with stake to vote you into power to control the chain.

This is intended. In PoS and PoW, stakeholders are unable to choose who benefits from securing the blockchain. dPoS allows stakeholders to choose who profits from the act of securing the blockchain, that way the blockchain can hire employees. Whoever can provide the most value or do the most work for the stakeholders will win the job. This allows stakeholders to "hire employees" who do development, marketing, documentation, user support on the forums, web development, etc.

The fact that some members of your community, like Roach, think that "corporate fascism" existing on Bitshares' blockchain is a good thing just shows how removed the system really is from the original intent of crypto.

As I said earlier, it is silly to judge an entire cryptocurrency by one or a few people in its userbase. I could go down the list of crazy/stupid Nxt users, Bitcoin users, <insert cryptocurrency here> users, and use that as a reason to not like the cryptocurrency, but that is stupid to stereotype an entire user base. Do you always stereotype people in general, or do you just stereotype Bitshares users because it fits in your agenda?

Also, who are you to decide what the "original intent" of crypto is or isn't? Technology is opinion and religious agnostic.

I call them liars, cheaters and thieves because they have changed the terms on their investors so many times that I've lost count.  The change of terms is always to their benefit.  If you can't see this, you're deluding yourself.

All changes needed stakeholder approval. It is unfortunate you didn't get your way and don't agree with the direction the project has gone, however it is ridiculous that you cry about it for the rest of Bitshares' existence. There are many people that have been around since day one that do not feel this way, so the fact that you think they are "liars, cheaters and thieves" is your personal opinion that you are trying to convey as fact.

All changes didn't get "stakeholder approval".  A lot of them were unanimously declared by the Larimers.

You don't understand how it works if you think one person with less than 50% stake can make any changes they want.

Regardless of the exact terminology they use, they portray Bitshares as "safer" than traditional methods of storing your USD (or other assets) when it is in fact extremely dangerous for individuals to do so.  If the marketcap of Bitshares ever drops below the entire market capitalization of all the bitAssets, the holders of such bitAssets will not be able to redeem them at face value, because the contracts will be under-collateralized.  This means there will be a run on all assets as people attempt to recover 70 cents on the dollar, 60 cents on the dollar, 50 cents on the dollar, 30 cents on the dollar, 10 cents on the dollar, all the way down to zero.  They market Bitshares as such because they only care about their own bottom line and not the risk that they are inducing to others.

All cryptocurrencies are inherently risky. There is a risk that any cryptocurrency's value on any certain day can plummet to zero. To fault Bitshares specifically for this risk when all other cryptocurrencies share the same risks is blasphemous. The Bitshares community has addressed black swan events. ... Although the risk exists, it is in my opinion unlikely that it will ever happen. Cryptocurrencies with the volume, liquidity, and market cap of Bitshares simply do not lose over 50% of their value in one day.

All cryptocurrencies do not expose their holders the same systematic risk that exists in Bitshares' bitAssets.  That's right Bitshares simply does not lose over 50% of its value in one day.  It loses 34% of its value in one day like we just saw a few days ago.

You are being hypocritical here. Many cryptocurrencies have introduced features which have inherent "systematic risks", yet you are not attacking them. Even the cryptocurrency you champion, Nxt has introduce systematic risks in a number of features it has implemented. You couldn't be more hypocritical by pushing this point. Nxt's asset exchange, monetary system, and marketplace expose their shareholders to systematic risks. I see very little to no caveats published along with Nxt's marketing of said features. Bitshares must put a caveat on any and all features that expose shareholders to risk, but Nxt (and all other cryptocurrencies that have similar features that you are not trolling) do not have to make sure these caveats are know. This is just supposed to be common sense, right? Nxt users are so much smarter than Bitshares users, so they automatically know the risks involved and no caveats are needed, right? right?

[CoinHoarder]

I will be taking a break from this thread for a week or so. This is my last free week before school starts, and I want to get some work done on a web application I am programming. Arguing with agenda-determined idiots is a huge waste of my time. I am not entirely convinced the users posting in this thread are more than one person using multiple sock puppets any ways. FUD away guy(s)... although beware of what you say, I will be back in about a week to prove you wrong.

[TPTB_need_war]

The worst they can do is exclude transactions from a block (which would quickly be noticed by stakeholders anyway) which would delay the confirmation of a transaction until the next honest delegate produces a block.

I thought you were also reading my thread because you posted in it. There is a worst they can do to a PoS coin (including DPOS):

• even 0.1% stake can attack the coin because block solutions are exclusive to some stake holder so the stake holder can delay transactions[1]

[1] Another scenario is DDoS attack other stake holders when their turn to mine a block, then jack up your transaction fees sky high when its your turn to mine a block.

Also you seem to not acknowledge that PoS coins can be shorted, so the risk of losing the value of the stake is not really valid argument.

