rpietila Altcoin Observer

[AlexGR]

There have been plenty of sound cases put forward as all taxes forced by coercion being inherently evil.  ...  specialization led to abundance, then the parasite class and taxes formed to exploit that, and here we are today.  Paying taxes isn't a patriotic duty, it's you voting towards supporting that particular ideology.

Only a valid point in the case of kleptocracies that don't provide basic services in exchange for the tax money.  There are countries where they pay taxes just like we do in the first world (or even more heavily in proportion) but don't even get clean water or basic road maintenance for their money, and yes, in that case I could talk about a "parasite class" and the "exploitation" of people via taxes. 

For the rest of us?  Naaah, I don't think so.  Government adminstrative overhead isn't substantially worse than the sum total of corporate administrative overhead and stockholder profit taking.  By and large, I think most of us get our money's worth. 

Describing Greece right now We are paying more taxes than average Europe i think but education, health system, infrastructure, pensions etc are getting shitier by the day

It's called "surplus"

You pay the government 100bn in taxes and it gives back 99bn in services so it can have 1bn "surplus".

They are marketing "surplus" as a good thing, when in reality it's making people poorer. For if they lose money to the government = their pockets get emptier by the day.

[mmitech]

some of you say that Litecoin wont succeed because it failed the ASIC proof claim !!!!... where and when the Devs or Coblee or any big investor pointed to litecoin as an ASIC "proof" ? they always said "resistant" which was important for the coin survival at the time....there is nothing ASIC proof, it is not if we can make ASIC for this coin or that coin but when is it profitable to make a one, and when it is made it means that the coin is going mainstream.


no one gives a fuck about the hashing algorithm except miners, investors/adopters care only about the utility and opportunities, market cap,development, services.... and dont give a shit about that hashing algorithm and pure technical stuff, and what matters to me as an investor is for the last 6 months Litecoin is really going crazy, take a look at the daily transactions volume and the trading volume against Bitcoin.

Remember, from looking at the history of litecoin price it is always lagging comparing to Bitcoin, but it always make a boom, and usually a bigger one.

[smooth]

CPU is an ASIC

A CPU is actually not an ASIC. It is general purpose, not application-specific.

The goal of ASIC-resistance is to require something closer to general purpose computing, not just a small subset of operations in a tight loop.

If you get close enough than you can't really create an ASIC that is more efficient than a CPU. Although you can trim out some functions of a CPU and optimize others, you are competing against the massive investment that goes into improving CPUs (which have higher volume than any ASIC, almost by definition) and you can't keep up.

[mmitech]

CPU is an ASIC

A CPU is actually not an ASIC. It is general purpose, not application-specific.

The goal of ASIC-resistance is to require something closer to general purpose computing, not just a small subset of operations in a tight loop.

If you get close enough than you can't really create an ASIC that is more efficient than a CPU. Although you can trim out some functions of a CPU and optimize others, you are competing against the massive investment that goes into improving CPUs (which have higher volume than any ASIC, almost by definition) and you can't keep up.

yes true... my mistake.. fixed

[Anotheranonlol]

some of you say that Litecoin wont succeed because it failed the ASIC proof claim !!!!... where and when the Devs or Coblee or any big investor pointed to litecoin as an ASIC "proof" ? they always said "resistant" which was important for the coin survival at the time....there is nothing ASIC proof, a CPU is an ASIC a GPU is an ASIC for you who doesn't know , it is not if we can make ASIC for this coin or that coin but when is it profitable to make a one, and when it is made it means that the coin is going mainstream.


no one gives a fuck about the hashing algorithm except miners, investors/adopters care only about the utility and opportunities, market cap,development, services.... and dont give a shit about that hashing algorithm and pure technical stuff, and what matters to me as an investor is for the last 6 months Litecoin is really going crazy, take a look at the daily transactions volume and the trading volume against Bitcoin.

Remember, from looking at the history of litecoin price it is always lagging comparing to Bitcoin, but it always make a boom, and usually a bigger one.

Gone over this a million times. I've bolded some sections for you.

We heard you like mining, so we put a miner on your miner, so you can mine while you mine.

Note: try changing -s in the miner batch to 3, 5, or 7. Experiment which is best for you.

