[Announce] 6-Week Alt Announcement

[Tobius]

Noticed a few other potential legal hurdles, looking into them. If I can't figure out a way to do this coin in the grace of US law I won't be doing it. Sorry

Idea's currently open to anyone else who wants to make it though...

Also could you explain these?

The main one simply is that it is a currency that, if you will, has an increased usage potential for money laundering. I know the other Cryptos do the same, I just don't know the legality of being the creator of such a currency . . .

Actually, I'm pretty sure it's not officially recognized as a currency atm...

True, in that sense it would be more of a network, system, or service that allows for money laundering.

Well, that's not the point of it...and I'm sure there's at least 1 person that's not think headed enough to not see this

Plus, what exactly would the US government do to you?

1. The creator CAN't take down the network. P2P networks don't work like that
2. It's open source, some guy in X country outside of US juristiction would just fork the code and take up development
3. If the US government actually wanted to do something for the first time in years, why would they go after a small altcoin vs Big Daddy (Bitcoin)

Overall, I don't see how you'd be held to it in any way

[NickCoin]

The coin itself will have a block reward that increases with hashing power.

I can see this causing a problem with value. as more miners come on it could case a surplus in coins. Having more supply than demand could cause a problem with coin valuation. IMHO I think it would be a good idea to put a hard cap on the number of coins possible no matter how high the hash rate gets.

Not really, the law of supply and demand will naturally adjust it to the market's value.
More miners = more coins => less $ per coin => less profitable => Less Miners => more $ per coin => more profitable => More miners again, and so on...

[FreeBit]

If you truly want to make a long-term coin, I would suggest a few things:

[/li]
[li]Not naming it -coin. 'Ripple' sounds much better than 'bitcoin' and is definitely more SciFi/futureish than -coin. It will also help differentiate the new currency among the plethora of alts.[/li]

Yes. No xxx-'coin' anymore ...

I suggest globe. Or something else that could be the name of the money in a cryptomancer scifi novel ...

[Tobius]

Any word on your legal worries?

[ultraimports]

TitCoin!! For pr0n sites ONLY!!

TtC 

[Aggrophobia]

SCR  -  SquareCredit

[MGUK]

Seems interesting.

How much dev work has been done already?

Also, do you have a fixed date for the launch?

Thanks.

For dev work, it's mostly been theoretical, plotting numbers, comparing to market trends. I have started to crack on the source code, but haven't done much there.

Fixed date: nope, when its ready! I want this coin to be built from community ideas, and that might take longer than six weeks to accomplish, depending on what happens I have a tentative date for some time in Mid June . . .

If you've not even started coding yet, I would remove any mention of any release date - don't want to see you do a BFL on us.....


Regarding legal hurdles, I think the currency itself is fine, the legal hurdles are normally set up round the exchanges and the points where it interacts with fiat. If push came to shove, with regards to aiding money laundering, it could be argued that the privacy offered by the system is there as a by product of the security provided through the blockchain data structure.

[spartacus_]

Is this a new coin ?

[BulletCoin]

Is this a new coin ?

I don't know if it makes sense to premine 6 weeks

[jonytk]

Noticed a few other potential legal hurdles, looking into them. If I can't figure out a way to do this coin in the grace of US law I won't be doing it. Sorry

Idea's currently open to anyone else who wants to make it though...

Yes and No, that's the problem with the alt-coins, any kid from 4chan starts his newbiecoin and then it goes nowhere,
no decent homepage
no services (wallets?)
And the MOST important:
no update of the client if there's a bug

if you want something at the level of bitcoin you really need some programmers backing it.

Not the usuall troll from some x country that don't even have a verified paypal account and can't buy a domain...

So you need some $ backing power, you could recover it later by charging fees on the services/webs you create or with ads.
but if there's no services, it will be no different, even if you come with the perfect algorithm that makes your coin
have a constant price against bitcoin that makes it perfect for micropayments.

[nwbitcoin]

I guess the legal issue revolve around the responsibility of ownership as suggested in some of the early US Gov papers a few weeks ago?

Maybe its time to forget calling it a currency, and start calling it a voucher?  Something with no real value, except to use in exchange for goods from other members of the club?

I know that sounds clumsy, but if the worry is how governments are going to deal with altcoins, this could be a good opportunity to revisit the whole definition of what crypto currency is about, and try and take the heat off the whole community?

This is where the removal of the term x coin is a good thing, and lets call it something like a universal voucher?

If we stop pretending that this is the start of a war against the dollar, and really just a way to buy pizza without using Paypal, we might get some more mainstream support?

just my 0.002 BTC!

[Vorksholk]

I have looked into the legal hurdles, mostly involving issues with money laundering, and have decided that this project would not be illegal, and will therefore  be put back onto track.

I of course reserve the right to stop the project again if other issues turn up, but basically it does not seem to be illegal by any current US law. There are laws preventing the creation of a system for money laundering, but the purpose of the coin is NOT to launder money, and arguably cash/printed money could be considered a system with equivalent possibilities for money laundering.

Additionally, any system in which a commodity, currency, or barter is used could be considered a way to launder money, and since money launderers would have to purposely take steps to make the system work for money laundering (mixing services, taint analysis, etc.), it can be said that the system/network itself is not aimed at money laundering.