I understood that PoS was motivated by the flaws in PoW. In my thread, I am working on trying to remove those flaws from PoW.  We will have to see what emerges from that.

[CoinHoarder]

Hmm.. OK, one more post before I go on my hiatus... just because I like you TPTB. I am done wasting my time in this thread for at least a week, but I may post in your thread TPTB because it is actually intellectually stimulating.

The worst they can do is exclude transactions from a block (which would quickly be noticed by stakeholders anyway) which would delay the confirmation of a transaction until the next honest delegate produces a block.

I thought you were also reading my thread because you posted in it.

Sorry, I haven't had time to read the whole thread although I read parts of it... maybe by not posting in this thread for a while I can catch up on yours. It would be a much better use of my time, that's for sure!

There is a worst they can do to a PoS coin (including DPOS):

• even 0.1% stake can attack the coin because block solutions are exclusive to some stake holder so the stake holder can delay transactions[1]

[1] Another scenario is DDoS attack other stake holders when their turn to mine a block, then jack up your transaction fees sky high when its your turn to mine a block.

Also you seem to not acknowledge that PoS coins can be shorted, so the risk of losing the value of the stake is not really valid argument.

I understood that PoS was motivated by the flaws in PoW. In my thread, I am working on trying to remove those flaws from PoW.  We will have to see what emerges from that.

I am not saying dPoS or PoS is perfect, and I admittedly am not as well versed as you in the technologies to understand all of the attack vectors associated with them. I was just stating that the attack vectors DE is bringing up cannot bring Bitshares to its knees and have been mostly (or eventually will be) mitigated. As you state, all variants of PoS and PoW that currently exist are imperfect, and I'm not sure that a perfect solution will ever be found... as you state you are trying to remove those flaws from PoW. Which consensus algorithm is better than the other is highly debatable, and had been unendingly debated for years now. Each has its own set of pros and cons, and who is anyone to decide which pros or cons should be more or less important than others.

You, and the other posted in this thread, seem to be focused on the shortcomings of every facet of Bitshares without considering (or mentioning) the positives that come along with the different technologies that Bitshares is composed of. Give me an example of any latest-greatest technology, and I will make it look like a pile of crap by focusing on and detailing all of its shortcomings.

I do not think Bitshares is getting a fair shake on these forums and is unfairly singled out regarding a lot of issues that other coins have as well, and I seem to be one of the few that is willing to waste their time defending it (even though the Bitshares token is less than 6% of my holdings.) I am also a stakeholder of all the coins that the trolls seem to have derived from, which ironically makes me have to FUD my own holdings just to point out the stupidity in their statements. I own Nubits, Nushares, and Nxt... all coins that are being championed as much better than Bitshares for random reasons ITT. I see the pros and the cons of each coin/technology with as much of an unbiased approach as possible. I just wish everyone else could do the same.

I do not think the following is possible in dPoS (I'm not sure about other forms of PoS), because delegates cannot change or set transaction fees by themselves. Transaction fees can only be changed by committee members which are elected by stakeholder vote. Not including a transaction because it doesn't have a certain amount in transaction fees seems silly, because the next honest delegate will do so and the honest delegate will get whatever fees are associated with the transaction. They would basically be giving up free money, putting a big red flag on their witness campaign, and it would be very likely that would get them voted out. Part of the incentive for delegates to stay honest is the future income of blocks produced in the future, although as I stated earlier... even if they are dishonest there is not much they can do other than withhold transactions from blocks (and the transaction would be included in the next block produce by an honest delegate.) The way I understand it, DPoS' main weakness is that all consensus algorithms suffer from.. a 51% attack.

[1] Another scenario is DDoS attack other stake holders when their turn to mine a block, then jack up your transaction fees sky high when its your turn to mine a block.

[TPTB_need_war]

Btw thank you for your kind statements. I also have no animosity towards you. Just sharing openly my thoughts.

You, and the other posted in this thread, seem to be focused on the shortcomings of every facet of Bitshares without considering (or mentioning) the positives that come along with the different technologies that Bitshares is composed of.

BitShares is so diverse in what it purports to do, I haven't had time to compile a detailed analysis. I do know they liedhyped/mislead about the 100,000 TX/s rate of the 2.0 release, and I had to do some research that it really only is about 10 - 100 TX/s realistically as of now.

I will need to spend more time in the future doing a comprehensive analysis of all major coin technology. But for now that would slow me down too much on more urgent work.

I must admit I still have a philosophical bad after taste lingering from my debates/discussions with Daniel Latimer from 2013 in this forum, because he was proposing features which seemed to me to be the antithesis of decentralization, e.g. some thing about paying interest rate to stake holders in a namecoin variant which I explained to him was socialistic and opposite of our goals for End-to-End principled protocols. He dismissed me, as most good socialists do to the ideals of Libertarianism (the true anarchistic kind). So when I read him writing that decentralization is impossible therefor we should make a coin a corporation, I want to puke. I try to believe people can change, but I know rarely they do. I almost got desperate enough recently to consider testing whether I could implement some anonymity for BitShares and get paid for it. But then it only took 3 minutes at their forum to change my mind. Search my old username there "AnonyMint".