Official Website: http://www.tenebrix.org

Hello everybody!

Allow me to introduce you Tenebrix, a cryptocurrency we (mostly ArtForz, but I contributed the name, some minor tweaks and the logo, as well as windows portability suite and cool genesis motto ) have created to provide the community with a cryptocurrency with solid GPU resistance.

It implements a proof-of-work scheme based on scrypt, a cryptographic construct specifically designed to resist creation of efficient GPU, FPGA and even ASIC implementations. You can find more about scrypt and how it can improve your stamina, masculine appeal and performance here

It was not GPU resistant at all and few sneaky guys (mainly the ones who actually PROPOSED it) knew this because they were privately mining with GPU's very shortly  after release. It was a failed concept from the beginning. Don't you get it? Litecoin was specifically invented to provide an alternative proof-of-work that wouldn't be brutalised by GPU, FPGA then ASIC's like everyone knew bitcoin would. It was a fresh start back to '1 cpu, one vote'- a safe haven so to speak.

It failed. If we were using this to hash passwords there would be a CVE-assigned with a quick hotfix and a lot of explaining to do. How ASIC resistant is it when 1 manafacturer can produce in 2 months what entire network has ever seen. o It's not resisting shit and so it should be fixed to reflect it's original promise.

You talk like there's a huge difference between 'resistant' and proof. Sure anything can be ported to ASIC.  Gridchips first batch of wafer was around 0.90$/chip (convert from RMB) and easily outperform any commodity hardware from economic standpoint. For all intents and purposes it's not resistant whatsoever if this is the case. If it was resistant it should of been barely feasible

 The POW can be altered invalidate ASICs with 1 line of code.  Coblee naturally does not want to change POW for fear of upsetting the apple cart (bear in mind he has millions of dollars invested in it's success)  Now you tell me what benefits litecoin offers over bitcoin?  Nothing. Nothing Litecoin can do that Bitcoin can't. No special features, no special services, pure speculation.

The economy isn't there, the infrastructure isn't there, the only thing it's really got going for it is some semblance of network affect and the notion it's the silver to bitcoins gold. Where's the fiat inflow going to be coming from with large scale farms now having hundreds of GH in private mode, then selling at xxx% markup to greedy shovel buyers who think they can jump on the next goldrush. Private farms paid off NRE and can dump at almost any cost, most home miners need to recoup electricity, People are so naive they imagine more ASIC- higher price just like BTC- the higher LTC goes the more inflow is needed to sustain the price- why would that inflow find it's way to LTC over BTC specifically?

[AlexGR]

some of you say that Litecoin wont succeed because it failed the ASIC proof claim !!!!... where and when the Devs or Coblee or any big investor pointed to litecoin as an ASIC "proof" ? they always said "resistant" which was important for the coin survival at the time....there is nothing ASIC proof, a CPU is an ASIC a GPU is an ASIC for you who doesn't know , it is not if we can make ASIC for this coin or that coin but when is it profitable to make a one, and when it is made it means that the coin is going mainstream.

no one gives a fuck about the hashing algorithm except miners, investors/adopters care only about the utility and opportunities, market cap,development, services....

I'd be more worried of Litecoin's inflation + lack of distinctive features than anything else.

28.8k LTCs per day X 10$ = 288k USD per day = 105mn USD per year for buying daily production.

If price is 20$ then 210mn USD to buy production.

I don't see that happening. What I see is that inflation will act corrosively to the investors and bagholders. Why keep something today that can be bought for lower money tomorrow?

The ratio of inflation between BTC/LTC means that a BTC holder who goes into LTC has his money debased much faster. It can be a diversification asset but other than that there is nothing else really.

If someone believes LTC can boom, ok, they can buy LTC... but can it boom?

[smooth]

The POW can be altered invalidate ASICs with 1 line of code.

Fairly good point actually. Any coin can be not just ASIC-resistant but completely ASIC-proof if the developer and community want it to be, since they can just tweak things in some otherwise insignificant way once someone has put money into developing an ASIC, wiping out that investment.

