rpietila Altcoin Observer

[jl777]

Supply figures with an asterisk indicate that the coin cannot be mined, i.e. not proof-of-work. Interesting too, how many of these are ranking higher this month.

What I am seeing is that a large proportion of well renowned experts in Crypto are starting to talk about PoW being a failure and that there must be another way. The Bitshares people, James from Nxt and BitcoinDark, Vitalik and even your idea suggests the future lay in PoS in some form.

The only people supporting PoW at the moment with large credibility are the Bitcoin core developers.

Anyone care to explain if things like dPoS are really the future, or is PoW still the most secure way to run a decentralized network?

PoW without any single entity mining more than 10% would be quite secure.

The problem with ghash.iocoin is that they can increase their hash power at anytime by just selling more GHS to a pretty liquid market (200 BTC last 24hrs). to my knowledge no other pool has access to such easy capital. So it is nervous for people to realize that by compromising just one private enterprise, bitcoin can get jeopardized. Since all of crypto is based on BTC, this is a disaster scenario for everyone!

I am no deep thinker on the PoW, PoS, DPos, PoXYZ matter. It is just common sense that if a small number of people can control a coin, well, it isnt very decentralized anymore. Maybe that matters, maybe it doesnt. It is what it is. Dangerous.

I hope that the community can level the playing field as to raising capital for other mining pools. The NXT Asset Exchange has several mining assets and they are reasonably popular, but the total capitalization of them is less than one day's volume of GHS. I know ghash.io promises to stay under 40%, but http://bitcoinchain.com/pools shows the top 5 pools control 70% of blocks.

So, ignoring the power usage issue, the danger of this concentration endangers all of crypto.

Now, I have no aspirations of anything replacing bitcoin anytime soon. Anybody that thinks that any altcoin will do this before this decade is over, is quite unrealistic and it could take quite a lot longer than this. The network effect is way too strong. For example, how long has Microsoft Windows had such large marketshare? I dont think I need to say anymore on this point. Bitcoin is here to stay, so it is in everybody's interest to make bitcoin as safe as possible.

With the impending legislative and regulatory attack on bitcoin, it is quite clear to me that if something isnt done to make some form of electronic cash out of crypto soon, the world will lose the ability to make cash transactions. This would be a disaster of unthinkable proportions to human freedom. Imagine if every purchase you make has to be approved by some govt official! Control the money, you control the people. Cash is no longer "legal tender for all debts public or private", in fact you cant use cash for a lot of things, especially any large purchases. Everyone is forced to use the fully trackable credit cards and with bitcoin a transparent protocol, according to senate hearing testimony by govt officials, it is quite a danger to us all.

This is why I am working so hard on some new tech that will allow bitcoin to go dark. I feel the world is at a crossroads and feel urgent need to recreate something that can be used as cash in today's world. Now I know my pedigree coming from the NXT world is probably making many dismiss me, but its worse! I only discovered crypto last November and of all things it was ripple. I didnt even know what bitcoin was last october. So, it took me a while to get up to speed, but I think I have done a decent job.

I am soon to release a Teleport beta release, but it is only myself coding and I want to make sure it is not having any bugs and of sound design. After seeing all the thoughtful posts here, I think that maybe there is a skilled C programmer here that would like to help. I write all the code from scratch, though I make liberal use of existing libraries like nacl, libtom, libuv, libwebsockets, etc. Also, my method for Teleport is not based on any new untested math, but more a wholistic approach to create a system for privacy. There are some weakspots, especially with the entry and exit to the system, but I feel that with proper precautions, these can be managed. But these are the things that need a critical review!

To clarify, the BTCD teleport will teleport any other supported coin and the coin interfacing code is based on multigateway.org codebase, so any bitcoin fork is easily supported. Others would not take long to add. The more teleport transactions, the larger the anon set, so privacy level scales along with network size. We will be offering free teleporting of other coins for a while. community is debating on 3 months to one year of free teleporting and the security of the transactions is based on the security of each coin's blockchain, so it wont be like entrusting BTC tx on BTCD network.

