The following post is from Alexander, specifically, and as such is a more personal response to the issues brought up in the last few pages.
In my whitepaper, I outlined some specific problems with the Cryptocoin community. These problems were the origin of the crude pump and dump schemes, lack of financial innovation, frequency of scams, and complete absence of professionalism in the Cryptocoin world. The qualities that propagate these problems were closely tied to a lack of financial literacy. A good example of this was in
our response to a legitimate (if inflammatory) set of concerns on page 20. However, much to our surprise, 8 pages later, from the same users,
we have been sent a significantly less-informed response, which seems to ignore the explanations previously, that repeats the same concerns but with more intensity. In essence, this is not how support works. We address concerns with the coin, and if they disagree, it is the pejorative of the poster to move on from our coin or to change their opinion, something that
the poster already did, claiming to even want to support our coin! For the next 8 pages, the world was a happy place, but it was not to last, as the following was posted by this same user:
I also find it alarming that we are trusting the developers with
$1,897,500 dollars worth of BTC if people believe their projections.
Opening exchange rates are expected at .00115 BTC/AIR, based off of current regression to the mean trends of .00002000 bitcoin-equivalent-per-kilohash-per-day, assuming a moderate difficulty (2 to 20) before entering an exchange. A higher launch difficulty will result in a higher exchange rate to return to the competitive mean.
This means nothing by the way. Whats their incentive to keep going? Why not just sell all the coins and retire to the bahamas?
People, we really need to ask ourselves; is a coin with a cap of 1,000,000,000 going to be released and be worth 0.00115 off the spot?
That would put the market cap at 1,150,000 BTC.... thats $759,000,000
ON DAY ONE!Reeeaaaallly?
A coin with:
- No new features
- No accountability (identification, recourse)
- No valid use except as a speculative asset
Come on people, lets be realistic here. A few satoshi's sure, but .00115 BTC/AIR?
Which was a very quick slippery slope into the following post, replied by the same user after his concerns were not immediately reciprocated:
If you believe the premine " is exclusively for an investment pool that will day trade the coin ..." then this coin may be the best investment in recent cryptocoins, with the potential to grow in value better than others, as long as the DEV´s keep doing their job.
If you believe the DEV's will dump their 2,500,000 coins at the best opportunity, then it will be just like almost any other coin out there, and I have lost nothing other than a little bit of my time.
I choose to believe the first option, as the DEV seems to be enlightened and intelligent enough see that long term rewards are better than the short term option, however I might be wrong and it wouldn't be the first time to happen.
Hoping for the best....but prepared for the worst!
But when and if that fund grows to $10,000,000 then what?
When we start getting in to that kind of money, things like morals and ethics have no place.
This is blind trust. In fact this is less than blind trust because for 50,000 years we know humans have been humans and will continue to be humans. This is trusting that just this once, humans will not be human.
Yes, this is the time guys.
You will have "lost nothing" but allowed someone to gain everything through untruthful means and profit off of your apathy. You will have supported a great fruitless endeavor. Don't demand accountability, because that would be hard. Who wants to make the world a better place anyway.
We KNOW scammers are gonna scam, but lets just trust them not to because they promised us 
On any other coin thread, this post would not look out of place. But given the heightened level of discussion on this thread, the professionalism in questions and responses, and the very honest and clear actions of both the users and the development team, there is no excuse for ignorance. We expect our users to learn from the questions and answers we provide, and at the very least, to then move past our coin and not impede on the abilities of others to use it. What we have here is a regression, despite our best efforts.
While it would be appropriate to deal with the (almost artful) amount of incorrect, unlikely, and inaccurate claims nad statements made in those series of posts, we have allowed it to propagate on the thread to gauge our users's responses. Which, generally, are extremely favorable. Issues with the false measurement of "market capitalization" and the claims against the price were pointed out immediately.
Therefore, much of our response would simply be quoting previous responses. However, we took a different approach, and waited to see if our users would notice the weaknesses of the post. From the following quotes, it’s clear that they did:
Which means that our development team was genuinely impressed with the user’s responses,
1. It has shown a remarkable awareness of the situation the cryptocoin community faces, and makes us proud that the adopters of our coin at this stage are cognizant of the difference between inflammatory comments and meaningful criticism.
