rpietila Altcoin Observer

[dga]

hard to believe they are selling on poloniex if you watch that book

The order book there has been reduced by about 2,000 or so today. A roughly 1% reduction.
The volume is 641 BTC  

That's XMR volume.  I was referring to CB's gpu mined BBR.  24 volume in BBR is 57btc.

Remarkable that XMR is 80% of the volume on PLX.  About 4 times more XMR xns than all other alts combined.  This really is the new bitcoin.

Sorry, but I think this is .. ahh .. let's politely say "incorrect."  I believe CB when he says he doesn't hold more than 10k - perhaps I'm wrong, but I can't see a reason for him to lie, given that he's already attracted everyone's attention.  That leads to the question of where the other 390k coins are sitting.  I hold about 7k (grin, yes, that's a few up from yesterday).  I have all of them listed on Poloniex at various asks ranging from .002 to .006 -- I have no urgent desire to part with them, but if someone wants to offer me a lot of money for them, I'm not above tripling my investment and then hoping I can buy more on a downswing.  That means that *my* holdings represent 1/4 the order book on Poloniex.  And yet, that's also only 1.6% of the coins produced, and that percent declines every day -- I'm a very small fish in this game.  Where are the rest?

I think the answer is:  some or a lot of people are holding on to the coin.  And from that one 80k offer that briefly floated across, there are probably one or two "whales" using large stores to try to play games on the market.  No surprise there.  I can't decide, however, whether they're using this GPU miner as a screen to hide their collection activities behind, encouraging it to keep the price low so they can get it now, or if they're using it to distract attention from their own private optimized mining activity, hoping the poop will stick to the public figure.

Regardless, the solution to this is to get the miner open sourced, and the bounty for the stratum implementation just crossed 1000 BBR (about 1.9 BTC - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=657484 ), which is, in my estimation, in the range that starts to get interesting for the people who can do this work well.  One developer has expressed interest in jumping for it.  I suspect we'll see something quite soon, and we can put at least one FUD-machine to bed and get back to arguing about the technical and economic merits of the coins.

Which we should:  The cryptonotes at present present a pretty stark trade between stronger anonymity than any other coin, and a huge blockchain and bandwidth use.  I tend to be of the view that things like privacy don't scale with lithography, but bandwidth and memory/disk space do, but the size of, e.g., the full Bytecoin blockchain is pretty impressive -- 1.2GB compressed.  I keep hearing anecdotal reports from people in ypool that their XMR daemons are filling their entire upstream home Internet connection, though, of course, that could be user error.  There's technical progress on part of this front - the BCN developers just announced a client modification to not store the full blockchain in DRAM - but given that people worry about Bitcoin's ability to scale to high transaction volume, I really wonder what they'd say about CN.  A fun challenge to solve, certainly.

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[statdude]

Last two posts deserve a gold star.

Good analysis

Who is "CB"?

[aminorex]

Sorry, but I think this is .. ahh .. let's politely say "incorrect."  I believe CB when he says he doesn't hold more than 10k..

What was incorrect?  I don't see anything in your post which is inconsistent with my own.  I simply doubt the CB coins are going to PLX.  But I must admit it is possible, when I do the math:

33k bbr changed hands during a period when 12k were mined.  2.75x churn is certainly possible.  Comparing the XMR churn ratio at 5x, I'm unconvinced.  

I don't think anyone is even trying to convince me:  CB never said, to my knowledge, that he was selling everything on PLX, and in fact said things which militate against this thesis.

cryptonotes at present present a pretty stark trade between stronger anonymity than any other coin, and a huge blockchain and bandwidth use

The bandwidth problem is just amateurish code.  Needs a lot of work.  To what degree blockchain size is fixable I am not in a position to comment.  It's not going to be a lot bigger than bitcoin in the long run, in any case.  Creative measures are certainly conceivable.

[dewdeded]

Who is "CB"?

Account here is "cbuchner" or "cbuchner1". Guy called Christoph Buchner, AFAIK. (Not sure about first name.)

