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[solid12345]

Bitcoin has more SHA256 hashing power than the whole rest of the world all put together, That is why bitcoin hopes maybe to be secure.

Talk about drinking the Kool-aid, if you have a broken front door and the only way to keep people from breaking in is to form a human chain around it, guess what, the front door is still broken.

But what do you expect from a guy whose avatar looks like 2 turds wrapped around each other, you guys are con artists like Karpeles.

[zeroday]

It seems you do not like EU on one side and promote an "international" currency that is bitcoin. I can't find a link between communism and Aurora, I can just see free market forces working at its fullest - it's in the hands of the Icelanders to decide wether or not Auroracoin is a scam, pump and dump asset, a currency and what not. Most of the criticism that receives Aurora today remembers me of... bitcoin's early days.

If you follow closely AUR, you'll see that 20 stores already accept it over there, that a car has been sold for AUR and that the USD/AUR price is not the same as the one quoted in cryptsy or mintpal.

Let's wait and see what happens in the coming months, there may be some surprises..

Don't you think that distributing 50% of pre-mined coins among country population is socialistic or even communistic approach ?
I know several examples of similar asset distribution in post-commie countries in the past and every of these approaches was doomed to fail and lead to economic collapse. Most of the public assets ended up in pockets of a few oligarchs.

[MegaHertz]

I am an Icelander.  I have been watching all night because I KNEW that there was a HARD FORK coming.

Whether or not there was some hacking, which maybe there was, it seems that the coin is still operating.

Here is the thing, Icelanders have really gotten hit by the 2008 crash.  People lost homes and have seen mortgages go UP and principal down (in effect, because mortgages are tied to inflation)  and have had some reality biting them in the ass.

But it wasnt their fault, it was the banking system and some bankers that let them down.

That is why there was a 50% pre-mine.  To give the coins to Icelanders.  Just because they didnt know about protecting block-chains, this was a poor excuse (if true) for a hacker to try to mess up a valid idea, a grand experiment, to try to offer some help to fellow Icelanders.

Everyone on the entire planet got screwed over by the banking crisis! Even goatherders in Africa felt it's effects. And many depositors in Britain and the Netherlands got screwed over by Icelandic banks essentially stealing their money and then they got screwed over again by the Icelandic govt refusing to honor the guarantee that they'd freely given for those deposits!

So the idea that Icelanders are poor things, worse victims than everywhere else is quite wrong. And the idea that they are a special case and should be given free money and it's not their fault for being too lazy to do some mining on an old computer... words fail. This is not like mining bitcoin, there was so little difficulty that anyone could have done it if they wanted to.

Look - if you don't want to trust your government to defend your currency, and want to create an alternative, you have to do the defending yourself. Just being passive and expecting everything to be done for you, foreign people to mine it for you, foreign people to develop it, foreign people to secure the blockchain, people in panama to do airdrops ... come on! This is not how the world works.

Also - auroracoin wasn't hacked, it was attacked. This is the crypto version of attacks that go on in the forex markets eg the attacks on the euro, the currrent forex attacks on the rouble and the brazilian real. This is how the world works, how it will always work. But you can defend yourself, if you can be bothered...

All good points. Thanks.  Unfortunately we only had a hundred people or so that were interested early on.   There is much more awareness now and some level of understanding.

I can tell you understand Crypto's quite well, and well, that is good for you... please be patient with us new comers.

MHz

[markm]

Talk about drinking the Kool-aid, if you have a broken front door and the only way to keep people from breaking in is to form a human chain around it, guess what, the front door is still broken.

Proof of work is broken, yes. It relies on brute force computation in order to trust raw brute force computation over human legal systems judges courts etc as arbiters of who owns how much of what.

Building more broken doors, even more broken, without anyone to protect them at all, is even worse, it is not helpful at all.

If your argument is that proof of work is a broken system, arguing in favour of more proof of work blockchains is idiotic.

Why use a brute force compution secured/arbitrated system if you do not find brute force computation to be a legitimate arbiter?

The whole point of the proof of work blockchain approach is that no one on the planet can muster more brute force computation of the required type than the people who are invested in the family of chains that all are secured by that one same mass of brute force computation.

-MarkM-

[solid12345]

If your argument is that proof of work is a broken system, arguing in favour of more proof of work blockchains is idiotic.

-MarkM-

But yet you want people to only invest in Bitcoin & Litecoin, just because it has more miners on it to protect their broken system, that makes no sense. This is nothing else but a turf war, end of story.

[markm]

If your argument is that proof of work is a broken system, arguing in favour of more proof of work blockchains is idiotic.

-MarkM-

But yet you want people to only invest in Bitcoin & Litecoin, just because it has more miners on it to protect their broken system, that makes no sense. This is nothing else but a turf war, end of story.

