Wanted - Programmer for 2 new alt-coins (BOUNTY - 5oz of silver OR BTC)

[michaelmclees]

A. Ok, lets use a different example. If i sent you a gold bar thats the exact same size and weight as a Pamp 1kg, would you accept it? No markings, no certifications at all.

B. This is not trading in dollars. What about uncirculated bars vs circulated bars? What about bars with non-gold elements attached to them? Sure you're receiving a full 1 oz gold bar...with 5 grams of chemicals that cant be taken off.

Your solution: "Melting down the bars and reminting them would be the absolute best option to make everything uniform and equal. If not, then no one would be willing to trade their higher premium bars for lower premium bars in the long run. Every USD dollar is still worth 1 USD regardless if it is bent, folded, has markings, or has been stained. The only way to devalue a USD is if you were to cut off part of it. That is not the same for metals. Matte finish silver rounds do not go for the same rate as mirror finish silver rounds. Until everything is equal, this concept will only be a fantasy. I would support this if it was possible.

A - If you sent me a 1kg gold bar I would give you the equivalent GDC.  Why wouldn't I?  What are you not understanding?

B - In what world is a 1oz gold bar going to have 5 grams of chemicals attached to it?  What is it, an 18 karat gold bar?  It's like you keep asking me nonsensical questions, and despite my attempts to give you sensible answers, still you persist.

"OK, here's a tough one for you...  Say I give you a 1oz gold coin.  But then you test it and it turns out... there's only .5oz of gold in it.  The rest is lead!  Will you give me 1GDC?"

What do you think?  Why would I?

Why would I give you 1GDC for .5oz of gold?  This would quickly put me in hot water, as everyone would rush to redeem their GDC's and I'd not have enough gold to cover their requests.  Perhaps people don't like my mint, because they prefer traditional looking bars over my bars... which look like gold plated golf balls.  Or they don't like my bars because I've stamped a picture of my face on them.  Who knows?  This would bring the GDC to USD rate down perhaps... but the GDC to physical weight in gold rate would remain the same, at least insofar as it is me doing the trade.  Trade your GDC's for whatever the guy down the road is selling and perhaps he might be able to accommodate your uncirculated, mirror finish PAMP fetish.

[zdarkazn]

A. Ok, lets use a different example. If i sent you a gold bar thats the exact same size and weight as a Pamp 1kg, would you accept it? No markings, no certifications at all.

B. This is not trading in dollars. What about uncirculated bars vs circulated bars? What about bars with non-gold elements attached to them? Sure you're receiving a full 1 oz gold bar...with 5 grams of chemicals that cant be taken off.

Your solution: "Melting down the bars and reminting them would be the absolute best option to make everything uniform and equal. If not, then no one would be willing to trade their higher premium bars for lower premium bars in the long run. Every USD dollar is still worth 1 USD regardless if it is bent, folded, has markings, or has been stained. The only way to devalue a USD is if you were to cut off part of it. That is not the same for metals. Matte finish silver rounds do not go for the same rate as mirror finish silver rounds. Until everything is equal, this concept will only be a fantasy. I would support this if it was possible.

A - If you sent me a 1kg gold bar I would give you the equivalent GDC.  Why wouldn't I?  What are you not understanding?

B - In what world is a 1oz gold bar going to have 5 grams of chemicals attached to it?  What is it, an 18 karat gold bar?  It's like you keep asking me nonsensical questions, and despite my attempts to give you sensible answers, still you persist.

"OK, here's a tough one for you...  Say I give you a 1oz gold coin.  But then you test it and it turns out... there's only .5oz of gold in it.  The rest is lead!  Will you give me 1GDC?"

What do you think?  Why would I?

Why would I give you 1GDC for .5oz of gold?  This would quickly put me in hot water, as everyone would rush to redeem their GDC's and I'd not have enough gold to cover their requests.  Perhaps people don't like my mint, because they prefer traditional looking bars over my bars... which look like gold plated golf balls.  Or they don't like my bars because I've stamped a picture of my face on them.  Who knows?  This would bring the GDC to USD rate down perhaps... but the GDC to physical weight in gold rate would remain the same, at least insofar as it is me doing the trade.  Trade your GDC's for whatever the guy down the road is selling and perhaps he might be able to accommodate your uncirculated, mirror finish PAMP fetish.

Point proven. No need for me to discuss anymore. Good luck.

[michaelmclees]

Good luck.

Thank you.  No hard feelings.   

[zdarkazn]

Good luck.

Thank you.  No hard feelings.   

Of course. Now lets see this in action someday, and while you're at it, make a PDC PTC and RHC too.

[michaelmclees]

If something like this were to take off, I'd have more gold and silver than I care to be responsible for.  No need to include other metals.

