Bitmark

[MsCollec]

[82ndabnmedic]

Fucking wow. Im wondering, Medic ... Others ... Where you aware of this months ago?

No I was not aware of Marks unethical dealings.

[82ndabnmedic]

Mark has 2 main problems beyond the obvious... (I plan to focus on steps which are imperative for us to effectively move forward).

1.) Money - He has this covered now with his new job
2.) His admitted difficulty in relation to large projects that actually have the capacity to change his life, and everyone around him for the better. He gets a mental block, and falls into a cycle of inefficiency and doubt.

I intend to mitigate # 2)... so how do we facilitate Mark to work in a productive way that provides added value for everyone.
- We break things down into manageable chucks (A series of smaller projects). Marking at web scale is a huge endeavor. On the other hand, a platform that incorporates 1 or 2 layers/facets of Marking is achievable (and has already been done). By doing this, we seek to add-value to BTM once more, incrementally providing our community with tangible products delivered on a timely basis. This new platform shall seek funding through angel investors or other analogous funding methods. The details surrounding this platforms features and functional use will be publicized shortly thereafter.

[Hulk Hobo]

Fucking wow. Im wondering, Medic ... Others ... Where you aware of this months ago?

No I was not aware of Marks unethical dealings.

Thoughts so. Glad to hear that is the case.

[johndec2]

Yeah, whatever...  Once again to repeat the point I have made regularly, I'm seeing a lot of talk and no action.  I couldn't give a flying fuck if Mark/Coinsolidation/Various other aliases is the second coming of Christ or the devil incarnate.  If everyone is happy that he is digging himself out of the shit and squaring everyone up, good - lets move on.  He can keep my donation, I can spare it and the sooner he is out of a hole the better.

Soooooooo... Can we move on with growing the coin? Soon? More action, less talk??

[melvster]

Klaranet is back up and running.  The default (of one right now) currency is switched to bits.

In retrospect it was way too early to use BTM, tho that door is left open in the future, someone is going to have to explain what BTM offers.  Certainly all these users that were promised for the music site was a lie. 

If this coin looks like an elaborate pump and dump right now, that's because it was.  So Mark/Nathan/conisolidation is going to put things right now?  Well let's see.  I suspect there's every incentive in the world to do so, because this is a global, long lived, reputation system after all and what better way to build a reputation than to keep your word (or not).  Not only that, using linked data, casts a huge footprint, which you cant really fight.  Given that most software developers rely on reputation for income, it's a no brainer to try and get things going quickly.

A reputation system can be shown to be working when it encourages good behaviour, discourages bad behavior and provides information.  Well, we could not wish for a better test case.

Klaranet will incorporate more currencies when I work out how to do that (its not easy) but that's nor prioritized.  When BTM offers something, it'll jump up the list of priorities.

[cryptozim]

Made a deposit to Poloniex on Sunday. I still only have 5 of 6 confirmations. Meanwhile, the price has dropped 25%.

[sdersdf3]

Made a deposit to Poloniex on Sunday. I still only have 5 of 6 confirmations. Meanwhile, the price has dropped 25%.

Thought bitmark was something new and better - seemed to be all the rave last year -- but the chart looks like just another pump and dump.

[kjadB]

Made a deposit to Poloniex on Sunday. I still only have 5 of 6 confirmations. Meanwhile, the price has dropped 25%.

Thought bitmark was something new and better - seemed to be all the rave last year -- but the chart looks like just another pump and dump.

I still think bitmark has one of the best use-cases for crypto, marking!

As long as the work continues it's a great time to buy

[lyynx]

What a sad course of events. This coin appeared to have a bright future. I think if Mark is truly remorseful, he will put 110% of his being into completing the coin and implementing marking to all facets originally announced, otherwise, these threads stand as a roadmap on how to destroy a coin and it's supporting community.

[Este Nuno]

What a sad course of events. This coin appeared to have a bright future. I think if Mark is truly remorseful, he will put 110% of his being into completing the coin and implementing marking to all facets originally announced, otherwise, these threads stand as a roadmap on how to destroy a coin and it's supporting community.

Things are still moving along behind the scenes. People will still be working on the project, but it's understandable that some portion of people who invested have decided to sit out for now at least. When there's some tangible progress I expect that many of them will be happy to return. Medic is getting things restructured and reorganized here now so it shouldn't be too much longer before things get going.

[kjadB]

What a sad course of events. This coin appeared to have a bright future. I think if Mark is truly remorseful, he will put 110% of his being into completing the coin and implementing marking to all facets originally announced, otherwise, these threads stand as a roadmap on how to destroy a coin and it's supporting community.

Things are still moving along behind the scenes. People will still be working on the project, but it's understandable that some portion of people who invested have decided to sit out for now at least. When there's some tangible progress I expect that many of them will be happy to return. Medic is getting things restructured and reorganized here now so it shouldn't be too much longer before things get going.

