IxCoin is a SCAM

[Mousepotato]

https://ixchange.bitparking.com

So basically, at current Ixcoin difficulty, in the time it takes me to mine 1 Bitcoin, I could mine about 1000 Ixcoins and sell them for about 2.4 Bitcoins.

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[smoothie]

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-----
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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.

I've got two words for ya: "DONT INVEST"

[ffuentes]

I've got two words for ya: "DONT INVEST"

+1 and a scam for avaricious.

[Steve]

https://ixchange.bitparking.com

So basically, at current Ixcoin difficulty, in the time it takes me to mine 1 Bitcoin, I could mine about 1000 Ixcoins and sell them for about 2.4 Bitcoins.

Nice...if that is true, then it should get arbitraged away *very* quickly.  I think if I had any IxCoins I'd want to sell before that happens.  It's not too often that you can more than double your mining yield like this (but again, it's probably a good idea to act quickly).

[BusmasterDMA]

Right now, no merchants that I know of will accept IxCoins...no exchanges that I know of will trade IxCoins

If they did, I would boycott their services as a matter of principal.

[smoothie]

I've got two words for ya: "DONT INVEST"

+1 and a scam for avaricious.

I've mined them for like a day so I wasn't speaking for myself. I was speaking for those skeptics and late adopters.

 

[smoothie]

Right now, no merchants that I know of will accept IxCoins...no exchanges that I know of will trade IxCoins

If they did, I would boycott their services as a matter of principal.

check this exchange out...

https://ixchange.bitparking.com/main

[ffuentes]

I "create" a new bitcoin fork, I said that I have already 500.000 ixcoins, tell anybody the advantages to make them fall in the trap, I sell enough ixcoins and run!

[BusmasterDMA]

Right now, no merchants that I know of will accept IxCoins...no exchanges that I know of will trade IxCoins

If they did, I would boycott their services as a matter of principal.

check this exchange out...

https://ixchange.bitparking.com/main

My point is that if an established Bitcoin exchange were to decide to offer Ixcoin exchanges as well, I would boycott that business altogether.  The same goes for merchants.  As someone else said, this is a blatant attempt at a power grab, nothing more; and I for one shall not support any business that would choose to associate with it.

[YoYa]

Problem with IxCoin is it replicates bitcoin.org waaaayyy too closely. That doesn't sit well.


Tho....that said.....free market! If they can make their model take off, then good luck to them. I doubt they will tho, unless they start innovating in ways that bitcoin doesn't cover.

[enmaku]

https://ixchange.bitparking.com

So basically, at current Ixcoin difficulty, in the time it takes me to mine 1 Bitcoin, I could mine about 1000 Ixcoins and sell them for about 2.4 Bitcoins.

Nice...if that is true, then it should get arbitraged away *very* quickly.  I think if I had any IxCoins I'd want to sell before that happens.  It's not too often that you can more than double your mining yield like this (but again, it's probably a good idea to act quickly).

It's not any different than the brief periods of time where namecoin is more profitable than bitcoin, really. Check out http://tvori.info/bitcoin/charts/ if you're not familiar with this phenomenon. Specifically go to the "all time chart" at the bottom and watch the relationship between the green line (BTC profit) and the blue line (NMC profit). If we had several more popular and well-known forks we might see network hopping as widespread as pool hopping is today. As long as you can determine (in real time) the BTC value of NMC/IXC/whatever and the difficulty of each network, it's trivial to determine where your GPU will make the most cash.

For the record, I do expect the profit differential to be arbitraged away quite quickly, but we probably won't see a stable exchange rate until we see a stable difficulty. Every increase thus far has been a factor of four (currently at 4096) and block times have been well under a minute. With the exception of the brief times when NMC mining is more profitable, NMC seems to have a stable value of 0.03 BTC or so, meaning that it's usually worth about 68% of what you'd get for the same time/equipment mining BTC. We're still in the "initial climb" phase of difficulty with IXC, but I'd expect a similar result once the initial climb is over.

Only time will tell of course.

As for the "value" IXC adds? I'm not so sure that too many exist, certainly less value than namecoin - but one look at the trade volume on bitparking's NMC exchange compared with the actual number of .bit registrations should tell you it's as much a speculative commodity as bitcoin. Speculators in NMC are betting that its potential as a DNS replacement will make it more valuable in the future, and with IXC the bet is that hitting a deflationary curve earlier than BTC will increase its relative value as it will be deflating while BTC is still inflating.

