rpietila Altcoin Observer

[grouper fish]

I'll cross-post this BURST post here in the right thread. Any thoughts? Anyone researched it thoughtfully?

this weirdo idea of some experts that bitcoin will be replaced by something better which we should wait for is so brutally flawed that I really wonder what they get their money for.

I see two spaces which will be filled by something other than bitcoin.  The 2.0 smart contracts etc system (counterparty? etherium? nxt?) and privacy. 

I know this is not the right thread to discuss other altcoins, but smart contracts are already a reality. Surprisingly (for me) it was implemented in a coin I treated like a shitcoin (mine and sell whatever the price). The coin is proof of capacity (you mine it on many TBs of HDD) and is called BURST. Here is a recent publication about BURST and smart contracts: https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/cryptocurrency-burst-makes-smart-contracts-reality-happened-ethereum/. I was just mining it and selling, so I didn't researched it a lot, so everything I know about the coin is that it seems it's not a premine and it's NXT based (but not POS). I have the feeling it's very easy to pump and dump (low market cap, many large miners still not selling) so be extremely careful with it.

I have been following Burst for a few months. Really like where it is going, also the activity seems to have picked up and the thread here on the forum is getting alot of good posts.

Treated it as a mine and sell coin in the beginning when it hit polo but now I'm actually buying.

[bytezero]

To raise Altcoins real value then you need to create a true and continuous demand for it by growing the economy and getting more merchants and organizations involved.

[jehst]

To raise Altcoins real value then you need to create a true and continuous demand for it by growing the economy and getting more merchants and organizations involved.

Altcoins will see virtually zero real world merchant transaction adoption for years to come. Until then, growing any altcoin is solely about making it attractive to speculators through hype, marketing, and the actual merit of the technology. Due to the high velocity of cryptocurrencies, merchant "adoption" (immediately cashing out into fiat), is really only useful insofar as it creates more hype and attracts more holders. Holding the coin for the purpose of wealth preservation is the most important non-speculative use of altcoins, not merchant adoption. If enough people hold the coin for the purpose of speculation and wealth preservation, merchants will be the ones pushing to obtain altcoins, rather than altcoin supporters pushing to obtain merchants.

Think about it from the merchant's perspective. How would you feel if someone approached you, begging you to accept their IOU or bitcoin or lucky rabbit's foot in exchange for your goods? You would rationally conclude that it's worthless and that they are trying to get one over on you. If they really thought that their bitcoin was valuable, they'd be giving you USD or EUR and keeping the bitcoin for themselves.

You might feel differently when someone approaches you begging you to accept their dollars. Then they ask you for their change in bitcoin. Then the buyer is communicating something entirely different.

[TrueCryptonaire]

Have you checked Unobtanium?
Only 15 UNO is created on daily basis and from May it will even be decreased to 7.5 UNO per day.
The charts look excellent since summer 2014.
It is still a small coin (marketcap only a few hundred of thousands).
It is recommended to buy UNO only with small incredements per day so that you will not be pumping the price too much. 1 btc a day is maximum one can spend.
The UNO fans are predicting it will reach 400 BTC per uno price at some point.  

The only problems with UNO is that there is a community literally begging the coin owners to sell some UNOs from time to time.
UNO may not be optimal coin for wide merchant adoption since not many are willing to spend UNO knowing it will be more expensive after 2-3 months from now. 

[GreekBitcoin]

Have you checked Unobtanium?
Only 15 UNO is created on daily basis and from May it will even be decreased to 7.5 UNO per day.
The charts look excellent since summer 2014.
It is still a small coin (marketcap only a few hundred of thousands).
It is recommended to buy UNO only with small incredements per day so that you will not be pumping the price too much. 1 btc a day is maximum one can spend.
The UNO fans are predicting it will reach 400 BTC per uno price at some point.  

The only problems with UNO is that there is a community literally begging the coin owners to sell some UNOs from time to time.
UNO may not be optimal coin for wide merchant adoption since not many are willing to spend UNO knowing it will be more expensive after 2-3 months from now.  

