[ANNOUNCE] Ixcoin - a new Bitcoin fork

[enmaku]

After thinking about it, the reality is that I have way more ixcoins than I have bitcoins.  So why should I want bitcoins to succeed over ixcoins, even if the creator of ixcoins didn't really add any value, and he reserved a huge chunk for himself?  Ixcoins are functionally no worse than bitcoins.

Except that Metcalfe's Law says that bitcoin is functionally vastly superior.

I'm not sure that necessarily applies in this case.

It might serve as an interesting test, though. I'd be interested to know precisely how many participants p (over time) BTC, NMC and IXC have and compare the exchange rates to the relative values p(B)^2, p(N)^2 and p(I)^2 expressed in Metcalfe's Law. It would at least be an interesting exercise (if I could find the data)

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[TheBanker]

After thinking about it, the reality is that I have way more ixcoins than I have bitcoins.  So why should I want bitcoins to succeed over ixcoins, even if the creator of ixcoins didn't really add any value, and he reserved a huge chunk for himself?  Ixcoins are functionally no worse than bitcoins.

Except that Metcalfe's Law says that bitcoin is functionally vastly superior.

I like that link. Indeed, the power of any virtual currency is the network. What good is a currency (virtual or otherwise) if you can't spend it?

[bansal]

After thinking about it, the reality is that I have way more ixcoins than I have bitcoins.  So why should I want bitcoins to succeed over ixcoins, even if the creator of ixcoins didn't really add any value, and he reserved a huge chunk for himself?  Ixcoins are functionally no worse than bitcoins.

Except that Metcalfe's Law says that bitcoin is functionally vastly superior.

I like that link. Indeed, the power of any virtual currency is the network. What good is a currency (virtual or otherwise) if you can't spend it?

The value here is in the size of the network of merchants that accept the currency as payment.  Although bitcoin has way more users, it has relatively few merchants anyway, although obviously more than ixcoin.  What really needs to be done is to get merchants accepting these types of currencies, instead of just creating a new one.

[gusti]

Couple of things:

First, I want to squash the "Satoshi mined a bunch of bitcoins on his own before releasing the bitcoin chain" idea.  He publicly announced bitcoin version 0.1 six days after he generated the genesis block: January 9, 2009:
  http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg10142.html

According to the block chain history, he generated about 10 blocks total before the announcement.  And we know that he didn't pre-generate blocks because the genesis block contains a quote from the January 3rd Financial Times newspaper.

Second, I have no problem with alternative block chains, I just don't personally like how this particular alternative block chain is being promoted and developed and introduced. In particular, I think it is unfair to keep hundreds of thousands of whatever-coins for yourself, and it is unwise to think that a bitcoin variation that is "almost exactly like bitcoin, only different because... well, just because" will ever have anything more than speculative value.

Perhaps then Satoshi could donate some of his stash of bitcoins to help fund bounties for bitcoin as did Thomas??

Don't you think that designing, creating and programming bitcoin from scratch was not enough donation ?

[smoothie]

Couple of things:

First, I want to squash the "Satoshi mined a bunch of bitcoins on his own before releasing the bitcoin chain" idea.  He publicly announced bitcoin version 0.1 six days after he generated the genesis block: January 9, 2009:
  http://www.mail-archive.com/cryptography@metzdowd.com/msg10142.html

According to the block chain history, he generated about 10 blocks total before the announcement.  And we know that he didn't pre-generate blocks because the genesis block contains a quote from the January 3rd Financial Times newspaper.

Second, I have no problem with alternative block chains, I just don't personally like how this particular alternative block chain is being promoted and developed and introduced. In particular, I think it is unfair to keep hundreds of thousands of whatever-coins for yourself, and it is unwise to think that a bitcoin variation that is "almost exactly like bitcoin, only different because... well, just because" will ever have anything more than speculative value.

Perhaps then Satoshi could donate some of his stash of bitcoins to help fund bounties for bitcoin as did Thomas??

Don't you think that designing, creating and programming bitcoin from scratch was not enough donation ?

Nope.

[kjj]

After thinking about it, the reality is that I have way more ixcoins than I have bitcoins.  So why should I want bitcoins to succeed over ixcoins, even if the creator of ixcoins didn't really add any value, and he reserved a huge chunk for himself?  Ixcoins are functionally no worse than bitcoins.

Except that Metcalfe's Law says that bitcoin is functionally vastly superior.

I'm not sure that necessarily applies in this case.

Metcalfe's Law is often used in a figurative sense, even though he was talking about physical boxes trading bits with each other.