I am not accusing scam. Rather I think difference in core philosophy.

I do not think the following is possible in dPoS (I'm not sure about other forms of PoS), because delegates cannot change or set transaction fees by themselves. Transaction fees can only be changed by committee members which are elected by stakeholder vote. Not including a transaction because it doesn't have a certain amount in transaction fees seems silly, because the next honest delegate will do so and the honest delegate will get whatever fees are associated with the transaction. They would basically be giving up free money, putting a big red flag on their witness campaign, and it would be very likely that would get them voted out. Part of the incentive for delegates to stay honest is the future income of blocks produced in the future, although as I stated earlier... even if they are dishonest there is not much they can do other than withhold transactions from blocks (and the transaction would be included in the next block produce by an honest delegate.) The way I understand it, DPoS' main weakness is that all consensus algorithms suffer from.. a 51% attack.

[1] Another scenario is DDoS attack other stake holders when their turn to mine a block, then jack up your transaction fees sky high when its your turn to mine a block.

You forgot my point that the attacker can short the coin. And that delaying transactions is an attack that could cause the share price to crater. Or DDoS attack all the others and then force all transactions on to your block. This is the problem with PoS and DPOS, because the ordering of who will mine is known before the transactions are sent. That is a major flaw compared to PoW.

[DecentralizeEconomics]

unconfiscatable, unrehypothicatable, un-bail-in-able, uninflatable and unbetrayable

It is safer than a Swiss Bank when it comes to all the corruption associated with the modern banking system.

Much safer than a Swiss Bank from being Enron'ed, MF Global'ed, Cyprus'ed, and Mt. Gox'ed.

It used to be, back in the Day, that Swiss Banks were famous for their privacy and immunity from unscrupulous acts by governments and the global banksters.  Not anymore.  All the Swiss banking laws have been updated to comply with The Global System which no longer recognizes a banking customer's privacy or even property rights.

You know the common man's perception of that statement is based on the old ideas.  What about the statement "Your own Fort Knox!"?  Are you going to rationalize its usage by saying, "Well really there's no gold in Fort Knox"?  Give us a break.

Nowhere am I saying that there are zero risks.  BitShares (and other cryptos) just provide a new form of safety that consumer's should consider for diversification against these risks.  And since the "Safer than a Swiss Bank" is aiming to get the attention of non-crypto-savvy consumers, it is a perfectly reasonable attention getting headline.  Naturally, when used, it is important to make sure that the other risks are clearly stated.

But we haven't used this slogan yet in any advertisement anywhere.  We just discussed it on bitsharestalk.org as a possible way to reach the unwashed masses.  A few of The Usual Suspects grabbed it from there and tried to make something of it out of context here.  Nice try.

You haven't used this slogan yet in any advertisements anywhere?  Rly?  Wow, I must have been hallucinating for about a year because everytime I went to your website, Bitshares.org, "Safer Than A Swiss Bank" was plastered on the main page!  Of course, you're going to say as you've said before that you didn't have any say in what was posted on Bitshares.org.  Interestingly, you were listed as "President/Chief of Operations" on the very same website.  Gee... I wonder why people call you a liar?

[DecentralizeEconomics]

Even with this enacted you cannot prevent multiple individuals from forming strategic voting blocks. These strategic voting blocks will always be present in Bitshares and everybody won't catch on to their existence.

Many blockchains are implementing stakeholder voting features, yet you pick out Bitshares to take the brunt of your FUD. Even Nxt, your crowned champion of a cryptocurrency has enabled a voting feature. As I said earlier, if someone forms strategic voting blocks to go against the will of other stakeholders, then that is a really stupid thing to do. The other stakeholders will catch on and sell their stake, hugely and negatively affecting the price per coin. It doesn't make much sense to form strategic voting blocks against the will of the community because of that.

The voting implementation in NXT does NOT control who secures the network.  It is only for posting polls like asking "Who has the longer nose? Stan Larimer? or Pinocchio?"

This is the inherit problem with DPoS verses PoS.  With PoS, you actually have to own the stake to control the chain.  With DPoS, you only have to convince others with stake to vote you into power to control the chain.

This is intended. In PoS and PoW, stakeholders are unable to choose who benefits from securing the blockchain. dPoS allows stakeholders to choose who profits from the act of securing the blockchain, that way the blockchain can hire employees. Whoever can provide the most value or do the most work for the stakeholders will win the job. This allows stakeholders to "hire employees" who do development, marketing, documentation, user support on the forums, web development, etc.

