rpietila Altcoin Observer

[AnonyMint]

Seems you failed to read a few posts

Thanks for responding. Just to avoid any misperceptions, I did read those posts. They, and the “past performance” to which you refer informed my criticism. Your summary of Dogecoin's appeal highlights the amateur approach I was referencing.

I don't intend to be offensive, merely precise. I use the term “amateur” as a precise description. An experienced professional would be able to bring to bear a rich set of modelling / analytic tools and a specialist domain terminology.

Indeed that is why maturing products hire Marketing gurus such as Steve Guttman (former marketing product manager of Adobe Photoshop) who I worked with as a programmer liason at Fractal Design (on what is now Corel Painter) and I observed his skill set and activities.

I can assure you that when conducting a re-branding exercise for, e.g. an instantly-recognisable high street FMCG product, your typical int'l bluechip won't make a single move until they've first invested at least an upper-end six-figure sum in the market research / development iterative loop (qualitative and quantitative) and got back an extensive raft of results and trial serializations.

I'm pointedly ignoring the proffered media-selected informal voxpops because I just can't bring myself to believe that anyone would be hard-pressed enough to cite them as actual insights, so they must be trolling.

Now I am going to teach you something if you are not already aware of the distinction. Data driven marketing is a refinement mechanism. The conceptual qualitative decisions about the target market which drive whether a product has immense potential and spark the initial exponential growth, are made from instincts that encompass a broad understanding of issues and concepts. In fact, too much data driven feedback looping too early can muddle the higher-level process of formulating a target market strategy.

Steve Jobs had these instincts, as my former CEO boss at Fractal discovered. I think I do too, which is evidenced by myself being involved in three products (two where I was nearly the sole author and one or two-man company) so far in my career which all had greater marketshare and penetration than Bitcoin.

Note about a year before the iPhone, I was thinking someone should make a smartphone based on Linux. I had also thought about the open source .Net. My life was too spread out at that time, traveling and not settled. Any way, I had insufficient resources to do the hardware and software integration. I am sure I am not the only person who had these thoughts.

I notice Steve was obsessed with small details. I notice I did that at times, but one of my weaknesses is I will cut corners in order to ship something. I tend to lose focus when I am bored slogging through tedious details, which is probably why I am wasting my time past 2 days posting in this forum.

[1715677475]

1715677475

[1715677475]

1715677475

[1715677475]

1715677475

[dga]

Also I am aware dga has a masters in computer science and he did the work on improving the PoW code. He seems fairly knowledgeable, but again I don't know if he has been in the trenches developing commercially successful client software. And in my case, successfully marketing these too.

Didn't dga just mine the **** out of Monero and then later help/invest with boolberry after he mined some of it?

LMGTFY - http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~dga/cv.pdf

It's a Ph.D. in addition to the masters, so feel free to insert the obligatory jokes about "those who can't, teach"  (but I've probably heard them before.

But yes, georgehoster - that was mostly what I did.  But to do so, I wrote highly-optimized code for the Monero proof-of-work function, and spent a fair amount of time analyzing it for weaknesses.  My code wandered out into the rest of the world, and once it was out there, I gave permission and relinquished copyright on it, so it's part of what you're running when you run a monero daemon or miner.  The bright side of having spent a lot of time trying to break it is that I'm also pretty confident that CryptoNight, as a PoW, does what it says -- it's expensive but pretty good against current GPU/FPGA/ASIC technologies.

But I have no relationship to the XMR dev team, or any other coin.  I'm not quite sure why my name got pulled in here other than my comments about the PoW function.

(Also, as others noted, I do plan to hold the BBR, but as with anything I do, that should best be interpreted as an experiment, not an endorsement -- I have no clue what BBR's price will do.  Realistically, I view it as a slightly long shot gamble on Zoidberg continuing to do interesting things, as, for example, he did today with a new release: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=577267.msg8645436#msg8645436  .  Gotta love the built in exchange data in the wallet, and more progress on getting ring signature pruning working.)

[tromp]

(anybody remember Aurocoin?)

Even its name is being forgotten:-)

[pa]

@AnonyMint: What is the estimated time of arrival for the coin you are developing? Are you working alone or on a team? Has any other competent coder vetted your ideas for face plausibility?

[coinits]

Anonymous is a strong term, we have yet to see one cryptocurrency achieve that instead of boasting about "anonymity".

