rpietila Altcoin Observer

[synechist]

Those interested in how XC works might take an interest in this:

Hello all

"Whitepaper," a term in cryptoland ostensively used to describe anything from a diagram to a full scholarly presentation, now pertains to this, Dan's diagrammatic summary of Rev 2 RC 1's trustless mixing process.


Some details attendant upon this:

- We anticipate you'll have a lot of questions about this, so Dan will host a Q&A session this evening here. The intention is to use Dan's summary to build up a public record of shared understanding about XC's technology.

- Trustless mixing is highly similar to, though predates, "coinshuffle", a paper for which is accessible here.

- For clarity, XC's trustless mixing is, in a nutshell, a randomised multipath version of coinshuffle on top of the encrypted P2P Xnode communication protocol.


See you later.

Hi all

The Q&A has begun! Please feel free to submit any questions on trustless mixing to the topic on the official forum.

Dan will wait until a bunch of questions have accumulated and then answer them in one go.

Alright, first question.

Why does XC have a premine?

To fund some very intensive development.

I believe this has been discussed at some length in this thread already.

There was a lot of talk about the relative ethicality of IPOs, instamines, premines, and venture capital.

For what it's worth, a small premine is the most ethical option in my opinion.

2nd question

Why did XC's dev sell the premine for Bitcoin? Doesn't that mean he's just in it for the money, and that's been reflected on XC's constant fall in price?

You know.....just wonderin.

He's paying salaries on a regular basis. Not so many people want to get paid in XC at this point.

He's using his personal funds for salaries as well.

About 50% of the premine has been spent at this point.

[SlipperySlope]

Here is the weekly chart of Litecoin vs. Bitcoin, from the BTC-e exchange. Litecoin has fallen further relative to bitcoin following the November 2013 peak. When bitcoin began its ascent last September, litecoin was was slow to follow. It may be that as bitcoin soared past its previous all time high set at the peak of the April, 2013 bubble, speculators began to believe that litecoin was undervalued with respect to bitcoin.

Therefore, litecoin may fall further even if bitcoin begins a new bubble, then sharply reverse as bitcoin passes its all time high. The grinding collapse of litecoin looks similar in shape to the collapse of the great bitcoin bubble of June 2013, in which bitcoin declined 10x from the peak. In USD terms, litecoin fell from a peak of $48.48 on BTC-e last November to $4.37695 right now.

[dillpicklechips]

Here is the weekly chart of Litecoin vs. Bitcoin, from the BTC-e exchange. Litecoin has fallen further relative to bitcoin following the November 2013 peak. When bitcoin began its ascent last September, litecoin was was slow to follow. It may be that as bitcoin soared past its previous all time high set at the peak of the April, 2013 bubble, speculators began to believe that litecoin was undervalued with respect to bitcoin.

Therefore, litecoin may fall further even if bitcoin begins a new bubble, then sharply reverse as bitcoin passes its all time high. The grinding collapse of litecoin looks similar in shape to the collapse of the great bitcoin bubble of June 2013, in which bitcoin declined 10x from the peak. In USD terms, litecoin fell from a peak of $48.48 on BTC-e last November to $4.37695 right now.

I think the current situation is different now. LTC has now adopted ASICs and is pretty much a bitcoin clone with no unique features. There is very little incentive to use LTC at all. There is also lot more competition with other unique alt coins.

[Joshuar]

Here is the weekly chart of Litecoin vs. Bitcoin, from the BTC-e exchange. Litecoin has fallen further relative to bitcoin following the November 2013 peak. When bitcoin began its ascent last September, litecoin was was slow to follow. It may be that as bitcoin soared past its previous all time high set at the peak of the April, 2013 bubble, speculators began to believe that litecoin was undervalued with respect to bitcoin.

Therefore, litecoin may fall further even if bitcoin begins a new bubble, then sharply reverse as bitcoin passes its all time high. The grinding collapse of litecoin looks similar in shape to the collapse of the great bitcoin bubble of June 2013, in which bitcoin declined 10x from the peak. In USD terms, litecoin fell from a peak of $48.48 on BTC-e last November to $4.37695 right now.

I think the current situation is different now. LTC has now adopted ASICs and is pretty much a bitcoin clone with no unique features. There is very little incentive to use LTC at all. There is also lot more competition with other unique alt coins.

"very little"- There is no incentive to use Litecoin at all. It's a Bitcoin clone with no features of its own and it makes no sense to use Litecoin over Bitcoin, and thus the fall of Litecoin's price is showing that, it's being "left for dead" especially with the scrypt ASIC trying to make a ROI, selling at any price they can.

