I've been hovering around on this forum for a while now and I am heavily invested in DRK . To say it's been a wild ride (in regards to the pricing extremes) would obviously be an understatement, but that's all part of the excitement of being involved in something so revolutionary. What I'm picking up though so clearly, when you consider the many varying viewpoints about DRK and anon-crypto in general, is a distinct lack of understanding by some of our more infamous participants on this thread as to what privacy and anonymity actually means at this point in humanity's development.
I'd just like to articulate a couple of key aspects around this which may help some who're very negatively vocal on here obtain a greater understanding of why privacy and anonymity of financial transactions is so important.
The world in 2014 is not the same as it was even just a few years ago. The twin disasters (from the perspective of most governments and their spy/spook agencies) of the Julian Assange/Wikileaks and Edward Snowden/NSA exposure have highlighted to us just how incredibly deep, systemic and widespread is the monitoring of other governments' and citizens' private communications and transactions. It's likely that what we learned in all that uncovering is but the tip of the iceberg. When you look at some of the programs and initiatives going on like the daily state-sponsored assassination of militants in distant lands via remote controlled drones and the incredibly draconian alterations to freedom-of-speech rights curtailing journalists' ability to operate without transgressing some anti-terrorism laws, you can see that Big Brother is just getting bigger and bigger and bigger. And Mr & Mrs Joe Public are completely and utterly clueless that their rights to live freely in functioning democracies are slowly being whittled away. Like the frog in the proverbial slowly heating water, most people are blissfully unaware that "freedom" is being eroded bit by little bit by forces that are so well disguised and so entrenched, there's almost no comprehension of the dangers facing society from within the task master mega-behemoth governments we've supposedly "voted" to protect us. There is an Orwellian undercurrent going on that is making themes portrayed in fiction like Animal Farm, 1984 and V for Vendetta ever more likely.
What I hear again and again from one of our more vocal criticisers on here are thoughts along the lines of "Corporations aren't going to use Darkcoin. There's just no way they'll trust some unknown crypto currency" and "The government's not going to allow it" an "You guys are kidding yourselves if you think this could become mainstream". Against a backdrop of regulated banking, mainstream financial services and the juggernaut payment processors such as Visa, Mastercard, Western Union, yes absolutely, Darkcoin looks about as likely to succeed in this area as any other little known "techie style" technological breakthrough. But this is where the short-term thinking that's not taking in the bigger picture is so flawed. Every new technology that's ever been developed that disrupts currently entrenched markets and processes goes through several phases:
1. Some brilliant person comes up with the idea and develops early proof-of-concept examples;
2. A whole bunch of early adopters are inspired and jump into the ring to be involved and support it;
3. As it starts to take off, hundreds of people who want part of the action get involved too (but they're often very impatient, want results immediately and start mouthing off like they're experts even though no one's likely to have guaranteed them anything);
4. The technology begins to be noticed by the mainstream and corporations/governments who will potentially have their revenues heavily affected by it and hence start jockeying for position to regulate/control it or kill it off altogether;
5. Lots of serious money starts flooding in and prices go to the moon but (due to classic pyramid expansion) crashes happen as substantial numbers of those who got in in early get out with astounding profits and thousands of people suffer serious losses by walking away from their investments;
6. But meanwhile, the original visionary and early supporters stay the course and keep beavering away;
7. After vast numbers of the public end up very wary and distrustful of whatever the new technology is, people that do "get it" work away on associated products/services and an eco-system around the new technology starts to develop;
8. Before long it's being talked about positively again and then mainstream organisations start adopting it (but this can take years/decades even);
9. It's then on TV, in films, in newspapers, in supermarkets (thinks iTunes pre-paid cards for example);
10. It's then so ubiquitous and no one can even imagine why they thought it was something to be so fearful of (think Internet banking/shopping).
Now, after more than 30 years working in the IT industry (I started my career driving a van around fixing Digital Equipment Corporation PDP-11s; a realm not too many of you would know about I would think) I have seen the cycle I've described above play out many times. What's different with Darkcoin is the tectonic shifts going on in regards to huge overbearing governments that have cooked the books with money printing (QE I,II,III is over $4tril now), ZIRP (zero interest rate policy) and created welfare states with a sense of entitlement within the population that's like nothing that's ever existed in the history of man. These tectonic shifts in society and how governments "govern" are going to facilitate all new desires to within many people to take charge of one's personal finances and prevent the ever deepening scrutiny. Deep down underneath the pat little nightly newscast financial summary of the Dow, the S&P 500, the gold price, how much a barrel of oil is and what the exchange rate is of wherever you are against the US$, is manipulation, control, subversion and domination that is beyond anything Mr & Mrs Joe Public has any comprehension of, nor indeed desire to know about. "Bread and circuses" for the middle classes keep our governments able to function with almost complete immunity, while the vast gulf between the haves and have-nots just widens. Massive change though is but moments away, especially in light of this house-of-cards economic fragility courtesy of central bankers who have completely ruined the world economy's potential to self-heal. Privacy and anonymity are nice notions at the moment but very soon they're going to be must-haves. What might look somewhat dubious at the moment (and even the name "Darkcoin" conjures up illegalities at first mention' my 16 year old daughter's response when I was explaining it to her was "that sounds dodgy") is going to move through the phases I've highlighted above and become a standard.
