IxCoin is a SCAM

[genjix]

Hey,

IxCoin simply has increased the reward for each block from 50 to 96. That means that every 4 years the reward halves so it should eventually reach 42 million.

However the hard coded max value in the code is 21 million. There are checks (see MoneyRange and ProcessBlock) in the source code which haven't been changed to still limit it to 21 million.

Once it reaches 21 million, all new blocks minted by miners (which are still using the same reward) will be all rejected and the network will shut down overnight.

Reasons I now think it's a scam after playing with it:
- They only made one minor modification to the source code (changing 50 -> 96)
- Already mined 400k IxCoins themselves.
- Copied and leveraged bitcoin community with minimal input. Product doesn't have much value on its own.
- wallet.dat is 52mb already. Within a year that will be 3gb. This is not sustainable in terms of computer resources.

Initially I was ambivalent about them, but after talking with the other guys here (at Bitcoin Consultancy), it's looking like a classic pump and dump.

IxCoin: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=36218.0



Also all the devs on the front page of bitcoin.org (me included), got this message:

So... I got this unsolicited email:

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Hi Gavin,

I'm one of the founders of the Ixcoin fork of Bitcoin. If you're
interested in trying out the new blockchain, we set aside a 5,000 IXC
bonus for each of you.

Please email me your IXC addresses if you're interested.

Best regards,

Thomas.
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v2.0.17 (MingW32)

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Ikdb4TK4dVjgc/IZLBVQ5O70sFmaQMbrqqVmS8nI55cxt8ywGBoLofdvQhKwr5kD
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=lct4
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... and I'm trying to figure out why my immediate reaction is "yuck."

I guess I just don't see the point of IxCoin.  I just spent some time looking back through all the original poster's messages, and I don't see any prior discussion of goals of IxCoin, how it should be designed, etc.

If the goal is to let more people be early adopters of a new cyber-currency, then it seems to me giving early bitcoin adopters a bunch of IxCoin goes against that goal.

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[1714009280]

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[pekv2]

Whoa.

[mizerydearia]

Perhaps modify the hardcoded limit to 42 million and push a new version?  Scam is no longer?

Also,

re: creator as early adopter from get go, I just now thought of this: nasakioto generated first 6,000 blocks and then released the blockchain publicly, which at the time of release had a difficulty of 1.  How can 6,000 blocks be generated and still offer difficulty of 1?  Perhaps that means each 2016 blocks generated must be generated at 2 weeks or longer to preserve difficulty of 1.  Thus, 6,000 blocks (or 3 sets of 2016 blocks) must be generated in 6 weeks or 1.5 months.  He ended up generating 6,000 blocks in 3.5 months.

[fitty]

Hey,

IxCoin simply has increased the reward for each block from 50 to 96. That means that every 4 years the reward halves so it should eventually reach 42 million.

However the hard coded max value in the code is 21 million. There are checks (see MoneyRange and ProcessBlock) in the source code which haven't been changed to still limit it to 21 million.

Once it reaches 21 million, all new blocks minted by miners (which are still using the same reward) will be all rejected and the network will shut down overnight.

How is it a scam?

When Bitcoin reaches 21 million all new blocks minted by miners will be rejected.

They fact they didn't raise the max blocks hardly makes it a scam.

[ctoon6]

i dont see why you guys even need to see this. the guy privately mined like 400000 coins before he published it.

[genjix]

Hey,

IxCoin simply has increased the reward for each block from 50 to 96. That means that every 4 years the reward halves so it should eventually reach 42 million.

However the hard coded max value in the code is 21 million. There are checks (see MoneyRange and ProcessBlock) in the source code which haven't been changed to still limit it to 21 million.

Once it reaches 21 million, all new blocks minted by miners (which are still using the same reward) will be all rejected and the network will shut down overnight.

How is it a scam?

When Bitcoin reaches 21 million all new blocks minted by miners will be rejected.

They fact they didn't raise the max blocks hardly makes it a scam.

No, check CreateNewBlock. It calculates the value using GetBlockValue which doesn't hard limit the value to 21 million. This means that the network will break overnight once it reaches 21 million.

[fitty]

Hey,

IxCoin simply has increased the reward for each block from 50 to 96. That means that every 4 years the reward halves so it should eventually reach 42 million.

However the hard coded max value in the code is 21 million. There are checks (see MoneyRange and ProcessBlock) in the source code which haven't been changed to still limit it to 21 million.

Once it reaches 21 million, all new blocks minted by miners (which are still using the same reward) will be all rejected and the network will shut down overnight.

How is it a scam?