[SlipperySlope]

Litecoin prices on BTC-e are now nibbling at the 23K wall at $4.00. Volume has been relatively high after $7.00 failed to hold.

Here is the 30 minute chart from BTC-e showing the wall...

[devphp]

Doge has more potential than Litecoin, because Doge has already hit the rock bottom and its inflation is slowing down, Litecoin has more downside risk, its inflation will be in double-digits for a few years. Doge is now also a support currency for Dogeparty trading platform, and Doge/Dogeparty direct trading is very likely. While nothing is happening in Litecoin, at all.

[smooth]

Doge has more potential than Litecoin, because Doge has already hit the rock bottom and its inflation is slowing down, Litecoin has most downside risk, its inflation will be in double-digits for a few years.

No DOGE has more potential because it has something that is unique and difficult to replicate (a brand and community). That may not be much, but LTC has nothing at all. It is just BTC without the advantages of BTC.

[devphp]

Doge has more potential than Litecoin, because Doge has already hit the rock bottom and its inflation is slowing down, Litecoin has most downside risk, its inflation will be in double-digits for a few years.

No DOGE has more potential because it has something that is unique and difficult to replicate (a brand and community). That may not be much, but LTC has nothing at all. It is just BTC without the advantages of BTC.

I agree. But since the poster above presented price action charts, I only made a point about the monetary aspect of Doge. Doge has a brand and community that Litecoin can't compare with, that's true. Those are all factors that will first make Doge's market cap and hash rate equal to Litecoin's and then exceed Litecoin's.

[jabo38]

I would also buy Doge before Litecoin.  Both have big communities but Litecoin has lots of room to fall, whereas Doge can basically only go up from here.  But still neither of them offer up a great feature that makes me excited.  So they have a big community?  So does Bitcoin x100

[lebing]

I would also buy Doge before Litecoin.  Both have big communities but Litecoin has lots of room to fall, whereas Doge can basically only go up from here.  But still neither of them offer up a great feature that makes me excited.  So they have a big community?  So does Bitcoin x100

mmm nope.

[SlipperySlope]

Here is the 3-day resolution chart of dogecoin priced in bitcoin. Note that bitcoin has dropped 2.4x from its November peak. Valued in bitcoin, the DOGE bubble has collapsed almost 13x from its corresponding peak.

[devphp]

Here is the 3-day resolution chart of dogecoin priced in bitcoin. Note that bitcoin has dropped 2.4x from its November peak. Valued in bitcoin, the DOGE bubble has collapsed almost 13x from its corresponding peak.

You are right, the Doge bubble has collapsed. As for the Litecoin bubble, its collapse is still in the making.

[beitris.dwlul]

I would still feel that we need more than one cryptocurrency and about as interested in altforums as I am in altcoins, I suppose.

[SlipperySlope]

And here is the one-week resolution chart for litecoin, priced in Chinese RMB as reported by the very liquid OKCoin exchange. The bubble has steadily collapsed from the November 2013 peak, with a great capitulation beginning about 7 days ago. Perhaps industrial miners are selling their mined litecoins to buy ASICS in fiat. Hobbyist miners in contrast, often mine in order to acquire coins for long term holding - regardless of economics.

[SlipperySlope]

Here is the one-week resolution chart for peercoin as reported by the BTC-e change, priced in bitcoin. Note that the combination proof-of-work and proof-of-stake coin has collapsed slightly less than pure proof-of-work altcoins - down 6.68 from the November 2013 peak relative to bitcoin.

[digitalindustry]

hey hey hey ! "Observers"

looks who's back to laugh at you ?

: D

remember this blog post :

http://kolinevans.wordpress.com/2014/07/04/why-has-litecoin-decoupled-from-bitcoin-and-is-on-a-price-decline-and-why-is-this-important-for-quark-and-other-free-market-crypto-currencies/

Where is said Quark would be a great crypto "reserve" to store "capital" in because it is driven by the free market...

https://coinmarketcap.com/currencies/views/filter-non-mineable-and-premined/

monopoly land doesn't looks so healthy- who's capital is going to come in now and give all these LTC ASICS a free lunch?

what about all the new BTC ASICS farms - we need someone to buy ?

oh the Dark monopoly collapsed ( but that was pretty obvious) (wasn't it)

caching the page now -

: D

[AnonyMint]

I don't have time to read this thread, so I don't know if this has been pointed out already. In our upthread discussion about Cryptonite and the MBC (mini blockchain), I failed to point out that the unscalable (without centralized mining) Bitcoin blockchain (and worse for Monero) can never be pruned because it relies on GUIDs to prevent double-spend replay transactions (or am I unaware that Bitcoin's tx GUID somehow incorporates the block hash?). If anyone is aware of a solution for that please let me know. Because I think it is major vulnerability of the MBC. Has Cryptonite addressed it in some way?