2. It demonstrates that, on general, those who have decided to support this currency are able to have rational discussion over emotional responses.
It is entirely possible that the intent behind that post was to prompt a drop in the price, by instituting fear in one of the AIRcoin users, in hopes to a quick return. To this, we return to the Whitepaper:
Every miner, every trader, every developer, every speculator and every investor who ever once decided that Cryptocurrencies might have even the smallest chance at independent success, if they sit idle and watch the next few months go by, is conceding their financial future to the same system that has ruled for over a century. The very system that Bitcoin was created to defy.
But this isn't a problem with just one user. This is a problem with the entire community, and the general lack of financial experience within it. This necessitated an entire section in the whitepaper to explain, and even that explanation is barely adequate to explain the severity of emotion-driven irrational actions in this market, and the damaging effect it has on a coin's survival. It is the root of economic failures in these cryptocoins, a developer team cannot even begin to consider skills it takes to make a coin thrive if they cannot rationally maintain order, intelligence, and most of all, constant improvement among their user base.
AIRcoin is not just an improvement to code, economics, or concept of cryptocurrencies: we aim to improve the knowledge and discussion around the coins. That is very clearly outlined in our declarations of intent. Memes, loud words, weak speech, and a lack of financial knowledge will not work here. In this thread, in this world, if you want to try to make claims against our coin, you need to come prepared.
It is our opinion, that of the AIRcoin team, that the intent of that post was not to offer reasonable criticism (that occurred in the earlier post) but to attempt to scare an owner of AIRcoin into selling at a very low price.
Now, our direct response to the post in question:
Claiming that more and more secure hashing algorithm would make the coin more economically viable is like claiming the US government would improve the dollar’s exchange rate by making it more difficult to counterfeit. The assumption is extremely weak compared to much larger market movements (inflation) that the cryptocurrency community largely ignores. There are many benefits to an extremely complicated hashing equation, but those benefits are past the marginal return for innovation in this community, and compared to the complete lack of economic innovation.
Does this mean that we won’t experiment with the possibility? Of course not, we will
definitely engage in emerging advances to the code. But for this week, this period and second in time, and this coin, we think that our energy is best spent providing the best business, interest, and service around the coin that is possible and reliable, and experimentation can happen once sufficient improvement to the market and community has happened.
• No new features
We’ve released plenty of information about the things this coin does that no other coin has even attempted, much less been successful at. If the sole feature a user cares about is the mining statistics (which are one very small part of what makes a currency economically viable) then they will be blinded to the real innovations behind this coin. This is addressed as a problem with the community in our whitepaper.
• No accountability (identification, recourse)
What we are doing is likely to upset the old regime of scams. We use anonymous names to protect ourselves, but our accountability can be found in the exchange rate and block explorer, where any user can watch the market movements and wallet movements to keep us in check.
Additionally, the word "recourse" is not properly used here.
Webster defines it as: "an opportunity or choice to use or do something in order to deal with a problem or situation" If the problem is a failure of our development team to maintain this coin, you are left with the same options that users of almost any other coin (easily 90% of hte existing coins, maybe more) to do with your coins. That is, by definition, your recourse. Additionally, you could offer to provide the same services we failed at, if you are capable of it.
• No valid use except as a speculative asset
All currency is purely a speculative asset, including Bitcoin and Litecoin. Value comes from the expectation it will be exchangeable (and expectation of the costs of that exchange) in the future, which is speculation. Since AIRcoin doesn’t have any transaction fees, it’s likely that it would have even more valid use than most other coins, since it would have a baseline expected return equal to or greater than 0, since there is not guaranteed loss through transfer.
So this, as well, is not correct.
Come on people, lets be realistic here. A few satoshi's sure, but .00115 BTC/AIR?