[mmitech]

some of you say that Litecoin wont succeed because it failed the ASIC proof claim !!!!... where and when the Devs or Coblee or any big investor pointed to litecoin as an ASIC "proof" ? they always said "resistant" which was important for the coin survival at the time....there is nothing ASIC proof, a CPU is an ASIC a GPU is an ASIC for you who doesn't know , it is not if we can make ASIC for this coin or that coin but when is it profitable to make a one, and when it is made it means that the coin is going mainstream.


no one gives a fuck about the hashing algorithm except miners, investors/adopters care only about the utility and opportunities, market cap,development, services.... and dont give a shit about that hashing algorithm and pure technical stuff, and what matters to me as an investor is for the last 6 months Litecoin is really going crazy, take a look at the daily transactions volume and the trading volume against Bitcoin.

Remember, from looking at the history of litecoin price it is always lagging comparing to Bitcoin, but it always make a boom, and usually a bigger one.

Gone over this a million times. I've bolded some sections for you.

We heard you like mining, so we put a miner on your miner, so you can mine while you mine.

Note: try changing -s in the miner batch to 3, 5, or 7. Experiment which is best for you.

Official Website: http://www.tenebrix.org

Hello everybody!

Allow me to introduce you Tenebrix, a cryptocurrency we (mostly ArtForz, but I contributed the name, some minor tweaks and the logo, as well as windows portability suite and cool genesis motto ) have created to provide the community with a cryptocurrency with solid GPU resistance.

It implements a proof-of-work scheme based on scrypt, a cryptographic construct specifically designed to resist creation of efficient GPU, FPGA and even ASIC implementations. You can find more about scrypt and how it can improve your stamina, masculine appeal and performance here

It was not GPU resistant at all and few sneaky guys (mainly the ones who actually PROPOSED it) knew this because they were privately mining with GPU's very shortly  after release. It was a failed concept from the beginning. Don't you get it? Litecoin was specifically invented to provide an alternative proof-of-work that wouldn't be brutalised by GPU, FPGA then ASIC's like everyone knew bitcoin would. It was a fresh start back to '1 cpu, one vote'- a safe haven so to speak.

It failed. If we were using this to hash passwords there would be a CVE-assigned with a quick hotfix and a lot of explaining to do. How ASIC resistant is it when 1 manafacturer can produce in 2 months what entire network has ever seen. o It's not resisting shit and so it should be fixed to reflect it's original promise.

You talk like there's a huge difference between 'resistant' and proof. Sure anything can be ported to ASIC.  Gridchips first batch of wafer was around 0.90$/chip (convert from RMB) and easily outperform any commodity hardware from economic standpoint. For all intents and purposes it's not resistant whatsoever if this is the case. If it was resistant it should of been barely feasible

 The POW can be altered invalidate ASICs with 1 line of code.  Coblee naturally does not want to change POW for fear of upsetting the apple cart (bear in mind he has millions of dollars invested in it's success)  Now you tell me what benefits litecoin offers over bitcoin?  Nothing. Nothing Litecoin can do that Bitcoin can't. No special features, no special services, pure speculation.

The economy isn't there, the infrastructure isn't there, the only thing it's really got going for it is some semblance of network affect and the notion it's the silver to bitcoins gold. Where's the fiat inflow going to be coming from with large scale farms now having hundreds of GH in private mode, then selling at xxx% markup to greedy shovel buyers who think they can jump on the next goldrush. Private farms paid off NRE and can dump at almost any cost, most home miners need to recoup electricity, People are so naive they imagine more ASIC- higher price just like BTC- the higher LTC goes the more inflow is needed to sustain the price- why would that inflow find it's way to LTC over BTC specifically?

because we choose to? you did ask a question and provided an answer for it in the same question  

[AlexGR]

What would that 1 line of code be?

[mmitech]

The POW can be altered invalidate ASICs with 1 line of code.

Fairly good point actually. Any coin can be not just ASIC-resistant but completely ASIC-proof if the developer and community want it to be, since they can just tweak things in some otherwise insignificant way once someone has put money into developing an ASIC, wiping out that investment.

this would be shooting your self in the foot and letting other shitcoins take over your hashing algorithm by adopting the supposed ASICs... no, I dont think so.

[smooth]

What would that 1 line of code be?

I don't know what changes was specifically proposed for LTC but the point is more general. Once someone has designed a chip it is extremely expensive to make any changes to the PoW function, but software solutions (CPU and/or GPU) can be tweaked a little at almost no cost.