What UNO has to offer? Anything new on its tech? How is it compares with bitcoin or litecoin etc?

>>Bryce Weiner. ughh,  does he do anything else than tweeting all the time?I am asking seriously.

I dont have any idea about it. But i just dont see the reason...



On the other hand, have you checked Gapcoin? Gapcoin has already in it's first 4 month of existence broken 544 records of first known occurrences in prime gaps. It was about to break the world record for highest merit before bitcoin dropped and hashrate dropped. If the Gapcoin mining difficulty reaches 35.4245, every block will be a new prime gap world record.

Now obviously you will say that scientific coins arent really that good economically speaking, but i dont know, with a current marketcap of 7500$ it looked like a sure bet to me. Although it isnt so easy to buy with so small marketcap/volume....

Edit: Obviously i own many of them.

[TrueCryptonaire]

Have you checked Unobtanium?
Only 15 UNO is created on daily basis and from May it will even be decreased to 7.5 UNO per day.
The charts look excellent since summer 2014.
It is still a small coin (marketcap only a few hundred of thousands).
It is recommended to buy UNO only with small incredements per day so that you will not be pumping the price too much. 1 btc a day is maximum one can spend.
The UNO fans are predicting it will reach 400 BTC per uno price at some point.  

The only problems with UNO is that there is a community literally begging the coin owners to sell some UNOs from time to time.
UNO may not be optimal coin for wide merchant adoption since not many are willing to spend UNO knowing it will be more expensive after 2-3 months from now.  

What UNO has to offer? Anything new on its tech? How is it compares with bitcoin or litecoin etc?

>>Bryce Weiner. ughh,  does he do anything else than tweeting all the time?I am asking seriously.

I dont have any idea about it. But i just dont see the reason...



On the other hand, have you checked Gapcoin? Gapcoin has already in it's first 4 month of existence broken 544 records of first known occurrences in prime gaps. It was about to break the world record for highest merit before bitcoin dropped and hashrate dropped. If the Gapcoin mining difficulty reaches 35.4245, every block will be a new prime gap world record.

Now obviously you will say that scientific coins arent really that good economically speaking, but i dont know, with a current marketcap of 7500$ it looked like a sure bet to me. Although it isnt so easy to buy with so small marketcap/volume....

Edit: Obviously i own many of them.

As far as I know, UNO offers nothing new technologically. Correct me if I am wrong.
It simply has extremely low emission and the total supply is 250 000 UNO.
And the chart is very appealing.

[nakaone]

Anyone did in-depth research about:

1.) BitShares
2.) Stellar (Improvements/Changes) vs. Ripple

?

Thanks in advance for good answers.

1.)
yes

I think almost use the same system to reach consensus as ripple does. bitshares are a collateral - it can be used to back some other commodity/currency etc pp, which are basically lend into existence and are oversecured at (200 or 300%). the mechanism is from an economists perspective relatively sound and clever, while still having some flaws, which are well described here (a little uberbearish): http://prestonbyrne.com/2014/08/17/dont-walk-away-run/

until now the system did not have a black swan event (I think it is almost rediculous to call that event black swan because it is much more likely). I am not as bearish as prestonbyrne regarding the project, but it suffers from one big flaw: for me it was a reason to sell (almost at ath ). the mechanism failed (at that point of time) to incentivesize to use or hold bitUSD over bitshares as well as over normal USD. While the last seems relatively clear, bitUSD are not as worthless as it seems compared to normal USD, having advantages regarding holding, sending etc. pp. . the additional condition to the first one was that the system in order to be successful needs to offer a high level of liquidity, which I could and can not see at this point of time, given that it is a kickstarter as well as poor risk/reward and little incentivisation.

overall the idea is brilliant, the mechanism is not bad and I will keep an eye on it (I would love to see a similar mechanism on top of bitcoin, which basically solves some of the problems bitcoin has as well as some of the problems bitshares has). it is definetely not the crappiest buy you can make, but I do not hold some. I think we will have time to see if it gets used, which basically offers a much better risk reward.