If nothing else, trading BTC for IXC or NMC and then trading them back goes a long way toward anonymizing non-generated BTC since the IXC and NMC exchanges don't deal in regular fiat and therefore don't care so much about who their customers are.

[BusmasterDMA]

Right now, no merchants that I know of will accept IxCoins...no exchanges that I know of will trade IxCoins

If they did, I would boycott their services as a matter of principal.

check this exchange out...

https://ixchange.bitparking.com/main

My point is that if an established Bitcoin exchange were to decide to offer Ixcoin exchanges as well, I would boycott that business altogether.  The same goes for merchants.  As someone else said, this is a blatant attempt at a power grab, nothing more; and I for one shall not support any business that would choose to associate with it.

That is about as childish and effective of when my 13 year old jr high daughter runs to her room, slams the door and ignores me LOL

I'm not expecting a personal boycott to have any significant effect.  My participation in the economy is quite a small drop in the bucket.  The whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth, thus I choose to distance myself from it.  I'm not calling for anyone else to boycott anything.  I just wanted to express my opinion as everyone else has already done.

[smoothie]

Right now, no merchants that I know of will accept IxCoins...no exchanges that I know of will trade IxCoins

If they did, I would boycott their services as a matter of principal.

check this exchange out...

https://ixchange.bitparking.com/main

My point is that if an established Bitcoin exchange were to decide to offer Ixcoin exchanges as well, I would boycott that business altogether.  The same goes for merchants.  As someone else said, this is a blatant attempt at a power grab, nothing more; and I for one shall not support any business that would choose to associate with it.

DoubleC did you read that above? He doesn't think your exchange is legitimate.

[smoothie]

Right now, no merchants that I know of will accept IxCoins...no exchanges that I know of will trade IxCoins

If they did, I would boycott their services as a matter of principal.

check this exchange out...

https://ixchange.bitparking.com/main

My point is that if an established Bitcoin exchange were to decide to offer Ixcoin exchanges as well, I would boycott that business altogether.  The same goes for merchants.  As someone else said, this is a blatant attempt at a power grab, nothing more; and I for one shall not support any business that would choose to associate with it.

That is about as childish and effective of when my 13 year old jr high daughter runs to her room, slams the door and ignores me LOL

I'm not expecting a personal boycott to have any significant effect.  My participation in the economy is quite a small drop in the bucket.  The whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth, thus I choose to distance myself from it.  I'm not calling for anyone else to boycott anything.  I just wanted to express my opinion as everyone else has already done.

Please, then take your words and stay away from it and threads that even have the word "IXCOIN" in it.

[indio007]

I'm not expecting a personal boycott to have any significant effect.  My participation in the economy is quite a small drop in the bucket.  The whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth, thus I choose to distance myself from it.  I'm not calling for anyone else to boycott anything.  I just wanted to express my opinion as everyone else has already done.

I did the same thing. I mined a couple thousand at difficulty 4 and just felt dirty. Short term profit might be a long term loss.

[nmat]

DoubleC did you read that above? He doesn't think your exchange is legitimate.

From what I understand, he is just saying that he won't support it. I won't support it either because I don't believe in ixcoins. It's nothing personal. It's just that not everything is about profit for me. I was like the 4th person to comment the thread so I could have been a really early adopter, but I chose not to. I don't like it.

I really like the idea behind bitcoins and I want it to succeed. With ixcoins...Well, I just see profit profit profit. Nothing new.

[Steve]

https://ixchange.bitparking.com

So basically, at current Ixcoin difficulty, in the time it takes me to mine 1 Bitcoin, I could mine about 1000 Ixcoins and sell them for about 2.4 Bitcoins.

Nice...if that is true, then it should get arbitraged away *very* quickly.  I think if I had any IxCoins I'd want to sell before that happens.  It's not too often that you can more than double your mining yield like this (but again, it's probably a good idea to act quickly).

It's not any different than the brief periods of time where namecoin is more profitable than bitcoin, really. Check out http://tvori.info/bitcoin/charts/ if you're not familiar with this phenomenon. Specifically go to the "all time chart" at the bottom and watch the relationship between the green line (BTC profit) and the blue line (NMC profit). If we had several more popular and well-known forks we might see network hopping as widespread as pool hopping is today. As long as you can determine (in real time) the BTC value of NMC/IXC/whatever and the difficulty of each network, it's trivial to determine where your GPU will make the most cash.