Who secures the blockchain in a PoS system should be the currency holders.  The motives of those who secure the chain should be aligned with the holders of the currency.  Bitshares' DPoS breaks this notion, intentionally.

Also, who are you to decide what the "original intent" of crypto is or isn't? Technology is opinion and religious agnostic.

I'm going to make this really simple for you:

https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Genesis_block

The Times 03/Jan/2009 Chancellor on brink of second bailout for banks

All cryptocurrencies do not expose their holders the same systematic risk that exists in Bitshares' bitAssets.  That's right Bitshares simply does not lose over 50% of its value in one day.  It loses 34% of its value in one day like we just saw a few days ago.

You are being hypocritical here. Many cryptocurrencies have introduced features which have inherent "systematic risks", yet you are not attacking them. Even the cryptocurrency you champion, Nxt has introduce systematic risks in a number of features it has implemented. You couldn't be more hypocritical by pushing this point. Nxt's asset exchange, monetary system, and marketplace expose their shareholders to systematic risks. I see very little to no caveats published along with Nxt's marketing of said features. Bitshares must put a caveat on any and all features that expose shareholders to risk, but Nxt (and all other cryptocurrencies that have similar features that you are not trolling) do not have to make sure these caveats are know. This is just supposed to be common sense, right? Nxt users are so much smarter than Bitshares users, so they automatically know the risks involved and no caveats are needed, right? right?

Assets listed on NXT's asset exchange are of course susceptible to the same scenario occurring from a falling NXT marketcap.  The difference is that NXT assets holders are not contractually entitled to a guaranteed return.  THERE IS NO PEG WITH NXT ASSETS.  Bitshares is going around claiming to have developed a safe, pegged asset market when it is clearly not safe and not pegged.

[brekyrself]

Btw thank you for your kind statements. I also have no animosity towards you. Just sharing openly my thoughts.

You, and the other posted in this thread, seem to be focused on the shortcomings of every facet of Bitshares without considering (or mentioning) the positives that come along with the different technologies that Bitshares is composed of.

BitShares is so diverse in what it purports to do, I haven't had time to compile a detailed analysis. I do know they liedhyped/mislead about the 100,000 TX/s rate of the 2.0 release, and I had to do some research that it really only is about 10 - 100 TX/s realistically as of now.

I will need to spend more time in the future doing a comprehensive analysis of all major coin technology. But for now that would slow me down too much on more urgent work.

I must admit I still have a philosophical bad after taste lingering from my debates/discussions with Daniel Latimer from 2013 in this forum, because he was proposing features which seemed to me to be the antithesis of decentralization, e.g. some thing about paying interest rate to stake holders in a namecoin variant which I explained to him was socialistic and opposite of our goals for End-to-End principled protocols. He dismissed me, as most good socialists do to the ideals of Libertarianism (the true anarchistic kind). So when I read him writing that decentralization is impossible therefor we should make a coin a corporation, I want to puke. I try to believe people can change, but I know rarely they do. I almost got desperate enough recently to consider testing whether I could implement some anonymity for BitShares and get paid for it. But then it only took 3 minutes at their forum to change my mind. Search my old username there "AnonyMint".

I am not accusing scam. Rather I think difference in core philosophy.

I do not think the following is possible in dPoS (I'm not sure about other forms of PoS), because delegates cannot change or set transaction fees by themselves. Transaction fees can only be changed by committee members which are elected by stakeholder vote. Not including a transaction because it doesn't have a certain amount in transaction fees seems silly, because the next honest delegate will do so and the honest delegate will get whatever fees are associated with the transaction. They would basically be giving up free money, putting a big red flag on their witness campaign, and it would be very likely that would get them voted out. Part of the incentive for delegates to stay honest is the future income of blocks produced in the future, although as I stated earlier... even if they are dishonest there is not much they can do other than withhold transactions from blocks (and the transaction would be included in the next block produce by an honest delegate.) The way I understand it, DPoS' main weakness is that all consensus algorithms suffer from.. a 51% attack.

[1] Another scenario is DDoS attack other stake holders when their turn to mine a block, then jack up your transaction fees sky high when its your turn to mine a block.

You forgot my point that the attacker can short the coin. And that delaying transactions is an attack that could cause the share price to crater. Or DDoS attack all the others and then force all transactions on to your block. This is the problem with PoS and DPOS, because the ordering of who will mine is known before the transactions are sent. That is a major flaw compared to PoW.

AnonyMint

Every Friday the BitShares group has a live mumble session with Dan where updates are discussed along with new ideas/comments/concerns.  You mentioned wanting to compile a more detailed analysis, thus what better way to do it but with Dan himself?  The two of you have built quite a reputation in the crypto space and a simple discussion would make a highly educational learning experience for others.

Any chance you could make that happen?

[DecentralizeEconomics]

This is my last free week before school starts

So, I'm just curious Stan... What's it feel like to be literally stealing kids' lunch money?

