How does the enemy sink your big and strong warship?
They don't have to, because the captain opened the underwater portals of his own ship and then placed some explosives on the hull to blow big holes, after which he jumped on a life raft to get away and disappeared in the mist.
The captain of this coin scuttled his own ship.
Enough of metaphors. CryptoGir killed his own coin. That is the one risk in crypto for which there is no mitigation - if the dev pulls the plug and disappears. The first time the community could understand that there was no time/urgency/personal matters to not make a post, but doing the same thing twice after he saw the impact of his first silence? A single post to say guys I will be gone for a month or whatever would have sufficed. Not even that courtesy which in itself speaks volumes of his character.
Who does CryptoGir think he is? Remember to stay away from anything that he does in future. The community has been supporting him for 4 months now and stayed loyal, just to be stabbed in the back. Any other dev that portrayed this arrogance would have been crucified a long time ago, but everyone said it is ok for this reason or that. ZS could have been his ticket to a bright future for him and his family.
There is much to be said for personal life issues that takes precedence over business, but the hard facts of business as in real life is that shareholders of a company will have limited compassion for personal issues of the management team. Life goes on and business must continue. The biggest thing to remember is that it is not Monopoly money that investors put into ZS, but real life money (although converted to BTC). Yes, blah-di-dont-invest-what-you-cannot-lose-blah but there could also be investors that also have personal issues now because they lost money. CG therefore has a responsibility towards the investors to go out of his way to protect their investment irrespective of personal life issues, else do not start a coin. Disappearing and letting the ship sink is no different from the scammers out there that scam people for their money, just in this case it is not stealing money, but blowing holes in the ship and then watching the ship go down with the people in it. I thought he had some integrity but even this lighthouse in the dark world of crypto has gone down. There is little hope for altoin crypto with the complete and utter lack of accountability all round, ZS included. The more these type of actions or lack thereof is committed, another nail is driven in the coffin of crypto and the more investor confidence is moving away from crypto. One of a handful of light beacons with a "trustworthy" dev has gone down.
Maybe a miraculous post will appear again after a scolding like this like the previous time but I doubt it.
RIP ZS.
Thanks, Jc, my turn at the mic.
You have indeed nailed the symptom, but not the proximate cause. I want to delve into that a bit. First, let me say that I think from a functional point of view, ZS is one of the very best alternatives to Bitcoin that has come down the pike. From an implementation point of view, it has been a rollercoaster, and may yet ultimately be a fail. I disagree with your final assesment. I do not disagree overall.
Cryptogir, whatever his faults, is a good programmer. He made a good product. That product needed marketing, adoption, marketing, some uses and cases for use, and marketing. Did I mention that it needed marketing?
The problem, ladies, gentlemen, and you over there in the corner, does not lie with Cryptogir. Yes, him being gone for 18 days without a peep to anyone is troublesome. A good case can be made for it being irresponsible. A slightly worse case can be made for it being reprehensible. But he is not the problem.
The problem is hardly unique to Zimstake. It's incredibly widespread, and not just in the little microcosm of digital currency. The problem is centralization. Not so much the fact of it as the lack of understanding of it's pervasiveness in both thought and action.
What sets Bitcoin apart from all the others? Price? Adoption? What?
Decentralization. It's development teams stayed on long enough to make sure that it was owned by a wide variety of diverse people with diverse ideas and goals who had a personal need to make it work. More failed than succeeded, but what those who have succeeded realized is the true nature of a DECENTRALIZED, OPEN SOURCE currency or payment system. Most of the afficianados of the various coins do NOT realize this. I hear and see it in almost every alt thread. "When is the dev gonna step up and do x".
Why the fuck should he? You've identified the problem, or a problem, what the hell is stopping YOU from implementing it? Copyright? Please.
You want a coin to succeed past the initial development phase, then YOU, right there in the mirror, buck up! Do you expect your life to be handed to you? If so, you're in for a lot of disappointment at best, and an ingnominous death at worst. If you had an idea for a business, and went about capitalizing it, would you expect to just sit back and wait for someone to realize it for you? They won't. They might pick up the ball you fumbled and run with it, but they sure as hell aren't going to do it FOR YOU. This rant is not aimed specifically at Zimstake, nor is it the first time I've said it. This is a problem across the spectrum of the digital currency world. We have one crowd always developing new coins, new algorithms, new something. But with no direction, no idea why they're doing it, no clue what to do with it. There are literally hundreds of alt coins, many with very innovative (and largely useless) features. Most, from a purely technical standpoint, are better than bitcoin. Yet bitcoin reigns supreme. Not because it was the first decentralized digital currency, it wasn't. Not because it is better in any sense, it isn't. But because it is perceived differently. Bitcoin people do NOT expect Satoshi Nakamoto to pop out of a hole and fix the problems. They expect a whole plethora of people to do things with bitcoin as a monetary instrument.
Altcoin people, with a few shining exceptions, do not think this way. They want something done FOR them. They do not push for retail adoption. They do not push for widespread awareness. They form into little bickering bands of "my coin is better than your coin" but do nothing to make it so.
I'm an agnostic in all the altcoin cults. I think one day an altcoin will displace bitcoin. It might be one that already exists. But when it happens, it will not be the developers who make it happen. If they are determined, they may indeed be a part of the process, and some are trying. But until YOU start to trade WITH YOUR COIN for goods and services, it will NEVER be more than a novelty. But so long as the sole purpose is to get bitcoin on an exchange, you are BY DEFAULT conceding victory to bitcoin.
Look at what Sync is doing. It's development culture has been a roller coaster and a train wreck. But they formed a foundation to make something of it, and they have indeed made something of it. It is valued more than BTC at this point. 2 months ago it had nearly died.
This is pervasive in modern culture! We all think in terms of "we" rather than "I", and we expect this vague thing called "society" to fix our ills. But this is not a real or realistic expectation. Society is just a word. Without context, it has no meaning, and in most cases the context leaves the individual the role of easily replaced, disposable part. If that's what you want, go die happy. For those of us who actually think the human race has a future AS HUMANS, the social paradigm needs to be discarded and the idea of individual responsibility needs to be again paramount. We need to think as I. I will do X today because it benefits ME and harms no other. I will do X today with that person because it works to our mutual advantage, but I will remain sovereign in myself. If the advantage does not work out, I will have the right and DUTY to terminate or modify the association, and they too have this understanding, right, and duty.
Zimstake isn't dead because of Cryptogir. If he was it's only raison d'etat, then it never lived.
