rpietila Altcoin Observer

[devphp]

"IPO is not a way to distribute currency" is just an opinion.

No, it's not just an opinion.  The person that runs the IPO can create as many fake accounts as they want, send in 10 BTC with all of them, get 90% of the coin issued, then all the BTC money goes back to himself anyway.  So the coin issuer not only gets as much premine as he wants, but also profits from anyone else that sends him money.  You couldn't invest in a more idiotic scam no matter how hard you try.

The only valid form of IPO is maybe proof of burn like Counterparty did.

Sure, the person who runs an IPO can do all that. But there are 2 issues with what you say.

#1. If that person doesn't innovate and develop anything, his scam will fail very quickly, as people will see there is no progress.
#2. If nobody but him invested in the IPO, it means other people don't provide bounties for development and take no part in the life of the community and the coin.

Both of which issues are not true for NXT, as the history of its development shows. So, yeah, 95%-99% of IPOs are probably scam, or if they are not outright scam, they will just fail, because the failure rate of startups is very high due to incompetence among other reasons.

I like the way Counterparty did their proof of burn IPO, I even burned half a bitcoin myself there But Counterparty cannot be extended indefinately as NXT can due to its architecture, and Counterparty runs on a slow network adding Bitcoin's flaws to its own. Hence, Counterparty can only compare to NXT in how it did the IPO.

[Its About Sharing]

I haven't seen any reasonable argument for holding litecoin in a very long time. I think anyone who is still holding LTC is insane at this point. There's probably 5 or more alts that have at least a chance at gaining a chunk of the market. Those LTC could be sold and put in to pretty much any promising coin and have a vastly better chance at actually making money.

What could possibly be the rationale for holding litecoin in the year 2014?

To make things even worse, I have a feeling that many of LTC holders  are using DRK as a life vest, buying it at unreasonable peak. They will end up with another heavy bag.

LTC does not represent store of value. DRK though, does. DRK issues 2880 coins per day instead of 28800 of LTC. With a similar price of 8-9$ per coin, LTC is a nightmare to preserve price as it sucks BTC at a rate that isn't really funny (250k usd per day).

DRK is scarcer + inflates slower.  Plus DRK also pays for itself (20% on masternodes) something that LTC doesn't. You need to buy ASIC miners for LTC while with DRK you can ...mine DRKs by simply running a node. So with a 30-50% ROI due to masternode payments alone for DRK + scarcer coin + much lower inflation, the LTC bag suddenly seems much less attractive.

DRK has some serious problems that have already been mentioned here. The HUGE instamine being one of them but that is just the start. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=560138.0

[Este Nuno]

"IPO is not a way to distribute currency" is just an opinion.

No, it's not just an opinion.  The person that runs the IPO can create as many fake accounts as they want, send in 10 BTC with all of them, get 90% of the coin issued, then all the BTC money goes back to himself anyway.  So the coin issuer not only gets as much premine as he wants, but also profits from anyone else that sends him money.  You couldn't invest in a more idiotic scam no matter how hard you try.

The only valid form of IPO is maybe proof of burn like Counterparty did.

What if all the money from the IPO was accounted for in spending on coin related costs? Why would that not be fair? In this case the money is not just going back in the devs pockets, and if any of it is going his pockets it's a specific known amount outlined in the IPO contract.

[illodin]

Risto (and others who understand crypto economy), may I ask your opinion on this:

BLACKHALO BITHALO AND NIGHTTRADER WORLDS FIRST UNBREAKABLE SMART CONTRACTS LIVE AND RUNNING
www.BlackHalo.info www.NightTrader.org www.BitHalo.org

[AlexGR]

I haven't seen any reasonable argument for holding litecoin in a very long time. I think anyone who is still holding LTC is insane at this point. There's probably 5 or more alts that have at least a chance at gaining a chunk of the market. Those LTC could be sold and put in to pretty much any promising coin and have a vastly better chance at actually making money.

What could possibly be the rationale for holding litecoin in the year 2014?

To make things even worse, I have a feeling that many of LTC holders  are using DRK as a life vest, buying it at unreasonable peak. They will end up with another heavy bag.

LTC does not represent store of value. DRK though, does. DRK issues 2880 coins per day instead of 28800 of LTC. With a similar price of 8-9$ per coin, LTC is a nightmare to preserve price as it sucks BTC at a rate that isn't really funny (250k usd per day).