[TPTB_need_war]

AnonyMint

Every Friday the BitShares group has a live mumble session with Dan where updates are discussed along with new ideas/comments/concerns.  You mentioned wanting to compile a more detailed analysis, thus what better way to do it but with Dan himself?  The two of you have built quite a reputation in the crypto space and a simple discussion would make a highly educational learning experience for others.

Any chance you could make that happen?

My current thought is Dan and Stan prioritize getting things done. Whereas, I prioritize getting a design that I believe in before implementing. They appear to think politics is a protocol and a coin is like a government. There is a core philosophical difference. I have implemented hacks in the past and made a lot of money (e.g. CoolPage was a hack in my opinion even though it fulfilled a market need, I wasn't satisfied that it didn't import general HTML because of a disonance between pixel-aligned layout and HTML in general...and I was never able to think of a way to make the two resonate so that is one reason I stopped working on while I was trying to find a solution and never came back to it after 2001).

I don't think I should try to change Dan, nor would he try to change me. He has implemented a lot and I have implemented not much (just some code, no launched coin).

At this point, I am less interested in being a voice of the community or driving the work of some other group that has philosophical tension with me (e.g. include Monero in that group even though I know they have very smart developers) and more interested in finding a design I believe in and implementing. Because at this point I feel shame for not having delivered a coin (or found a coin to contribute to which I believed in).

I like technical discussions, so a discussion with Dan isn't out-of-the-question, but I think it is not the right priority now. Also I would be in a better position in discussion if I had also accomplished a coin, so that it would look like I am just whining.


Edit: this is where I think politics and government ends up:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EYS647HTgks

[brekyrself]

AnonyMint

Every Friday the BitShares group has a live mumble session with Dan where updates are discussed along with new ideas/comments/concerns.  You mentioned wanting to compile a more detailed analysis, thus what better way to do it but with Dan himself?  The two of you have built quite a reputation in the crypto space and a simple discussion would make a highly educational learning experience for others.

Any chance you could make that happen?

My current thought is Dan and Stan prioritize getting things done. Whereas, I prioritize getting a design that I believe in before implementing. They appear to think politics is a protocol and a coin is like a government. There is a core philosophical difference. I have implemented hacks in the past and made a lot of money (e.g. CoolPage was a hack in my opinion even though it fulfilled a market need, I wasn't satisfied that it didn't import general HTML because of a disonance between pixel-aligned layout and HTML in general...and I was never able to think of a way to make the two resonate so that is one reason I stopped working on while I was trying to find a solution and never came back to it after 2001).

I don't think I should try to change Dan, nor would he try to change me. He has implemented a lot and I have implemented not much (just some code, no launched coin).

At this point, I am less interested in being a voice of the community or driving the work of some other group that has philosophical tension with me (e.g. include Monero in that group even though I know they have very smart developers) and more interested in finding a design I believe in and implementing. Because at this point I feel shame for not having delivered a coin (or found a coin to contribute to which I believed in).

I like technical discussions, so a discussion with Dan isn't out-of-the-question, but I think it is not the right priority now. Also I would be in a better position in discussion if I had also accomplished a coin, so that it would look like I am just whining.

Based on your writings here and other posts, it appears you believe critical mass adoption still lies at the blockchain level instead of apps built upon a blockchain?  Seems all the "2.0" chains are going more for apps (marketplaces, exchanges, social interaction, etc...).

Based on where this began with Bitcoin and where we are now, I am not sure if the average Joe will care about the underlying technology.  We see this everyday with consumer perception and marketing instead of performing due diligence into competitive products.  Unfortunately, average Joe's just want a simple app on their smart mobile phones and cars that drive themselves

[TPTB_need_war]

Based on your writings here and other posts, it appears you believe critical mass adoption still lies at the blockchain level instead of apps built upon a blockchain?  Seems all the "2.0" chains are going more for apps (marketplaces, exchanges, social interaction, etc...).

Based on where this began with Bitcoin and where we are now, I am not sure if the average Joe will care about the underlying technology.  We see this everyday with consumer perception and marketing instead of performing due diligence into competitive products.  Unfortunately, average Joe's just want a simple app on their smart mobile phones and cars that drive themselves

First two quotes:

1. So the decentralized database is a block chain?

2. Does the browser need to run Java applets to do wallet level operations?

3. What is the advantage for the user of a decentralized block chain storage for their tweets? The data is open to display/access to anyone and thus isn't owned by Twitter, so tweets can be displayed by any client, not just through an API authorized by Twitter. Talk about how this creates advantages that users care about? Sounds like it will be used by terrorists so then the government has an incentive to shut it down.

4. How can this remain decentralized if the mining becomes centralized? Seems the same centralization problems that plague crypto currency thus hang over the head of any current block chain design.

