rpietila Altcoin Observer

[drawingthesun]

Well I am selling all my Nxt as soon as I can, the fact that the community has shown that it will freeze any account that is inconvenient simply destroys all credibility they had, which being a pure POS wasn't much to begin with.

Somehow BTER's mistake will be somewhat handled by a community block is simply a joke, wasn't Nxt meant to be more decentralized than bitcoin?

drawingthesun, you are simply retarded (or you didnt read what happened).


If the majority of the forging power wants to forge in an alternative chain, it is the most decentralized decision ever made. Every forger has in his hands to forge or not the alternative chain.

What I read was that it was bter making the decision to to roll back or the community decision to block that account.

The fact that this was talked about is cause for concern. From what I read if enough people decided they could have used their coin forging power to make it happen with little downside. 

Some people are more tolerant of others controlling their currency and I understand that. However that is unacceptable for my uses.

If I have been misinformed instead of calling me a retard please explain. As I understand it if a similar hack happened in bitcoin everyone would have just said. Oh well it was the exchanges fault. But with Nxt the exchanges hold power because they are effectively the biggest miners.

[devphp]

What I read was that it was bter making the decision to to roll back or the community decision to block that account.

The fact that this was talked about is cause for concern. From what I read if enough people decided they could have used their coin forging power to make it happen with little downside. 

Some people are more tolerant of others controlling their currency and I understand that. However that is unacceptable for my uses.

If I have been misinformed instead of calling me a retard please explain. As I understand it if a similar hack happened in bitcoin everyone would have just said. Oh well it was the exchanges fault. But with Nxt the exchanges hold power because they are effectively the biggest miners.

When NXTs are moved from a wallet, the wallet of the exchange is left with no forging power, they can't make any dicisions whatsoever. Coins have to stay in wallet for 1440 blocks to get forging power. Only those forgers who have coins in the wallet for 1440+ blocks and forge, decide the fate of NXT. There are rolling checkpoints in NXT, that make chain reorganizations past the last 720 blocks impossible. Which means all txs which were included in blocks older than 720 blocks deep are 100% irreversible, even theoretically. I hope this briefly explains all your wrong assumptions.

PS: when Transparent Forging is implemented, the numbers will change from 51% of forging power necessary to overcome last 720 blocks to 90%, and blockchain reorganization from 720 blocks to 10 blocks. Per CfB's words.

[drawingthesun]

What I read was that it was bter making the decision to to roll back or the community decision to block that account.

The fact that this was talked about is cause for concern. From what I read if enough people decided they could have used their coin forging power to make it happen with little downside. 

Some people are more tolerant of others controlling their currency and I understand that. However that is unacceptable for my uses.

If I have been misinformed instead of calling me a retard please explain. As I understand it if a similar hack happened in bitcoin everyone would have just said. Oh well it was the exchanges fault. But with Nxt the exchanges hold power because they are effectively the biggest miners.

When NXTs are moved from a wallet, the wallet of the exchange is left with no forging power, they can't make any dicisions whatsoever. Coins have to stay in wallet for 1440 blocks to get forging power. Only those forgers who have coins in the wallet for 1440+ clocks and forge decide the fate of NXT. There are rolling checkpoints in NXT, that make chain reorganizations past the last 720 blocks impossible. Which means all txs which were included in blocks older than 720 blocks deep are 100% irreversible, even theoretically. I hope this briefly explains all your wrong assumptions.

Thanks. So was there any chance a roll back could have happened? And now they are not going ahead, does this mean the hacker now controls 5% of the hashrate of Nxt?

[devphp]

Thanks. So was there any chance a roll back could have happened? And now they are not going ahead, does this mean the hacker now controls 5% of the hashrate of Nxt?

Theoretically, if 51% of forging power would be sent to forge on an alternative chain, just like in PoW currencies, where 51% of the hash rate of one entity can overcome other chains. However, in NXT no single entity owns 51% and if this happened, it would be a combined decision of many forgers (like in voting) or distributed consensus.

The hacker at the moment controls ~4.6% of the hash rate, correct (he sent 5m back to bter before he disappeared, maybe he'll send more later). There are plans in the NXT community to notify all exchanges not to accept funds from that address, however that may not work in practise. He can sell and depress price of NXT for some time, but can't destroy NXT with this. If you're looking for bargain prices of NXT, get some bitcoins ready soon.