DRK is scarcer + inflates slower.  Plus DRK also pays for itself (20% on masternodes) something that LTC doesn't. You need to buy ASIC miners for LTC while with DRK you can ...mine DRKs by simply running a node. So with a 30-50% ROI due to masternode payments alone for DRK + scarcer coin + much lower inflation, the LTC bag suddenly seems much less attractive.

DRK has some serious problems that have already been mentioned here. The HUGE instamine being one of them but that is just the start. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=560138.0

Huge? It's only 10% of the total monetary supply - and it's already distributed through the market at prices of 0.0000x to 0.002 for months. But I don't expect you to know it because you weren't there watching it. I did though and therefore I'm better informed.

Compare that to PoW/PoS which have 100% of their monetary supply instamined in a week or so and no-one bitches about them "scam scam scam" or "problematic distribution". Nobody cares about "fairness" to future miners. If they did, they'd also say Bitcoin is a 1bn USD scam due to Satoshi mining >1mn coins on his own with a few desktops and laptops. And those who scream scam for DRK because it disadvantages future miners, are actively supporting PoW/PoS coins that give 0 chance of mining to future miners.

Besides, most of the accusations use a retroactive logic, in that the miners who mined at the launch somehow knew that the coin would be worth it 15-20$ each a few months later, when in reality miners were selling 100.000 DRK for 2 to 2.5 BTC to buyers. It was considered a very good profit back then. You can make a coin, you can instamine it as much as you like, but it will still be a worthless coin if you do not assign value to it. And DRK gradually added value in terms of features.

PS. The thread you link is not the most objective source of information. Poster there used an out of context quote of Evan when he proposed an airdrop to fix the distribution a few months ago. In the airdrop scenario, Evan would issue 2mn coins and then distribute it. Poster took the quote of "2mn coins that I own" and presented it out of context in big red letters to show that Evan actually has ...2mn coins - when this refers to an event that never took place because the community voted it down (the airdrop).

[superresistant]

Huge? It's only 10% of the total monetary supply - and it's already distributed through the market at prices of 0.0000x to 0.002 for months. But I don't expect you to know it because you weren't there watching it. I did though and therefore I'm better informed.

10% not huge for you ? It clearly huge when it's owned by one person and hidden to the market.

Compare that to PoW/PoS which have 100% of their monetary supply instamined in a week or so and no-one bitches about them "scam scam scam" or "problematic distribution". Nobody cares about "fairness" to future miners. If they did, they'd also say Bitcoin is a 1bn USD scam due to Satoshi mining >1mn coins on his own with a few desktops and laptops. And those who scream scam for DRK because it disadvantages future miners, are actively supporting PoW/PoS coins that give 0 chance of mining to future miners.

Your argument is invalid. In real PoW, there are miners, there is competition.
When you solo insta-mine, you take all the coins you insta-mined with zero-cost hardware and energy.

Besides, most of the accusations use a retroactive logic, in that the miners who mined at the launch somehow knew that the coin would be worth it 15-20$ each a few months later, when in reality miners were selling 100.000 DRK for 2 to 2.5 BTC to buyers. It was considered a very good profit back then.

You cannot have a free market with insta-mine.

You can make a coin, you can instamine it as much as you like, but it will still be a worthless coin if you do not assign value to it.

Yes, that's exactly why Darkcoin has no value.

[binaryFate]

I completely share the ninja mine view of darkcoin, and it puts it for me in the category of very dishonest coins, to be polite. But apparently it's hard to claim that without entering in arguments about numbers, dates, past posts, etc. with DRK holders.

I personally prefer to say that the technology behind DRK is limited. It is a pre-historic attempt at a privacy-enhanced cryptocurrency, where cryptonote is the 21th century. This is enough for me no to be interested in DRK regardless of the initial coin distribution, without entering in endless justifications of "why premined", "why not premined". Stick to the fundamentals of the coins. This already discredites DRK completely and these are facts that are much harder to arg on.

[illodin]

It is a pre-historic attempt at a privacy-enhanced cryptocurrency, where cryptonote is the 21th century.

Something built on true and tested cryptography and technology that is (or will be) as good as anyone might need for any practical purposes vs. something new that's not stood the test of time yet and with unsolved (and potentially unsolvable) issues.

[binaryFate]

It is a pre-historic attempt at a privacy-enhanced cryptocurrency, where cryptonote is the 21th century.

Something built on true and tested cryptography and technology that is (or will be) as good as anyone might need for any practical purposes vs. something new that's not stood the test of time yet and with unsolved (and potentially unsolvable) issues.