5. Why should we think a product that is breaking SEC regulation by selling shares has any long-term future? The government can make an example out of you with SEC action.

Society will converge one one fungible unit. It always works that way. We are not creating apps here. This is money. I realize all the altcoins so far are not really money, but just delusional projects. But if we are talking about widepread adoption, then there will be only one.

Those who deny how history has already shown that there can only be one outcome for money (which is unification on one fungible unit), are in delusion.

Edit: note I am referring to money above. There could end up being multiple viable projects for block chain 2.0 features that are not money.

The entire point of DECENTRALIZED contracts, apps, databases is that they are permissionless. If we don't need the permissionless (End-to-End) principle, then a corporation/government can nearly always do that feature more efficiently and provide more robust servers to the users (e.g. have you scrolled the Facebook timeline lately and see all videos, games, and mesmerizingly addictive content that loads as you scroll it ... it is like a TV with 1000 channels).

DECENTRALIZATION is a threat to the Corporations (and they are the government), thus if a DECENTRALIZED paradigm becomes popular, the government is going to attack it the same as they did Napster.

Thus if your block chain design is not truly permissionless, then you've accomplished nothing.

Ethereum, BitShares, etc are Napsters. Daniel can't figure out how to make something truly decentralized so he argues that we substitute politics and governance for protocol. Sorry I am not inspired by that.

We are still waiting for someone to invent the Gnutella of crypto.

After that we can use that technology to go make the correct block chain for all these 2.0 features.

True DECENTRALIZATION enables the End-to-End Principle which enables grassroots wildfire viral adoption, because developers and others who invest in it are confident that no one owns it (i.e. just like open source, their investment doesn't depend on any third parties), as that is embodied in the definition of the End-to-End Principle.

And besides I've been thinking (since 2013 or 2014 when I first read gmaxwell's Coin Witness thread) the only way to do programmable block chain scalably is ZK-SNARKS. But first I want to perfect the block chain.

Sometimes the turtle and not the hare wins the race.

[StanLarimer]

Funny how so many people think that crypto is limited to only one application.  The ideal design for an autonomous cryptocurrency does not necessarily apply to other business applications, including private applications which have no need to be decentralized at all.  One should avoid imposing a one-size-fits-all set of requirements on every use of the blockchain.  That's way to limiting to its potential and will cause you to miss out on many opportunities to provide the world with something new and useful.

We agree that the application level has huge potential.  BitShares is a real-time platform with a built in decentralized exchange (DEX) as it's first app which also serves as important support infrastructure for many other applications by us and others.  Think of the DEX as an anchor store at a mall where we plan to add and attract other businesses over time.  The platform gets a small share of the fees from each business in exchange for providing and infrastructure and ecosystem that accelerates the time to market for new businesses.

That DEX has a variety of products including Market Pegged Assets (MPA), User Issued Assets (UIA), and Fee Backed Assets (FBA).  But BitShares is not defined by any particular single business or business product.

BitShares meets all our threshold design objectives for a practical engineering solution to a secure self-governing real-time blockchain.  We expect to continue evolution of our free public domain software, but this was not a reason to delay releasing it to the public for others to start building a user base and providing useful services.  It has run for 18 months in two generations without any serious problems.  It is blazing fast, scalable to 1 second transactions and 100,000 transactions per second (when eventually needed), and completely controlled by its token owners proportional to their stake in the system.

We understand that others may have other design criteria, for other applications.

So do we.  

[TPTB_need_war]

Stan, I suggest you not sell the future as you have done in the prior post. Because all this selling the future is potentially getting you in deep trouble with the SEC. Both you and Dan are US citizens as I am, correct. The other flaw of PoS, and especially DPOS and Dash masternodes (as pointed out by smooth et al) is you are paying yourselves via the shares from an enterprise that issued unregistered investment securities and which also requires each stakeholder to register as a money transmitter with FinCIN. I can't fathom how you convinced yourself that you are not going to jail in the future or end having to lick the boots of the SEC as Erik Voorhees did to wiggle out of jail time.

As of now what you have is:

BitShares meets all our threshold design objectives for a practical engineering solution to a secure self-governing real-time blockchain.

You and Dan are intelligent and good with bending words. I am good at drilling down between the lines. What the above sentence means is that you think crypto currency is politics and governance. Others of us think it is permissionless commerce.

If you guys become more aligned to reality and stop the delusion, then I would be more inspired (say to work with you or build apps on top of what you are doing). But for one thing I can't even fathom to support your operation because it appears to be illegal according to the Howey test.

Funny how so many people think that crypto is limited to only one application.  The ideal design for an autonomous cryptocurrency does not necessarily apply to other business applications, including private applications which have no need to be decentralized at all.