The analogy is pretty easy to figure out.  The network I'm talking about here isn't just the nodes pushing blocks and transactions around, it is the network of people and businesses that grew up around the software network.

[bansal]

After thinking about it, the reality is that I have way more ixcoins than I have bitcoins.  So why should I want bitcoins to succeed over ixcoins, even if the creator of ixcoins didn't really add any value, and he reserved a huge chunk for himself?  Ixcoins are functionally no worse than bitcoins.

Except that Metcalfe's Law says that bitcoin is functionally vastly superior.

I'm not sure that necessarily applies in this case.

Metcalfe's Law is often used in a figurative sense, even though he was talking about physical boxes trading bits with each other.

The analogy is pretty easy to figure out.  The network I'm talking about here isn't just the nodes pushing blocks and transactions around, it is the network of people and businesses that grew up around the software network.

Yeah the real value is businesses, of which bitcoin has relatively few.  It wouldn't be that hard for ixcoin or any other copycat currency to catch up at this point in that regard.

[smoothie]

After thinking about it, the reality is that I have way more ixcoins than I have bitcoins.  So why should I want bitcoins to succeed over ixcoins, even if the creator of ixcoins didn't really add any value, and he reserved a huge chunk for himself?  Ixcoins are functionally no worse than bitcoins.

Except that Metcalfe's Law says that bitcoin is functionally vastly superior.

I'm not sure that necessarily applies in this case.

Metcalfe's Law is often used in a figurative sense, even though he was talking about physical boxes trading bits with each other.

The analogy is pretty easy to figure out.  The network I'm talking about here isn't just the nodes pushing blocks and transactions around, it is the network of people and businesses that grew up around the software network.

Yeah the real value is businesses, of which bitcoin has relatively few.  It wouldn't be that hard for ixcoin or any other copycat currency to catch up at this point in that regard.

Good point. How many merchants accept bitcion currently?

[nmat]

Good point. How many merchants accept bitcion currently?

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

[Yanz]

I threw this together real quick. I think it works.
it's like blockexplorer but for ixcoin. all the links say 'bitcoin' but i pointed it at the ixcoin chain so its actually showing ixcoin info.

http://buttoncommand.net:2750/

Neat! http://ixcoin.net/ will point there for a little while.

thanks for that. how did you get it to mask up the weird port and the domain name?

It's called an iframe lol

Ahahaha, I should've just done a inspect element.

Anyways, I've changed the references to ixcoin. nethash is currently not working...it locks up the server for some reason.

[smoothie]

One of the things that made ixcoin popular (even if only briefly) is the fact that it has a GUI. Namecoin still does not have this and it does make interest harder to capture when everything is command line.

User-friendliness & Usability is one of the goals of any software project.

[Tasty Champa]

After thinking about it, the reality is that I have way more ixcoins than I have bitcoins.  So why should I want bitcoins to succeed over ixcoins, even if the creator of ixcoins didn't really add any value, and he reserved a huge chunk for himself?  Ixcoins are functionally no worse than bitcoins.

Except that Metcalfe's Law says that bitcoin is functionally vastly superior.

I'm not sure that necessarily applies in this case.

Metcalfe's Law is often used in a figurative sense, even though he was talking about physical boxes trading bits with each other.

The analogy is pretty easy to figure out.  The network I'm talking about here isn't just the nodes pushing blocks and transactions around, it is the network of people and businesses that grew up around the software network.

Yeah the real value is businesses, of which bitcoin has relatively few.  It wouldn't be that hard for ixcoin or any other copycat currency to catch up at this point in that regard.

Good point. How many merchants accept bitcion currently?

Seriously??? XD
i can't believe this got so deep with the logic a couple of you are showing.

dudes all you have to do.
you convert your "ixcoins" to "bitcoins" and THEN you can buy your drugs! XD

[enmaku]

So here's my latest bit of analysis:

We can approximate an "instantaneous" difficulty if we know the current network hashrate as follows:
Difficulty ~= Hashrate * 0.13969625
If we assume the 133,367 MH/s currently operating on the only IXC pool to be the entire (or at least the majority of) network hashrate then that gives us an estimated difficulty of ~18631 once we get past the "initial climb" difficulties. Assuming this difficulty holds (which it won't) that would require IXC to trade for about 0.005137 BTC each in order for them to be exactly as profitable as bitcoins. At current difficulty of 4096, breakeven value is around 0.001 BTC each. Given that these are the bounds between which price seems to fluctuate, I feel pretty confident in those estimations.