Now, I am too busy coding (and I am no academic) to make anything approaching a scholar whitepaper, so I only have a DarkPaper http://209.126.70.170/DarkPaper.pdf written so the common person can pretty much understand things, my posts in the BTCD thread and the source code: https://github.com/jl777/libjl777
It is still very much a work in progress and I am embarassed for some messy code, but I hope for understanding and cooperation. The BTCD community is so new and small, and the NXT community is all Java guys, so I have come here to ask for help.

Is there a C programmer who can do a code review to ensure that Teleport is indeed secure? I am able to pay a reasonable fee (in any currency), if this is an issue

James

[aminorex]

Not sure how it will fit into any main stream type of usage given how it can be essentially untraceable in terms of who sent what to whom etc in any transaction. Please correct me here if I have not seen an outcome where it could be accepted in a main stream sense.

How many of your transactions would benefit from being made public records?  I think only payment for titled property.  Everything else is better kept private.  There is at least one medical practice in New York accepting XMR today, even at this early stage.

Maintaining privacy is very challenging today.  Because XMR makes it much easier to protect your privacy, that makes XMR much more valuable.  

Privacy is a fundamental human right and any political actor who opposes it immediately identifies himself as a fascist abuser, an enemy of liberty and of the people.

The masses gladly sacrifice privacy for trinkets, and perhaps XMR is not for the gumchewers watching Kardashians or Duck Dynasty - whatever the flavor of the moment may be, but that does not impose a meaningful ceiling on value or liquidity: They are the majority who can't raise usd400 in an emergency according to a recent poll.  They just don't exist monetarily.

[brekyrself]

Anyone care to explain if things like dPoS are really the future, or is PoW still the most secure way to run a decentralized network?

Variations of POS are just one piece of the puzzle on securing the blockchain while also adding functionality.  DPOS for example with its fast confirmations will allow for the upcoming asset exchange.


Start here to read the background on DPOS:
http://wiki.bitshares.org/index.php/DPOS

Continue here to read about the security and simplicity of sending to names instead of addresses:
http://wiki.bitshares.org/index.php/TITAN

Listen to this episode from a few weeks back:
Let's talk Bitcoin! episode 129.  Starts around 12 minute mark with the lead dev Dan.  Great listen.
http://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/lets-talk-bitcoin-129-dogeparty-and-delegated-proof-of-stake

Which leads to the asset exchange:
http://wiki.bitshares.org/index.php/Bitshares_X

Finally finish up with this to really get you thinking about where bitcoin ideology will go:
http://bitshares.org/overstock-to-cryptostock/


With all the above were just scratching the surface of possibilities.

[othe]

In practice BitShares isn't a distributed system, it is more like coordinated synchronized time shared centralized system.  -bytemaster

Is that really what we want? I doubt it.

[brekyrself]

In practice BitShares isn't a distributed system, it is more like coordinated synchronized time shared centralized system.  -bytemaster

Is that really what we want? I doubt it.

The question becomes what is decentralized "enough?"

DPOS is far more decentralized compared with BTC pools as it also provides a way for everyday users to vote in or out the current 101 delegates.  Misbehave and the user base will notice, thus vote you out asap.

[othe]

Being decentralized means at least the byzantine generals problem is solved, i cant see how DPOS does this.

But it doesn´t really matter because i don´t see Bitshares as a cryptocurrency anyway, its simply a startup/company like apple and facebook.
And most IT Companies are overvalued anyway, so i have no interest in "investing" there.

[brekyrself]

Being decentralized means at least the byzantine generals problem is solved, i cant see how DPOS does this.

But it doesn´t really matter because i don´t see Bitshares as a cryptocurrency anyway, its simply a startup/company like apple and facebook.
And most IT Companies are overvalued anyway, so i have no interest in "investing" there.