2)
no but I would be really interested in that, given that one can assume that ripple (not ripples) at least partially starts networking

[jwinterm]

Anyone did in-depth research about:

...
2.) Stellar (Improvements/Changes) vs. Ripple
...

...
2)
no but I would be really interested in that, given that one can assume that ripple (not ripples) at least partially starts networking

I thought that the primary difference between Stellar and Ripple was that Stellar was supposed to achieve much wider/better distribution, first with their facebook giveaways, and then sometime soon I think they're supposed to distribute to all btc addresses above some threshold.

[forzendiablo]

i invest in BTC/DRK and EXCL [my sig]. imo best coins

[dewdeded]

This is a (high quality) content thread.
===> Please give a good, compact & comprehensive introduction and description of EXCL.

One we can all learn from or leave EXCL out of this thread.

[Bassica]

Anyone did in-depth research about:

...
2.) Stellar (Improvements/Changes) vs. Ripple
...

...
2)
no but I would be really interested in that, given that one can assume that ripple (not ripples) at least partially starts networking

I thought that the primary difference between Stellar and Ripple was that Stellar was supposed to achieve much wider/better distribution, first with their facebook giveaways, and then sometime soon I think they're supposed to distribute to all btc addresses above some threshold.

http://observer.com/2015/02/the-race-to-replace-bitcoin/

Very good read regarding ripple/stellar, and sillicon valley/crypto world in general. It's long, but well worth it. 

[jwinterm]

...
I thought that the primary difference between Stellar and Ripple was that Stellar was supposed to achieve much wider/better distribution, first with their facebook giveaways, and then sometime soon I think they're supposed to distribute to all btc addresses above some threshold.

http://observer.com/2015/02/the-race-to-replace-bitcoin/

Very good read regarding ripple/stellar, and sillicon valley/crypto world in general. It's long, but well worth it. 

Interesting article. Thanks for the link.

[Whtwabbit]

http://armstrongeconomics.com/2015/01/19/the-one-world-currency-cryptocurrencies/

Do you think this post on Armstrong Economics helped the latest Darkcoin pump

If bitcoin gets out of control then all the government has to do is trace the transactions and persecute the individuals, but with darkcoin they would be forced to take drastic measures like using an internet kill-switch. If darkcoin were to become as popular as bitcoin, would it not force the hand of government and therefore reveal their true intentions? Could cryptocurrencies serve as light to shine on the emperor’s lack of clothes, and maybe even prove to the public that there is a need for a decentralized world currency?

[Cryddit]

Well for starters total bitcoin days destroyed is something whose supply isn't limited in a very useful way.  

<clip>

Ultimately, the only 'finite resource' I've come up with so far that is finite in the way we want it to be, is the TxOuts that exist at the fork point.  Whichever chain has had more of those coins spent in it is the chain created by the majority of the stake that existed at that time.  

<clip>

Well, my point is that if we're serious about proof-of-stake, "doing the work" means doing transactions that prove your stake supported a particular chain.  In a Proof-of-stake universe that, and not hashing, is what keeps the chain secure.  And by paying 'interest' on coins transacted in a chain, we would be paying exactly the people who did the work to secure the chain.    

Are you increasing security in one area by decreasing it in another? Could SPV clients could work with either technique?  Does some alt-coin already do something like this?

"Decreasing security in some other way" seems quite likely, unfortunately.   While I'm reasonably confident in the above as a general measure  of chain goodness that isn't vulnerable to the nothing-at-stake issue, I don't know if it can really function as the *only* measure of chain goodness.  I haven't provided for any real control over who gets to build the next block and when.  And if the attacker can find any way to control that - building N blocks in a row at a time of his own choosing - he is quite likely to find a new way to mount an attack.  

In all, no, this measure of chain goodness isn't a solution to the whole problem.  As I said at the outset it's still awfully sensitive to large transactions. It's an important part of a solution but it isn't a solution of itself.

<clip>

When I finish working out its kinks it'll probably be one of my 'Cryptocurrency 101' blog posts.  But I don't consider it to be quite unkinked just yet.  

