[ANNOUNCE] Ixcoin - a new Bitcoin fork

[enmaku]

So how much are they worth currently anyway? 0.0001 BTC each? How much is that in NMC? In GRP? In DVC? In MBC? Etc.

Will be good when there are more exchanges that ignore stupid fiat crap in favour of exchanging actual bitcoin-type currencies.

-MarkM-

I agree, we need more coin-for-coin exchanges. I started working on an exchange once upon a time but had too many problems with Dwolla and C# not playing nicely... Perhaps I could modify what I've already got to serve as a BTC/NMC/IXC/GRP/DVC/MBC/etc exchange...

As for current value... While I see no reason to tie USD values to difficulty, I think difficulty could be a great tool for estimating the worth of coin-to-coin exchanges... IXC diff is currently 4, BTC diff is currently 1888786.70535 so it seems to me that 1 IXC should be valued somewhere in the neighborhood of 4/1888786.70535=0.00000212 BTC (rounded to the nearest satoshi). Do the math the other way to find that 1 BTC ~= 472,196.67633750 IXC.

Of course difficulty 4 won't last for long, even with a measly 2 GH/s for the whole pool, so it may be too early to attempt such a valuation.

Of course, we have namecoin to base our math on too... Already-existing resources have shown that historically NMC is valued at about 2/3 (67.9%) of what this ratio says it should be (on average). The argument that namecoins have intrinsic value because of the service offered by the network might be slightly true, but the bitparking exchange has a volume much higher than the actual NMC spent on registrations, so they're likely being traded by speculators much the same as BTC. If we apply this fractional value to IXC we get the following:

1 BTC ~= 320,621.54323316 IXC
1 IXC ~= 0.00000144 BTC

Yeah let's redo the math after a few weeks worth of difficulty updates

[OgNasty]

*OgNotes exist only in the mind of OgNasty

How would one go about purchasing such mind notes?

You send me bitcoins (link in my sig).  I remember your username in my head along with the amount of notes you bought.  They can be redeemed at anytime by simply asking me to forget your name.

Current price, 5BTC. Hurry, they go up to 10BTC in 2 more hours and 10.1BTC by tomorrow!!!

[OgNasty]

Ouch!!!!

But it's not ripoff when the source is free

Sex is free too, but rapists still exist.

[smoothie]

Okay your posting says to use port 8337 but your wiki says use port 8338. Which is it?

Also what is the name of the config file? ixcoin.conf? bitcoin.conf?

Your tutorials dont have proper documentation for anyone to start mining.

How do you expect people to help the project if you don't even have basic documentation?

I'm pretty sure 8337 is for the p2p network and 8338 is for RPC to connect the miner with the daemon.
Also ixcoin.conf.

Edit: Sorry for apparent double posting. There was a post between my 2 responses that has been deleted already.

What would my ixcoin.conf file look like? Post an example please.

rpcuser=youruser
rpcpassword=yourpassword
server=1

and if you want increase your connection limit.
maxconnections=60
I'm just guessing that'd be a good idea in order to decrease rejects because you're more up 2 date with the blockchain.

How many blocks have been solved?? It keeps downloading and downloading to no end.

At the current rate you won't see it "ending" the download. 7418 at the time of writing. They are generated really fast until the difficulty change.

If I am using guiminer would I put the port as 8337 into the mining settings?

What miner are u using?

[InstaGx]

Okay your posting says to use port 8337 but your wiki says use port 8338. Which is it?

Also what is the name of the config file? ixcoin.conf? bitcoin.conf?

Your tutorials dont have proper documentation for anyone to start mining.

How do you expect people to help the project if you don't even have basic documentation?

I'm pretty sure 8337 is for the p2p network and 8338 is for RPC to connect the miner with the daemon.
Also ixcoin.conf.

Edit: Sorry for apparent double posting. There was a post between my 2 responses that has been deleted already.