You could have said the same of bitcoin at the beginning wrt something that was more established. Time will tell!
I personally believe darkcoin is going to demise much faster than many expect, once the supernodes (not sure of the name) owners begin selling it will be dominos effect.

[giveBTCpls]

Dude, just give up on the Darkcoin bullshit. It's all about Monero when it comes to anonymous coins. If I had to move money from A to B for whatever reasons, I would use Monero and not DRK, and never Bitcoin.

[illodin]

You could have said the same of bitcoin at the beginning wrt something that was more established.

Yep, that is the years of experience and development that has went to Bitcoin that Darkcoin stands on and improves upon.

Dude, just give up on the Darkcoin bullshit. It's all about Monero when it comes to anonymous coins. If I had to move money from A to B for whatever reasons, I would use Monero and not DRK, and never Bitcoin.

Good for you, when I was trading Monero a bit I didn't have the balls to send it to my wallet nor another exchange, just bought and sold on the same exchange so actual coins never moved.

[damashup]

It is a pre-historic attempt at a privacy-enhanced cryptocurrency, where cryptonote is the 21th century.

Something built on true and tested cryptography and technology that is (or will be) as good as anyone might need for any practical purposes vs. something new that's not stood the test of time yet and with unsolved (and potentially unsolvable) issues.

No cryptocurrency is in the "stood-the-test-of-time" bracket just yet... All of them have their challenges, not least of which is mass adoption.

Selling the concept of 'masternodes' as part of a decentralised currency, will be a hard sell and sounds like an oxymoron to me (as a lay person). A solution where masternode owners profiteer out of people's desire for an anonymous transaction vs. a solution that is inherently anonymous... I think I know which is likely to win out in the end.

[AlexGR]

Huge? It's only 10% of the total monetary supply - and it's already distributed through the market at prices of 0.0000x to 0.002 for months. But I don't expect you to know it because you weren't there watching it. I did though and therefore I'm better informed.

10% not huge for you ? It clearly huge when it's owned by one person and hidden to the market.

Compare that to PoW/PoS which have 100% of their monetary supply instamined in a week or so and no-one bitches about them "scam scam scam" or "problematic distribution". Nobody cares about "fairness" to future miners. If they did, they'd also say Bitcoin is a 1bn USD scam due to Satoshi mining >1mn coins on his own with a few desktops and laptops. And those who scream scam for DRK because it disadvantages future miners, are actively supporting PoW/PoS coins that give 0 chance of mining to future miners.

Your argument is invalid. In real PoW, there are miners, there is competition.
When you solo insta-mine, you take all the coins you insta-mined with zero-cost hardware and energy.

1. Instamine wasn't one person holding 2mn coins

2. Solomine and instamine are different things. Solomining = what Satoshi did at the start. Instamine = fast mining rate for a percentage or the total of the coins. Everyone arriving to mine had the exact same block rewards.

You cannot have a free market with insta-mine.

The market disagrees with your assessment. Coins were been sold and bought from the get go. Right now DRK has an accumulated volume of hundreds of millions USD in transactions.

100% instamined coins (PoW/PoS) also have millions of marketcap. PoS coins like NXT weren't even mined but sold to begin with.

You can make a coin, you can instamine it as much as you like, but it will still be a worthless coin if you do not assign value to it.

Yes, that's exactly why Darkcoin has no value.

Living in denial...

[AlexGR]

It's all about Monero when it comes to anonymous coins.

Explain this to me: Why is it that the market doesn't trust Monero if it has so solid fundamentals? Why is it that 100% instamined PoW/PoS hybrids appear out of nowhere, and just by being based on the Bitcoin codebase are able to out-perform the marketcap of Monero in a few days or weeks? This shouldn't even be possible.

4    Darkcoin   $ 34,537,954   $ 7.78   4,439,477 DRK
11    Bytecoin (BCN)   $ 8,974,931   $ 0.000057   156,920,284,106 BCN      
13    VeriCoin   $ 7,597,613   $ 0.283679   26,782,417 VRC
15    XC   $ 6,451,500   $ 1.17   5,515,507 XC
17    Monero   $ 5,080,622   $ 2.72   1,867,647 XMR

[devphp]

Markets are irrational. If market was rational, Bitcoin would be somewhere between Dogecoin and Namecoin in market cap at the moment, because it has most sh*tty fundamentals among most modern coins

[sonoIO]

Explain this to me: Why is it that the market doesn't trust Monero if it has so solid fundamentals? Why is it that 100% instamined PoW/PoS hybrids appear out of nowhere, and just by being based on the Bitcoin codebase are able to out-perform the marketcap of Monero in a few days or weeks? This shouldn't even be possible.