Like others that have posted overviews of their thinking on DRK, (and I particularly like bigrcanada's summary below), I'm in this for the long haul. It doesn't mean DRK is a sure thing, but based on what I know is going on and what's going to (eventually) become important to everyday people, the strategy the DRK team have, I think is sound and will carry DRK well into the future. Some of the negative voices on here are speaking from a perspective of this week, next week, and maybe the week after (if they can stop their aggressive abuse hurling for more than an hour to have a think about things). Come on....much longer term thinking is fundamental with this. The movement of DRK's price at this juncture is nowhere near as important as the development of, what's looking like, the soundest and most substantial anonymous payment architecture ever developed. I've read the white papers and overviews of most of the anon coins and I truly believe what Even Duffield and his team are pulling together here is truly ground breaking. If he's as good an entrepreneur and project manager as he is a developer, it's highly likely RC4 won't be released for weeks yet. I've worked on large software development projects and know what's involved with distributed teams and testing. The amount of pressure being postulated here by people that clearly have no idea is appalling (one the main offenders; you know who you are; how about you just calm down about the price dropping and let this anon coin develop along the time-frame it needs for such a revolutionary concept?)
The very best thing we can do is let those guys do their job and do it well. It's imperative that RC4 is rock solid (as much as can be expected; there will be issues) and confidence is built in the strong and substantial foundation of Darkcoin.
Shojayxt... im going to give you the same respect back. First off, im going to assume that your fairly intuitive, and would figure that why would a person like me be on here. You would probably guess that i to have my agenda sort of speak. i did some very indept research and became acquainted to Evan and Internet Ape and what the plan was going to be back in January, though they had been working on it already alot earlier.
As part of my own private crypto investment group... we spent alot of time discussing not only darkcoin but several other potential coins. It became evident that nothing had the robust vision that was being purposed by darkcoin. we had as a collective a vast experience base in crypto investments. One of the requirements we had was that we were looking for long term solution to wto specific concerns to us, security, anonymous transactions as well as a look to coming out with real world solutions for the retail and merchant space. Our collective groups background is from IT and software engineering , mine was having developed a software billing system for at&t and MCI, to retail merchants, investment advisors and even a doctor. This gave us a great prospective on what it would take resource wise, to tackle this. We were also aware of what the development cycle would be like and the hurdles that were going to come.
To be honest... couple of things that irritated us was the advertising of firm dates on deliverables as we knew those virtually meant nothing due to the nature of what was being proposed. the other thing that worried us was the the meteoric price raise. We could fore tell that this was going to be a recipe for trouble... and here we are. Obviously no one is thrilled with the price drop that goes with out saying though it was not unexpected.
I think there are those here that have done a deservice to this coin in the short haul buy shouting from roof tops dates and price targets and when those arent met less savey investors start to panic. we had experienced this numerous times in BTC, not certain if your familiar when BTC was at $22 then fell to $3. this happened a number of times to BTC... drove people crazy. We knew what was coming price wise fir dark, because we saw it happen a number if times with Bitcoin.
Do I have doubts about Drk? No way... because the fundamentals are still there that we invested in... is the pricing down trend irritating yes. Doubts, we have non because we've collectively been here before, we know what to expect, people like you doing what your doing.... we've seen it all before... and im sure we'll see many more of you. Let me tell you and those looking to invest on Darkcoin, we knew to stay invested in BTC at that time. We heard many like you ... dump BTC for $3 like your advising to do now. Never Mr. Shojayxt. Your right... im not a moron nor is my investment group, we play to win Shojayxt... and we know exactly what we're doing and why we are amassing darkcoins! History again will prove me right.
Mr. Shojayxt... we're not some kids throwing some dollars around. We are professional investors that know what the hell we're doing. Collectively Between us... we hold a sizable chunk of this coin. And let be me very frank with you Mr. Shojayxt... we didnt invest in this to just run this up to just $50/drk. We can assure you we are in the next few years expecting far, FAR bigger numbers. So to investors in Darkcoin ... this is isnt a pump. You figure out the rest. Richard
bump, worth quoting. Respect for the author.