Okay, I unkinked it.  I finally know the RIGHT way to do a PoW/PoS hybrid coin.  I haven't made the blog post yet, but my thoughts drifted back to it in the context of another discussion and I thought about how to get the people who provide security paid in proportion to the security they provide, and I sat down and did math and eventually came up with something that will definitely work.  The coin remains a PoW/PoS hybrid forever - but proof-of-stake becomes more important (because the coin supply is increasing) so proof-of-work becomes proportionally less important as time goes on.

First of all, there's a mining subsidy for hashing.  It could decline over time - that's up to whoever sets the coin parameters - but it need not.  For purposes of the example, I'm going to say the miner gets one 'dirt' every time he mines a block, forever, but this becomes less important as time goes on because the stake portion of the system starts dominating security - and eventually provides the bulk of the awards generated by the coin.  

When a transaction is made, it has to be 'staked' - that is, it has to commit to a past block and can be included only in block chains generated from that block.  This means that if an attacker is mining a chain that he has not revealed, transactions made by other people cannot be included in his attack chain.  Transactions once staked, have become a finite resource that can be counted in support of one side of a fork and CANNOT be used to support the other.  So the only txIns that can count for both chains are the ones that are explicitly double spent by their owners.  If you stake your transaction on the losing side of a block chain fork, the transaction 'Never Happened' and cannot be replayed into the new block chain.

The owner of each txIn gets "Head Stake" (calculating as compounding interest) for the interval between the generation of the txOut and the block where it gets staked as a txIn.  The miner gets "Tail Stake" - the same rate of interest, but for the interval between the block the transaction is staked and the block the miner puts the transaction in.  

Where "Split Stake Awards" is defined as the amount of stake interest awarded for a single block for all txouts created before the fork and used as txIns in transactions staked after the fork, and the Mining Subsidy is the subsidy for a single block, the priority of any chain as compared to another is calculated as

(Hashes since fork) X (Split Stake Awards + Mining Subsidy)

Which is to say, the miners and the stakers are counted as amplifying the security of the total hashes by exactly the same proportion in which they get paid on a single block when they commit resources that can be used only once to one chain and not the other.

This starts out as straight proof-of-work, because there is NO split stake award for the first block, but after a while, depending on the staking interest rate, split stake awards get bigger than mining subsidies.  By the time we're talking about a block chain that carries a significant transaction volume, split stake awards would be the main reason why one fork is accepted over the other given remotely comparable amounts of hashing.  The odds of forking the chain with a block chain that you've prepared in secret would rapidly approach nil unless you have more than half of the (dirt X hashing power), and the importance of the dirt would far exceed the importance of hashing power.

Cryddit

[thelibertycap]

The European Central Bank has released a new report on digital currency, describing it as “inherently unstable” but potentially transformative in the realm of payments.

As well as including refrains of central bank warnings about digital currencies, such as a perceived lack of transparency and market volatility, the ECB also touched on the growth of altcoins.

The report suggested that altcoins may one day serve as future payment networks that, in the eyes of the ECB, could compete with bitcoin given the differences in design, distribution and implementation.

At the same time, the report highlighted how altcoins pose added risks for investors because of the nebulous nature of some projects, noting:

“It is too early to tell what the future of these altcoins will be. A great many of them could be nothing more than “scamcoins”, ie VCSs that are created with the main objective of swindling naive buyers, either as consumers and payers or as investors.”

Specific risks named in the report include a lack of specific information about an altcoin network's management, premining and market illiquidity.

http://www.coindesk.com/european-central-bank-digital-currencies-inherently-unstable/

-

ECB talking altcoins?
Nice
Feels like the times of opportunity when they noticed Bitcoin on the horizon.

[stereotype]

The European Central Bank......

And apparently, the Bank of England assumes i was 1 of 20,000 people in the UK, late last year....

http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/publications/Pages/quarterlybulletin/2014/qb14q3prereleasedigitalcurrenciesbitcoin.aspx

[Joshuar]

The European Central Bank has released a new report on digital currency, describing it as “inherently unstable” but potentially transformative in the realm of payments.

