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[BitcoinEXpress]

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[BitcoinTate]

+1

Very solid, well written argument. The idea behind Aurora is brilliant but I still have yet to see any proof this "airdrop" is being carried out honestly. No one seems to know how it is working or who is behind it. Is transparency really to much to ask for?

[poornamelessme]

The thing is, many of the same arguments you use against AUR can be used against bitcoin, as well. Hidden dev, little transparency, unusually large number of coins held by a select few. And there was no infrastructure or merchant acceptance of the coin initially either.

Your argument that AUR looks like a scam is a valid one. Yep, it may all be an elaborate scam. At the same time, there is no proof whatsoever that it is. Do you normally decide innocence or guilt, of regular people you meet on the street, based on how they look or suspicions? And then decide to take action before any crime is committed?

There are a couple of reasons why this may not be a scam:

Dev simply didn't trust any 3rd party to hold the premine. It is a large sum of money, so am not entirely sure what trusted 3rd party would be used anyway. Can you imagine what would happen if the 3rd party walked away with the entire premine?

Dev is unrealistically idealistic, and the money doesn't mean much to him.

Dev is already rich, so cashing out the premine is a drop in a bucket to him.

Again, if you ask me if this coin, or other nation coins, have some devs planning to cash out some of the premine for themselves ... I'd say most likely. I still don't think it gives anyone the right to go ddos pools/fork the coin, just based on this suspicion. And there is a very real possibility that you will do more harm than even a scammy dev would, both to holders of the coin, and to crypto's reputation in general.

[iGotAIDS]

TLDR: YOU (BCX) didn't like the way they launched their coin and took it upon yourself to play crypto-marshall and let the wide-world of [Suspicious link removed] altcoin section know about it.

Reality: Bluster, pomp and circumstance, and the Cryptsy backroom/trollbox stroking eachother's egos and talking about how great it would be if any of their coins were still the center of attention.

What a philanthropist you are! A great service done here!

[Wipeout2097]

These large "premines" should be algorithmically distributed. In other words, the Auroracoin protocol and wallet should have allowed an option to enter one's Icelandic ID and perhaps some 2nd key as challenge provided by national registry, and the network would generate a transaction akeen to (PoS) mining and allocate the 31.8 AUR. Not sure here...

Cryptos are a decentralized, trustless system, and here we still have to trust someone's word.

On a side note, I hope this isn't a "lab's rat experiment" and the end result is indeed the benefit of Icelanders. If a bunch of random foreign guys in internet forums and tech sites have this kind of power over people's finantial safety, and when it happens nobody is careful and only thinks how attack or OTOH how to profit from speculating on AUR or getting page views, then I'm starting to doubt the point of the "free from governments and central authorities" rhetoric

[slapper]

Who are these tech sites that contacted? Do we have names of the correspondents who sent email? Did they receive response that can be verified?

This entire thing looked like a defensive action from a select few in the forums, when no such action was needed. People are getting scammed on a daily basis here in the alt coin section and no one seems to do anything about it, perhaps because for the first time some really good alternative came about and it needed to be quashed.

[illodin]

Being fully 100% transparent without any doubt and managing the drop would've been too much of a challenge. If they pre-announced the authentication method(s) in detail that would've created easier way for scammers to get ready and abuse the system. They would've had to get the software that is used to claim the coins audited by trusted 3rd party, and have that software running on a trusted 3rd party servers so it wouldn't be possible to tamper it, and have the premine cold wallets on the hands of the 3rd party who would periodically send them to the server's hot wallet etc.. just so much stuff that could go wrong and still possible to have a loophole which would make people say it's possible to scam the system anyway. And they just probably didn't think it would be such a big issue and worth the extra hassle.

[Globb0]

+1

air dropped air drop process = no

its like a version of the instamine. its gone before you blink, then a few days later the public catch up and cover the tracks over.

[poornamelessme]

I was contacted by Adrianne Jeffries from the site TheVerge.com and freelanceer from TechCrunch who are doing stories on Auracoin.

 Both are users on the forum and are following these threads.


~BCX~

If they want an even better story, I expect they have kept track of that shitcoin killing thread, the hypocrisy and extortion threats listed there.

I know you have stated you aren't going to accept money directly for killing any coins, just be the 'muscle', so to speak. Still, it's not right... and flat out illegal if any money does get extorted by anyone.

[Zimbabwecoin]

Auroracoin does not provide any transparency because the market will let them get away with it. As long as Fortune and others are hungry to write non-critical articles about new alt coins they have no reason to change any. I can't say that I blame them...

[BohemianStalker]

Auroracoin does not provide any transparency because the market will let them get away with it. As long as Fortune and others are hungry to write non-critical articles about new alt coins they have no reason to change any. I can't say that I blame them...

Auroracoin's transparency is a thing of past, when we got proof that people are getting their auras. And by the way this is facebook buy/sell group with aurora. It is getting huge 1600 members already

https://www.facebook.com/groups/544259455688424/

consider that this is about 0.5% of entire iceland population.