Well you are correct, it is much more then just a crypto-currency.  All of their code is public and on the table, not sure how they compare to a proprietary company such as Apple?  Check out those links I posted a few replies back, this software is quite fascinating once you wrap your brain around the potential use cases.

Not being bias here as I am invested in many crypto currencies, just want to keep the record straight on certain interesting ones!

[aminorex]

But it doesn´t really matter because i don´t see Bitshares as a cryptocurrency anyway, its simply a startup/company like apple and facebook.

Well you are correct, it is much more then just a crypto-currency.

Referring to it as a crypto-currency debases the meaning of the term.  Its price probably won't correlate strongly to the general alt market, because it's structurally different.  It's more than a crypto-currency in the sense that it does other things that crypto-currencies don't do.  It's less than a crypto-currency in the sense that it is not fit and will never be fit for primary use as a currency.

I suspect that, like Ethereum, it's an illegal security offering in the U.S.  If so, then I think that may bite them hard, before very long. Being the biggest, most successful, currently operating cryptographic enterprise share distribution would make BTSX the obvious first target of federal prosecution in the U.S.

Overall, I would venture to guess that BTSX has more short-term upside than e.g. XMR, and much, much less long-term upside. I am more confident of the latter than I am of the former, so I'm not playing it.

[Melbustus]

...
Overall, I would venture to guess that BTSX has more short-term upside than e.g. XMR, and much, much less long-term upside. I am more confident of the latter than I am of the former, so I'm not playing it.

I wish there were a vehicle for shorting it (BTSX). But I wish that about almost every alt blockchain token.

[rpietila]

...
Overall, I would venture to guess that BTSX has more short-term upside than e.g. XMR, and much, much less long-term upside. I am more confident of the latter than I am of the former, so I'm not playing it.

I wish there were a vehicle for shorting it (BTSX). But I wish that about almost every alt blockchain token.

It should be possible to identify some of the large holders and negotiate with them a loan of BTSX. Then you just sell them to the market and hope to be buying back lower when the term expires. Sure there are practical issues with the interest rate and guarantee.

I'd think that if this market would be structured around a central (or distributed) escrow that takes the full number of BTC as a guarantee from the borrower (short-seller), then the lender would be at peace that he is not being defaulted upon. The variable interest rate would make sure that there can be no collusion between the altcoin owners ("we don't participate in this activity").

Actually this is a sweet idea, properly done. I'd like to loan out my XMR against interest to the uninformed people that believe it will fall.

[ArticMine]

...
Overall, I would venture to guess that BTSX has more short-term upside than e.g. XMR, and much, much less long-term upside. I am more confident of the latter than I am of the former, so I'm not playing it.

I wish there were a vehicle for shorting it (BTSX). But I wish that about almost every alt blockchain token.

It should be possible to identify some of the large holders and negotiate with them a loan of BTSX. Then you just sell them to the market and hope to be buying back lower when the term expires. Sure there are practical issues with the interest rate and guarantee.

I'd think that if this market would be structured around a central (or distributed) escrow that takes the full number of BTC as a guarantee from the borrower (short-seller), then the lender would be at peace that he is not being defaulted upon. The variable interest rate would make sure that there can be no collusion between the altcoin owners ("we don't participate in this activity").

Actually this is a sweet idea, properly done. I'd like to loan out my XMR against interest to the uninformed people that believe it will fall.

I am not so sure. If XMR/XBT decides to spike during a XBT/USD bull market that way that LTC, NMC and even PPC spiked in the past this kind of thing can blow up real fast, not just for the short seller / borrower but also for the lender. I would be more the buyer of the shorted XMR who then takes delivery and waits for the whole short position to blow up.

Edit: Something about this reminds me of early 2012 when I was buying and taking delivery of XBT, while pirateat40 was busy building his massive XBT short position.