Realistically we won't get breakeven values under normal circumstances, but if we use NMC as an example, they tend to average around 68% of their breakeven value, so we should expect an instantaneous value for IXC somewhere around 0.0035 BTC

Of course there's a lot of assumptions there:
1. 133,367 MH/s is the total network speed - it's not, but with no better tools it's an ok guess
2. The same ratios that hold for NMC will hold for IXC - probably not true as NMC has added value
3. Price follows difficulty - it seems to be the other way 'round actually (but they ARE usefully related for "instantaneous" math)

Does anyone have anything else to add or spot any other flaws in my logic/math?

[Clipse]

Why go through all these hoops?

bitcoinx.com can do it for you, input difficulty as 4096 and hashrate, it comes out to 0.00053 @ 1024 diff thus now at 4096 you need to get atleast 0.00212 per namecoin to be even with bitcoin mining/price.

The price atm is mostly trailing around 0.002 which makes it just as profitable if not slightly less profitable considering trading fees involved to convert to BTC on the ixcoin exchange.

The previous 1024 and below were really profitable

[enmaku]

Why go through all these hoops?

bitcoinx.com can do it for you, input difficulty as 4096 and hashrate, it comes out to 0.00053 @ 1024 diff thus now at 4096 you need to get atleast 0.00212 per namecoin to be even with bitcoin mining/price.

The price atm is mostly trailing around 0.002 which makes it just as profitable if not slightly less profitable considering trading fees involved to convert to BTC on the ixcoin exchange.

The previous 1024 and below were really profitable

Does that math take into account that each found block is worth 96 coins instead of 50? I've not used that site, but in most cases the online calculators do not allow you to change that value...

[doublec]

Edit: ok, strike that..it seems the hash rate is oscillating wildly...I'm sure you guys can think of several scenarios as to why this is happening.

It's a pool statistics bug. When the pool finds a block it cleans out the information it uses the calculate the hash rate, so it drops until there's enough to compute it again.

[Crs]

1. Pointing my machine to Ixcoin.
2. Buying lots of ixcoins
...
3. Profit?

[kano]

Actually I can think of a very great use of this to the Bitcoin world.

It has been mentioned before, but seriously it would be worth attempting a network takeover and seeing if it is possible.

Are there any grounds to say someone can't try it?
Those grounds could be considered the same as those for creating this blockchain:
An attempt to make money and nothing more.

And yet it would also work well as a threat test for the Bitcoin block chain.
It's all nice in theory but when tried in the real world it helps make the problem seem more real.

Certainly not something anyone but a large company/government could do to Bitcoin (currently something like 13Th/s)
but to this one it could be worth trying to prove proof of concept for considering the security of Bitcoin ...

[Clipse]

Why go through all these hoops?

bitcoinx.com can do it for you, input difficulty as 4096 and hashrate, it comes out to 0.00053 @ 1024 diff thus now at 4096 you need to get atleast 0.00212 per namecoin to be even with bitcoin mining/price.

The price atm is mostly trailing around 0.002 which makes it just as profitable if not slightly less profitable considering trading fees involved to convert to BTC on the ixcoin exchange.

The previous 1024 and below were really profitable

Does that math take into account that each found block is worth 96 coins instead of 50? I've not used that site, but in most cases the online calculators do not allow you to change that value...

It calculates based on individual coins, block count doesnt matter.

[enmaku]

Why go through all these hoops?

bitcoinx.com can do it for you, input difficulty as 4096 and hashrate, it comes out to 0.00053 @ 1024 diff thus now at 4096 you need to get atleast 0.00212 per namecoin to be even with bitcoin mining/price.

The price atm is mostly trailing around 0.002 which makes it just as profitable if not slightly less profitable considering trading fees involved to convert to BTC on the ixcoin exchange.

The previous 1024 and below were really profitable

Does that math take into account that each found block is worth 96 coins instead of 50? I've not used that site, but in most cases the online calculators do not allow you to change that value...

It calculates based on individual coins, block count doesnt matter.

Yes it does... Difficulty determines how many blocks each MH/s will get you, if you don't account for the fact that an IXC block gives 1.92 times the coin reward your math will be skewed. If they traded 1:1 and had the same exact difficulty rating, it would be almost twice as profitable to mine IXC because of the coin difference. It'll also screw up your inflation calculations and just about everything else (7200 new BTC every day compared to 13,824 IXC - which is kind of the whole point). Calculations based on difficulty and hashrate have results in # of blocks, which must then be translated into a given # of coins. We must compare coins to coins, not blocks to blocks if we're to have accurate numbers...