[ArticMine]

Thanks. So was there any chance a roll back could have happened? And now they are not going ahead, does this mean the hacker now controls 5% of the hashrate of Nxt?

Theoretically, if 51% of forging power would be sent to forge on an alternative chain, just like in PoW currencies, where 51% of the hash rate of one entity can overcome other chains. However, in NXT no single entity owns 51% and if this happened, it would be a combined decision of many forgers (like in voting) or distributed consensus.

The hacker at the moment controls ~4.6% of the hash rate, correct (he sent 5m back to bter before he disappeared, maybe he'll send more later). There are plans in the NXT community to notify all exchanges not to accept funds from that address, however that may not work in practise. He can sell and depress price of NXT for some time, but can't destroy NXT with this. If you're looking for bargain prices of NXT, get some bitcoins ready soon.

So the response by the NXT community is to taint the coins involved in the theft?

[devphp]

So the response by the NXT community is to taint the coins involved in the theft?

NXT community is decentralized. What individual members of the community do (exchanges in this case) is not unanimous opinion of all NXT community, and NXT community has no control of what individual members do, it's super duper decentralized, you know. Some members of NXT community even think of getting rid of its semi-official forum, because the forum makes it sort of more centralized, which goes against principles and values of NXT. Exchanges are free to act on their own, they are businesses, just like in real world you can choose to accept the money you know for sure involved in theft or not accept it.

[kingscrown]

due to all scams im offering escrow for altcoin - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=741158.msg8374994#msg8374994
actually 2 contacted me saying they.. want me listed but dont want real escrow.

altcoins are joke this days...

[johnnyrocket]

So the response by the NXT community is to taint the coins involved in the theft?

NXT community is decentralized. What individual members of the community do (exchanges in this case) is not unanimous opinion of all NXT community, and NXT community has no control of what individual members do, it's super duper decentralized, you know. Some members of NXT community even think of getting rid of its semi-official forum, because the forum makes it sort of more centralized, which goes against principles and values of NXT. Exchanges are free to act on their own, they are businesses, just like in real world you can choose to accept the money you know for sure involved in theft or not accept it.

Decentralization is one of the essential founding principles of cryptocurrency, and I'm glad to see overwhelming support from NXT holders to sticking with it in this case.

[scruffy scruffington]

due to all scams im offering escrow for altcoin - https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=741158.msg8374994#msg8374994
actually 2 contacted me saying they.. want me listed but dont want real escrow.
altcoins are joke this days...

My fees: 1% of whole premine

Is it a joke?) Do you really think somebody gives you 1% of the premain for such an escrow?)

[rpietila]

This is updated and cross-posted from another thread, for what it's worth.  You guys seem to like statistics and reality, and perhaps this is pertinent to the discussion.  

I've been working on some indexes specifically for alts.  Indexes were all balanced at 100 just eleven days ago at noon.  Info source is coinmarketcap.com

Latest, from about two hours ago:

Index 1: cap-weighted, includes all cryptos except BTC is now 75.36
Index 2: cap-weighted, includes all cryptos except BTC and LTC is now 80.68

(These indexes are imperfect because coinmarketcap has added 5 or 6 cryptos in the last eleven days, which skews them a little high.  Interesting that the HUGE dump by LTC has such an impact)

Index 3: cap-weighted, includes a basket of 31 NON-LTC cryptos selected by cap/volume metrics is now 73.58
Index 4: cap-weighted, includes the basket of 31 PLUS LTC is now 71.25

(I think Index 3 is actually the closest to what I'm trying to accomplish, which is to judge the general movement of the alt market as a whole.  I created Index 3 and intentionally left out LTC because it was so much larger than the rest of the alts and I wanted to gauge the movement of my portfolio against a representative sample.  Again, note that LTC influenced lower.)

Index 5: price-weighted version of Index 3 is now 70.17
Index 6: price-weighted version of Index 4 is now 69.25

(Dow Jones is price-weighted.  S&P, Russell, most others are cap weighted.  I just set these up to see if there would be much difference.  Again, LTC provides downward weight.)

Meta index is 73.38.  This contains elements of all above.  