Then if you are selling shares in such a corporate development, then register them with the SEC or document your exclusion. Do the required disclosure to investors and those building apps on your platform, so we know the legal and criminal ramifications. Private businesses have to follow the laws. Leading others into potential jail time and not informing them is going to make the court that much more hard on you two brothers.

[StanLarimer]

Stan, I suggest you not sell the future as you have done in the prior post. Because all this selling the future is potentially getting you in deep trouble with the SEC. Both you and Dan are US citizens as I am, correct. The other flaw of PoS, and especially DPOS and Dash masternodes (as pointed out by smooth et al) is you are paying yourselves via the shares from an enterprise that issued unregistered investment securities. I can't fathom how you convinced yourself that you are not going to jail in the future or end having to lick the boots of the SEC as Erik Voorhees did to wiggle out of jail time.

As of now what you have is:

BitShares meets all our threshold design objectives for a practical engineering solution to a secure self-governing real-time blockchain.

You and Dan are intelligent and good with bending words. I am good at drilling down between the lines. What the above sentence means is that you think crypto currency is politics and governance. Others of us think it is permissionless commerce.

If you guys become more aligned to reality and stop the delusion, then I would be more inspired (say to work with you or build apps on top of what you are doing). But for one thing I can't even fathom to support your operation because it appears to be illegal according to the Howey test.

Non sequitur.  We are not designing a cryptocurrency.  We are designing blockchain based accounting software for businesses that offer a variety of financial products. Some need a self-governing model.  You continue to project your preconceptions on our products and then expect us to comply with them.  They only have to meet the business needs of entrepreneurs who choose to use our free software.  There is no intent or need to comply with your particular philosophy - which we agree is valid, but not exclusive.

We are totally aware of the Howey test and have scrupulously avoided engaging in any business governed by it.  Our only activity is developing an open source software toolkit which others have used or are using to deploy their own applications including BitShares, MUSE, PLAY and Identabit.  We do not operate any of these businesses or pay ourselves anything.  We do accept contracts to provide and maintain software for other manned and unmanned entities.  At no time have we sold anything.

[TPTB_need_war]

We are totally aware of the Howey test and have scrupulously avoided engaging in any business governed by it.  Our only activity is developing an open source software toolkit which others have used or are using to deploy their own applications including BitShares, MUSE, PLAY and Identabit.  We do not operate any of these businesses or pay ourselves anything.  We do accept contracts to provide and maintain software for other manned and unmanned entities.  At no time have we sold anything.

1. Have you consulted an attorney and may we know the name of the legal firm standing behind your assertion?

2. I was told by someone (I think smooth?) that there are payments to stake holders and at least with Dash's masternodes some percentage of that gets paid to the developers. How are you and Dan being paid? Somehow you are receiving remuneration for working on this and thus you are part of the enterprise. And it doesn't even matter if you are being paid (that just makes the case more iron clad), because the Howey test has very minimal requirements to ensnare you. Thus I say you or your attorney does not understand the Howey test:

I had read the actual Supreme Court text and not just summary of interpretation. The judgement revolves around the interpretation of the meaning of "investment contract" and it specifically says that there are no specific cases that will preclude the interpretation of the economic reality:

The term 'investment contract' is undefined [...]it had been broadly construed by state courts so as to afford the investing public a full measure of protection. Form was disregarded for substance and emphasis was placed upon economic reality. An investment contract thus came to mean a contract or scheme for 'the placing of capital or laying out of money in a way intended to secure income or profit

So there are no specific rules. The court will look at the economic reality of whether participants were placing of capital or laying out money in expectation of profit. Note that 'capital' might not even mean money. It can include applying their effort, which is a form of human capital. I confirmed this by reading in depth other expert interpretations and subsequent case law.

It appears to me that the court will look at the reasonable expectations of the participants. And always side with protecting the public. Thus my interpretation is if the participants are not investing but just using your tokens, then they don't need to be protected by securities registration. However if your tokens are being invested in by investors expecting a profit, then you need to register then with the SEC. This is why I advised making sure the ecosystem is well diversified asap, so that by the time investors start accumulating the tokens, then it can't be alleged that the investors were basing their investment on the ongoing effort of the original developers of the coin.[...]

But again I am not a lawyer, so you can't cite my posts as legal advice!!

It is very clear that people are investing in BitShares because they are expecting development efforts from you and Dan. Come on that is blatantly obvious. How can you justify that you are not subject to the Howey test  

[StanLarimer]

We have consulted some of the biggest law firms in New York, Washington and Virginia.  I'll refer you to the following white paper.

Members of policy group Coin Center, law firm Perkins Coie as well as Harvard and MIT have released a new working paper that aims to illuminate legal questions surrounding the non-financial use of the bitcoin: 
   

SWARM Working Paper Distributed Networks and the Law.

