rpietila Altcoin Observer

[nakaone]

Thing is with xcp is they are just arbitrary tokens and completely unnecessary, correct me if Im wrong but I seem to remember when researching when counterparty was first announced that the XCP tokens were a) not needed and b) essentially worthless.
 

they can be taken in escrow by the counterparty protocol (currently impossible with btc afaik) - so they have a purpose, but until know they are almost unused due to the mantra of the core developers that everything which can be done on the counterparty protocol with bitcoin, will be done with bitcoin.

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[dreamspark]

Thing is with xcp is they are just arbitrary tokens and completely unnecessary, correct me if Im wrong but I seem to remember when researching when counterparty was first announced that the XCP tokens were a) not needed and b) essentially worthless.
 

they can be taken in escrow by the counterparty protocol (currently impossible with btc afaik) - so they have a purpose, but until know they are almost unused due to the mantra of the core developers that everything which can be done on the counterparty protocol with bitcoin, will be done with bitcoin.

Thanks for jogging my memory I knew there was a reason the currency itself was essentially worthless and unused at this point in time.

[devphp]

But the way how it was distributed.. Meh, it'll be a stain for a long time.

NXT IPO lasted for 53 days, 28 Sep 2013 to 19 Nov 2013 when the Genesis Block was created.
Most IPOs these days run less than that and manage to attract much more capital than NXT did.
It's not NXT's fault that almost nobody did IPOs back in those days and most people were afraid to send any funds.

[rpietila]

But the way how it was distributed.. Meh, it'll be a stain for a long time.

NXT IPO lasted for 53 days, 28 Sep 2013 to 19 Nov 2013 when the Genesis Block was created.
Most IPOs these days run less than that and manage to attract much more capital than NXT did.
It's not NXT's fault that almost nobody did IPOs back in those days and most people were afraid to send any funds.

IPO is not a way to distribute currency. Perhaps people in 2013 were more educated than the current ones 

Just imagine how well NXT would be doing if the coin generation would have been set similar to XMR...

[devphp]

IPO is not a way to distribute currency. Perhaps people in 2013 were more educated than the current ones 

Just imagine how well NXT would be doing if the coin generation would have been set similar to XMR...

"IPO is not a way to distribute currency" is just an opinion. Since NXT poses as more than just a currency, you were right in saying that it's more like stock of a company, thus IPO is a natural way to distribute it. And because it is PoS, you can't distribute it as PoW, it's one or the other, can't have cake and eat it too

[silencesilence]

you can always retrace the transaction

I'd need a second (and a third) opinion before I can accept that claim. That surely has to depend on how the mixer has been implemented as well, right?

I am assuming after minimal research that Vertcoins new "stealth address" feature actually IS somewhat different than just trustless mixing.  If it actually succeeds at strong privacy is another question I am still trying to answer.

I was lucky to be awake for the Vertcoin announcement and day traded (night traded? myself a little cost free position in them.  So now a have a small pile of them sitting on an exchange, and will remain sleepily interested in them.

Would love to hear more insightful opinions.

Many people are not familiar with Vertcoin Stealth Address (First in the world), maybe you're one of them  

At the moment, we’re working on stealth addresses in Vertcoin. Those of you have been around a while may remember, in the early days of VTC, there was some discussion over zerocoin implementation, and we made clear that anonymous/untraceable payments were not the direction we wanted to go with VTC – we are of the opinion that mainstream adoption won’t come from these features, and that they will actually damage the currencies that go down that route. The fact is, people don’t care about anonymity – if they did, they wouldn’t use social media etc.

However, we do believe in transactional privacy akin to what you expect from your legacy payment/banking systems, such that it’s not trivially easy for anyone to see your entire financial history.

Stealth addresses strike a good balance – all the transactions are still on the blockchain to be seen, but the link between an address and an individual is obfuscated. One thing that not many people seem to consider when talking about anonymity systems in cryptocurrencies is that true anonymous payments make all the blockchain tools you’re used to useless.

Stealth addresses increase privacy for a recipient by allowing you to publish a stealth address, which is like a seed which the sender then uses to generate a unique one-use Vertcoin address for the transaction. All the transactions remain public on the blockchain, but knowing the entire transactional history of your stealth address is now no-longer possible except for you, the holder of the secret key.