Sounds good to me!! As long as marking gets implemented eventually, BTM investors will do well, and the community who stick around should be rewarded for their patience and loyalty. I still believe Mark will do everything he can to make bitmark a success!

[coinsolidation]

Yes, web marking will be completed by myself, even if others get their first, or everybody abandons the project.  It will be done.

[melvster]

Hope this project gets on track again.  I'd like to share what I know.

I've known coinsolidation, real name Nathan Rixham, for about 5 years, he's a scottish freelance developer, known as webr3 (which means web revision 3.0).  We are both members of the semantic web community. 

As most people here can tell, hes a smart and capable coder and communicator.

Before he was involved in the semantic web community, he was a member of the PHP community, famously with mark karpeles, who I think found out about bitcoin through nathan!

Over the course of knowing him, we became friends.  Unfortunately Nathan periodically reported financial difficulties, and as a friend I always wanted to do my best to help.  This probably happened a dozen times.  Sometimes it was just some money to tide him over.  But mostly it was short term loans.  For example his paypal account would be locked for 1-2 days and he'd need enough to get him through for 1-2 days.  Or sometimes a loan to get him to the weekend.  Sometimes he'd be stranded without petrol and no money to drive home.  Every time I would try and help him if i could, even sometimes asking my friends to, when I didnt have the money.

Each of these loans was 1-2 days to be made right at the weekend.  Never once was any of the money repaid.  But I try not to judge people, he was a friend and I just wanted what was best for him.  My thought was that he would get himself back on his feet, make a decent living and then we'd all square up in the future.  I didnt treat any of these failed promises to repay as theft, I wasnt rich, but just wanted to help as a friend.  All this changed about 2 years ago.

I was in the middle of something and Nathan said he needed some XRP to complete a trade and would return them immediately.  He was a bigtime XRP trader and knew all the insiders.  I said no, because I wanted to keep my XRP.  He said it was a risk free thing, so I made it 100% clear that this was no 'loan' like all the other times, I wanted it back and didnt have time to chase it.  The chasing time with nathan is as expensive as the actual loan, much more sometimes.  And I was so busy I just did it.  At that point he disappeared and I spent days trying to contact him to find out what happened.  His response was, 'A direct debit came into my bank account and the money was gone'.  Essentially a polite way of saying he spent or stole the money.

I was unhappy with this.  I told him to pay me back so that I would not have to worry about it.  Even if it was just a few $ a week, I wanted a feeling id be made whole and above all not having to chase  He agreed.  At this point he disappeared on me for about 6 months.  What he told me later was he was burnt out and just went round taking pictures in scotland.  It later emerged that during this time he was actually insanitycoin from wolf.  Something he initially denied but then admitted when it became obvious.

After several months, I contacted Nathan to say I was going to retract a positive review of him on the forums due the the XRP, because I want to be honest with the community.  He immediately surfaced again, and said he'd pay back in installments.  So I held off.  Then he showed me bitmark, and the work he'd done on the coin.  Looking at the 70 milestones completed in the first 2 months, I was impressed.  And thought finally he's doing something positive with his life, making what could be a great project, which could make a great difference.  I told him not to worry about the XRP and to continue coding, and that I would help as much as I could.

I donated to the project, I ran servers.  I spent 2 months solid making a basic proof of concept for marking and BTM.  I helped people where I could.  I sent infomation about the project to many people, p2p foundation, w3c payments, crowdbucks and lots of others.  However, in september the good pace of work that had started tailed off, and the marking API was the focus.  In October we were told it was complete and ready to be checked in.  In November we were told that the markign was done and that markthis was the focus, and well into it.  In December we were told there was a large body of code in private repos which was a mistake and would be checked in, but it wasnt.  In January we were told that it would be a fresh start.  In Feburary ... etc. etc.

Finally we learnt that Nathan had been involved in multiple coins without them knowing much about each other WOLF, BTM, GMC.  There is now a suspicion he's also involved with other coins, artos, federacoin, metalcoin, and many more, and has been doing this over and over.  I'm not the only person where he's taken money, there' sa large number of people, none of them knowing about each other, but the money taken is the smaller part of it.  This project has gone from a 30 million dollar market cap, with potential to be much bigger to almost nothing now.  So many stake holders have lost out.

The good news is that Nathan knows this was wrong, is prepared to face the consequences and most importantly wants to put things right.  I really hope that can happen, and is not just another 'ill do it at the weekend'.  I hope it's taken seriously this time, and I think everyone wants to believe.

That's about all I know, and I have no problem at all sharing it.  We done know everything yet but I'd encourage stake holder to share.

I still would like to see this project reach its full potential starting with marking code being a reality and checked in as it goes along.  This still could be a great project, but the heavy slide it's in needs to stop and be reversed.  The project needs to get back to honest coding checked in as it goes along, like the vast majority of open source projects.  I really hope this can be turned around and made into a success, because the web needs a good reputation system. 

[gjhiggins]

I really hope this can be turned around and made into a success, because the web needs a good reputation system.  