4    Darkcoin   $ 34,537,954   $ 7.78   4,439,477 DRK
11    Bytecoin (BCN)   $ 8,974,931   $ 0.000057   156,920,284,106 BCN      
13    VeriCoin   $ 7,597,613   $ 0.283679   26,782,417 VRC
15    XC   $ 6,451,500   $ 1.17   5,515,507 XC
17    Monero   $ 5,080,622   $ 2.72   1,867,647 XMR

Because of the propaganda.

Those coins you mention have an army of people convincing noobs to what they want. All X11 coins are essentially a  scam. Instamine aside, I think that most of the GPU miners of those coins didn't yet figured out that they are fighting against FPGAs.

[Its About Sharing]

It's all about Monero when it comes to anonymous coins.

Explain this to me: Why is it that the market doesn't trust Monero if it has so solid fundamentals? Why is it that 100% instamined PoW/PoS hybrids appear out of nowhere, and just by being based on the Bitcoin codebase are able to out-perform the marketcap of Monero in a few days or weeks? This shouldn't even be possible.

4    Darkcoin   $ 34,537,954   $ 7.78   4,439,477 DRK
11    Bytecoin (BCN)   $ 8,974,931   $ 0.000057   156,920,284,106 BCN      
13    VeriCoin   $ 7,597,613   $ 0.283679   26,782,417 VRC
15    XC   $ 6,451,500   $ 1.17   5,515,507 XC
17    Monero   $ 5,080,622   $ 2.72   1,867,647 XMR

First, regarding your reply to me above, yes, I haven't done a lot of DD on Dark Coin. I did look into it a while back, before the big run-up actually.
I have done a bit of work on Monero and really liked what I found thus far. There have been many things brought up about DRK here, and I'm not
real high on it. I realize it has a head start and that is often huge, but time will tell. What is clear to me is that Monero has superior technology (but
that doesn't always matter, I understand). We are still finding that #1 Anonymous coin and time will once again tell here.

Regarding the market not trusting XMR, how long has it been out? How many people even have a clue on this subject? Things are just getting started
and for sure I wouldn't just judge the success of a coin based on it's market cap. Of course, I will follow that and it will eventually be a great indicator,
but we are just getting started.

The downside with Monero to me right now has more to do with them not having a GUI wallet and nice paper wallet available (for the masses). But they are working on
some more important things (they say) so I will consider this as just having a better chance to have gotten in early.
There is some big money moving into XMR, perhaps DRK as well. Who knows, maybe both succeed.

IAS

[darkota]

Explain this to me: Why is it that the market doesn't trust Monero if it has so solid fundamentals? Why is it that 100% instamined PoW/PoS hybrids appear out of nowhere, and just by being based on the Bitcoin codebase are able to out-perform the marketcap of Monero in a few days or weeks? This shouldn't even be possible.

4    Darkcoin   $ 34,537,954   $ 7.78   4,439,477 DRK
11    Bytecoin (BCN)   $ 8,974,931   $ 0.000057   156,920,284,106 BCN      
13    VeriCoin   $ 7,597,613   $ 0.283679   26,782,417 VRC
15    XC   $ 6,451,500   $ 1.17   5,515,507 XC
17    Monero   $ 5,080,622   $ 2.72   1,867,647 XMR

Because of the propaganda.

Those coins you mention have an army of people convincing noobs to what they want. All X11 coins are essentially a  scam. Instamine aside, I think that most of the GPU miners of those coins didn't yet figured out that they are fighting against FPGAs.

That^

Big investors usually look for easy-quick-scam coins to pump and dump in an instant. All those coins, XC, Vericoin, Cloakcoin, Veilcoin, Supercoin, etc etc lol, are Pumps and Dumps only.

[Jungian]

Markets are irrational. If market was rational, Bitcoin would be somewhere between Dogecoin and Namecoin in market cap at the moment, because it has most sh*tty fundamentals among most modern coins

So you are saying actual usefulness and adoption of a coin is worth zero and shouldn't considered a fundamental? Yeah...

[devphp]

Markets are irrational. If market was rational, Bitcoin would be somewhere between Dogecoin and Namecoin in market cap at the moment, because it has most sh*tty fundamentals among most modern coins

So you are saying actual usefulness and adoption of a coin is worth zero and shouldn't considered a fundamental? Yeah...

He asked why the market doesn't trust. Adoption = market. It's a chicken and egg issue. I prefer to talk about technical fundamentals when it comes to software. Crypto coins are first of all software.