My resources about stealth addresses so far:
   Audio: http://coin.cubeconnex.com/poollist/media/Vertcoin_SX_VO.mp3
   Text, Pictures and Audio: http://coin.cubeconnex.com/poollist/ click on Stealth Address
    http://sx.dyne.org/stealth.html
    https://wiki.unsystem.net/en/index.php/DarkWallet/Stealth
    https://wiki.unsystem.net/en/images/e/e5/RHhNKL6.jpg

[aminorex]

I don't consider NXT to be a currency.  It is a useful commodity, and will have some swings which speculators may speculate upon.  The asset exchange is a great utility.  I wish the project good success.  I don't think substantial gains in long term value will be found by holding NXT, unless you can acquire so much that you are no longer liquid, in which case your gain is an unrealizable paper gain, which can only be cashed out by selling to a greater fool.

MSC/XCP functions can be better fulfilled on a blockchain which is not a currency.

I see two useful niches for currency:  Transparent and private liquidity niches.  BTC and XMR are the leaders in these two natural monopolies, XMR being much less mature.  BTC has no serious threats to dominance on the horizon.  XMR has one:  Zerocash.

Until and unless ZC can evolve so that it no longer requires a trusted mint,  I do not think it can succeed.  The overhanging risk of the mint defecting, and secretly issuing unlimited amounts of the currency, is just too great.

[David Latapie]

Until and unless ZC can evolve so that it no longer requires a trusted mint,  I do not think it can succeed.  The overhanging risk of the mint defecting, and secretly issuing unlimited amounts of the currency, is just too great.

This and obscuring the whole economy, which makes it impossible to notice something is going wrong until it is too late. This later threat is more difficult to explain and more dangerous.

[illodin]

What the heck is MSC and XCP?

Mastercoin and Counterparty, both run on Bitcoin network as their transport blockchain.
Out of those two XCP is a better choice, but neither of the two can compare to NXT.
Bitcoin network is just slow to trade on.

I said it before but I repeat it :
Using 2 blockchains add the possible flaws/risks from both.
If you want a real innovative PoS, go for Nxt.

Don't forget how "fair" was the distribution of NXT.

( I missed the train, yeah, but still a fact. )

If PoS is your thing, BlackCoin has done improvements to PoS (and call it PoS 2.0) and has a very fair distribution. It didn't have IPO or premine, it was PoW mined by hundreds or thousands of people and traded actively at low prices. It still has pretty low price, surprisingly low in fact considering they are developing NightTrader, which is a decentralized exchange and BlackHalo, which is a smart contract client that allows you to trade/buy anything without having to trust the other party. Wasn't this something that's been needed for a long time? Also the maximum yearly inflation is only 1%, so it should make an excellent store of value.

[CryptoGuu]

But the way how it was distributed.. Meh, it'll be a stain for a long time.

NXT IPO lasted for 53 days, 28 Sep 2013 to 19 Nov 2013 when the Genesis Block was created.
Most IPOs these days run less than that and manage to attract much more capital than NXT did.
It's not NXT's fault that almost nobody did IPOs back in those days and most people were afraid to send any funds.

IPO is not a way to distribute currency. Perhaps people in 2013 were more educated than the current ones 

Just imagine how well NXT would be doing if the coin generation would have been set similar to XMR...

The overall distribution in Bitcoin isn't really better as in NXT. And why are you so sure that does not almost all of XMR are mined by botnets? Mining isn't a better distribution, example: Bitcoins. And i also don't like the electricity wastage.

[bigboom]

What the heck is MSC and XCP?

Mastercoin and Counterparty, both run on Bitcoin network as their transport blockchain.
Out of those two XCP is a better choice, but neither of the two can compare to NXT.
Bitcoin network is just slow to trade on.

I said it before but I repeat it :
Using 2 blockchains add the possible flaws/risks from both.
If you want a real innovative PoS, go for Nxt.

Don't forget how "fair" was the distribution of NXT.

( I missed the train, yeah, but still a fact. )

If PoS is your thing, BlackCoin has done improvements to PoS (and call it PoS 2.0) and has a very fair distribution. It didn't have IPO or premine, it was PoW mined by hundreds or thousands of people and traded actively at low prices. It still has pretty low price, surprisingly low in fact considering they are developing NightTrader, which is a decentralized exchange and BlackHalo, which is a smart contract client that allows you to trade/buy anything without having to trust the other party. Wasn't this something that's been needed for a long time? Also the maximum yearly inflation is only 1%, so it should make an excellent store of value.