[rpietila]

I am not so sure. If XMR/XBT decides to spike during a XBT/USD bull market that way that LTC, NMC and even PPC spiked in the past this kind of thing can blow up real fast, not just for the short seller / borrower but also for the lender. I would be more the buyer of the shorted XMR who then takes delivery and waits for the whole short position to blow up.

Edit: Something about this reminds me of early 2012 when I was buying and taking delivery of XBT, while pirateat40 was busy building his massive XBT short position.

What do you think is problematic in the following scheme:

- OTC market where people can list bids and asks for altcoin loans (maturity; sum; interest)
- When match is made, the escrow takes full guarantee (typically 150% of the loan in BTC)
- The altcoin is transferred from the lender's wallet to the borrower (that typically sells it)
- Margin call when margin is less than 30%, forced liquidation at 15% (by the escrow)
- At maturity, the borrower must have bought back the altcoin, return it with interest, and gets the escrowed BTC back.

[ArticMine]

I am not so sure. If XMR/XBT decides to spike during a XBT/USD bull market that way that LTC, NMC and even PPC spiked in the past this kind of thing can blow up real fast, not just for the short seller / borrower but also for the lender. I would be more the buyer of the shorted XMR who then takes delivery and waits for the whole short position to blow up.

Edit: Something about this reminds me of early 2012 when I was buying and taking delivery of XBT, while pirateat40 was busy building his massive XBT short position.

What do you think is problematic in the following scheme:

- OTC market where people can list bids and asks for altcoin loans (maturity; sum; interest)
- When match is made, the escrow takes full guarantee (typically 150% of the loan in BTC)
- The altcoin is transferred from the lender's wallet to the borrower (that typically sells it)
- Margin call when margin is less than 30%, forced liquidation at 15% (by the escrow)
- At maturity, the borrower must have bought back the altcoin, return it with interest, and gets the escrowed BTC back.

With say margin call at 130%. In a sharply rising market first finding a willing seller of XMR and then even transferring the XBT to the seller before the position drops to 100% then 90%, 80% etc. In short the lender of the XMR could end up having to panic buy ending up with the position closed at a loss in XMR and an un-collectible debt. The logistics of this can also be significant. For example even waiting for the required XBT confirmations in a fast moving market.

[dewdeded]

Yeah othe is right, Bitshares are no Crypto-Currency. (Because they are different, wider focus, other rules, ...)
Projects like Bitshares, Maidsafe, etc. are doing in Crypto-Finance business (as in crypto-currency inspired).
We should keep (using) this distinction and dont dilute the cryptocurrency term and meaning, by calling every FIN Tech startup/project that involves cryptography a cryptocurrency.


BTW, Bitshares websites look really good/promising. I wish them success.

[rpietila]

I am not so sure. If XMR/XBT decides to spike during a XBT/USD bull market that way that LTC, NMC and even PPC spiked in the past this kind of thing can blow up real fast, not just for the short seller / borrower but also for the lender. I would be more the buyer of the shorted XMR who then takes delivery and waits for the whole short position to blow up.

Edit: Something about this reminds me of early 2012 when I was buying and taking delivery of XBT, while pirateat40 was busy building his massive XBT short position.

What do you think is problematic in the following scheme:

- OTC market where people can list bids and asks for altcoin loans (maturity; sum; interest)
- When match is made, the escrow takes full guarantee (typically 150% of the loan in BTC)
- The altcoin is transferred from the lender's wallet to the borrower (that typically sells it)
- Margin call when margin is less than 30%, forced liquidation at 15% (by the escrow)
- At maturity, the borrower must have bought back the altcoin, return it with interest, and gets the escrowed BTC back.

With say margin call at 130%. In a sharply rising market first finding a willing seller of XMR and then even transferring the XBT to the seller before the position drops to 100% then 90%, 80% etc. In short the lender of the XMR could end up having to panic buy ending up with the position closed at a loss in XMR and an un-collectible debt. The logistics of this can also be significant. For example even waiting for the required XBT confirmations in a fast moving market.