[dga]

Sorry, but I think this is .. ahh .. let's politely say "incorrect."  I believe CB when he says he doesn't hold more than 10k..

What was incorrect?  I don't see anything in your post which is inconsistent with my own.  I simply doubt the CB coins are going to PLX.  But I must admit it is possible, when I do the math:

33k bbr changed hands during a period when 12k were mined.  2.75x churn is certainly possible.  Comparing the XMR churn ratio at 5x, I'm unconvinced.  

I don't think anyone is even trying to convince me:  CB never said, to my knowledge, that he was selling everything on PLX, and in fact said things which militate against this thesis.

cryptonotes at present present a pretty stark trade between stronger anonymity than any other coin, and a huge blockchain and bandwidth use

The bandwidth problem is just amateurish code.  Needs a lot of work.  To what degree blockchain size is fixable I am not in a position to comment.  It's not going to be a lot bigger than bitcoin in the long run, in any case.  Creative measures are certainly conceivable.

I'm simply skeptical that the CB GPU mining is reducing trading volume on PLX by a huge margin (and, I guess more generally, I think that people are multiplying or dividing how much they think he's a factor in the mining to whichever point the want to prove, given the absence of hard data.  I'm certainly not immune to that kind of cognitive bias either.)  You're right, though, that he didn't say he was selling on PLX or any other public exchange.  I'm clueless on the analysis of trading volume and churn, but I'd ask:  are you comparing the churn during periods when the price of each coin behaved in a similar way?  Certainly, the last two days had huge XMR volume, but XMR also increased in price over that time where BBR was flat.  ... I don't claim to know which direction the causality goes there, but the volume and big price changes are certainly correlated.

If you have a pointer to the cause of the bandwidth problem, I'd be interested - that's more my line of work.

@statdude, ripplebtc posted a good summary of the gpu miner issue on the previous page:  https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=624223.msg7415460#msg7415460

[adhitthana]

XMR certainly looks to be a good call as it seems to stand a better chance of establishing itself the way it is going.

Another coin that seems interesting is XC whose team is making noises that they are working towards solving some of issues with these coins.
Any comments on this release?
https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B4OTDoLPVfe-VE5RVWo0WF80bmc/edit

[aminorex]

If btc fungibility becomes an issue, xmr may save the day. Every coinjoin has proven reversible.  I think btc taint will inevitably become a problem, in the u.s., under the existing laws.

The reasons for xmr become more compelling to me every day.  Miners and speculators seem to agree.  

[aminorex]

The mulipath join is the interesting part of xc.  I am constitutionally sceptical of crypto claims.  They require careful review of both protocol and implementation.

[Melbustus]

If btc fungibility becomes an issue, xmr may save the day. Every coinjoin has proven reversible.  I think btc taint will inevitably become a problem, in the u.s., under the existing laws.

The reasons for xmr become more compelling to me every day.  Miners and speculators seem to agree.  

It's gonna get interesting. Once an anon coin starts to gain more public attention, the reaction from governments may very well be to *promote* bitcoin by contrast because they realize the poison they're dealing with. They'd certainly act harshly against non-transparent-blockchain coins. In one of the NYDFS hearings, Lawsky even made some comment about "maybe we require all virtual currencies to have a transparent blockchain". So they're thinking that way.

Obviously gov couldn't actually shutdown the coin, but they *could* outlaw merchants from accepting non-transparent crypto without also collecting egregious AML/KYC on normal retail customers. That'd certainly limit the mainstream appeal of such a coin.

But I do think there's a good chance that eventually the #2 coin is a strong-anon flavor, be it a cryptonote (agree that Monero is strongest right now), or an eventual Zerocoin implementation, who knows...