My feeling is that Index 3 is the one that alt traders would find to be the most representative of general market direction, but I'm open to any feedback if y'all have some.  This weekend, I will re-balance the basket.  I'm using strict cap/volume statistics to mechanically re-balance.  Right now, the basket is 31 cryptos, but it's possible that it could drop to 26 or go up to 36 representative examples.  

I'm planning to seek out some help from somebody who can integrate API so that I can put some or all of these indexes up on a website that updates every 5 minutes along with coinmarketcap.com.  

TL:DR If your alt portfolio hasn't dropped by 26.42% in the last eleven days, you might be beating the market.  If this kind of info is helpful to you and/or if you can help me put together a simple website so that alt traders can access this info, hit me up.

For what it's worth, XMR hasn't changed much in relation to BTC during this time frame, but my start date is a bit arbitrary.  That just happens to be when I started, in part because I wanted to know how Monero was doing compared to other alts.  My start date happens to be just after XMR took a haircut versus BTC over a period of a couple of days.  I wanted to determine how bad that really was in the bigger picture.

edited to say "balanced at 100 just eleven days ago at noon" (had originally written nine, but that was incorrect.)

Bump

+1 This is interesting - could you post weekly updates in the thread?

[Globb0]

Trying to buy some more monero, the bank stopped my bitcoin purchase and froze my account. Im a bit confused I thought it was my money.

Is there any easier way to get monero directly.

[smooth]

Trying to buy some more monero, the bank stopped my bitcoin purchase and froze my account. Im a bit confused I thought it was my money.

Is there any easier way to get monero directly.

There is at present to way to buy XMR without BTC. Some ideas to make that happen are in the very early stages.

You need to get BTC.

I'd suggest something like localbitcoins or buying from a highly trusted member on the Exchange section of the forum.

EDIT: to get very small amounts to play with you could mine it yourself but it won't be much.

[GreedyBoy]

Trying to buy some more monero, the bank stopped my bitcoin purchase and froze my account. Im a bit confused I thought it was my money.

Is there any easier way to get monero directly.

i have a little bit the same problem. they did not freeze my account yet but everything is going very slowly. and also, now is fucking weekend, no money transfers for the next 2 days, this traditional banking system sucks so much.. all we can do is watch the price crash..


maybe i should lend some btc, friend of mine has some, but i would have to pay interest for sure. I have this feeling that on sunday or monday we make the final low. why are crashes mostly @ weekends? in my opinion very simple, Fiat money cant flow to the exchanges. with sepa express the money is normaly on the exchange within 12-24h, so there is time to react, no need to have everything on the exchange. but right now its bad to watch, orderbook collapsed to 140 btc.

anyway, i feel good to stay a little bit on the sideline, since BTC and XMR are both crashing. Normaly cash is trash, but sometimes, cash is king
its a long time ago that i was happy to hold some usd

I'm not surprised that BTC and XMR is crashing, especially the last one.

[carpetbagger]

Trying to buy some more monero, the bank stopped my bitcoin purchase and froze my account. Im a bit confused I thought it was my money.

Is there any easier way to get monero directly.

i have a little bit the same problem. they did not freeze my account yet but everything is going very slowly. and also, now is fucking weekend, no money transfers for the next 2 days, this traditional banking system sucks so much.. all we can do is watch the price crash..


maybe i should lend some btc, friend of mine has some, but i would have to pay interest for sure. I have this feeling that on sunday or monday we make the final low. why are crashes mostly @ weekends? in my opinion very simple, Fiat money cant flow to the exchanges. with sepa express the money is normaly on the exchange within 12-24h, so there is time to react, no need to have everything on the exchange. but right now its bad to watch, orderbook collapsed to 140 btc.

anyway, i feel good to stay a little bit on the sideline, since BTC and XMR are both crashing. Normaly cash is trash, but sometimes, cash is king
its a long time ago that i was happy to hold some usd

I'm not surprised that BTC and XMR is crashing, especially the last one.

Why do you feel that? re: the last one.

[GreedyBoy]

Trying to buy some more monero, the bank stopped my bitcoin purchase and froze my account. Im a bit confused I thought it was my money.

