rpietila Altcoin Observer

[SlipperySlope]

Money cannot have an issuer that must be trusted.

However could a genuine trustless system even be possible?

Based on designs I've explored, I believe yes. Except for adding new features, you need to trust a developer to take control. Once you are willing to lock the features into stone, it can run on autopilot if the features are resilient enough. When it eventually fails, you design a new currency learning from the past mistakes.

If we agree that the semantics of trust are "confidence placed in an agent by making that agent the nominal owner of property to be held or used for the benefit of one or more others", then I entirely agree with AnonyMint that software agents can be trustless.

We do not need to have confidence that a software agent will do the right thing if we can inspect the source code and its peers can verify each other peer's correct behavior.

This is how Satoshi's Bitcoin operates, indeed that is how any enterprise financial system works. Years ago while working at a bank, my code was routinely checked by a data security officer. Daily runs of the bank's software had a staff of people in the Controls department that verified the accounting inputs and outputs of the system. The bank did not need to trust that I would perform my job correctly, rather others would verify my work before it entered production, and others would verify the results of the calculations.

Customers, on the other hand, trusted the bank because we were subject to audit by the board of directors, by the State government and by the Federal government. And if the bank failed despite the audits, then customer deposits were insured to a certain limit by Federal insurance.

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[vuduchyld]

We've had a big move up in the last 30 or so hours.  That doesn't surprise anybody who trades alts.  How does your portfolio compare with the market as a whole?

Here's a little update on the indexes I've been tracking.  

Index 1: cap-weighted, includes all cryptos except BTC was 61.92 30 hours ago, now at 72.75
Index 2: cap-weighted, includes all cryptos except BTC and LTC was 69.88 30 hours ago, now at 77.88

(LTC is still dragging down Index 1, but it has recovered with a little more strength as of right now)

Index 3: cap-weighted, includes a basket of 31 NON-LTC cryptos selected by cap/volume metrics was 63.86, now at 74.03
Index 4: cap-weighted, includes the basket of 31 PLUS LTC was 58.31, now at 70.47

(I still think Index 3 is actually the closest to what I'm trying to accomplish, which is to judge the general movement of the alt market as a whole.  REALLY interesting, IMO, to note that LTC dragged index 4 lower.  But the recovery of LTC didn't mean that index 4 has recovered stronger, as we found with Index 1 compared to Index 2.  My theory is that this justifies the basket selection as a good arbiter of alt direction.)

Index 5: price-weighted version of Index 3 was 56.01, now at 80.79
Index 6: price-weighted version of Index 4 was 54.72, now at 77.20

(Dow Jones is price-weighted.  S&P, Russell, most others are cap weighted.  I just set these up to see if there would be much difference.  Again, LTC provides downward weight.  Looks like these indexes are also more volatile.)

Meta index is 75.15.  This contains elements of all above.  

TL:DR If your alt portfolio is anything like the alt market as a whole, you may have been down 40%.  As of now, you're probably down 25%. If you're doing worse, you might either own LTC or you might be holding some of the alts that aren't in the top 50 in market cap, as they seem to be performing just a little bit worse.

STRONG (like a bull!) recovery continues!

Index 1: 85.09 (LTC recovery brings this back closer to Index 2)
Index 2: 86.81
Index 3: 81.78 (this one is the one that I think represents the total market the best)
Index 4: 82.39
Index 5: 88.21
Index 6: 86.62 (these last two are most volatile, it seems, because they are price-weighted)
meta: 85.15

Indexes have basically recovered halfway from their downturns.  Your portfolio may have seen a 33% increase over the last few days and possibly 12-13% in the last 36 hours.  If this is NOT the case, you might have chosen the wrong alts.

[Lohoris]

POW as an ever increasing resource drain could easily contribute to ruining the planet

If you knew my solution, you would know that is false. There are not an unbounded number of people in the world. Remember I said it is unprofitable, so no one has an incentive to invest more. My solution is essentially one person one vote, but not in the way you would normally assume.

Surely I have given enough hints, you can deduce now what I have in mind. Any further incorrect assumptions, will not be corrected.

Lol what do you think you are, a sibyl?
(no offence intended, I'm just amused)

POW as an ever increasing resource drain could easily contribute to ruining the planet

Debt "money" (fiat) is the greatest contributor to misallocation and waste. Good thing is, anything is a step to the better in this arena.

