[ANNOUNCE] Ixcoin - a new Bitcoin fork

[dancupid]

It doesn't actually matter how many cloneCoins are out there - trading between coins is trivial and immediate.
You could have a single client that works on all coins and simply trades between then when you need to shift from one to the other - you wouldn't even need an exchange site. The value of any coin would be determined by the market. Trading could be automated by the client - and you could choose between different trading algorithms or write your own, or do it manually. Your stored value would remain intact irrespective of which coin wins.
A shop accepting bitcoins could also accept any other coin because they can be inter-traded immediately. Digital currencies don't face the barriers to trading that other commodities have.

[smoothie]

It doesn't actually matter how many cloneCoins are out there - trading between coins is trivial and immediate.
You could have a single client that works on all coins and simply trades between then when you need to shift from one to the other - you wouldn't even need an exchange site. The value of any coin would be determined by the market. Trading could be automated by the client - and you could choose between different trading algorithms or write your own, or do it manually. Your stored value would remain intact irrespective of which coin wins.
A shop accepting bitcoins could also accept any other coin because they can be inter-traded immediately. Digital currencies don't face the barriers to trading that other commodities have.

Have you started development of these ideas? I like them...

[NF6X]

It doesn't actually matter how many cloneCoins are out there - trading between coins is trivial and immediate.
You could have a single client that works on all coins and simply trades between then when you need to shift from one to the other - you wouldn't even need an exchange site. The value of any coin would be determined by the market. Trading could be automated by the client - and you could choose between different trading algorithms or write your own, or do it manually. Your stored value would remain intact irrespective of which coin wins.
A shop accepting bitcoins could also accept any other coin because they can be inter-traded immediately. Digital currencies don't face the barriers to trading that other commodities have.

Exactly how would that work?

[indio007]

How are clonecoins not inflationary?

[markm]

Ideally it would work in a distributed, person to person manner.

For example you and each of your friends you trust could each run an IRC bot that knows how much you are willing to sell each type of coin for in terms of each other type of coin, and how many coins of each other type you are willing to buy each type for.

This is basically what my IRC bots were intended for. It knows for example how many UKB I want for a CDN, how many CDN I want for a UKB, how many CDN It can spend on buying UKB and how many UKB it can spend on buying CDN.

The bots actually act kind of like "reserves" for each coin, because whatever you use to buy a certain kind of coin from it it will only use to buy that same kind of coin. So each type of coin it sells builds up "reserves" of the other types of coin with which to "back" it.

You would only bother trading with those friends you trust, and you could further tailor your bot to offer different prices to different people, volume discounts, or whatever tailoring you find appropriate to further your own trading strategy.

-MarkM-

[JoelKatz]

Exactly how would that work?

It's not difficult in principle. Exchanges could advertise a particular exchange rate between two known currencies, then another client could accept that offer. The exchange would then present a signed contract "You send X bitcoins to Y address by time T, and I'll send Z namecoins to address Q (with backup address R)."

The client accepts the contract by validating the terms and the exchange's signature and then funding. The exchange then completes the deal.

If an exchange cheats a client, the client has proof. If a client funds late, the exchange refunds to the backup address.

The biggest problem I see is a client holding onto a contract and then deciding whether to fund it based on movements of the market. There are a lot of ways to fix this. For example, you could have contracts that always permit the exchange to just refund the money. The exchange could build in an extra cushion to cover it for this eventuality. The exchange could require the client to make a non-refundable 1% deposit before it issues a contract, and so on.

[Spacy]

And the rally starts ;-)

Bitparking IXC exchange:
Last Price:   0.00080000    
High:   0.00400000    
Low:   0.00020000    
Volume: 1884.50000000

[Xephan]

Is it really good for the general virtual currency economy as a whole to have this?

I thought one of the fundamental characteristics of Bitcoin was the deflationary aspect, being a limited supply. If we just keep adding alternative currencies for no better purpose than having an alternative, doesn't it the same as printing more paper money?

The way I see it, miners will mine Currency A until it becomes too difficult, and due to the market size, there isn't enough transaction fees to sustain mining. So bulk of them then switch to Currency B. Now nobody can use Currency A because difficulty A is too high for blocks to get processed efficiently and time to next correction is 2 years down the road. Ditto Currency B and new Currency C, ad nauseum.

[dancupid]

How are clonecoins not inflationary?

cloneCoins can be built on any model you want - the model will be tested by the market (inflationary or otherwise). As long as they are digital then they can be exchanged easily. Even centralized digital currencies would have to compete. Our money would always move to the strongest currency at any time.
Infact the more competing digital currencies there are the easier it will be for us to find a safe haven for our stored value. Exchange just needs to be quick and simple (ideally, invisible for the average user).

[smoothie]

I guess ixcoin was getting too much attention on the general discussion board. Now it has been moved =). Wow `13 pages of discussion in the first 18 hours of posting? LOL

[dancupid]

Is it really good for the general virtual currency economy as a whole to have this?

I thought one of the fundamental characteristics of Bitcoin was the deflationary aspect, being a limited supply. If we just keep adding alternative currencies for no better purpose than having an alternative, doesn't it the same as printing more paper money?