Anyone who mined AIRcoin and wishes to sell below ~.00115 BTC/AIR (or higher depending on the difficulty when they mined the coins) is going to take a loss compared to mining any other coin. So if you do believe that coins will be sold at those prices (remember, the price is determined by what people will buy and sell at and nothing else) then you have basically told every miner of our coin that they are wasting their time and energy. I think they, as well as our team, would strongly disagree with that. This same relationship between ease of mining and per-coin exchange rate is a very STRONG assumption, and can be observed on both ends of the spectrum with 42Coin and Dogecoin.
So only having few satoshi’s of worth isn’t incorrect as much as it is certainly extremely unlikely, and those who would have to act to cause such a thing to happen have strong incentive not to do so.
I don't really doubt that they will follow through on their promise at least initially.
But when and if that fund grows to $10,000,000 then what?
With the business minds we have, we can generate $10,000,000 of capital through they booming Venture Capitalist market. Anything over $1,000,000 seems a lot to the normal person, but in the financial world, it's not a fortune: it's the price of entry.
To quote the Whitepaper again,
The reflection is awful, and in this point of view, how trifling, how ridiculous, do the little paltry cavilings of a few weak or interested men appear, when weighed against the business of a world.
Unfortunately, the post descends quickly after this:
This is blind trust. In fact this is less than blind trust because for 50,000 years we know humans have been humans and will continue to be humans. This is trusting that just this once, humans will not be human.
Claiming what is “human” nature and not “human” nature is absolutely absurd when it comes to finance, which is wholly an unnaturally phenomena. I am certain they said the same thing when the first Banks, the First Corporations, the First governments, the First Books, the First Businessmen, the First Tribes, and the First Religions were created. “We can’t trust humans to do anything other than sleep, eat, and procreate until they die! That’s all they can be certain of doing in the last 50,000 years!” It is at this point where the post forgets all reason.
Pump and dump scams are easy, have little profit, and will only speed up the process before this entire market is closed down by regulation. The real profit is in maintaining the strongest internally supported coin, until that coin become an exception to the regulatory position. This would both prolong the period of deregulation and improve the entire community’s status in comparison to the rest of the far more organized financial world.
This doesn’t warrant a real response, but I hope that in retrospect, it becomes clear that it doesn’t, in any way, improve the criticism of the post.
So we wish to make a statement to our users and their concerns: We will respond. We will discuss it, and if you bring up good points, our development team will learn from it. But if you do not advance from our response, and you return with an even less informed response, we will note it and we will act on it as well. If your concerns are already addressed professionally and reasonably, either support it or leave it. You do the community no good if your further posts are less helpful than your earlier ones, and there are currencies that do, indeed, need your criticism far more. We want to provide as much help and service as we possibly can.
- Alexander
Some quick responses to other questions or comments:hope this manages to get on an exchange soon. Need more hash
If this is listed on an exchange with a trading API multipools will rape it.
This coin has no protection from multipools.
It is going to be very hard for the devs to follow through with their plan if there is a constant downward pressure on the price.
We need better KGW implementation, some algoritm similar to what DarkCoin has - controlled by Moore's law, extremely efficient, effectively will rule multis out.
AGREE 100%
We are looking into altering the KGW implementation for the next wallet version, and as stated before, upon the stability of AIRcoin and the proof of its ability to function as intended in this market, we will begin experimenting with new hashing formulas through secondary coins. We wish to innovate combat against the negative effects of multipools through market-oriented systems, rather than mining-oriented ones, but we will approach the issue from both sides.
I have no trouble agreeing with you X, when money pile up, ethics usually start to go down. True.... but not always.
What is your solution then? How are we going to reward the DEV Team? or to you think that creating and supporting something should not be rewarded? Don't get me wrong TheMightyX, I understand your concerns and share them, but what would be a better solution?
No matter what, you always need to trust at a point, trust that the doctor will not forget a pair of scissors inside your belly, trust that your wife doesn´t fool around with some other guy (or girl), trust that your kid is not smoking something funny, you name it.
This is no different, and if the DEV's make a pile of money, as long as i make some too, i´m happy. After all it was their idea, their initiative, their work... i´m just following along.
I don't think that a dumping-out option at some future point is the intended mean of reward for the dev team
- on the other hand It's clear that they will reward themselves for the work done.