This isn't really decentralized, entirely. It is up to a developer to make the changes, but the community still has to adopt them.

And no it doesn't help any other altcoins. If they want an ASIC PoW they can just use SHA256 or Scrypt (SHA256 is probably better). There is no benefit to a new ASIC PoW.

[Anotheranonlol]

What would that 1 line of code be?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89258.msg1011029#msg1011029

you can start by

changing this:

RAM = state

to this:

RAM.Insert(state.e % i, state)

[mmitech]

What would that 1 line of code be?

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=89258.msg1011029#msg1011029

you can start by

changing this:

RAM = state

to this:

RAM.Insert(state.e % i, state)

look there, you figured it all out, the next noble should be yours.

[AlexGR]

Ok, I will ask what others are afraid to ask: what does that change do?

[dnaleor]

Also kudos to aminorex for introducing the forum vets to MRO. I think it was he who first dropped hints in the Wall Observer thread.

indeed, thx mate!
That's how I got my stash of 1000 MRO early on

[spiffcow]

tax dodgers, libertarian wackos

While I am personally not a tax dodger, there have been plenty of sound cases put forward as all taxes forced by coercion being inherently evil.  Humans were once hunter gatherers, then they began to practice specialization.  That specialization led to abundance, then the parasite class and taxes formed to exploit that, and here we are today.  Paying taxes isn't a patriotic duty, it's you voting towards supporting that particular ideology.

The word libertarian is somewhat based on identifying that system as either a necessary evil, or completely unwanted phenomenon, and minimizing it's effects.  If there's anyone with a logical flaw in their argument, it's probably you.

There's certainly a "parasite class", but it's not who you think it is.  I'll take the tyranny of democratically elected government over the feudalism of libertarian corporatocracy any day.  The only freedom libertarians care about is the freedom to economically enslave others.

The fundamental flaws behind libertarian thinking are:
1.) A free market fixes every economic problem (demonstrably false, but assumed without question by libertarians)
2.) Rational self interest produces the greatest good for society (also easily show to be wrong.  See Prisoner's Dilemma)
3.) Lack of government leaves a power vacuum that is filled evenly by the population (rich individuals and corporations are ready and eager to fill that power vacuum)
4.) "useless" people such as the old, the infirm, or the unlucky, don't deserve to live unless some wealthier individual takes pity on them (this is more a value judgement, but one I'm pretty sure most sane people will agree is completely fucked)

[r0ach]

tax dodgers, libertarian wackos

While I am personally not a tax dodger, there have been plenty of sound cases put forward as all taxes forced by coercion being inherently evil.  Humans were once hunter gatherers, then they began to practice specialization.  That specialization led to abundance, then the parasite class and taxes formed to exploit that, and here we are today.  Paying taxes isn't a patriotic duty, it's you voting towards supporting that particular ideology.

The word libertarian is somewhat based on identifying that system as either a necessary evil, or completely unwanted phenomenon, and minimizing it's effects.  If there's anyone with a logical flaw in their argument, it's probably you.

There's certainly a "parasite class", but it's not who you think it is.  I'll take the tyranny of democratically elected government over the feudalism of libertarian corporatocracy any day.  The only freedom libertarians care about is the freedom to economically enslave others.

The fundamental flaws behind libertarian thinking are:
1.) A free market fixes every economic problem (demonstrably false, but assumed without question by libertarians)
2.) Rational self interest produces the greatest good for society (also easily show to be wrong.  See Prisoner's Dilemma)
3.) Lack of government leaves a power vacuum that is filled evenly by the population (rich individuals and corporations are ready and eager to fill that power vacuum)
4.) "useless" people such as the old, the infirm, or the unlucky, don't deserve to live unless some wealthier individual takes pity on them (this is more a value judgement, but one I'm pretty sure most sane people will agree is completely fucked)

If we're talking about effectiveness of markets and government in dealing with a population base, I think you missed what my point was.  I clearly stated the following:

"I'm of the viewpoint that human structure originates from individual > family > tribe/village > city state, (then possibly a nation built upon that) and that's where the buck stops.  Those organizational structures are all based on ethnocentric values, shared culture, and experiences.  If you would take a look at the modern world today, every nation following that natural state seem to be doing okay, while all the ones embracing globalization are just falling apart except the top 1/10th of 1%."