This was another of my numerous secrets.  

(if you don't understand my post, ask one of the altcoin developers lurking here to explain it)

Edit#2: All crypto-coins to date are centralized mining deceptions:

http://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/bino

The insoluble economic dilemma not mentioned in the above linked essay is how to prevent pools from giving away their service for free by subsidizing it with some thing they gain by centralizing mining. The largest Bitcoin pool GHash.io (which sometimes has > 50% of the network hashrate) is free because the largest ASICs miner subsidizes it. In that case, no one can make a profit from running a pool, so no one has an incentive run a pool.

Edit: Got to love all the intrigue and drama surrounding Cryptonote coins, e.g. Moanero and Foolberry. (feel free to return a political stab, I am just pointing out my opinion that what doesn't start well, usually doesn't end well, better to start with a clean slate and something differentiated)

Edit#3: I didn't know Zerocash is supported by the US and Israel militaries. I didn't like the idea that the crypto is complex and unvetted, nor that anyone who retained the master key could create unlimited coins and the money supply is unknowable.

Edit#4: I disagree with this statement made by the cryptographer or math guy who reviewed and annotated the Cryptonote whitepaper.

http://monero.cc/downloads/whitepaper_annotated.pdf#page=5

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

I claim that the Pareto equilibrium is somewhat unavoidable. Either 20% of the system will
own 80% of the CPUs, or 20% of the system will own 80% of the ASICs. I hypothesize this be-
cause the underlying distribution of wealth in society already exhibits the Pareto distribution,

The Pareto equilibrium doesn't apply in activities where profit is not directly correlated, such as talking and volume of transactions. In both of those examples, 80% of the system has more than 80% of the activity. The power-law distribution of money is because the 80% spend more than they save. So obviously 80% of the system has more than 80% of the spending.

Sorry. I think of things others don't. I don't know why. Perhaps because I never accept something authoritative as fact. I try to find holes in everything.

[digitalindustry]

Here is the one-week resolution chart for peercoin as reported by the BTC-e change, priced in bitcoin. Note that the combination proof-of-work and proof-of-stake coin has collapsed slightly less than pure proof-of-work altcoins - down 6.68 from the November 2013 peak relative to bitcoin.

awesome name to be posting these charts.

[digitalindustry]

I don't have time to read this thread, so I don't know if this has been pointed out already. In our upthread discussion about Cryptonite and the MBC (mini blockchain), I failed to point out that the unscalable (without centralized mining) Bitcoin blockchain (and worse for Monero) can never be pruned because it relies on GUIDs to prevent double-spend replay transactions. If anyone is aware of a solution too that please let me know. Because I think it is major vulnerability of the MBC. Has Cryptonite addressed it in some way?

This was another of my numerous secrets.  

(if you don't understand my post, ask one of the altcoin developers lurking here to explain it)

i understand it - did you post it on the wiki or on their ANN ?

but guess what - he's got it out there - its in the market as a working prototype, break it,  that's what its there for.

[SlipperySlope]

Here is the one-week resolution chart for peercoin as reported by the BTC-e change, priced in bitcoin. Note that the combination proof-of-work and proof-of-stake coin has collapsed slightly less than pure proof-of-work altcoins - down 6.68 from the November 2013 peak relative to bitcoin.

-- chart omitted --

awesome name to be posting these charts.

Ha! That was my handle back in the day of posting on the peak oil site - The Oil Drum, before technical innovation in the oil sector killed it.

My point in posting these charts is twofold, first to witness the dramatic altcoin speculative bubble collapse, and second to observe to what extent factors such as mining algorithm affect the degree of collapse.

I am working on a cooperative proof of stake mining method to hard-fork popular Satoshi-style proof-of-work cryptocurrencies. The respective forked blockchains would be continued on separate networks and not corrupt the original versions. My method secures a blockchain network using conventional financial data and network security enforced by a trustless multi-agent cognitive architecture, and paid for by the block rewards. Micro-transactions enabled by immediate, certain acceptance and extremely low transaction fees suggest the initial market.

I will be speaking in a modest role at the Hashers United conference in Las Vegas in October if anyone would like a meetup.

-Stephen Reed.