The way I see it, miners will mine Currency A until it becomes too difficult, and due to the market size, there isn't enough transaction fees to sustain mining. So bulk of them then switch to Currency B. Now nobody can use Currency A because difficulty A is too high for blocks to get processed efficiently and time to next correction is 2 years down the road. Ditto Currency B and new Currency C, ad nauseum.

Well it's happening, so that's our brave new world.
If a currency is weak in some way then people won't be interested in it.
Bitcoins difficulty can go down as well as up - if no one is mining bitcoin then it will become easier to mine bitcoin thus attracting miners, who will raise the difficulty again (that's exactly what happened this month - the next difficulty is less than the current difficulty).

Difficulty       1,890,362
Next Difficulty    1,868,794


http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/

[smoothie]

I think this can get a success. There is no need for a IXC/USB exchange, IXC/BTC is sufficient imho.  I think this can reach 0.1USB per IXC ;-)

Is this where you exchange your ixcoins for usb slots/ports?

I want in on that!

[Starlightbreaker]

how to check the difficulty again? 

[bittersweet]

I thought one of the fundamental characteristics of Bitcoin was the deflationary aspect, being a limited supply. If we just keep adding alternative currencies for no better purpose than having an alternative, doesn't it the same as printing more paper money?

No, because you can't send ixcoins to Bitcoin chain or the other way around.
The price of both currencies doesn't depend on each other.

[Xephan]

Well it's happening, so that's our brave new world.
If a currency is weak in some way then people won't be interested in it.
Bitcoins difficulty can go down as well as up - if no one is mining bitcoin then it will become easier to mine bitcoin thus attracting miners, who will raise the difficulty again (that's exactly what happened this month - the next difficulty is less than the current difficulty).

Difficulty       1,890,362
Next Difficulty    1,868,794


http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/

The problem is the time till difficulty correction. Just look at namecoin, the current estimate is Nov before correction, a total of 5 months. Instead of 6 blocks per hour, it's averaged less than 1 per hour. If people start getting tired of long wait time for transactions to be confirmed, then switch to Currency B, it will make the time to next correction longer and longer and eventually currency A will just die.

If there isn't some kind of sensible control/selection, the whole crypto-currency movement will simply go into an infinite loop and eventually dying off as people get sick of the same old shit again and again.

[smoothie]

Well it's happening, so that's our brave new world.
If a currency is weak in some way then people won't be interested in it.
Bitcoins difficulty can go down as well as up - if no one is mining bitcoin then it will become easier to mine bitcoin thus attracting miners, who will raise the difficulty again (that's exactly what happened this month - the next difficulty is less than the current difficulty).

Difficulty       1,890,362
Next Difficulty    1,868,794


http://www.bitcoinwatch.com/

The problem is the time till difficulty correction. Just look at namecoin, the current estimate is Nov before correction, a total of 5 months. Instead of 6 blocks per hour, it's averaged less than 1 per hour. If people start getting tired of long wait time for transactions to be confirmed, then switch to Currency B, it will make the time to next correction longer and longer and eventually currency A will just die.

If there isn't some kind of sensible control/selection, the whole crypto-currency movement will simply go into an infinite loop and eventually dying off as people get sick of the same old shit again and again.

Are you an early adopter to bitcoin? If so, your comments above may explain why you say what you say.

[JoelKatz]

The way I see it, miners will mine Currency A until it becomes too difficult, and due to the market size, there isn't enough transaction fees to sustain mining. So bulk of them then switch to Currency B. Now nobody can use Currency A because difficulty A is too high for blocks to get processed efficiently and time to next correction is 2 years down the road. Ditto Currency B and new Currency C, ad nauseum.

This isn't a huge problem for two reasons:

1) The people who hold a currency will be incentivized to mine it at least enough to get the difficulty back down.

2) Alternative currencies can have any rules they want for when and how difficulty is adjusted.

The alternative currencies, at least for now, are not particularly likely to inflate the supply of bitcoins anywhere near as much as they inflate the demand. Any additional attention placed on virtual peer-to-peer currencies will spillover into more interest in bitcoins.

[Xephan]

Are you an early adopter to bitcoin? If so, your comments above may explain why you say what you say.

No, in fact I've got more ixcoins than I've got Bitcoins!

But just because I'm on the bandwagon as insurance (hey who doesn't want to be an early adopter and hope that IXC will go to US$30 a pop?), doesn't mean that I feel it's good for the crypto-currency movement as a whole.

Furthermore, the fact that the originator quietly mined 500K in advance... just smells rotten to me.

[smoothie]

Are you an early adopter to bitcoin? If so, your comments above may explain why you say what you say.

No, in fact I've got more ixcoins than I've got Bitcoins!

But just because I'm on the bandwagon as insurance (hey who doesn't want to be an early adopter and hope that IXC will go to US$30 a pop?), doesn't mean that I feel it's good for the crypto-currency movement as a whole.

Furthermore, the fact that the originator quietly mined 500K in advance... just smells rotten to me.

Well then Satoshi is 3 times more rotten than this guy since he mined 1.5 million bitcoins before releasing it to the public.

 

[doublec]

Well then Satoshi is 3 times more rotten than this guy since he mined 1.5 million bitcoins before releasing it to the public.

Satoshi announced the bitcoin chain when it was brand spanking new, only the genesis block around.