[saddambitcoin]

Which we should:  The cryptonotes at present present a pretty stark trade between stronger anonymity than any other coin, and a huge blockchain and bandwidth use.  I tend to be of the view that things like privacy don't scale with lithography, but bandwidth and memory/disk space do, but the size of, e.g., the full Bytecoin blockchain is pretty impressive -- 1.2GB compressed.  I keep hearing anecdotal reports from people in ypool that their XMR daemons are filling their entire upstream home Internet connection, though, of course, that could be user error.  There's technical progress on part of this front - the BCN developers just announced a client modification to not store the full blockchain in DRAM - but given that people worry about Bitcoin's ability to scale to high transaction volume, I really wonder what they'd say about CN.  A fun challenge to solve, certainly.

bitmonerod sometimes will intermittently kill my internet connection. somewhere in r/monero i read devs are fixing this in the next update.

i do hold monero as well but i did not buy as much as i should have. hoping to see a good correction.

[smooth]

Which we should:  The cryptonotes at present present a pretty stark trade between stronger anonymity than any other coin, and a huge blockchain and bandwidth use.  I tend to be of the view that things like privacy don't scale with lithography, but bandwidth and memory/disk space do, but the size of, e.g., the full Bytecoin blockchain is pretty impressive -- 1.2GB compressed.  I keep hearing anecdotal reports from people in ypool that their XMR daemons are filling their entire upstream home Internet connection, though, of course, that could be user error.  There's technical progress on part of this front - the BCN developers just announced a client modification to not store the full blockchain in DRAM - but given that people worry about Bitcoin's ability to scale to high transaction volume, I really wonder what they'd say about CN.  A fun challenge to solve, certainly.

bitmonerod sometimes will intermittently kill my internet connection. somewhere in r/monero i read devs are fixing this in the next update.

i do hold monero as well but i did not buy as much as i should have. hoping to see a good correction.

The cause is likely blockchain downloading by (new) peer nodes. The coin is growing fast. Every new wallet user has to download the blockchain, and most don't use the blockchain archives. So they connect to a random peer (in this case yours) and download the block chain, saturating your upstream. The issues was made worse by: 1) The optimized PoW that makes verifying blocks faster, and 2) more usage (especially pool dust, though that is being fixed too), which makes blocks bigger.

tldr: 1) please be patient, it is being fixed, and 2) be happy that your bandwidth is helping bring new users into the network, otherwise the coin would whither and die.


 

[adhitthana]

Obviously gov couldn't actually shutdown the coin, but they *could* outlaw merchants from accepting non-transparent crypto without also collecting egregious AML/KYC on normal retail customers. That'd certainly limit the mainstream appeal of such a coin.

They will still have to balance that with peoples right to not have anyone who knows their address knowing a lot about their finances. Though maybe they don't see things that way, especially if it becomes an issue of "national security" 

[Trolololo]

Monero (XMR) added to Bter:
https://bter.com/trade/XMR_BTC

Said to be added to Mintpal on Monday.

[darlidada]

So what should be our trading plan for Monero ? We've just been added ton BTER. Mintpal is the next and rumour has it that BTC38 is trying to implement it. If we more or less follow in DRK path, its second bubble phase saw him surge from 0.03 to 0.015 - Personally I have no plan as of right now I am holding for Mintpal.

BTW: instant 1% bonus on XMR deposit at BTER. If you deposit 1K there, you got 10 xmr for free directly when the deposit arrive! But they take 1% off when we withdraw

[Its About Sharing]

Monero (XMR) added to Bter:
https://bter.com/trade/XMR_BTC

Said to be added to Mintpal on Monday.

Thanks for noting that. I just looked at the order book, and talk about thin! Of course XMR was just added, but all the same.
There are hardly any buy orders and the sells on the way up are reasonable but if it starts to move, will be eaten up.

Now I find myself in an interesting place. I had no plans for XMR to be at these levels and I'm temped to sell some
but at the same time I feel confident in the next few months of development and it is less stress to sit and wait.
Thanks Rpietila for mentioning the coin. I wonder how much of the attention is actually do to that here...

As another poster mentioned, I wonder what governments will do with the anonymous coins? But even then, Dark Wallet
and other anonymizing wallets/software will get the same thing accomplished, so this will get interesting. I think governments
will prefer being or rather thinking they are "in control" though. Computer savy people, and barely so at that, will always find
work arounds. The thing is, this field is just getting started and it might run away from governments. Remember, we are VERY
early adopters still. Most people when they hear Bitcoin don't even have a clue and I work with many tech savvy people.