Therefore, the project is back on, and scheduled for late June. Thanks!!

[Vorksholk]

A bit of the explanation to the economics behind the coin (also in OP):

With a square root reward, the early starting difficulty would not provide significant coinage, so the first hour people would not have a huge advantage.
With the square root reward, ASIC market manipulation is reduced. If ASIC devices are created, if they outpace the network 10:1, they will only increase the block reward by ~3.3 or so. For all of the investment in ASIC hardware, this seems about right.

While it is true that the coin supply per minute would increase over time, so would the user base. If you have a community of 100 people, then $100 in circulation might be enough. However, if you have a community of 10,000 people, they would have to share that $10,000 in the standard Bitcoin model. This causes inflation of the value of each dollar, so each of the 100 people who had on average $1 is now much more rich, as that resource should be $0.01 per person. However, if the 100 person community grew to 10,000 people, but the coinage in circulation was grown to $10,000, the people who were originally in that village don't have anything over the newcommers, as would occur with a linear model. However, if the new 10,000 people village had $3,000, then the dollar would be worth more than it was in the day of the 100 person community, but would still not be as painful to join for late arrivers, and ensures a more fair distribution of resources inside of the community, keeping up production rates to scale in a non-linear fasion with demand has some interesting, yet-to-be-tested economic effects in supply/demand economics, but my personal guess is that the currency will act as if it had a "buffer" against rapid increases and decreases of price, apart from speculation.

One issue that arises is that, while the money supply increases, block mining turns from a "I made the equivalent to a cupcake!" to "I made the equivalent of a new car!?!". This is an interesting side effect, making the block reward less of a job and more of a lottery. However, by the time the block reward is significantly bigger than the starting position, pools will have popped up, and almost all mined blocks will be mined by pools and distributed to users, with a few solominers playing the lottery if they so choose. The same lottery occurs with Bitcoin today, but instead of the number of coins increasing, the value of the coins is increasing at a steady rate, and seems to be currently taking a nap around $115-120.

While the square root may not be the ideal magic value, I feel that it will take the benefits of both sides: reducing inflation while increasing fairness.

I will hold a public poll for the name of the currency in the next week or so. If you have additional suggestions, please enter them in this thread within the next day or two!

[daHavok]

Gonna watch on this one 

[yacoin]

Definitely!

[Rex_Heston]

I have looked into the legal hurdles, mostly involving issues with money laundering, and have decided that this project would not be illegal, and will therefore  be put back onto track.

I of course reserve the right to stop the project again if other issues turn up, but basically it does not seem to be illegal by any current US law. There are laws preventing the creation of a system for money laundering, but the purpose of the coin is NOT to launder money, and arguably cash/printed money could be considered a system with equivalent possibilities for money laundering.

Additionally, any system in which a commodity, currency, or barter is used could be considered a way to launder money, and since money launderers would have to purposely take steps to make the system work for money laundering (mixing services, taint analysis, etc.), it can be said that the system/network itself is not aimed at money laundering.

Therefore, the project is back on, and scheduled for late June. Thanks!!

Great to see that you have figured out the legal issues. I would also think that Mens Rea would apply to this situation, if it were to come up in a court of law, i.e., one's intent determines whether a crime has been committed. Since your intent is not to create a money-laundering operation, you likely would not be held liable for such.

I'm not a lawyer, so don't take any of what I just said as gospel. I'm not going down with you if the G-Man come-a-knockin' at your door.

[Vorksholk]

I have looked into the legal hurdles, mostly involving issues with money laundering, and have decided that this project would not be illegal, and will therefore  be put back onto track.

I of course reserve the right to stop the project again if other issues turn up, but basically it does not seem to be illegal by any current US law. There are laws preventing the creation of a system for money laundering, but the purpose of the coin is NOT to launder money, and arguably cash/printed money could be considered a system with equivalent possibilities for money laundering.

Additionally, any system in which a commodity, currency, or barter is used could be considered a way to launder money, and since money launderers would have to purposely take steps to make the system work for money laundering (mixing services, taint analysis, etc.), it can be said that the system/network itself is not aimed at money laundering.

Therefore, the project is back on, and scheduled for late June. Thanks!!

Great to see that you have figured out the legal issues. I would also think that Mens Rea would apply to this situation, if it were to come up in a court of law, i.e., one's intent determines whether a crime has been committed. Since your intent is not to create a money-laundering operation, you likely would not be held liable for such.

I'm not a lawyer, so don't take any of what I just said as gospel. I'm not going down with you if the G-Man come-a-knockin' at your door.

Haha, I'm with you in ideology. The coin is just like a knife or a gun. If I make them and do my best to make them safe and used for their intended purpose and someone does something bad with it, it isn't on my shoulders. The coin's intention is to be a currency used to exchange goods for a credit in a central-faith system (currency backed by a faith by the users of the currency, much like the US Dollar), and a person has to take additional steps to launder money with it.

[defaced]

Cool idea, let me know if you wnt help.

[termhn]

So.... This hasn't been posted in for about 6 months. What ever happened to it?

[r3wt]

So.... This hasn't been posted in for about 6 months. What ever happened to it?

about 4 million shit coins thats what happened