The escrow would auto-close the positions, and could hold some of the aggregate escrowed BTC in the exchange. (Auto-closing would happen in exchange, not OTC). If the auto-close does not happen as expected, the loss would be on the escrow who failed it. They are naturally getting compensated for their service, so it is not an all-lose proposition.

I believe it can be done with mature and liquid coins such as XMR and LTC, quite easily. With volatile coins, the BTC guarantee just needs to be that much higher.

[kennyP]

Supply figures with an asterisk indicate that the coin cannot be mined, i.e. not proof-of-work. Interesting too, how many of these are ranking higher this month.

What I am seeing is that a large proportion of well renowned experts in Crypto are starting to talk about PoW being a failure and that there must be another way. The Bitshares people, James from Nxt and BitcoinDark, Vitalik and even your idea suggests the future lay in PoS in some form.

The only people supporting PoW at the moment with large credibility are the Bitcoin core developers.

Anyone care to explain if things like dPoS are really the future, or is PoW still the most secure way to run a decentralized network?

PoW without any single entity mining more than 10% would be quite secure.

The problem with ghash.iocoin is that they can increase their hash power at anytime by just selling more GHS to a pretty liquid market (200 BTC last 24hrs). to my knowledge no other pool has access to such easy capital. So it is nervous for people to realize that by compromising just one private enterprise, bitcoin can get jeopardized. Since all of crypto is based on BTC, this is a disaster scenario for everyone!

I am no deep thinker on the PoW, PoS, DPos, PoXYZ matter. It is just common sense that if a small number of people can control a coin, well, it isnt very decentralized anymore. Maybe that matters, maybe it doesnt. It is what it is. Dangerous.

I hope that the community can level the playing field as to raising capital for other mining pools. The NXT Asset Exchange has several mining assets and they are reasonably popular, but the total capitalization of them is less than one day's volume of GHS. I know ghash.io promises to stay under 40%, but http://bitcoinchain.com/pools shows the top 5 pools control 70% of blocks.

So, ignoring the power usage issue, the danger of this concentration endangers all of crypto.

Now, I have no aspirations of anything replacing bitcoin anytime soon. Anybody that thinks that any altcoin will do this before this decade is over, is quite unrealistic and it could take quite a lot longer than this. The network effect is way too strong. For example, how long has Microsoft Windows had such large marketshare? I dont think I need to say anymore on this point. Bitcoin is here to stay, so it is in everybody's interest to make bitcoin as safe as possible.

With the impending legislative and regulatory attack on bitcoin, it is quite clear to me that if something isnt done to make some form of electronic cash out of crypto soon, the world will lose the ability to make cash transactions. This would be a disaster of unthinkable proportions to human freedom. Imagine if every purchase you make has to be approved by some govt official! Control the money, you control the people. Cash is no longer "legal tender for all debts public or private", in fact you cant use cash for a lot of things, especially any large purchases. Everyone is forced to use the fully trackable credit cards and with bitcoin a transparent protocol, according to senate hearing testimony by govt officials, it is quite a danger to us all.

This is why I am working so hard on some new tech that will allow bitcoin to go dark. I feel the world is at a crossroads and feel urgent need to recreate something that can be used as cash in today's world. Now I know my pedigree coming from the NXT world is probably making many dismiss me, but its worse! I only discovered crypto last November and of all things it was ripple. I didnt even know what bitcoin was last october. So, it took me a while to get up to speed, but I think I have done a decent job.

I am soon to release a Teleport beta release, but it is only myself coding and I want to make sure it is not having any bugs and of sound design. After seeing all the thoughtful posts here, I think that maybe there is a skilled C programmer here that would like to help. I write all the code from scratch, though I make liberal use of existing libraries like nacl, libtom, libuv, libwebsockets, etc. Also, my method for Teleport is not based on any new untested math, but more a wholistic approach to create a system for privacy. There are some weakspots, especially with the entry and exit to the system, but I feel that with proper precautions, these can be managed. But these are the things that need a critical review!