Simply integrating mixing or wiring the transactions via Tor/L2P isn't enough, integrating mixing and claiming anonymity makes about as much sense as lowering the block speed and claiming to be the "fastest altcoin" or "the altcoin with the fastest transactions". It implies that there is some original innovation when there is none.

I might not be on here 24/7 looking into every single altcoin but as far as I know we are the only candidate that got it so far, however we are pretty early into development ourselves.

seem NUD is the only true anon con.

and they will introduce ruduced blockchain soon.

Where is the evidence for NUD being anonymous?

His Freudian Slip of con vs coin speaks volumes.

[smooth]

I'm not sure if first mover in anon coins is still a big deal since dark is falling to Monero?

First mover has always been a bit of a myth.  For example see (along with other sections of the same page): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First-mover_advantage#Second-mover_advantage

First mover advantage is often cited by some Bitcoin proponents who try to declare the competition over and themselves the winner. It is either wishful thinking, mistaken thinking, willful attempt to deceive for personal gain, or some combination of these.

[tifozi]

The "Play nice" people seem to think there can be more than one winner in this space.  

This was an interesting quotation to me as I do try to play nice. I had a keen eye on BitMonero when it was planned for launch, trying to reason with thankful_for_today et al about renaming the coin before it was launched and other general things. It was obvious that we were dealing with someone from the original Bytecoin coding team, so even after the disagreements between him and some of us who were following the ANN thread, we stuck around and when I saw the others who were into BitMonero, I knew it would have success. By the way none of the current vocal members of XMR were there when all of this was taking place. I never envisioned others would be promoting it so hard, and in my mind I knew that this would be the CN coin to go with even if there were no Heroes around.

When Boolberry came on to the scene, I rejected it and saw it as an unnecessary noise that would create some unwanted competition with XMR and the name didn't help the case to get acceptance. I didn't mine it and didn't even care what was happening with it, just like I hadn't cared for the Quazarscam (though Qcn was very frustrating crapping on the BMR thread those days). But then the pump happened and I saw people discussing it here and there and I checked the thread. I knew it was being the victim of FUD, deliberations and financial attacks right away. By that time it was hitting the current bottom in prices and it wasn't matching up with all the technical developments that were showing up in the thread. I made my own assumption that zoidberg was probably also one of the core CN reference devs with the command he had. Despite all this I can understand why playing nice is not part of the game and why people continue to defame him personally and ridicule his technical progress along with other absurdities.

I just refuse to play that game. I am not saying others need to do it too, but till date there have been zero reasons provided on this thread or elsewhere that makes me want to dispose of the BBR I procured earlier in August. People love an underdog story. It may be me today, but I bet people are going to question the market dynamics of BBR down the road once they find out too.

[smooth]

I'm not quite sure why my name got pulled in here other than my comments about the PoW function.

I don't think there is any other reason. Simply because you have improved the code and commented on its apparent soundness (and known and potential weaknesses)

I must say I'm a bit taken aback that you think exchange rate being displayed in a wallet is "interesting" but I guess that is in the eye of the beholder.

[dga]

I'm not quite sure why my name got pulled in here other than my comments about the PoW function.

I don't think there is any other reason. Simply because you have improved the code and commented on its apparent soundness (and known and potential weaknesses)

I must say I'm a bit taken aback that you think exchange rate being displayed in a wallet is "interesting" but I guess that is in the eye of the beholder.

I don't think that adding in the exchange rate is technically interesting;  I think it's cute and somewhat useful.  But it's "interesting" in some sense that he's continuing to make UI improvements and experiments in the wallet -- I like that.  Again, keeping in mind my view of crypto in general as a fascinating experiment, with cryptonote as a really intriguing advance that trades some bloat and other issues for anonymity in a technically and socially/financially interesting way.

The ring signature pruning is technically interesting.

So -- what I'm being most positive about is the continued development along directions not necessarily being explored by Monero or any other cryptonote coin.  That's good for anyone who thinks that there's value in having technology for anonymous transactions.  If things like blockchain aliases turn out to be dumb  -- great, we learned something.  If they turn out to be wildly popular -- same answer.

As David Clark famously put it in the early days of the IETF:  "We reject kings, presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code."  It's nice to have working implementations you can kick around and have fight against each other.

[smooth]

I'm not quite sure why my name got pulled in here other than my comments about the PoW function.

I don't think there is any other reason. Simply because you have improved the code and commented on its apparent soundness (and known and potential weaknesses)

I must say I'm a bit taken aback that you think exchange rate being displayed in a wallet is "interesting" but I guess that is in the eye of the beholder.