[markm]

How much hashing power do you have to secure these blockchains?

Do you have a whole bunch of Avalons or are you waiting on BFL or what?

If you don't have an absolutely massive amount of hash power the whole concept is screwed from the start.

Use Cyclos or Open Transactions or just mysqladmin or something to track your metal, its much more secure.

-MarkM-

[TheSwede75]

Yes! Lets keep publishing dumber and dumber alt coin ideas until no one has any trust for any of the crypto currencies! YAY!

[michaelmclees]

How much hashing power do you have to secure these blockchains?

Do you have a whole bunch of Avalons or are you waiting on BFL or what?

If you don't have an absolutely massive amount of hash power the whole concept is screwed from the start.

Use Cyclos or Open Transactions or just mysqladmin or something to track your metal, its much more secure.

-MarkM-

The idea is that they can be merge mined with Bitcoin.  Because transaction fees are backed by gold and silver and thus highly tradeable, it is in the interest of people to mine GDC and SRC.

[markm]

Have you actually examined how merged mining is actually working to secure chains though?

Even chains that are outright giving away (minting) coins to miners are mostly not getting mined, and every one of the many chains that proposed to pay miners only with transaction fees was forced to quit using blockchains at all because miners bsically just would not mine them.

Even making a Massively Merged Mining pool did not work to get miners, even though such a pool could necessarily pay more than any other pool could pay.

So basically your idea is screwed from the start. Take a look at how much the various currencies are worth that are listed at

http://galaxies.mygamesonline.org/digitalisassets.html

You can there see that even being worth an ounce of gold per coin still is not good enough to make it feasible to use a blockchain, because you just will not get enough miners.

First we need to build massive ASIC farms committed to massively merged mining, only then will it maybe start to look reasonable to use blockchains for currencies that do not let miners make up coins out of thin air.

-MarkM-

[michaelmclees]

This is because most of the coins being merged mined are basically worthless.  I'll spell it out for you.

There is an enormous waiting list at MtGox, people waiting to get their dollars in and out of the exchange.  Let us suppose that SRC exists.

Mr. Silver trader visits me and trades me a 100oz silver bar for 100SRC, with which he may do what he likes.  What he likes to do is sell his SRC's to the general public for dollars.  So now Bitcoin-noob comes into his little shop and pays $25 per SRC.  He buys 4 of them.  Mr. Silver now has $100, with which he may buy more silver (just a little over 4 ounces at the current rate) and he's ready to make another deposit with me.  Now I'm holding 104.1oz of silver and Mr. Silver holds 100.1SRC.  Bitcoin-noob now goes to an exchange and trades his SRC for BTC.  When he's ready to cash out, he trades his BTC back to SRC and visits either me or Mr. Silver to get back to dollars.

It sounds convoluted, but it can be done basically anonymously in a matter of hours.

See how everyone is making out like bandits, especially when compared to what we do now?

Multiply this for large amounts of gold and silver and with trades happening all the time.  The transaction fees start to add up.

Even with half of transaction fees going to me for administrative costs, it should be clear that miners have every incentive to mine, especially as my reserve ramps up.

[markm]

You didn't look at the link I provided by the sound of it.

Also, you left out of your story the fact that anyone can at any time with almost trivial effort doublespend your coins because you do not have anywhere near even half of the Avalons that are in the field, nor thousands of GPUs.

A lot of the time miners have been looking at 5% to 10% increased earnings simply by merging in namecoin, devcoin and ixcoin, yet how many actually do so? A pathetically small fraction of them. Now look at how much money bitcoin mining brings in, and realise 5% to 10% of that will not be enough to get miners for your coin(s).

3600 bitcoins per day times $150 or so per bitcoin is about $540,000 per day. Even just one percent of that is $5400 per day, and only a 1% bonus for merged mining is way way too small to attract miners. 5% isn't enough even, and that would be $27000 per day.

You will have to pay miners a lot more than $27000 per day to get even a fraction of miners to mine your coins. Namecoin, Devcoin, plus Ixcoin between them have often offered miners 10% or more added income per day and that has not been enough to attract enough miners.

Blockchains are insanely expensive. SInce everyone has to trust you anyway it is absolutely insane to add $54000 or more PER DAY of overhead to your business just for the privilege of making your accounting vulnerable to attackers armed with ASICs and FPGAs and GPUs.

It is insane, you might as well just ship all the gold and silver you can find directly to Anon.

If you absolutely have to use a blockchain, research "coloured coins" or "colored coins".

-MarkM-

[michaelmclees]

And you didn't read my reply, obviously.  You're saying, "See how people aren't merge mining IOCoin?  That's proof that people won't merge mine Goldcoin."