Mostly true, and true.
Still, no reason to only make a small step and be content with it.

[Capt Drake]

STRONG (like a bull!) recovery continues!

Index 1: 85.09 (LTC recovery brings this back closer to Index 2)
Index 2: 86.81
Index 3: 81.78 (this one is the one that I think represents the total market the best)
Index 4: 82.39
Index 5: 88.21
Index 6: 86.62 (these last two are most volatile, it seems, because they are price-weighted)
meta: 85.15

Indexes have basically recovered halfway from their downturns.  Your portfolio may have seen a 33% increase over the last few days and possibly 12-13% in the last 36 hours.  If this is NOT the case, you might have chosen the wrong alts.

Yeah, this week my RDD got up around 50% but VIA went down around 10%
DRK got up around 70% and CLOAK going down too.

I think the summer investors are waking up 

[othe]

the trolling against xmr is beyond any scope I have seen so far in the last 9 months 

A possible contrarian indicator?

Or just school holidays in mother russia.

[CoinRocka]

POW as an ever increasing resource drain could easily contribute to ruining the planet

If you knew my solution, you would know that is false. There are not an unbounded number of people in the world. Remember I said it is unprofitable, so no one has an incentive to invest more. My solution is essentially one person one vote, but not in the way you would normally assume.

Surely I have given enough hints, you can deduce now what I have in mind. Any further incorrect assumptions, will not be corrected.

"Everyone mines their own business"   

[vuduchyld]

the trolling against xmr is beyond any scope I have seen so far in the last 9 months 

A possible contrarian indicator?

Oh, man, I was just about to make this post word-for-word.

Someb0dy1 really wants to buy some cheap Monero.

[AlexGR]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ggB0Wh_g33M&feature=youtu.be&t=24m30s

Antonopoulos about people switch to anonymous currencies if NY regs stick.

[dillpicklechips]

POW as an ever increasing resource drain could easily contribute to ruining the planet, I suppose a check might be when it realy no longer makes financial sense they stop. Nice that some POW at least try to create something meaningful that can be used elsewhere, like scientific research.

PoW is an unsustainable ever escalating arms race.
Even during the cold war USA vs. USSR managed to understand that it wasn't a great idea.

(not implying PoS is a good idea. Just that PoW is leagues far from perfect)

In a bitcoin world, miners will drive the engine that fuels the bitcoin economy. The successful ones will be innovative in:
-cheaper sustainable energy
-faster computer technology
-efficient cooling

So yes it might be an arms race but it's a technology one that everyone can benefit from.

[rpietila]

Gold mining also raised socialist-warmonger ambitions: it was forbidden in the U.S. during WWII, because it was seen as waste of resources. (I would have argued that the war was the waste of resources, not gold mining, but nobody asked my opinion..)

[Este Nuno]

Gold mining also raised socialist-warmonger ambitions: it was forbidden in the U.S. during WWII, because it was seen as waste of resources. (I would have argued that the war was the waste of resources, not gold mining, but nobody asked my opinion..)

World War II was a waste?

On topic:

In that thread where that guy revealed that CN and Bytecoin were at the very least supporting each others lies, the CN/BCN shill accounts have come crawling out of the woodwork. There's a few of them registered with in a few minutes of each other as well, it's quite funny.

CryptoNote is now claiming that their website was hacked and someone placed fake whitepapers on it! Hilarious..

You Monero folks have to be extra careful about that code base imo. These CN people are absolutely nuts.

[smooth]

Gold mining also raised socialist-warmonger ambitions: it was forbidden in the U.S. during WWII, because it was seen as waste of resources. (I would have argued that the war was the waste of resources, not gold mining, but nobody asked my opinion..)

World War II was a waste?

On topic:

In that thread where that guy revealed that CN and Bytecoin were at the very least supporting each others lies, the CN/BCN shill accounts have come crawling out of the woodwork. There's a few of them registered with in a few minutes of each other as well, it's quite funny.

CryptoNote is now claiming that their website was hacked and someone placed fake whitepapers on it! Hilarious..

You Monero folks have to be extra careful about that code base imo. These CN people are absolutely nuts.

We're way ahead of you

Unlike the others, Monero is a completely clean slate and has no relationship whatsoever with the bytecoin/cryptonote scammers, despite their apparent effort to saturate the market with their own pump-and-dump clones.