@teamaircoin: How do you reward yourself for the work done? Is there some kind of salary? Do you intend to use the pre mined funds for this? Sorry if this maybe is covered somewhere in whitepaper or somewhere in this thread and I'm not aware at the moment...
This is actually a very good question, and is not covered explicitly in the whitepaper. The development team is paid a salary, and income is generated through market-making (buying low, selling high on our own coin to help speed up sales and close market spreads, allowing a higher trading volume) and through % gains over our quotas for the investing pool. This is how we
use the premine to make money, but do not
sell the premine. It's the most economically stable way to pay our team, but of course requires experience and knowledge of finance that isn't readily accessible to most people.
You're missing the part where the number of initial coins needs to be 1 billion so that their 0.25% premine seems small when actually it is more coins than will be mined during the first 2.5 years of mining.
It has been explained before, in many posts, but to summarize: a smaller premine (and/or faster coin dispersal rate) would kill this coin. It would require such incredibly high trading returns on our tend that the exchange rate would continually fall against efforts. It requires that we have strong leverage to be able to provide the market services that make this coin effective.
If you would prefer a coin that doesn't have any premine, but also doesn't provide any liquidity services, market making, re-investment, or stabilization against pumps and dumps, there are many, many coins like that already, and they are out there for you. The more coins that are created like that however, the more damage the community will suffer long-term.
hope this manages to get on an exchange soon. Need more hash
If this is listed on an exchange with a trading API multipools will rape it.
This coin has no protection from multipools.
It is going to be very hard for the devs to follow through with their plan if there is a constant downward pressure on the price.
We need better KGW implementation, some algoritm similar to what DarkCoin has - controlled by Moore's law, extremely efficient, effectively will rule multis out.
I'm also not sure if the KGW implementataion at this point reacts "quick" enough if a multipool jumps of the ship. Will leave the miners stuck the heights of long block times for days. The Hashrate going down from ~300 to >200, the difficulty took more than one day to readjust, not even clear if this adjustment is finished already. But I think things like that can be readjusted later on also.
On the other hand maybe this is just my subjective conception, this graph tells something different, doesn't it?:
Also what Darkcoin does is an adjustment of the block reward, KGW is on the difficulty, correct me if wrong. And btw - It's not this "moores law thing" what is keeping the multis away at this time but the hashing-algorithm used, right? Aircoin will have other means of adjusting the block reward and this will not be fixed like in darkcoin but can be adjusted on purpose by teamaircoin - correct me if wrong again.
This is a very accurate summary of our views of the situation, and we're working quickly to get our own block reward adjustment algorithms in place. Multipools do not post as much of a threat as ASICs do, in our eyes, but improving both the reward and the adjustment algorithm is an ongoing process.
You know I didn't even consider this until you brought it up. That would put it right at the #2 spot on coinmarketcap. This premine is enormous. The worst are the people who PMd me when I was trying to buy some AIRcoin at first , quoting prices of 0.002 BTC/ AIR ... Unbelievable.
If AIRcoin launched at our current expected rates, the market capitalization would be $1,765,060, or #26 on Coinmarketcap. As pointed out in the first half of this point, TheMightyX is very wrong on the definition and assumptions of what market capitalization means.
Hey you're right, I was tired and didn't think it through there for a second. Marketcap @ 2 million is reasonable, the premine though (even with the intended purpose of facilitating trading) is excessive. It will definitely allow them to manipulate the market as they said they will do - they control 96% of it right now and that control will go down by only about 3% a month at the current rate. Which means that after a year they still control around 62% of all Aircoins in existence (provided that they don't make gains by trading). Don't even know what to think about it anymore, just seems weird.
Since the premine amount is used to manage pump and dump expenditures, it is effectively a mechanism to distribute coins into the market without lowering the exchange rate (or to purchase them back at a higher exchange rate). If we chose a smaller premine, we would have to concede a lower (and decreasing) exchange rate in return. We found this to be unacceptable for an economically viable coin.
However, the entire premine amount will be documented, and is currently available to view in the block explorer. Gains on trading will be released on a regular basis along with data about how the coins have been invested, it is our intention that the more transparency we have on the issue, the greater support (and accountability) we will have from our users.