There's no demand for IOCoin.  There is demand for physical gold.

See the difference?

[markm]

I am not talking about I0coins, I am talking about coins worth hundreds or thousands of dollars per coin.

You evidently did not actually go look up at the link I gave to the price charts of various coins that were forced, by lack of miners, to not use blockchains until some future day when it does become feasible to provide enough hashing power to secure them.

Try for example looking at the "asset values expressed in terms of bitcoin" tables, and notice how many are worth far more than one bitcoin, and notice that those are the very ones that have been forced, by lack of hashing COMBINED WITH BEING TOO VALUABLE TO NOT BE SECURED, to not use blockchains anymore.

It is BECAUSE THEY ARE VALUABLE that they cannot afford, like the coins you refer to as "worthless", to NOT HAVE MINERS.

I am talking about hundreds or thousands of dollars per coin.

Long long ago almost all of them surpassed bitcoin in value, which was an immense surprise as I had always assumed bitcoin would always be worth more than any of them. Yet due to all the hacks and bad press and so on, bitcoin crashed for a couple of years allowing all those coins - even bitnickels, intended to be worth only 1/20 of a coin by virtue of having twenty times as many (total of 420 million) in existence - to rise above bitcoin in price.

Sure it is fine to have relatively-worthless coins merged mined, since they are relatively not worth attacking or double-spending.

But if you want coins worth an ounce of gold each, that is comparable to being worth a Martian BotCoin each, and THAT is enough value that MERGED MINING IS TOO INSECURE.

-MarkM-

[Bitcoin Oz]

Just use ripple. Thats what its designed for.

[michaelmclees]

When I google "martian botcoin" I find that it is basically a currency for a strange sci-fi/fantasy game.  OK, fair enough.  I'm a little curious about how widely this game is played.

I simply have a difficult time believing that the issuers and users of BitNickels or Martian Botcoins are treating or thinking of their stashes of loot as anything like money.  It would be like me issuing a currency MMCOIN on Open Transactions and having a close friend buy .00000001 MMCOIN's for 1 dollar.  Then I issue 100 MMCOIN's to myself.

I'm a billionaire now?  MMCOIN's are so valuable that I cannot afford to have them secured by a blockchain?  Yeah right.

It could well be that Open Transactions would work well for what I'm doing, but that isn't what I'm advertising, is it?

[markm]

United Kingdom Britcoins (UKB) were originally intended to be worth one British Pound (GBP) each, and Canadian DIgital Notes (CDN) were originally intended to be worth one Canadian Dollar (CAD) each.

What happened though was they found that trying to keep the value that low was simply making the Martians richer, as the Martians eagerly bought up any CDN or UKB being sold that cheap. A whole lot of the richness of the Martians comes from the foolish attempts of the Canucks and the Brits to keep their own coins down in price so as to try to stay at par with the corresponding fiat they had originally hoped to be able to stay at par with. They would sell off a bunch of their coins whenever the price rose above the corresponding fiat, and the Martians would buy them, until the Martians ended up owning more of their coins than they did!

So in the end they gave up trying to make a limited edition coin (21 million only in existence) stay at par with freely printable fiat,

By that time they were among the lowest valued, per coin, of the lot. GMC, GRF, MBC, by not trying to artificially keep their value low, easily outstripped them in value.

-MarkM-

[michaelmclees]

But this basically occurred in a fictional game, no?

Can you really trust the issuers of all these currencies to make good on their obligations?  If I go to the issuer of UKB with 10 million UKB's, at any point, could I leave his home with a suitcase full of 10 million pounds?

[markm]

Now you are touching upon matters of jurisdiction, and some jurisdictions on the planet known as Earth might not recognise money transmitter licenses issued by Martians of the planet known as M5 and maybe vice-versa. So you are getting into the whole concept of sovereignty, and whose sovereignty is "fictional" versus whose sovereignty is "non-fictional" according to whom, and who recognises who as fictional or as non-fictional.

Let us bear in mind that  the planet known as Earth is widely considered to be mythical or fictional, so although Earthlings (if they existed) could scoff at Martians as being fictional, Martians are equally well able to claim that Earthlings are fictional.

For some corps, it might seem more practical to base their operations on  the planet known as M5, where they are able to operate without being interfered with by the mythical "Earthlings", instead of basing themselves on a mythical/fictional planet such as  the planet known as Earth.

-MarkM-

[michaelmclees]

I think you've just jumped the shark.

[markm]

Well once you have gotten all your appropriate licenses in place to operate a virtual currency backed by precious metals we can look again at how best to implement such a currency. Until then it is all kind of fictional / hypothetical isn't it?

-MarkM-