I don't think that adding in the exchange rate is technically interesting;  I think it's cute and somewhat useful.  But it's "interesting" in some sense that he's continuing to make UI improvements and experiments in the wallet -- I like that.  Again, keeping in mind my view of crypto in general as a fascinating experiment, with cryptonote as a really intriguing advance that trades some bloat and other issues for anonymity in a technically and socially/financially interesting way.

The ring signature pruning is technically interesting.

So -- what I'm being most positive about is the continued development along directions not necessarily being explored by Monero or any other cryptonote coin.  That's good for anyone who thinks that there's value in having technology for anonymous transactions.  If things like blockchain aliases turn out to be dumb  -- great, we learned something.  If they turn out to be wildly popular -- same answer.

As David Clark famously put it in the early days of the IETF:  "We reject kings, presidents and voting. We believe in rough consensus and running code."  It's nice to have working implementations you can kick around and have fight against each other.

I agree that all of those other things are interesting. Exchange rate in a wallet though -- seems so obvious as to not even be worth a mention. Nearly all bitcoin wallets do that, and its just a very obvious feature. Just my opinion though, you obviously disagree. Fair enough.

[dga]

I agree that all of those other things are interesting. Exchange rate in a wallet though -- seems so obvious as to not even be worth a mention. Nearly all bitcoin wallets do that, and its just a very obvious feature. Just my opinion though, you obviously disagree. Fair enough.

With a history graph?  (Please forgive my ignorance -- I've actually never used a GUI bitcoin wallet.  I'm a command-line luddite and use coinbase for everything else.   But, as you noted, this isn't a shocking innovation in either direction, just continued active development, so probably not worth too many more messages.

[AnonyMint]

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Subject: You can lead an Armstrong horse to water,  but you can't make it drink
From:    AnonyMint
Date:    Tue, September 2, 2014 9:45 pm
To:      Armstrong Economics
--------------------------------------------------------------------------

Armstrong is correct in many of his points about gold:

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2014/09/02/will-gold-still-go-to-5000/

But can anyone spot the flaws in his analysis?

The control over the issuance of money and debt is intimately tied to the power vacuum of democracy. Gold as money isn't entirely autonomous as it needs to be stamped for purity and weight in order to be used as rapid medium-of-exchange.

He still doesn't get it! PoW is a technological Richter scale 11 earthquake.

He is likely posting that because I accused him of not getting it. And he still doesn't get it!

Gold did not save Spain nor did the gold standard postwar world with Bretton Woods! Why? BECAUSE IT DOES NOT MATTER WHAT THE MONEY IS – THE PROBLEM IS FISCAL MISMANAGEMENT OF GOVERNMENT.  Returning to a gold standard will NOT make politicians honest. Sorry – we need real reform for that one and that does NOT center upon what we use as money.

This should be about making money – not supporting a predetermined idea because that is what someone would like to see happen. No matter what evidence is presented, there are those who will refuse to believe anything other than what they want to believe. That is life. They have to learn the hard way.

[Johnny Mnemonic]

I don't think any cryptonote coin will ever pass Monero, including BBR. But:

The idea that Monero is already too big to be overtaken is complete nonsense. I'm a big supporter of the project and hold much respect for the developers, but if a new technology comes along that is unquestionably superior, adoption will flood to the new tech.

Monero's fate will depend on it's ability to adapt or compete with emerging technologies, which will put it in an inferior position compared to its nimble adversaries. Some very bold decisions lie ahead for the core team.

[georgehosterguy]

The "Play nice" people seem to think there can be more than one winner in this space.  

This was an interesting quotation to me as I do try to play nice. I had a keen eye on BitMonero when it was planned for launch, trying to reason with thankful_for_today et al about renaming the coin before it was launched and other general things. It was obvious that we were dealing with someone from the original Bytecoin coding team, so even after the disagreements between him and some of us who were following the ANN thread, we stuck around and when I saw the others who were into BitMonero, I knew it would have success. By the way none of the current vocal members of XMR were there when all of this was taking place. I never envisioned others would be promoting it so hard, and in my mind I knew that this would be the CN coin to go with even if there were no Heroes around.