I quite appreciate MSC and XCP, as they run on Bitcoin network. It's amazing advantage.

[statdude]

The overall distribution in Bitcoin isn't really better as in NXT. And why are you so sure that does not almost all of XMR are mined by botnets? Mining isn't a better distribution, example: Bitcoins. And i also don't like the electricity wastage.

"The overall distribution in Bitcoin isn't really better as in NXT." False. Bitcoin is still not even 75% floated.
As debated above, IPO of 100% of a currency,  up front, is not a strong recipe for mass adoption. There is little to no sunk cost for original/average holders (something like a paltry $2-3k total in this case - which makes me wonder - why didn't the NXT founders just match or beat that with their own money, and thus hold 50%+ of coins?), and thus incentive for original holders not to sell.

Bitcoin, on the other hand, with a slower distribution, every order of magnitude of growth brings in new buyers at a higher cost basis, and a lower number of "cheap buyers", lessening the chance of an original buyer crashing the market e.g. "1 million Satoshi Coins".

Fortunately for NXT holders, NXT has built itself many competitive advantages, so the market is unlikely to crash completely.

[keystroke]

Until and unless ZC can evolve so that it no longer requires a trusted mint,  I do not think it can succeed.  The overhanging risk of the mint defecting, and secretly issuing unlimited amounts of the currency, is just too great.

Assuming the value would be in moving in and out of ZC to clean bitcoins, why would it be a bad thing if the mint issued unlimited amounts of the currency? Wealth could be kept in BTC and ZC could be held for short amounts of time to clean the BTC.

[drawingthesun]

Until and unless ZC can evolve so that it no longer requires a trusted mint,  I do not think it can succeed.  The overhanging risk of the mint defecting, and secretly issuing unlimited amounts of the currency, is just too great.

Assuming the value would be in moving in and out of ZC to clean bitcoins, why would it be a bad thing if the mint issued unlimited amounts of the currency? Wealth could be kept in BTC and ZC could be held for short amounts of time to clean the BTC.

Because the last person holding the unlimited ZC loses once the last BTC is moved out.

Or, on a shorter time frame, the value of ZC would decrease as the supply inflates towards infinity and holding ZC for any period of time becomes a risk.

The situation will eventually deteriorate to the point that mixing your bitcoin ends up costing you 90%+ of their value.

Why would I move my bitcoin into a currency with an infinitely growing supply?

[Its About Sharing]

What the heck is MSC and XCP?

Mastercoin and Counterparty, both run on Bitcoin network as their transport blockchain.
Out of those two XCP is a better choice, but neither of the two can compare to NXT.
Bitcoin network is just slow to trade on.

XCP (and the Counterparty wallet) just blows me away. The potential of a coin to do where this is going is mind bending.
Looking into these 2.0 technologies. Not saying it will make you money, but the programmability and overall nature of
them is just incredible.

[bitcoinpaul]

Just imagine how well NXT would be doing if the coin generation would have been set similar to XMR...

resp. Nxt rules

[darkota]

Just imagine how well NXT would be doing if the coin generation would have been set similar to XMR...

resp. Nxt rules

Yea, because of NXT's horrible distribution, it will never achieve much price wise.

[arielbit]

I might be cementing a 40% loss in LTC if I sell it now. Should i sell anyway for xmr?

40% loss in ltc and 300% gain in monero....might happen, do the math 

[Its About Sharing]

I might be cementing a 40% loss in LTC if I sell it now. Should i sell anyway for xmr?

40% loss in ltc and 300% gain in monero....might happen, do the math 

One of the worst mistakes I have seen is holders not cutting their losses. I unfortunately waited a bit too long with Quark but still cut my losses at 40% or so!
It is hard to detach from our holdings at times. But when something better comes along, tides change, etc. move on (just keep an eye on the past investments)...

[Wekkel]

Nice to see an observer thread for Altcoins. I sense interest in Altcoins is picking up lately, if even because of LTC's fall in price   Altcoins bring a lot of experimenting into the game from which we can all learn over time.

A fascinating environment.