To clarify, the BTCD teleport will teleport any other supported coin and the coin interfacing code is based on multigateway.org codebase, so any bitcoin fork is easily supported. Others would not take long to add. The more teleport transactions, the larger the anon set, so privacy level scales along with network size. We will be offering free teleporting of other coins for a while. community is debating on 3 months to one year of free teleporting and the security of the transactions is based on the security of each coin's blockchain, so it wont be like entrusting BTC tx on BTCD network.

Now, I am too busy coding (and I am no academic) to make anything approaching a scholar whitepaper, so I only have a DarkPaper http://209.126.70.170/DarkPaper.pdf written so the common person can pretty much understand things, my posts in the BTCD thread and the source code: https://github.com/jl777/libjl777
It is still very much a work in progress and I am embarassed for some messy code, but I hope for understanding and cooperation. The BTCD community is so new and small, and the NXT community is all Java guys, so I have come here to ask for help.

Is there a C programmer who can do a code review to ensure that Teleport is indeed secure? I am able to pay a reasonable fee (in any currency), if this is an issue

James

Wow, I might feel like the stupid kid in the smart class reading this thread most days, but even I can spot a big development in the crypto space when I see one. Teleporting coins using the BTCD network and making them 'dark' is a MAJOR breakthrough. I'm really hoping some of the regular rpietila Altcoin Observer brainiacs try and pull apart jl777's teleporting concept, because if the smart guys in this thread can't punch a hole in the basic concept, then a lot of things will change in the crypto world, and fast. All coins can truly be anonymous ... that's BIG news!

I'm very keen to digest the peer review on teleporting!

[jl777]

Supply figures with an asterisk indicate that the coin cannot be mined, i.e. not proof-of-work. Interesting too, how many of these are ranking higher this month.

What I am seeing is that a large proportion of well renowned experts in Crypto are starting to talk about PoW being a failure and that there must be another way. The Bitshares people, James from Nxt and BitcoinDark, Vitalik and even your idea suggests the future lay in PoS in some form.

The only people supporting PoW at the moment with large credibility are the Bitcoin core developers.

Anyone care to explain if things like dPoS are really the future, or is PoW still the most secure way to run a decentralized network?

PoW without any single entity mining more than 10% would be quite secure.

The problem with ghash.iocoin is that they can increase their hash power at anytime by just selling more GHS to a pretty liquid market (200 BTC last 24hrs). to my knowledge no other pool has access to such easy capital. So it is nervous for people to realize that by compromising just one private enterprise, bitcoin can get jeopardized. Since all of crypto is based on BTC, this is a disaster scenario for everyone!

I am no deep thinker on the PoW, PoS, DPos, PoXYZ matter. It is just common sense that if a small number of people can control a coin, well, it isnt very decentralized anymore. Maybe that matters, maybe it doesnt. It is what it is. Dangerous.

I hope that the community can level the playing field as to raising capital for other mining pools. The NXT Asset Exchange has several mining assets and they are reasonably popular, but the total capitalization of them is less than one day's volume of GHS. I know ghash.io promises to stay under 40%, but http://bitcoinchain.com/pools shows the top 5 pools control 70% of blocks.

So, ignoring the power usage issue, the danger of this concentration endangers all of crypto.

Now, I have no aspirations of anything replacing bitcoin anytime soon. Anybody that thinks that any altcoin will do this before this decade is over, is quite unrealistic and it could take quite a lot longer than this. The network effect is way too strong. For example, how long has Microsoft Windows had such large marketshare? I dont think I need to say anymore on this point. Bitcoin is here to stay, so it is in everybody's interest to make bitcoin as safe as possible.

