Not all of them are scammers.
There are legal problems launching new coins on the Internet, so many developers prefer to remain anonymous
Yesterday i asked an alt dev to reveal his name and his identity but he refused. Here is the reason the dev gave to me:
We won't be releasing our personal information because we don't want people breaking our doors down to rob us because we made the most successful crypto in existence. Think about if Satoshi Nakomoto has given his real name... That man would either be in jail or dead. There is a reason people choose anonymity when it comes to cryptocurrencies. Well, yes - people can develop some strongly idiosyncratic mental models and we do like to encourage our children to exercise their imagination, so the response perhaps isn't all that surprising.
It's a hilariously ill-conceived response and we could entertain ourselves hugely making fun of the hapless responder but if we put that on one side and acknowledge that this feeble excuse for an excuse is actually widely employed, we could benefit from taking it a little seriously. No, please, I know how difficult that must be but do try.
On the positive side, the response provides pretty much all the information you need to inform your decision as to whether to engage with this coin or not
If we can be confident that the italicised text is indeed a response pounded in by the dev's own fist, then we can profit by examining the semantics of the argument:
IF "we made the most successful crypto in existence" THEN "people will break our doors down to rob us".
There's a step in the logic that's glossed over:
IF "we made the most successful crypto in existence" THEN "we will become famously rich"
IF "we are famously rich" THEN "people will break our doors down to rob us".
I think it's inarguable that a sharp divergence exists between the views of some altcoin devs and miners' views generally on the how the
spoils rewards should be divided. The logic used in the argument here informs us that the dev of this particular altcoin is anticipating a share of the profits that is so stupendously large that it will, by itself, make them famous.
I can't seem to turn up a single existing attested example from the altcoin domain, let alone an emergent trend, of super-rich altcoin devs getting robbed in their own homes. (Nope, not Kim Dotcom, it doesn't count if the robbers give you receipts for what they take).
There's no existing instance, let alone trend, to support this fantastical notion. In its child-like, comic-book simplicity it has no correlate in the real world but it does usefully serve our purposes by illuminating the dev's preparedness to sacrifice miners' interests (of greater transparency) on the slightest pretext. And it's as classic an example of "slightest pretext" as I've ever seen.
Moving through the text ...
"Think about if Satoshi Nakomoto has given his real name... That man would either be in jail or dead."
I haven't experienced the "..." logical notation before, it's use here suggests that it can be interpreted as "insert any or all of your favourite conspiracy theories".
From a less imaginative perspective, if the person or persons referenced by "Satoshi Nakomoto" had given his/her/their/its real name, the most likely outcome would be that their employer's lawyers would be pursuing them for the IP.
SN is very likely employed in a technical capacity and SN's employment contract will include a section that (broadly) states: "We pay you to be a tech, so the rights to everything you create, in or out of work, that relates to tech is OURS. End of." (I was once asked to sign one that was even broader in scope; personnel only backed down and narrowed the scope when I publicly threatened to submit intimate family photos to their "Please, may I keep this IP?" process.) SN probably published under a pseudonym in an attempt to prevent the employer/s from mounting a claim on the IP. (Doesn't matter if the code has been Open Sourced, the assignment can be challenged because it can be argued that SN didn't own the rights in the first place.)
The same context applies to any number of amateur altcoin devs. They have a full-time job in the tech sector that pays the rent; the altcoin stuff is done quietly on the side as a potentially lucrative hobby and they prefer not to be publicly identified with AspirantlyCupidCoin or whatever because their employment contract assigns the IP to the employer. I treat it as merely an inherent limitation arising from amateur status; professional practitioners quickly come to understand the value of a personal reputation because it circumscribes their entire professional activity. It matters less for amateurs, they spend the majority of their time on other things, they're just not in a position to commit to the coin because
the coin is not their main priority. However, it is something that investors might want to factor in to their risk assessment.
Then there's those altcoin devs who are still in secondary / tertiary education, using pseudonyms to conceal their minority / abuse of .edu resources / support limitations. Here's
a recent example: the challenge is to try and keep a straight face. Still - you can't blame the lad for trying and he'll probably try again; with luck and learning he might be able to put together a solid project, worth investing in. In some cases, it's only inexperience that prompts the over-enthusiastic claims and fuels the over-confidence that investors need to be alert to.
In other cases ... well, let's return to the damning conclusion of the response to your customer enquiry
"There is a reason people choose anonymity when it comes to cryptocurrencies."
The semantics of that sentence give me nothing to cavil about, the premise is incontestably correct and has been driving the success of Darkcoin. Unfortunately, it's got absolutely nothing to do whatsoever with the previous statements. It's a
non sequitur and that distinctive error in reasoning gives us a couple of implications to consider.
1. The author's reasoning capacity is so under-developed that they are unable to recognise it as a non-sequitur. This can be expressed more prosaically as “couldn’t think their way out of a paper bag placed over their head” and, of the two, this is the explanation I prefer (c.f. Roger of Occam) and my preference is informed further by the author's apparent inability to distinguish between the semantics of anonymity and pseudonymity.