When Boolberry came on to the scene, I rejected it and saw it as an unnecessary noise that would create some unwanted competition with XMR and the name didn't help the case to get acceptance. I didn't mine it and didn't even care what was happening with it, just like I hadn't cared for the Quazarscam (though Qcn was very frustrating crapping on the BMR thread those days). But then the pump happened and I saw people discussing it here and there and I checked the thread. I knew it was being the victim of FUD, deliberations and financial attacks right away. By that time it was hitting the current bottom in prices and it wasn't matching up with all the technical developments that were showing up in the thread. I made my own assumption that zoidberg was probably also one of the core CN reference devs with the command he had. Despite all this I can understand why playing nice is not part of the game and why people continue to defame him personally and ridicule his technical progress along with other absurdities.

I just refuse to play that game. I am not saying others need to do it too, but till date there have been zero reasons provided on this thread or elsewhere that makes me want to dispose of the BBR I procured earlier in August. People love an underdog story. It may be me today, but I bet people are going to question the market dynamics of BBR down the road once they find out too.

   
Maybe I should have put this another way.  I feel major adoption is inhibited until there is a clear cut winner.  I don't think that means shill louder or all the other shit that goes on.  More of a technical / adoption aspect. 

[aminorex]

Whoever is in the lead is always the hardest to overtake, and the difficulty only increases with time, network size, and market cap.  Certainly  it is possible.  Certainly it is difficult.  Anything worth doing usually is.

[iCEBREAKER]

I feel major adoption is inhibited until there is a clear cut winner.  I don't think that means shill louder or all the other shit that goes on.  More of a technical / adoption aspect. 

Multiple approaches by independent variants of a new technology catalyze major adoption, by more rapidly exploring potentially stable niches and killer applications within the marketplace.

Today's Altcoin Observation: Monero collapsing.  Boolberry UP!

/dons Nomex flamesuit   

[gjhiggins]

Now I am going to teach you something if you are not already aware of the distinction. Data driven marketing is a refinement mechanism.

I am familiar with both the distinction and the characterisation but it may be new to others.

Cheers

Graham

[Triffin]

I don't think any cryptonote coin will ever pass Monero, including BBR. But:

The idea that Monero is already too big to be overtaken is complete nonsense. I'm a big supporter of the project and hold much respect for the developers, but if a new technology comes along that is unquestionably superior, adoption will flood to the new tech.

Monero's fate will depend on it's ability to adapt or compete with emerging technologies, which will put it in an inferior position compared to its nimble adversaries. Some very bold decisions lie ahead for the core team.

I realize that things move fast in CryptoLand and from the near non stop
proliferation of "coins" it's clear to me that there is zero barrier to entry in this space ..
As long as the "next big thing" in crypto is open source wouldn't that imply that
Monero can adopt/modify as needed going forward ?? There's no real need to
constantly produce new "coins" for every great idea that comes along; we've got a
population of some 1500 alts now; surely that's enough to satisfy any "new" concept  
worth trying out .. I've noticed that most recently launched coins are essentially "featureless"
with the dev/s promoting community participation in selecting from a 'menu' of potential
attributes for eventual inclusion .. I suspect that 'rehab crews' will relaunch failed/abandoned
coins with the latest desirable 'feature' set as a way to cheaply pump and dump for BTC or other coin ..

Triff ..

[infofront]

InfoFront's Daily AltCoin Observation: Boolberry has one of the worst names of any altcoin. Based on that fact alone, it has an approximately 0% chance of success.

[infofront]

I don't think any cryptonote coin will ever pass Monero, including BBR. But:

The idea that Monero is already too big to be overtaken is complete nonsense. I'm a big supporter of the project and hold much respect for the developers, but if a new technology comes along that is unquestionably superior, adoption will flood to the new tech.

Monero's fate will depend on it's ability to adapt or compete with emerging technologies, which will put it in an inferior position compared to its nimble adversaries. Some very bold decisions lie ahead for the core team.

I realize that things move fast in CryptoLand and from the near non stop
proliferation of "coins" it's clear to me that there is zero barrier to entry in this space ..
As long as the "next big thing" in crypto is open source wouldn't that imply that
Monero can adopt/modify as needed going forward ?? There's no real need to
constantly produce new "coins" for every great idea that comes along; we've got a
population of some 1500 alts now; surely that's enough to satisfy any "new" concept  
worth trying out .. I've noticed that most recently launched coins are essentially "featureless"
with the dev/s promoting community participation in selecting from a 'menu' of potential
attributes for eventual inclusion .. I suspect that 'rehab crews' will relaunch failed/abandoned
coins with the latest desirable 'feature' set as a way to cheaply pump and dump for BTC or other coin ..

Triff ..

If history is any indication, the larger and more adopted a coin becomes, the more monolithic and stagnant it becomes, at least in terms of development.