Can you imagine 15 000 000 americans trading for a bitcoin? You will start to understand the scale and succes of aurora when you compare it.

[MisO69]

Cryptos are a decentralized, trustless system, and here we still have to trust someone's word.

That is why I believe that PoW is the only fair way to distribute coins.

[Wipeout2097]

WTF, what extorsion "ring" in the first place? 

It was just one newbie that came up with the extorsion post, and opportunists keep using it to falsely associate and throw mud at everyone.

[kalus]

Being fully 100% transparent without any doubt and managing the drop would've been too much of a challenge. If they pre-announced the authentication method(s) in detail that would've created easier way for scammers to get ready and abuse the system.

security through obscurity is no security.

Obfuscating critical pieces of information allows scammers that compromise your "security" through obscurity to operate with less competition.

the auroracoin developers put too much faith in security through obscurity, just as they put too much faith into KGW, and deployed it despite clear information that an exploit existed in the wild.

similarly, investors put too much faith in auroracoin's concept, and didn't bother to look at how many resources it would have taken to secure the blockchain.  most coins are overvalued not because they're all shitcoins, but because their blockchains can never be protected. 

[poornamelessme]

What I stated was that I was in no way part of any extortion ring.

I am not their muscle.

~BCX~

Yeah, I know, which is why I said you stated you won't accept extortion money. Although it does appear you are someone's muscle, based on past posts from you:

-----

For the record, I am not part of any extortion team. You cannot pay me enough to not kill your coin if I decide to. I'm not sure how these guys are going to use "BCX" method to kill anything as I have a rather large "private pool" along with a substantial amount of my own hash rate both Scrypt and ASIC SHA.

My part is in this operation is brute strength, what ever coins they decide to kill as long as it is not a primary alt is fine by me. I don't even need a reason.


~BCX~

Just to give you some feed back, a pool is being built at this time that will allow miners to join the "Kill Pool" anonymously and it warms my heart for people like you to call me Facist LOL...

Not only will we fork coins but will also attack services that support them.

Operation Shitcoin Cleanup underway.


~BCX~

[poornamelessme]

WTF, what extorsion "ring" in the first place? 

It was just one newbie that came up with the extorsion post, and opportunists keep using it to falsely associate and throw mud at everyone.

The problem was the fact that almost nobody who organized that group or promoted it, dispelled the notion of extortion either. BCX did, which is why I said he stated he wouldn't accept any money. It doesn't mean we know who that newbie actually was, if he was a puppet, or whatever.

The way promoters of that thread should have acted was to dismiss the extortion claims outright.

[Kernel32]

...[Auroracoin] was just a random coin I picked that had yet to deploy KGW. It was simply a test platform for me.
...
~BCX~

If I'm not mistaken, you BCX, have the resources and knowledge to set up your own test platforms. Why  would you use a coin people care about and not your own?

Auroracoin and it's idea is one of those projects against political will, until the breaking point, where enough people gets educated and politicians need to obey as they should.
It is a wise thing to remain anonymous for the time being.

Sometimes you have to believe in someone. Give it a try. But risk accordingly.

I don't see why you should be the judge of what currency (lives or) dies along with some people dreams/scam.

Is there some?

[iGotSpots]

WTF, what extorsion "ring" in the first place? 

It was just one newbie that came up with the extorsion post, and opportunists keep using it to falsely associate and throw mud at everyone.

The problem was the fact that almost nobody who organized that group or promoted it, dispelled the notion of extortion either. BCX did, which is why I said he stated he wouldn't accept any money. It doesn't mean we know who that newbie actually was, if he was a puppet, or whatever.

The way promoters of that thread should have acted was to dismiss the extortion claims outright.

Not everyone extorts people for a payment

[Viscis]

My only issue with this coin is the blatent disregard for fixing KNOWN security flaws pre airdrop. If it wasnt BTX then it would of been anyone else. This is not a good launch.

[Wipeout2097]

WTF, what extorsion "ring" in the first place?  

It was just one newbie that came up with the extorsion post, and opportunists keep using it to falsely associate and throw mud at everyone.

The problem was the fact that almost nobody who organized that group or promoted it, dispelled the notion of extortion either. BCX did, which is why I said he stated he wouldn't accept any money. It doesn't mean we know who that newbie actually was, if he was a puppet, or whatever.

The way promoters of that thread should have acted was to dismiss the extortion claims outright.

Perhaps some should have dismissed the claims to clarify the situation yes, but the burden of proof is not on the accused! If I'm accused of something on any context, I expect evidence of it, not making the uphill effort to struggle against B.S. accusations.

So, back up your accusation with facts, and quote posts of WHO exactly agrees with extortion. The ones you can't, are not to be throw mud at. Perhaps you can claim "hidden agenda" or "you also made shitcoins in the past", etc... which you also would have to prove as fact or be relevant  to the discussion, but not extortion