When Bitcoin reaches 21 million all new blocks minted by miners will be rejected.

They fact they didn't raise the max blocks hardly makes it a scam.

No, check CreateNewBlock. It calculates the value using GetBlockValue which doesn't hard limit the value to 21 million. This means that the network will break overnight once it reaches 21 million.

So he has like 6-7 years to push a new client with the fix? Or people fork it and make the fix themselves? I mean at least within lets say 5 years.

[dancupid]

Yeah, it's dodgy. But this is off topic - please relocate this post to off-topic so we off-topic people can discuss it freely without fear of the Nazi elite who want to control all we do and think.

[Littleshop]

i dont see why you guys even need to see this. the guy privately mined like 400000 coins before he published it.

That was all I needed as well along with the no improvements.  It might have been an improvement if they REDUCED the block reward by 4 and doubled the speed of blocks.  Maybe.  But the only change they made was actually something most people would point to as going in the wrong direction. 

[genjix]

Yeah, it's dodgy. But this is off topic - please relocate this post to off-topic so we off-topic people can discuss it freely without fear of the Nazi elite who want to control all we do and think.

I'd rather people see this here before more people jump in on this. Already people have been buying lots of them and wasting mining power on generating them.

[enmaku]

i dont see why you guys even need to see this. the guy privately mined like 400000 coins before he published it.

That was all I needed as well along with the no improvements.  It might have been an improvement if they REDUCED the block reward by 4 and doubled the speed of blocks.  Maybe.  But the only change they made was actually something most people would point to as going in the wrong direction. 

Increasing block speed has been discussed. All it would do to double block speed is to halve the security of each block so instead of needing to wait 6 blocks before considering a transaction to be confirmed/secure you'd have to wait 12.

[dancupid]

I'd rather people see this here before more people jump in on this. Already people have been buying lots of them and wasting mining power on generating them.

People can do what they like - I thought that was the point of Bitcoin. This forum doesn't feel like that.  There is an aristocracy here.

[Littleshop]

i dont see why you guys even need to see this. the guy privately mined like 400000 coins before he published it.

That was all I needed as well along with the no improvements.  It might have been an improvement if they REDUCED the block reward by 4 and doubled the speed of blocks.  Maybe.  But the only change they made was actually something most people would point to as going in the wrong direction. 

Increasing block speed has been discussed. All it would do to double block speed is to halve the security of each block so instead of needing to wait 6 blocks before considering a transaction to be confirmed/secure you'd have to wait 12.

Agreed.  But for fast cheap transactions, a faster single confirm would be a benefit.  That is why I said 'Maybe.' above.  
Changes like what I described are a trade off and I think Satoshi made a very good set of choices at where he set them.

The idea of an 'alternate' block chain would make some sense if it had differences that could be positive (maybe not to everyone) in some way.  What they did is make changes that only benefited themselves.  

[Spacy]

I don't see a problem here. Change the code and most of the users will use the new version. Problem solved.

[newminerr]

i dont see why you guys even need to see this. the guy privately mined like 400000 coins before he published it.

That's more than 800BTC worth of money now and it might go more in the future

[Spacy]

Maybe the people here crying loud just want to buy low 

[nmat]

I don't see a problem here. Change the code and most of the users will use the new version. Problem solved.

Does that imply that the current chain is invalid, or we just need to update the client?

[mizerydearia]

re: creator as early adopter from get go, I just now thought of this: nasakioto generated first 6,000 blocks and then released the blockchain publicly, which at the time of release had a difficulty of 1.  How can 6,000 blocks be generated and still offer difficulty of 1?  Perhaps that means each 2016 blocks generated must be generated at 2 weeks or longer to preserve difficulty of 1.  Thus, 6,000 blocks (or 3 sets of 2016 blocks) must be generated in 6 weeks or 1.5 months.  He ended up generating 6,000 blocks in 3.5 months.

[qikaifu]

Yes, you're right.

[nelisky]

re: creator as early adopter from get go, I just now thought of this: nasakioto generated first 6,000 blocks and then released the blockchain publicly, which at the time of release had a difficulty of 1.  How can 6,000 blocks be generated and still offer difficulty of 1?  Perhaps that means each 2016 blocks generated must be generated at 2 weeks or longer to preserve difficulty of 1.  Thus, 6,000 blocks (or 3 sets of 2016 blocks) must be generated in 6 weeks or 1.5 months.  He ended up generating 6,000 blocks in 3.5 months.

Or he simply tweaked the timestamps on the miner (he was mining alone!) and made time fold back on itself, managing to generate 6k blocks spanning 3.5 months in an afternoon of watching supernanny.