2. The author knows full well that it's a non-sequitur and it has been deliberately constructed to mislead the enquirer (unlikely, given the wobbly logic but people can be unexpectedly canny with such things)
Either way, the response is vacuous and will act as a strong signal to even partially-informed investors that they should adjust their risk assessment of this, ahem, investment opportunity.
Presumably there are other, even more hilariously fantastical responses to be elicited - all you do is ask the question on the coin's forum/thread and reference this thread. Make the open source principle work in
your favour, s'what it's supposed to be all about.
I've learned how important it is to define terms, but this isn't the right forum, or even medium so I'll make an informal verbal sketch instead, just to outline the scope ...
It's not about everyone knowing everything about everyone. A focussed transparency of process doesn't mean "no pseudonyms at all for any altcoin devs" but it
does mean "given the amount of money at stake, altcoin devs should be able to confirm their identity or be able to present a convincing argument as to why investors can be relaxed about this particular exception to the rule of thumb". At minimum, this is just so
someone knows where the spare key is kept.
There's one convincing explanation presented above, someone with, e.g. Sunny King's technical depth is almost certainly following a career path in the tech sector and will be subject to the same potential IP grab from his employers as I was. That's a good enough reason
when paired with the outstanding quality of SK's work.
"I've got a full-time job and need to conduct this activity via a pseudonym but if they promise to keep it to themselves, I will tell the MineMineItsAllMineCoin Foundation Chairperson" is a transparently poor reason when paired with dump-commit* dev but
being obliged to make the argument means communicating valuable information for investors about the dev's priorities, in that investors need to account for the risk of Real Life disrupting coin development plans and schedules --- not a purely theoretical consideration given that bct threads are positively carpeted with variants of "Hey dev , y u no post ?"
IP protection may, or may not, be the actual reason that SK chooses to remain pseudonymous but
it's good enough. Your guess is as good as mine as to whether SK's weekly development report is deliberately intended to counter potential investor nervousness about the pseudonym (given that it seems to be providing effective camouflage for luserdevs) or whether s/he's a top-class engineer who intuitively understands the benefits it brings (probably mostly the latter, maybe a bit of both).
Were
you aware that the Primecoin dev issues a
weekly report? How much change in altcoinland would be needed before "* Weekly dev report" appears amongst the tickbox ticklers in altcoin launch [ANN]s?
I don't think anyone would argue against a claim that we have seen some scam altcoins and although bct threads are littered with misunderstandings and misperceptions, there are a few real stinkers in there: people have been cheated and gulled out of money. It would be completely unrealistic not to expect investors' attitudes to harden in response to this.
I'll brown-bag from my previous post:
I would recommend people treat a pseudonymous dev as a yellow flag - not a diagnostic certainty, merely a contra-indicator.
I've not read anything in this discussion which would cause me to reconsider that recommendation. I've risked boring you rigid with an over-deep analysis of what is an insultingly ill-considered response mainly in order to add some nuance to the context. The result is, I hope, of use to both the investor and the altcoin developer alike.
I'm indebted to Spartak for enabling me to observe that my earlier response has prompted at least one professional to discard his pseudonym
(waves at Spartak. Hi, nice to meet you.)Integrity is as integrity does and I'm interested to see whether what's being discussed in this thread is taken up by altcoin investors. My figures suggest that we've seen the peak of altcoin launches and are now stabilising at a lower rate, still too high for many people's comfort --- but not mine, I confess; for me, the vitality and exuberance of the altcoin domain are invaluable natural attributes, to be nurtured rather than strangled.
Cheers
Graham
* dump-commit - e.g.
Albocoin, dev made a
copy of the repos and committed that; discarding the commit history and removing the code from the main stream of development. Contrast with SK's
fork of the bitcoin code, preserving the commit history and keeping the codebase within the main development stream. This is the
right thing to do, the Albocoin approach is just luserdev
wrong. Why is it right? Because SK can "simply" merge development work that's taken place on the Bitcoin repos -- see
Primecoin: Merge with Bitcoin v0.8.6 lookit all the improved code, extra features ---
that SK didn't have to write <- smart operator.
(experienced devs will understand why "simply" is scarequoted)If your fave altcoin's pseudonymous dev is following similarly cost-effective strategies, then leave 'em be, they're doing a solid job for you. If they've made the mistake of crippling your fave altcoin by copying rather than forking, then you might want to consider moving your money elsewhere or asking the dev to re-seat the code back into the main dev commit stream.
Billy Markus and Jackson Palmer have it knocked -
Dogecoin 1.4 was a copy (91 commits) but
Dogecoin 1.7 (5727 commits) is back in the stream (Bitcoin Core 0.9.1-based).
If you care to, just look around and make a few simple, direct comparisons - check the github repos. For an altcoin using the bitcoin protocol look for 5000+ commits, I've found it to be a very good indicator of a technically strong dev/cointeam, irrespective of pseudonymity.