What would my ixcoin.conf file look like? Post an example please.

rpcuser=youruser
rpcpassword=yourpassword
server=1

and if you want increase your connection limit.
maxconnections=60
I'm just guessing that'd be a good idea in order to decrease rejects because you're more up 2 date with the blockchain.

How many blocks have been solved?? It keeps downloading and downloading to no end.

At the current rate you won't see it "ending" the download. 7418 at the time of writing. They are generated really fast until the difficulty change.

If I am using guiminer would I put the port as 8337 into the mining settings?

What miner are u using?

I'm using DiabloMiner. 8338 is the RPC port for mining clients.

[smoothie]

Okay your posting says to use port 8337 but your wiki says use port 8338. Which is it?

Also what is the name of the config file? ixcoin.conf? bitcoin.conf?

Your tutorials dont have proper documentation for anyone to start mining.

How do you expect people to help the project if you don't even have basic documentation?

ixcoin.conf, point miner to ixcoin.exe, start a solo miner with port 8337. Pretty simple stuff and I have little idea what I'm doing.

When you say point it to ixcoin.exe what do you mean? this is what I have so far using poclbm:

ixcoin.conf:

rpcuser=joe
rpcpassword=blow
server=1
maxconnections=60
rpcport=8337

miner settings:

start /DC:\bitcoin\poclbm_py2exe_20110428 poclbm.exe --user joe --pass=blow --host 192.168.1.10 --port 8337 --device=0 AGGRESSION=11 BFI_INT WORKSIZE=256 --verbose

[Chris Acheson]

You ripoff artists willing to do anything to make a quick buck off the backs of good people and great ideas are basically attacking the bitcoin that we all love so dearly.  I don't see how people like you who are creating competing currencies using the same exact software could be looked at by this community as anything other than the enemy.

Seriously?  You think a fork with no added features is going to divert more than a trivial amount of resources from Bitcoin?  Getting mad over this is just silly.

[Herodes]

I tought of this weeks ago. I wondered for myself, how long would it take for someone to make a new block chain, then get a head start with software and services for a quick 'get rich' scheme? I read in a wiki some weeks ago about which properties a new block chain could have. But here is Ixcoin, with no added benefit over bitcoins. In the future we will probably see a lot of different cryptocurrencies. I also see that http://www.ixcoin.org/ is a complete ripoff of bitcoin.org, at least with a first look. I imagined that the ones coming out with a new blockchain would make it more polished, and have more services already ready. As already pointed out, bitcoin is in it's infancy, so the mere purpose of ixcoin is ofcoure enrichement of the early adopters. If we say that at the moment one ixcoin is worth 0.00000001 btc, and I buy 50000 of these now for that price at 0.0005 btc, and the price rose to say 0.01 btc for 1 ixcoin, my initial 0.0005 investment would turn into a 500 btc, which is about 5000 USD with the current prices. And of course, the earnings would be gigantic if it reached parity with bitcoins. I am sure that stores now accepting bitcoins would easily accept also ixcoins, as I guess few modifications would be needed in the system.

But please, tell me if there's any other reason for this new block chain but personal enrichment.

And also, how do you feel about ripping of the entire (at least parts from the looks of it) bitcoin.org site? I don't know if that's allowed, or what license is used on that site.

So basically, this new cryptocurrency comes with no new features, so basically it is just profiteering gluttons piggybacking on the bitcoin community?

[LeFBI]

But please, tell me if there's any other reason for this new block chain but personal enrichment.

Nope, no other reason. The +580,000 coins that he mined before he even made his project public will stay his.

I wonder when buttcoin.org starts his own chain. i would mine for that!

[newminerr]

I have 300 ix coins already  

[markm]

You ripoff artists willing to do anything to make a quick buck off the backs of good people and great ideas are basically attacking the bitcoin that we all love so dearly.  I don't see how people like you who are creating competing currencies using the same exact software could be looked at by this community as anything other than the enemy.

Seriously?  You think a fork with no added features is going to divert more than a trivial amount of resources from Bitcoin?  Getting mad over this is just silly.