Bullshit.

If you design a better coin, merged mining pools will happily add it to their merge, granting it the same massive security enjoyed by all the merged coins, to the extent that they have enough valid useful improvements to get added to the merge.

Even with only 8 coins so far merged, two of them have not yet convinced most miners to add them to their merge. If Aurora was a good idea it likely could have gotten a whole lot more hashing behind it than the two "least popular" of the current eight merged mined coins.

BCX already stated long ago that most of those coins have too much hashing for the propose time travel exploit planned for deployment against Aurora to work against them.

So even only getting as few pools as e.g. IXCoin has merging it, it could have been strong enough to resist that one potential attacker (who is maybe not really much of a threat really except to insanely pathetically weak blockchains that don't even bother to implement merged mining).

-MarkM-

[verdun2003]

It seems you do not like EU on one side and promote an "international" currency that is bitcoin. I can't find a link between communism and Aurora, I can just see free market forces working at its fullest - it's in the hands of the Icelanders to decide wether or not Auroracoin is a scam, pump and dump asset, a currency and what not. Most of the criticism that receives Aurora today remembers me of... bitcoin's early days.

If you follow closely AUR, you'll see that 20 stores already accept it over there, that a car has been sold for AUR and that the USD/AUR price is not the same as the one quoted in cryptsy or mintpal.

Let's wait and see what happens in the coming months, there may be some surprises..

Don't you think that distributing 50% of pre-mined coins among country population is socialistic or even communistic approach ?
I know several examples of similar asset distribution in post-commie countries in the past and every of these approaches was doomed to fail and lead to economic collapse. Most of the public assets ended up in pockets of a few oligarchs.

Not at all - for social/communist states, you need to steal, through force if necessary, from one set of people to transfer it to another set of people. Here, nobody was forced to buy AUR coins, it was people who used their free will to buy AUR coins for whatever reason (getting rich, supporting the cause, you name it) - this is capitalism at its best, where people exchange voluntarily.

You can't compare the AUR experiment to the post soviet era, where crony politicians sold to their friends the remains of state owned companies. Here, anybody could participate in buying AUR, knowing there was a 50% premine.

[Jherek]

Here is the thing, Icelanders have really gotten hit by the 2008 crash.  People lost homes and have seen mortgages go UP and principal down (in effect, because mortgages are tied to inflation)  and have had some reality biting them in the ass.

But it wasnt their fault, it was the banking system and some bankers that let them down.

That is why there was a 50% pre-mine.  To give the coins to Icelanders.  Just because they didnt know about protecting block-chains, this was a poor excuse (if true) for a hacker to try to mess up a valid idea, a grand experiment, to try to offer some help to fellow Icelanders.

-MegaHertz

So, instead of promoting bitcoin, the very first and strongest cryptocurrency that is intended to spread financial freedom around the world, someone is trying to push a utopian commie-coin 50% of which was pre-mined.
Instead of supporting international approach, they want to earn points with nationalism based currency. Good luck with that.

I really feel for those naive Icelanders who invested in this pseudo-national coin, that ended up as yet another pump and dump scheme.

It will need some time for you evangelists to learn that bitcoin is digital gold and not digital money. I wish some of you would just visit economy classes once.
Not saying AUR was better - in fact its worse. But Bitcoin is no solution.
Transactions are rather slow (not from client to client but from fiat to btc and from exchange to service)
Neuralgic point are the exchanges, that all together are not hacker proof. It is rather impossible to rob a bank and get away with it today but it is sort of easy to fuck up the bitcoin economy with actions like MtGox did.
Bitcoin is no currency, the hard cap makes it deflationary, but high deflation is as bad as inflation. Money need to be spend, deflation for gold is good, for a currency its poison.
Bitcoin is controlled by mining industry and exchanges, Satoshi's ideal of decentral anonymous money is spoiled.
A good investment coin should have PoS.
A good currency coin - there is none ATM.

[markm]

Remember bitcoin is just one of a family of eight coins that all can be secured using the same hashing power.

If speed of transactions was a useful/valuable feature, I0Coin's 1.5 minutes or GeistGeld's what, ten seconds, fifteen seconds, or whatever, would surely be fast enough? Many claimed that GeistGeld is in fact TOO fast.

There is no need to sacrifice security for speed. If you think speed is important, how fast do you need? If 1.5 minutes is enough, use I0Coin. If you need almost-too-fast, use GeistGeld.

The main reason fewer merged mining pools merge I0Coin and/or GeistGeld than merge the slower-blocks coins is that consumers have not actually shown enough preference for higher speed, as indicated by the transaction fee volumes of the higher speed coins.

-MarkM-

[solid12345]

Bullshit.