The Trojan Horse has already had offspring and more are on the way. I'm not sure governments will easily be able to
control Cryptos. Which is great as governmental structures are weakening as it is and Cryptos just hasten that.
The days of printing money to get what you want are becoming numbered.

IAS

[rpietila]

I know full well how many dollars of new investment is needed each day to retain the valuation.

As with BTC, it does not matter what the price is. What matters is how many % of the coin you own, if the technology is sound and has a potential to break out. MRO was the first coin with interesting technology and fair launch. That's why I hold approx the same % as I hold BTC.

I mentioned this in ToF, so let it be known here also that I like MRO very much at 0.002, I like it at 0.004, but would not buy over 0.010. Going to 0.020 in the immediate future is a sell zone with an intention to buy back at 0.010 or less.

Emphasis new.

[mvidetto]

I know full well how many dollars of new investment is needed each day to retain the valuation.

As with BTC, it does not matter what the price is. What matters is how many % of the coin you own, if the technology is sound and has a potential to break out. MRO was the first coin with interesting technology and fair launch. That's why I hold approx the same % as I hold BTC.

I mentioned this in ToF, so let it be known here also that I like MRO very much at 0.002, I like it at 0.004, but would not buy over 0.010. Going to 0.020 in the immediate future is a sell zone with an intention to buy back at 0.010 or less.

Emphasis new.

.02 may be a pretty fair valuation considering the volume is consistently rising everyday, and mintpal (which is larger than both plx and bter) is adding it Monday.  We may even see .01 consistently before Monday.

[Its About Sharing]

I know full well how many dollars of new investment is needed each day to retain the valuation.

As with BTC, it does not matter what the price is. What matters is how many % of the coin you own, if the technology is sound and has a potential to break out. MRO was the first coin with interesting technology and fair launch. That's why I hold approx the same % as I hold BTC.

I mentioned this in ToF, so let it be known here also that I like MRO very much at 0.002, I like it at 0.004, but would not buy over 0.010. Going to 0.020 in the immediate future is a sell zone with an intention to buy back at 0.010 or less.

Emphasis new.

.02 may be a pretty fair valuation considering the volume is consistently rising everyday, and mintpal (which is larger than both plx and bter) is adding it Monday.  We may even see .01 consistently before Monday.

We are a bit ahead of our time, in the sense of being ready for the masses. The developers are still working on getting the bugs worked out as this is no BTC clone. (Which is a great security blanket.)
We don't even have a GUI wallet yet and that is not scheduled for months from now. To boot, be sure other coins will be released, not to mention 2.0 coins, that will take some of our thunder.

The "issue" that has been brought up is that the coins mined over the next 2 years is relatively high and since Bots are involved that is going to a fair amount of downward pressure.
Does anyone know the rate of coin distribution/mining over this period of time? (Sorry, forget the proper terminology here.) I'd like to see the number of coins that can be sold in this two year window. I wonder what % of miners the bots make up, or will make up.

Its about sharing

[Its About Sharing]

Found the information about the mining. Certainly interesting as everyone has a chance to get in while the supply is still high for quite a while. 18.4 million coins in total.
Taken from: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.0 And because of the huge early distribution I think that certainly limits our upside (as has been mentioned) in the short term.

Roughly 86% mined in 4 years (see graph).

[aminorex]

Today I estimate the marginal cost of production of 1 XMR, using Amazon C3.8xlarge spot instances, as 0.0104 BTC.

If difficulty continues to rise exponentially it will overrun the ability of the numeraire pipe to provide demand liquidity.
MintPal would help in that regard.  With additional exchanges, new coins can more easily be absorbed. 

I think a local coins exchange via Mycelium would be super helpful because it would provide both wallet utility infratructure and a distributed demand liquidity soak.

Whether XMR can maintain its leadership position through the course of a difficulty/demand mismatch and correction -- that issue will be it's first major existential hurdle.