No, he is quite right, it is like that evil Santa guy, draining vast amounts of resources from grownups to finance a bunch of stupid toys for children, when children don't even have jobs for gosh sakes so are the last people on earth that deserve any resources! Sheesh!

-MarkM-

[enmaku]

So basically, this new cryptocurrency comes with no new features, so basically it is just profiteering gluttons piggybacking on the bitcoin community?

It doesn't necessarily need new features (a la namecoin) to be meaningful. This is part of the coolness of open source, if you think something else will work better you're free to modify and distribute those changes. In this case we have someone who's decided that a brief introductory period of crazy steep inflation would be better since we get to the much-touted deflationary part of the curve sooner. I've considered creating the opposite: a variant where inflation occurred so slowly and over such a long span of time that it would be highly unlikely for the increase in supply to ever outpace the increase in demand. Someone who believes inflation is the way to go might create a fork in which nSubsidy never halves and there is no enforced ceiling on the number of coins.

Just because it wasn't a massive feature-packed fork doesn't mean it's not worthwhile. If you don't think a steep but brief inflationary period would be a beneficial change, then don't use ixcoin. If you think bitcon's curve has the wrong shape, duration, etc. then it's an easy matter to change a few key numbers and reshape the graph to your design. Saying this fork is worthless, profiteering, gluttonous, etc because the changes made aren't substantial enough is like arguing that bitcoin wasn't a substantial change because it's deflationary. Sometimes changing a single thing is a big deal.

Also, assuming any of the bounties on the wiki site are real and will actually be paid, it seems to add up that the original 580k that were mined before release are being used as rewards to help move ixcoin's infrastructure forward. Since ixcoin and bitcoin use identical RPC, any products developed for one should work for the other with little to no modification. If an ixcoin bounty leads to the development of something that can be useful to bitcoin then it has helped the bitcoin cause (and vice versa).

No one is stealing anything from anyone. Not any more than beertokens, weeds or any of the other miscellaneous feature-identical branches of bitcoin have anyway.

Edit: Oh, and since such forks tend to be lower difficulty (even lower than namecoin usually) they also make mining more accessible. BTC and NMC both have difficulties so high that CPU mining is more than unprofitable, it's flat out impossible. Let the casuals mine the forks and those of us with dedicated rigs will still mine BTC. There's nothing wrong with forks, we just need a good exchange to support them all.

[bitfoo]

You would have received a lot more mining power if you had support merged mining from the start:

http://dot-bit.org/Merged_Mining

[markm]

Someone who believes inflation is the way to go might create a fork in which nSubsidy never halves and there is no enforced ceiling on the number of coins.

No need, this is the condition in which GRouPcoin has ended up now that DeVCoin has sprung from the tests done using the GRouPcoin code.

Of course it is still feasible to use GRouPcoin to continue development of some of what DeVCoin no longer bothered trying for once it realised what it actually wanted was possible. But in the meanwhile GRouPcoin just keep chugging along as a blockchain different from Bitcoin only in that the 50 coins per block never changes and never ends.

-MarkM-

Edit: oh wait, no ceiling on number of coins? That would have to be settled. I don't think we messed with ceilings yet, and int64 only goes so high in any event so would itself impose a ceiling...

[enmaku]

oh wait, no ceiling on number of coins? That would have to be settled. I don't think we messed with ceilings yet, and int64 only goes so high in any event so would itself impose a ceiling...

So give away 1 coin per block and let maxint be your ceiling. Those two factors combined would give you a LONG time before you have to worry about inflation stopping... And by then int64 might seem as quaint as int defaulting to 8 bit is to us today

[NF6X]

I'll call my cryptocurrency FailCoin. It'll be even better, because I'll make the mining reward 97 coins.

[Chris Acheson]

I wonder when buttcoin.org starts his own chain. i would mine for that!

There are several mentions in the Something Awful Bitcoin thread about starting a "Gooncoin" blockchain.  A lot of them believe that Bitcoin has no future because anyone can clone it and (according to them) devalue the original.  I don't buy it, but I'd like to see them take a shot at it.