Is there any easier way to get monero directly.

i have a little bit the same problem. they did not freeze my account yet but everything is going very slowly. and also, now is fucking weekend, no money transfers for the next 2 days, this traditional banking system sucks so much.. all we can do is watch the price crash..


maybe i should lend some btc, friend of mine has some, but i would have to pay interest for sure. I have this feeling that on sunday or monday we make the final low. why are crashes mostly @ weekends? in my opinion very simple, Fiat money cant flow to the exchanges. with sepa express the money is normaly on the exchange within 12-24h, so there is time to react, no need to have everything on the exchange. but right now its bad to watch, orderbook collapsed to 140 btc.

anyway, i feel good to stay a little bit on the sideline, since BTC and XMR are both crashing. Normaly cash is trash, but sometimes, cash is king
its a long time ago that i was happy to hold some usd

I'm not surprised that BTC and XMR is crashing, especially the last one.

Why do you feel that? re: the last one.

They do not have the influx of new users. So, XMR community consists of old users only, in other words, it's closed community as mostly of altcoin community.

XMR is depends on BTC price, so every time BTC drops in price XMR drops too. So, that the disadvantage of XMR that it depends on BTC. I mean what's the reason to invest in a coin which depend on BTC? isn't it better to find independence or, at least, less dependent coin?

[drawingthesun]

Trying to buy some more monero, the bank stopped my bitcoin purchase and froze my account. Im a bit confused I thought it was my money.

Is there any easier way to get monero directly.

i have a little bit the same problem. they did not freeze my account yet but everything is going very slowly. and also, now is fucking weekend, no money transfers for the next 2 days, this traditional banking system sucks so much.. all we can do is watch the price crash..


maybe i should lend some btc, friend of mine has some, but i would have to pay interest for sure. I have this feeling that on sunday or monday we make the final low. why are crashes mostly @ weekends? in my opinion very simple, Fiat money cant flow to the exchanges. with sepa express the money is normaly on the exchange within 12-24h, so there is time to react, no need to have everything on the exchange. but right now its bad to watch, orderbook collapsed to 140 btc.

anyway, i feel good to stay a little bit on the sideline, since BTC and XMR are both crashing. Normaly cash is trash, but sometimes, cash is king
its a long time ago that i was happy to hold some usd

I'm not surprised that BTC and XMR is crashing, especially the last one.

Why do you feel that? re: the last one.

They do not have the influx of new users. So, XMR community consists of old users only, in other words, it's closed community as mostly of altcoin community.

XMR is depends on BTC price, so every time BTC drops in price XMR drops too. So, that the disadvantage of XMR that it depends on BTC. I mean what's the reason to invest in a coin which depend on BTC? isn't it better to find independence or, at least, less dependent coin?

Also remember that Monero is a new coin, to expect independence straight away is ridiculous.

Within the next few months the official GUI and the problems with resource usage will be fixed, and then we'll be ready to start attracting non technical users.

[aminorex]

They do not have the influx of new users. So, XMR community consists of old users only, in other words, it's closed community as mostly of altcoin community.

This is incorrect.  The XMR user base is growing about 60% monthly. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=702140.msg8209493#msg8209493

XMR is depends on BTC price, so every time BTC drops in price XMR drops too. So, that the disadvantage of XMR that it depends on BTC. I mean what's the reason to invest in a coin which depend on BTC? isn't it better to find independence or, at least, less dependent coin?

During the recent BTC decline, XMR fell less than the large majority of coins.

In general the shorter your timeframe the stronger the correlation with BTC.  Over the long run XMR should outperform BTC dramatically.

[pinky]

They do not have the influx of new users. So, XMR community consists of old users only, in other words, it's closed community as mostly of altcoin community.

This is incorrect.  The XMR user base is growing about 60% monthly. https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=702140.msg8209493#msg8209493

Current growth of users has slowed down and is no more than 2-3% per week. (numbers used in my estimation are from the current week not used in https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=622708.msg8279959#msg8279959 ). Monthly estimates for altcoin that is baby are useless.
Current trend is worrisome, but XMR is holding quite well compared to other alts.

[vuduchyld]

Bump

+1 This is interesting - could you post weekly updates in the thread?

Will do!

[Lohoris]

This is good for them, but I am still out for now, the fact that this was on the table scares me.

Even in Bitcoin there's plenty of people constantly proposing retarded things that would remove fungibility hence destroy the currency itself.
But they are just ignored.