Libertarianism and freedom works, it just requires a nation built on a solid ethnocentric majority.  There are plenty of case studies as to why, as seen in things like "the Florida effect", where tax payers will willingly pay out whatever taxes to support local schools and other groups as long as the demographic there resembles their own, then the opposite effect for other demographics.  Some people will pull the whiny liberal card and claim this is discrimination, but that's just the natural order of things, how nature works.  People are more willing to support other groups when that group has a high probability of being actual blood relation to themselves.  

This is the natural order, no other bullshit systems work since it goes against the opposite of human instincts.

[rpietila]

The only short term problem for MRO is that supply is a tad bit more than demand.

Currently, the market has corrected that one a fair bit. When first introduced to MRO, I calculated that 0.002 would be the sweet spot and I decided to make the bulk of my purchases at that price, which has indeed succeeded.

I like the fact that MRO needs to gain value by its merits, and not via the usual premine-instamine-ninjamine-pump route.

Also kudos to aminorex for introducing the forum vets to MRO. I think it was he who first dropped hints in the Wall Observer thread.

Yes, thanks to him!

[Peter R]

On that note, imagine launching Monero as a spin-off.  This would bootstrap the coin with an already efficient distribution, and would greatly reduce the inflation rate which is hurting the coin currently.  I believe a spin-off would out-compete Monero itself and I may be interested in helping with its launch.  Developers could still profit by mining the first new coins while difficulty is low.

It's a mistake to believe that the inflation rate is hurting Monero. Rather, it's distributing it cheaply as far as I am concerned. The problem with piggybacking on an existing, distributed blockchain is that there is no longer any reasonable chance of a distribution that is widespread.

Exactly: it is helpful to achieve a widespread distribution for a low cost.  The premise behind spin-offs is that they achieve a widespread and efficient distribution without even having to go through an awkward high-inflation stage and with less resources spent on the initial mining.  This is why it's called "bootstrapping" with the Blockchain distribution: spin-offs take advantage of the work done by the mining and trading processes that already took place with bitcoin.  

For instance with Bitcoin, if you launched it as a merged mining chain, you add all the insecurity of merged mining (usually a single large pool can destroy the currency) while distributing the coins mostly to large ASIC farms. This is less than ideal.

The spin-off concept is orthogonal to merge mining.  A spin-off could use any mechanism the developer chooses for achieving consensus.  

And the spin-off process still rewards developer innovation: if PoW is chosen, the developers can take advantage of the information asymmetry to mine a greater portion of the new coins available while difficultly is low.  If PoS is chosen, the developers will likely be among the first to begin staking.  

Right now large, large quantities of MRO are being mined and dumped by licit (or possibly illicit) compute clusters, which are readily dumping into the market. Speculators are buying with their own cash, and won't let go of their coins until they realize a profit. In the meantime, the supply is falling regularly and will press the market upwards. I'm not terribly worried about the recent dumps, they're redistributing wealth.

Here's a thought experiment:

Assume there is long-term demand for Cryptonote technology and assume Monero becomes the dominant blockchain.  At a point 2 years in the future, the people holding Monero will (for the most part) be a subset of the people holding bitcoin.  Like you implied, it is in Monero's best interest to maximize the size of this subset.  But in order to do so, bitcoin holders need to trade BTC for MRO or do work to acquire them.  Let's say the total cost to achieve this distribution is C_monero.

Next assume that a spin-off clone of MRO becomes the dominant blockchain.  At some point in the future, the people holding the clone will likely be mostly the same people that would have held MRO at the 2-year-mark (the same subset of bitcoin users).  Let's say the total cost to achieve this distribution is C_spinoff.

Which process has the lower total cost?  I think it is fairly clear that C_spinoff < C_monero.  That being said, I don't think it automatically follows that the spin-off will necessarily outcompete the original, as the actual dynamics are complex.  But I'm keen to see how a spin-off launch would play out...

[vokain]

Just wanted to chime in that Monero is NOT CPU-only, if it hasn't already been covered. GPU MRO mining software just hasn't yet been developed publicly yet.