If you design a better coin, merged mining pools will happily add it to their merge, granting it the same massive security enjoyed by all the merged coins, to the extent that they have enough valid useful improvements to get added to the merge.

Look this all goes over my head, I'm not a miner, nor am I a programmer, I barely understand the technological basics of Bitcoin as it is. But as an INVESTOR, stuff like this does not give me confidence in crypto in general. Knowing I could make an investment in a coin that could be wiped out overnight by petulant man children is scary to me, at least with the shitcoins I recognize the risk, can research the origins and make an educated decision on whether I want to put my money there. But stuff like this, all it takes is a day or two of some tribal conflict to make things go sour within hours.

Your crew says I should go invest in Bitcoin or LTC because they are "the first" and "the best", well sorry but if the future of Bitcoin is going to be run by you guys, i'll take the Jamie Dimons of the world over this sociopathic behavior.

This all feels more like a game of Quake with team red v.s team blue playing games with people's money and savings.

[markm]

Bullshit.

If you design a better coin, merged mining pools will happily add it to their merge, granting it the same massive security enjoyed by all the merged coins, to the extent that they have enough valid useful improvements to get added to the merge.

Look this all goes over my head, I'm not a miner, nor am I a programmer, I barely understand the technological basics of Bitcoin as it is. But as an INVESTOR, stuff like this does not give me confidence in crypto in general. Knowing I could make an investment in a coin that could be wiped out overnight by petulant man children is scary to me, at least with the shitcoins I recognize the risk, can research the origins and make an educated decision on whether I want to put my money there. But stuff like this, all it takes is a day or two of some tribal conflict to make things go sour within hours.

Your crew says I should go invest in Bitcoin or LTC because they are "the first" and "the best", well sorry but if the future of Bitcoin is going to be run by you guys, i'll take the Jamie Dimons of the world over this sociopathic behavior.

The bitcoin developers are not sociopathic. They added merged mining to bitcoin fergoshsakes, so that altcoins can benefit from the security that bitcoin's massive hashing power can provide.

So far only Namecoin, Devcoin, Groupcoin, I0Coin, IXCoin, CoiLedCoin and GeistGeld have working implementations to actually take advantage of that extremely generous capability provided by the bitcoin developers but that seems mostly to do with scammers preferring not to make secure blockchains.

Be aware though that some bitcoin miners and pools are sociopathic to the extent of not actually merging all the merge-able coins, so even the highest hashrate merged coin (Namecoin) does not have the full hashing power that bitcoin has.

This seems to be partly because some bitcoiners think any co-operating coin is in some way actually a competing coin; somehow a detraction rather than an addition to the family and ecosystem.

-MarkM-

[Jherek]

Remember bitcoin is just one of a family of eight coins that all can be secured using the same hashing power.

If speed of transactions was a useful/valuable feature, I0Coin's 1.5 minutes or GeistGeld's what, ten seconds, fifteen seconds, or whatever, would surely be fast enough? Many claimed that GeistGeld is in fact TOO fast.

There is no need to sacrifice security for speed. If you think speed is important, how fast do you need? If 1.5 minutes is enough, use I0Coin. If you need almost-too-fast, use GeistGeld.

The main reason fewer merged mining pools merge I0Coin and/or GeistGeld than merge the slower-blocks coins is that consumers have not actually shown enough preference for higher speed, as indicated by the transaction fee volumes of the higher speed coins.

-MarkM-

The most significant spot of why proof of work is broken lays in all coins from bitcoin over litecoin to the shittiest shitcoin. All of them have much value for the few that been in early enough but it's rather impossible for anyone who came later to earn the same wealth with the same hard work (means investing in miners) as for these that been in 3 months earlier. Difficulty makes it impossible for later people to get equal with early adopters.
That, in fact makes the whole system a total failure for everyone who was "not on the train" early enough.
Money should give equal possibilities for everyone who joins in with their hard work at any time. Crypto coins dont. Since the shitcoin flood, you will be too late already 3 days after launch.

[solid12345]

The bitcoin developers are not sociopathic. They added merged mining to bitcoin fergoshsakes, so that altcoins can benefit from the security that bitcoin's massive hashing power can provide.

So far only Namecoin, Devcoin, Groupcoin, I0Coin, IXCoin, CoiLedCoin and GeistGeld have working implementations to actually take advantage of that extremely generous capability provided by the bitcoin developers but that seems mostly to do with scammers preferring not to make secure blockchains.

-MarkM-

This is all the same logic blackhat hackers use to justify their behaviors

"Well if you're security wasn't so poor, we wouldn't have stolen from you"

I guess if I leave my car unlocked I deserve to have things stolen from me. Gotcha.