With the impending legislative and regulatory attack on bitcoin, it is quite clear to me that if something isnt done to make some form of electronic cash out of crypto soon, the world will lose the ability to make cash transactions. This would be a disaster of unthinkable proportions to human freedom. Imagine if every purchase you make has to be approved by some govt official! Control the money, you control the people. Cash is no longer "legal tender for all debts public or private", in fact you cant use cash for a lot of things, especially any large purchases. Everyone is forced to use the fully trackable credit cards and with bitcoin a transparent protocol, according to senate hearing testimony by govt officials, it is quite a danger to us all.

This is why I am working so hard on some new tech that will allow bitcoin to go dark. I feel the world is at a crossroads and feel urgent need to recreate something that can be used as cash in today's world. Now I know my pedigree coming from the NXT world is probably making many dismiss me, but its worse! I only discovered crypto last November and of all things it was ripple. I didnt even know what bitcoin was last october. So, it took me a while to get up to speed, but I think I have done a decent job.

I am soon to release a Teleport beta release, but it is only myself coding and I want to make sure it is not having any bugs and of sound design. After seeing all the thoughtful posts here, I think that maybe there is a skilled C programmer here that would like to help. I write all the code from scratch, though I make liberal use of existing libraries like nacl, libtom, libuv, libwebsockets, etc. Also, my method for Teleport is not based on any new untested math, but more a wholistic approach to create a system for privacy. There are some weakspots, especially with the entry and exit to the system, but I feel that with proper precautions, these can be managed. But these are the things that need a critical review!

To clarify, the BTCD teleport will teleport any other supported coin and the coin interfacing code is based on multigateway.org codebase, so any bitcoin fork is easily supported. Others would not take long to add. The more teleport transactions, the larger the anon set, so privacy level scales along with network size. We will be offering free teleporting of other coins for a while. community is debating on 3 months to one year of free teleporting and the security of the transactions is based on the security of each coin's blockchain, so it wont be like entrusting BTC tx on BTCD network.

Now, I am too busy coding (and I am no academic) to make anything approaching a scholar whitepaper, so I only have a DarkPaper http://209.126.70.170/DarkPaper.pdf written so the common person can pretty much understand things, my posts in the BTCD thread and the source code: https://github.com/jl777/libjl777
It is still very much a work in progress and I am embarassed for some messy code, but I hope for understanding and cooperation. The BTCD community is so new and small, and the NXT community is all Java guys, so I have come here to ask for help.

Is there a C programmer who can do a code review to ensure that Teleport is indeed secure? I am able to pay a reasonable fee (in any currency), if this is an issue

James

Wow, I might feel like the stupid kid in the smart class reading this thread most days, but even I can spot a big development in the crypto space when I see one. Teleporting coins using the BTCD network and making them 'dark' is a MAJOR breakthrough. I'm really hoping some of the regular rpietila Altcoin Observer brainiacs try and pull apart jl777's teleporting concept, because if the smart guys in this thread can't punch a hole in the basic concept, then a lot of things will change in the crypto world, and fast. All coins can truly be anonymous ... that's BIG news!

I'm very keen to digest the peer review on teleporting!

I was beginning to wonder if my post was somehow invisible
The silence was unexpected after my post, I am glad somebody at least read it

I am indeed looking for brainiacs to try to crack the Teleport. I am not ready to offer any bounties for flaws (yet), as this is still relatively new, but after code review then I think it might be good to do that.

I am also planning to make trading of telepods of different denominations via InstantDEX, so in realtime you would be able to swap a BTC telepod for XMR telepod and the trail of these telepods only goes back to the creator, which I am expecting will be people/companies that specialize in selling aged telepods, so they wont care that it looks like they are continuing to transfer funds to themselves over and over.

I am not trying to make a new coin that replaces BTC or XMR or any other coin. Teleporting enhances the privacy of any coin, so if you start with XMR and start teleporting it around (especially some percentage via trusted teleports), I think that will create the best privacy levels possible. Though with all the things I put into the Teleport system, just teleporting BTC should be quite private.