As well as including refrains of central bank warnings about digital currencies, such as a perceived lack of transparency and market volatility, the ECB also touched on the growth of altcoins.

The report suggested that altcoins may one day serve as future payment networks that, in the eyes of the ECB, could compete with bitcoin given the differences in design, distribution and implementation.

At the same time, the report highlighted how altcoins pose added risks for investors because of the nebulous nature of some projects, noting:

“It is too early to tell what the future of these altcoins will be. A great many of them could be nothing more than “scamcoins”, ie VCSs that are created with the main objective of swindling naive buyers, either as consumers and payers or as investors.”

Specific risks named in the report include a lack of specific information about an altcoin network's management, premining and market illiquidity.

http://www.coindesk.com/european-central-bank-digital-currencies-inherently-unstable/

-

ECB talking altcoins?
Nice
Feels like the times of opportunity when they noticed Bitcoin on the horizon.

Hmm, makes sense on their reference to altcoins.

[nakaone]

The European Central Bank has released a new report on digital currency, describing it as “inherently unstable” but potentially transformative in the realm of payments.

As well as including refrains of central bank warnings about digital currencies, such as a perceived lack of transparency and market volatility, the ECB also touched on the growth of altcoins.

The report suggested that altcoins may one day serve as future payment networks that, in the eyes of the ECB, could compete with bitcoin given the differences in design, distribution and implementation.

At the same time, the report highlighted how altcoins pose added risks for investors because of the nebulous nature of some projects, noting:

“It is too early to tell what the future of these altcoins will be. A great many of them could be nothing more than “scamcoins”, ie VCSs that are created with the main objective of swindling naive buyers, either as consumers and payers or as investors.”

Specific risks named in the report include a lack of specific information about an altcoin network's management, premining and market illiquidity.

http://www.coindesk.com/european-central-bank-digital-currencies-inherently-unstable/

-

ECB talking altcoins?
Nice
Feels like the times of opportunity when they noticed Bitcoin on the horizon.

Being here you just have to open your eyes to see what kind of scamfest it is.

Looking at the top 20 coins you can find at least 7 coins which are very close to complete scam - at least two of them are complete scams. below that you probably do not find 7 coins that are not scams.

[pa]

Good post in Speculation subforum re alts: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=974346.msg10675534#msg10675534

[jabo38]

Anyone did in-depth research about:

1.) BitShares
2.) Stellar (Improvements/Changes) vs. Ripple

?

Thanks in advance for good answers.

1.)
yes

I think almost use the same system to reach consensus as ripple does. bitshares are a collateral - it can be used to back some other commodity/currency etc pp, which are basically lend into existence and are oversecured at (200 or 300%). the mechanism is from an economists perspective relatively sound and clever, while still having some flaws, which are well described here (a little uberbearish): http://prestonbyrne.com/2014/08/17/dont-walk-away-run/

until now the system did not have a black swan event (I think it is almost rediculous to call that event black swan because it is much more likely). I am not as bearish as prestonbyrne regarding the project, but it suffers from one big flaw: for me it was a reason to sell (almost at ath ). the mechanism failed (at that point of time) to incentivesize to use or hold bitUSD over bitshares as well as over normal USD. While the last seems relatively clear, bitUSD are not as worthless as it seems compared to normal USD, having advantages regarding holding, sending etc. pp. . the additional condition to the first one was that the system in order to be successful needs to offer a high level of liquidity, which I could and can not see at this point of time, given that it is a kickstarter as well as poor risk/reward and little incentivisation.

overall the idea is brilliant, the mechanism is not bad and I will keep an eye on it (I would love to see a similar mechanism on top of bitcoin, which basically solves some of the problems bitcoin has as well as some of the problems bitshares has). it is definetely not the crappiest buy you can make, but I do not hold some. I think we will have time to see if it gets used, which basically offers a much better risk reward.

2)
no but I would be really interested in that, given that one can assume that ripple (not ripples) at least partially starts networking

That's a pretty good summary to me.

I'd also add that time after time Larimar has stated Bitshares would be X and changed it to Z. I'm guessing at each change too some nice profit ended up in his pocket.