[safeminer]

No here, suck on my bitcoin tit and buy it for a grand.

did you know bitcoin tits are divisible?  the smallest divisible unit is called an "A-cup".

He probably knows just fine, but is bummed out that he is not a bitcoin millionaire, and now wants to convince the whole world that [copy]coin so much better and they should buy that. Which is never happening.

[solid12345]

The most significant spot of why proof of work is broken lays in all coins from bitcoin over litecoin to the shittiest shitcoin. All of them have much value for the few that been in early enough but it's rather impossible for anyone who came later to earn the same wealth with the same hard work (means investing in miners) as for these that been in 3 months earlier. Difficulty makes it impossible for later people to get equal with early adopters.
That, in fact makes the whole system a total failure for everyone who was "not on the train" early enough.
Money should give equal possibilities for everyone who joins in with their hard work at any time. Crypto coins dont. Since the shitcoin flood, you will be too late already 3 days after launch.

Exactly, which is why more and more people are viewing Bitcoin as a commodity, not a currency. If it were a true currency, I shouldn't have to spend 50 grand in mining hardware and electricity just to get as many coins as what someone mined on their $300 computer 3 years ago.

[zeroday]

I suppose this is the blueprint of Aurora coin

GUIDE: HOW TO SAVE FINANCIALLY TROUBLED COUNTRIES !!!

[micryon]

If you design a better coin, merged mining pools will happily add it to their merge, granting it the same massive security enjoyed by all the merged coins, to the extent that they have enough valid useful improvements to get added to the merge.

I do agree that new PoW coins are especially vulnerable to be targeted for a variety of attacks.  KGW itself was an attempt at closing one of those issues.  

For any new coins, and even for existing coins, I'm thinking of moving over to PoS personally.. i just don't feel safe with PoW @ low hashing powers.  Merging mining is another great idea, which any new coin needs to consider.

However, I also wouldn't consider it an impossibility to fix this in SW with existing PoW.  It may be a workaround upon a workaround, but gut feel anything is solvable in software.. nothing is impossible to fix.

[markm]

Mining should not be profitable except for industries located where electricity is cheap, and even then only if they use the best most efficient mining gear.

Hashing is a commodity, it is designed to find the lowest possible price, the lowest possible wages for its workers, the cheapest most efficient circuits and electrical generators.

Working for a mining corporation is unlikely to be more profitable than working for an automobile manufacturer or any other large scale mass production industry.

For individuals there is likely better opportunity in becoming a unique individual with unique skills and/or services to offer than in becoming yet another generic replaceable unskilled plugger in of machines-that-make-stuff.

-MarkM-

[Jherek]

The bitcoin developers are not sociopathic. They added merged mining to bitcoin fergoshsakes, so that altcoins can benefit from the security that bitcoin's massive hashing power can provide.

So far only Namecoin, Devcoin, Groupcoin, I0Coin, IXCoin, CoiLedCoin and GeistGeld have working implementations to actually take advantage of that extremely generous capability provided by the bitcoin developers but that seems mostly to do with scammers preferring not to make secure blockchains.

-MarkM-

This is all the same logic blackhat hackers use to justify their behaviors

"Well if you're security wasn't so poor, we wouldn't have stolen from you"

I guess if I leave my car unlocked I deserve to have things stolen from me. Gotcha.

Sadly, yes.

I mean, if some hackers can do it, what can big guys cause?

Everything that is possible WILL be done. That's why blackhat hackers do a serious job. If its not some stereotype blackhat hacker, then there will be state agencies doing it. If it is possible to fuck up bitcoin for instance, NSA for instance much likely has the power to do so. So, better some blackhats fuck you up and force you to fix your weak spots than some gov does it when it really thinks it has to.

[markm]

If you design a better coin, merged mining pools will happily add it to their merge, granting it the same massive security enjoyed by all the merged coins, to the extent that they have enough valid useful improvements to get added to the merge.

I do agree that new PoW coins are especially vulnerable to be targeted for a variety of attacks.  KGW itself was an attempt at closing one of those issues.  

For any new coins, and even for existing coins, I'm thinking of moving over to PoS personally.. i just don't feel safe with PoW @ low hashing powers.  Merging mining is another great idea, which any new coin needs to consider.

However, I also wouldn't consider it an impossibility to fix this in SW with existing PoW.  It may be a workaround upon a workaround, but gut feel anything is solvable in software.. nothing is impossible to fix.

You can simply make a proof of stake coin or a Ripple clone or a NXT clone or whatever and issue in its first block(s) all the coins the Aurora chain shows the ownership of, or issue the coins onto Ripple or other "issue custom tokens" system similarly. So yes it is fixable, but in fixing it you might as well only issue to Icelanders, the whole garbage of having 50% go to foreigners is pointless wastefulness.

-MarkM-