For the record, I do expect the profit differential to be arbitraged away quite quickly, but we probably won't see a stable exchange rate until we see a stable difficulty. Every increase thus far has been a factor of four (currently at 4096) and block times have been well under a minute. With the exception of the brief times when NMC mining is more profitable, NMC seems to have a stable value of 0.03 BTC or so, meaning that it's usually worth about 68% of what you'd get for the same time/equipment mining BTC. We're still in the "initial climb" phase of difficulty with IXC, but I'd expect a similar result once the initial climb is over.

Only time will tell of course.

As for the "value" IXC adds? I'm not so sure that too many exist, certainly less value than namecoin - but one look at the trade volume on bitparking's NMC exchange compared with the actual number of .bit registrations should tell you it's as much a speculative commodity as bitcoin. Speculators in NMC are betting that its potential as a DNS replacement will make it more valuable in the future, and with IXC the bet is that hitting a deflationary curve earlier than BTC will increase its relative value as it will be deflating while BTC is still inflating.

If nothing else, trading BTC for IXC or NMC and then trading them back goes a long way toward anonymizing non-generated BTC since the IXC and NMC exchanges don't deal in regular fiat and therefore don't care so much about who their customers are.

Excellent Analysis.  So I think you could say that for a new digital currency that offers nothing that is perceived to be inherently more valuable than bitcoin, the upside potential is no greater than bitcoin, while the downside risk is far greater.  Of course, if the perception changes, then this dynamic would invert, but that is a substantial hurdle to overcome.

[BusmasterDMA]

Right now, no merchants that I know of will accept IxCoins...no exchanges that I know of will trade IxCoins

If they did, I would boycott their services as a matter of principal.

check this exchange out...

https://ixchange.bitparking.com/main

My point is that if an established Bitcoin exchange were to decide to offer Ixcoin exchanges as well, I would boycott that business altogether.  The same goes for merchants.  As someone else said, this is a blatant attempt at a power grab, nothing more; and I for one shall not support any business that would choose to associate with it.

That is about as childish and effective of when my 13 year old jr high daughter runs to her room, slams the door and ignores me LOL

I'm not expecting a personal boycott to have any significant effect.  My participation in the economy is quite a small drop in the bucket.  The whole thing leaves a bad taste in my mouth, thus I choose to distance myself from it.  I'm not calling for anyone else to boycott anything.  I just wanted to express my opinion as everyone else has already done.

Please, then take your words and stay away from it and threads that even have the word "IXCOIN" in it.

Note that the thread to which I decided to reply was the thread titled "IxCoin is a SCAM."  I'm not exactly trolling the actual IxCoin threads. 

[Maged]

Here's the thing IxCoin == Bitcoin in every way except the velocity to get to the coin cap (as it seems to me)  Really Bitcoin supporters should like this as it would provide a decent experiment as to what will happen once no new coins can be mined.
Just my 0.00000002 BTC...

No, it wouldn't. You see, Bitcoin weens the mining reward away, allowing it to be slowly replaced with transaction fees. IXCoin does no such thing. One day you are making 96 coins + fees, the next day you only make the fees.

The only thing this experiment tells us is what the initial difficulty should be for a new, competing blockchain.

[ctoon6]

I am not necessarily pro-Ixcoin or anything but I will tell you the trait that will keep it here to stay is simple.  It helps further the cause for anonymity that a significant portion of the early adopters of BTC believed was there... what will happen is people will be shifting their money in and out of NMC, IxC etc.  They will still be making sales and purchases in BTC for blackmarket goods and currency laundering but now they can add several levels of complexity in tracking what they are doing... can it be tracked? yes, but it is just that much harder now.  That is what will keep IxC here to stay so if you don't like it fine, but just be aware as long as there will at minimum be that use it will be around as a viable and exchanged currency.

A later use will likely be to double the liquidity of crypto currency, this value will be seen much later when BTC prices start to get too high, i.e. when 1 BTC is enough to say buy a car etc.  since there will be many more IxCs on the market by then it will likely be picked up for much smaller transactions until it too reaches 1 to 1 ish parity with BTC.

theoretically, that will never happen, there are far more ixcoin than bit coin, almost double