I will say that given the degree of fraud and deceit uncovered, it is reasonable to be cautious about the possibilities of back doors in the code. We have reviewed a lot and continuing to review everything very, very carefully. Nevertheless it is somewhat new code from a source that is not only untrusted but now reasonably distrusted. Caution is advised.

[BeeTeeSea]

What are the chances of Monero hitting say... 100 USD in the next 5 years?

[Globb0]

so it could be 199% likely?


hmmm must sell the car quick

[MoneroMooo]

There is a reason the Bible says you can only lend at interest to a stranger, not to one of your own.

Xenophobia ?

And yes, I do realize that the common wisdom of human (pre) history was about survival of small groups, with occasional encounters, violent or otherwise, with other such groups. Still, I found the apparent reliance on perceived authority amusing in a context where it makes it appear in the opposite way as religious authorities would like it to appear nowadays

[rdnkjdi]

So I keep watching the XC chat thread.  Those guys over there remind me of dogers except almost worse.  Their structure and optimism and complete ... ADHD of features just kinda fascinates me.  They just announced XAdvertise (decentralized/blockchainified advertisement) or something.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=630547.msg8492212#msg8492212

Their developer has had himself listed as CEO of XCurrency - https://www.linkedin.com/pub/dan-metcalf/12/1a8/b82.  Admittedly he has some accomplishments ... but they say he's self funding the project (along with some of a premine) to "pay salaries"

This is their team - http://xc-official.com/the-xc-team/

They've got cjfromthesea from bitcointalk listed.  I can't find any posts from him.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?action=profile;u=353448

It's just ... really weird weird coin/chat/advertising platform/whatever it is.  Anybody have any insight?  

[SlipperySlope]

So I keep watching the XC chat thread.  Those guys over there remind me of dogers except almost worse.  Their structure and optimism and complete ... ADHD of features just kinda fascinates me.  They just announced XAdvertise (decentralized/blockchainified advertisement) or something.

. . .

It's just ... really weird weird coin/chat/advertising platform/whatever it is.  Anybody have any insight?  

I do not have an opinion on whether their project as a whole has any merit, but I do like certain ideas that are shared with my own project. Namely, paying full node operators to secure the network. I believe that Satoshi PoW coins mis-allocate their block rewards which could be better spent elsewhere, provided the blockchain is secured in a free, distributed, transparent, and trustless manner as Satoshi required for Bitcoin.

Perhaps Satoshi believed back in 2009 that Bitcoin users would generate bitcoins on their own personal computers so that each user ran a full node, securing the network, and receiving appropriate remuneration by way of bitcoins mined. But, by 2011 in his last posts on this forum, Satoshi came to believe that industrial mining was the future, with the vast majority of non-generating users connected to a few centralized miners, e.g. the big pools that we have today, with the current 7000 Bitcoin volunteer full nodes unpaid, and mining few if any bitcoins.

[noelmal]

Gold mining also raised socialist-warmonger ambitions: it was forbidden in the U.S. during WWII, because it was seen as waste of resources. (I would have argued that the war was the waste of resources, not gold mining, but nobody asked my opinion..)

I disagree nothing saves resources better longterm then thinning the pack a little 

[AlexGR]

Gold mining also raised socialist-warmonger ambitions: it was forbidden in the U.S. during WWII, because it was seen as waste of resources. (I would have argued that the war was the waste of resources, not gold mining, but nobody asked my opinion..)

Logically processed, it was just a bullshit excuse. For the gold miner, it's not like a ban would make him mine something else (say a strategic metal like nickelium or copper) instead. His equipment is specifically designed to mine gold due to separating very heavy ore and particles (gold) from light ores and dirt. Thus the only waste of resources comes from having such machines sitting idle.

[thelibertycap]

1. The most used contracts must be put on ASICs to get scaling, because Moore's Law is ending (unless POET rescues it), i.e. they will force more centralization of mining not less.

Intel is working on it for a long time it seems from this 2009 article http://optics.org/article/40732 and they can throw billions at it so I am not too worried about that. Apparently we still have years before we start hitting limits even with current old-school technologies.

What's more - sillicon photonics is here, its the first step in this direction and should drop the costs of photonics considerably and drive the innovation further http://www.theinquirer.net/inquirer/news/2345610/intel-primes-market-for-silicon-photonics-to-lift-data-centre-interconnect-speeds