James

[ArticMine]

...

The escrow would auto-close the positions, and could hold some of the aggregate escrowed BTC in the exchange. (Auto-closing would happen in exchange, not OTC). If the auto-close does not happen as expected, the loss would be on the escrow who failed it. They are naturally getting compensated for their service, so it is not an all-lose proposition.

I believe it can be done with mature and liquid coins such as XMR and LTC, quite easily. With volatile coins, the BTC guarantee just needs to be that much higher.

The escrowed XBT are kept in the exchange where a market order to buy XMR is triggered when 115% is reached. If the slippage plus commission is less than 15% then it would work. This also assumes the exchange does not temporarily stop trading as a "circuit breaker" on the market.

Black Monday in stocks, October 19, 1987,  comes to mind here. A sharp fall or rise triggered by a cascade of margin calls. More recently this type of spike has been seen with XBT on BTC-E for the same reason. Some risk to the lender still remains. This risk can be mitigated, but not eliminated entirely.

[jl777]

...

The escrow would auto-close the positions, and could hold some of the aggregate escrowed BTC in the exchange. (Auto-closing would happen in exchange, not OTC). If the auto-close does not happen as expected, the loss would be on the escrow who failed it. They are naturally getting compensated for their service, so it is not an all-lose proposition.

I believe it can be done with mature and liquid coins such as XMR and LTC, quite easily. With volatile coins, the BTC guarantee just needs to be that much higher.

The escrowed XBT are kept in the exchange where a market order to buy XMR is triggered when 115% is reached. If the slippage plus commission is less than 15% then it would work. This also assumes the exchange does not temporarily stop trading as a "circuit breaker" on the market.

Black Monday in stocks, October 19, 1987,  comes to mind here. A sharp fall or rise triggered by a cascade of margin calls. More recently this type of spike has been seen with XBT on BTC-E for the same reason. Some risk to the lender still remains. This risk can be mitigated, but not eliminated entirely.

I think with btsx somehow the 101 delegates could decide some significant things and their decision would stand, all that can be done is replace the naughty delegates after the fact. So if a flash crash causes domino effect liquidation not sure what the delegates can or cant do, but I just dont understand how a peg that is created by the market can possibly hold true when the market itself is collapsing.

I call the btsx thing a holographic peg. It looks like its there, but really it is just a projection. I also have heard that the btsx (company?) is going to use IPO funds to support the price and also that it is not going to do this. It is very hard to understand without really analysing the details and currently I am too busy finishing teleport. I do know that they have aggressive marketing and really stretching claims about their tech, so I would be cautious unless you really understand how it really works.

James

[rpietila]

...

The escrow would auto-close the positions, and could hold some of the aggregate escrowed BTC in the exchange. (Auto-closing would happen in exchange, not OTC). If the auto-close does not happen as expected, the loss would be on the escrow who failed it. They are naturally getting compensated for their service, so it is not an all-lose proposition.

I believe it can be done with mature and liquid coins such as XMR and LTC, quite easily. With volatile coins, the BTC guarantee just needs to be that much higher.

The escrowed XBT are kept in the exchange where a market order to buy XMR is triggered when 115% is reached. If the slippage plus commission is less than 15% then it would work. This also assumes the exchange does not temporarily stop trading as a "circuit breaker" on the market.

Black Monday in stocks, October 19, 1987,  comes to mind here. A sharp fall or rise triggered by a cascade of margin calls. More recently this type of spike has been seen with XBT on BTC-E for the same reason. Some risk to the lender still remains. This risk can be mitigated, but not eliminated entirely.

Yes, you are right. A short (theoretically) has unlimited downside, and it is of course not possible to have unlimited guarantees. This can be mitigated with higher guarantees when the coin has a history or anticipated future of quick upside moves. Also it is possible to just vest some of the risk to the lender, such as a stipulation that if the coin moves up more than 50% in 24 hours, then the excess gains are kept by the service.