[Herodes]

Oh. I will read all the responses since my last posting, but I just checked out the bounties.

The creator of ixcoin really is some sleezebag, not only did he just do some minor modifications to bitcoins and is keeping a whole lot of the ixcoins to himself, but he also wants to rely on everybody else to do the dirty work, ie. create software, like a ixcoin <> bitcoin exchange for instance, and how does he want to pay for this work? Drumroll... with ixcoins that he mined himself for virtually no cost.

Reminds me a bit about lazy students who has a student assignment and posts on a forum expecting someone else to do all the work for them. If the creator of ixcoin at least had taken the time to sweat over some serious code himself, it would at least from me be given more respect.

But anyone's free to start a new blockchain, so let's see how it develops!

[markm]

Hey now be fair, it is only armchair critics who have been speculating that Ixcoins are only worth 0.0001 of a Bitcoin.

For all we know the holder of the initial 580,000 plans to "back" them with 5800 or 58000 Bitcoins once the exchange opens.

It would be useful though to know ahead of time what exactly the amount is at which he plans to buy early coins, so we can maybe plan to open the exchange with his hoard of Bitcoins already in place ready to buy more Ixcoins than anyone but him actually has, so as to establish a clear floor on the value.

-MarkM-

[Herodes]

So basically, this new cryptocurrency comes with no new features, so basically it is just profiteering gluttons piggybacking on the bitcoin community?

...snip...

Interesting post this. I'd give you a karma point for this post, as it was valuable to this discussion and gave (at least for me) some new light to it. However, there's no karma vote button on this forum. It's true that software developed for ixcoin or any other variant probably would be beneficial for bitcoin, but I don't see how it can be attractive to collect ixcoin bounties as they're worth nothing at the moment. It must only be if they'd recieve value in the future, only then would it make sense to collect ixcoins at the moment.

I did a quick calculation of the bounties given at the moment:

First Gambling service to support IXC payments    500 IXC
First shared hosting service to support IXC payments    500 IXC
First Gift Card service to support IXC payments    500 IXC
First VPN service to support IXC payments    500 IXC
First VPS service to support IXC payments    500 IXC
Getting shops/organisations to accept Ixcoin    25,000 IXC
Volunteers: Code contributors    10,000 IXC
Ixcoin Stats Page    2,000 IXC
Ixcoin Logos    2,000 IXC
Volunteer: Bounty Manager    2,000 IXC
Volunteers: Github/Sourceforge Admins    10,000 IXC
Volunteer: Mac distro maintainer    2,000 IXC
Volunteer: Wiki Contributors    10,000 IXC
Volunteer: Wiki admin    2,000 IXC
Volunteers: IRC admins - 5,000 IXC    2,000 IXC
Volunteer: Forum admins    10,000 IXC
Volunteer: Twitter admin    1,000 IXC
Volunteer: Facebook admin    2,000 IXC
First IXC/USD exchange service with $100,000 30d volume    20,000 IXC
First BTC/USD exchange service    5,000 IXC
First BTC/IXC exchange service with 10,000 BTC 30d volume    20,000 IXC
First BTC/IXC exchange service    5,000 IXC
First web-based Ixcoin block explorer    5,000 IXC
First Ixcoin wallet service    2,000 IXC
First Ixcoin escrow service    2,000 IXC
First pool to reach 500GH/s on Ixcoin blockchain    20,000 IXC
First pool to reach 1,000GH/s on Ixcoin blockchain    50,000 IXC
First tier-3 mining pool to support Ixcoin    2,000 IXC
First tier-2 mining pool to support Ixcoin    5,000 IXC
First tier-1 mining pool to support Ixcoin    10,000 IXC


Total: 228500 IXC

580000 - 228500 = 351500

Which mean the creator sits on ~0,3 million ixcoins. In the case of Sathosi, he actually spent a lot of time writing bitcoin. I can't see what time consuming work has been done by the creator of ixcoin.