...and this higher level Coindesk article:  Token Security Research Analyzes Blockchain US Law

These top tier firms explicitly considered Howie and what we and others are doing. Quoting from the above Working Paper:

The nomenclature of “Distributed Organizations” is derived from pre-existing work on these topics. The original concept, a“Decentralized Autonomous Corporation” (DAC),was coined by Daniel Larimer. The second permutation, “Decentralized Autonomous Organization,” (DAO) was coined by Vitalik Buterin. Contrary to the DAC concept , a  DAO does not necessarily pursue its own profit and may represent some sort of collective or non-profit interest. The third phase, “Distributed Collaborative Organizations,” was created by Joel Dietz and refers to a specific type of DAO that provide sits members with a defined set of rights that may be programmatically ensured and linked to the existing legal system.

Cryptonomex does not issue tokens or operate any blockchain.
We publish and maintain open source accounting software that others are free to use for public and private applications.

We also provide consulting services to help others develop public and private blockchains with all kinds of different specs for their own purposes.  This is no different than companies that sell accounting software to banks and firms on wall street.  It is those banks and firms that are regulated.

There are multiple independent software providers contributing to the body of open source software and multiple organizations using it for their own businesses.  We do not restrict, nor are we able to control, what others do with that public domain software.

We scrupulously adhere to this bright line limitation to our activities.

People who use the public domain software are naturally presumed to comply with all applicable regulations in their various jurisdictions.

[TPTB_need_war]

Please name a law firm. How can we believe you?

Also do you have an official legal statement about all this any where on your website?

I am analyzing the rest of your post and will reply shortly.

[TPTB_need_war]

We have consulted some of the biggest law firms in New York, Washington and Virginia.

Okay I read that very long document.

I am claiming you are bullshitting, because if you understood the following working paper, then you would understand it does not state that you no culpability under the Howey test. There is no way an attorney has advised you that you are not culpable.

What it says is that only in the case that non-tradeable tokens are issued for DAOs, does it appear to not be an investment security. Whereas, you guys issues tradeable tokens where there is an expectation of profit and the investors are depending on your development actions to generate the expected gains.

Get a real attorney to advise you and stop bullshitting.

Do you not realize what kind of serious trouble you could be in? Securities law is not a joke. There are many people in Federal prison for violating securities law.

 I'll refer you to the following white paper.

Members of policy group Coin Center, law firm Perkins Coie as well as Harvard and MIT have released a new working paper that aims to illuminate legal questions surrounding the non-financial use of the bitcoin:  
  

SWARM Working Paper Distributed Networks and the Law.

...and this higher level Coindesk article:  Token Security Research Analyzes Blockchain US Law

These top tier firms explicitly considered Howie and what we and others are doing. Quoting from the above Working Paper:

The nomenclature of “Distributed Organizations” is derived from pre-existing work on these topics. The original concept, a“Decentralized Autonomous Corporation” (DAC),was coined by Daniel Larimer. The second permutation, “Decentralized Autonomous Organization,” (DAO) was coined by Vitalik Buterin. Contrary to the DAC concept , a  DAO does not necessarily pursue its own profit and may represent some sort of collective or non-profit interest. The third phase, “Distributed Collaborative Organizations,” was created by Joel Dietz and refers to a specific type of DAO that provide sits members with a defined set of rights that may be programmatically ensured and linked to the existing legal system.

You did not quote any relevant text to our discussion, instead you hype Dan. The mention of Dan there is irrelevant to our discussion. Focus on the legalities of the Howey test.

Cryptonomex does not issue tokens or operate any blockchain.

Dan was involved in the issuance of the tokens. If by now you have created some legal structure to obfuscate the economic reality, the Howey test specifically said those obfuscations of form will be ignored and the economic reality will prevail.

We publish and maintain open source accounting software that others are free to use for public and private applications.

We also provide consulting services to help others develop public and private blockchains with all kinds of different specs for their own purposes.  This is no different than companies that sell accounting software to banks and firms on wall street.  It is those banks and firms that are regulated.

There are multiple independent software providers contributing to the body of open source software and multiple organizations using it for their own businesses.  We do not restrict, nor are we able to control, what others do with that public domain software.

We scrupulously adhere to this bright line limitation to our activities.

People who use the public domain software are naturally presumed to comply with all applicable regulations in their various jurisdictions.

Daniel and you are promoting Bitshares 2.0 all over the place, such as even Let's Talk Bitcoin sitdowns.

The Howey test includes when the investors in the tokens are relying on the promotional efforts of others.

I can't believe you are this clueless.

I see you claim are not indemnifying others who build products on your system. And it appears you haven't even done your legal due diligence. I don't want to get involved in such a potential legal mess. If I am mistaken and you have an official legal document on your website which clarifies matters, then please enlighten me. Also seeing you reveal the name of a respected law firm would also add some credibility to your claims that you should not be subject to the Howey test. I assume you won't lie about that, because I believe that could be illegal to claim you've been advised by a specific legal firm when you haven't.