I admire your optimism. I had some email convos with “Mark Pfennig” during the period of time when he was researching for Bitmark (and on a different occasion with insanitycoin because of his interest in the blockchain-cum-RDF). We had a go at discussing the issues in a reputation system but I found that his naive and uninformed model rendered the attempt futile.

Question is: what makes you feel that someone who has demonstrated such questionable social judgement is capable of designing and building an effective reputation system?

Cheers

Graham

P.S. I owe you an email, I'm working on it

[cryptozim]

the chart looks like just another pump and dump.

That's because it was Pumped & Dumped. I don't know for sure who was behind it, but Mark (and possibly others) was aware that it was happening.

Here is a conversation I had with him in August when he was asking for "developer loans." Knowing what I know now, I'm glad that he didn't take it. Sounds like I never would have seen my BTM again.

[Este Nuno]

the chart looks like just another pump and dump.

That's because it was Pumped & Dumped. I don't know for sure who was behind it, but Mark (and possibly others) was aware that it was happening.

Here is a conversation I had with him in August when he was asking for "developer loans." Knowing what I know now, I'm glad that he didn't take it. Sounds like I never would have seen my BTM again.

Eh, that was August well before the period in September when BTM had it's big run up. The whole thing ended being blown out of proportion and what actually happened was some of the people we feared as 'pumpers' just ended up becoming valuable members of the community.

Finally we learnt that Nathan had been involved in multiple coins without them knowing much about each other WOLF, BTM, GMC. There is now a suspicion he's also involved with other coins, artos, federacoin, metalcoin, and many more, and has been doing this over and over.  

Yeah, no one knew about WOLF, but it was also many months before BTM and from Mark's explanation on slack it seemed to come to a reasonably amicable conclusion well before BTM was launched.

I forgot to copy Mark's explanation about what happened on slack, and slack removed the text from my view when I remembered to do so. But I asked schnoetzel to save it and I think he was able to do so. If he sees this and wants to dump it here or on a pastebin or something that might add some clarity for people here.

He wasn't really ever officially involved in GMC as a developer or anything, he was mostly attempting to get other people working on building value in to it and then have the GMC that BTM community members held fund BTM development. In theory it sounded like a pretty good idea and I thought that it was going to benefit BTM development a lot and enable funding for multiple devs.

After reading his explanation on slack I tend to believe that he's telling the truth when he says he was only developing BTM since launch. I don't really view him seeking out funding sources to be a negative at all, and actually at the time I thought it was commendable that as the lead person of BTM he was going to get things done one way or another even if he failed to meet previous milestones and had to pay other developers to get things shipped.

GMC got badly messed up with multiple forks and needed someone to come and fix the blockchain and the client. and Mark did that together with a GMC dev recently. He ported it over to Pfennig and fixed up whatever needed to be fixed.

I don't know about any other projects that he's supposed to be involved with. What's the evidence for all those ones you listed? So far the narrative lines up with my experience, but I'm willing to consider any possibilities.

[cryptozim]

the chart looks like just another pump and dump.

That's because it was Pumped & Dumped. I don't know for sure who was behind it, but Mark (and possibly others) was aware that it was happening.

Here is a conversation I had with him in August when he was asking for "developer loans." Knowing what I know now, I'm glad that he didn't take it. Sounds like I never would have seen my BTM again.

Eh, that was August well before the period in September when BTM had it's big run up. The whole thing ended being blown out of proportion and what actually happened was some of the people we feared as 'pumpers' just ended up becoming valuable members of the community.

The "run up" started 3 weeks after that conversation, and increased the price by 1600%. You're telling me these two events are completely unrelated?

[Este Nuno]

the chart looks like just another pump and dump.

That's because it was Pumped & Dumped. I don't know for sure who was behind it, but Mark (and possibly others) was aware that it was happening.

Here is a conversation I had with him in August when he was asking for "developer loans." Knowing what I know now, I'm glad that he didn't take it. Sounds like I never would have seen my BTM again.

Eh, that was August well before the period in September when BTM had it's big run up. The whole thing ended being blown out of proportion and what actually happened was some of the people we feared as 'pumpers' just ended up becoming valuable members of the community.

The "run up" started 3 weeks after that conversation, and increased the price by 1600%. You're telling me these two events are completely unrelated?

Unrelated in the sense that there was unlikely to be any sort of organized pump executed. Related in the sense that this was probably the first bit of interest in Bitmark from the crypto community at large. We would still joke many months after the fact about how some of these supposed pumpers that we feared in August ended up joining our community and staying and contributing in a very positive manner. At the time it was common to see quite a few serious traders who normally just float around to whatever is getting the volume with the sole intent of getting in and out with a profit actually believe in the concept of Marking. Lots of people joined the community and participated.

In September the amount of interest in BTM and Marking was at a level far beyond anything a handful of traders could have manufactured by themselves. There was interest from all sorts of directions including a fair amount of academic interest from multiple people.

So basically what I'm saying is that what we perceived as a pump group in August had very little effect on the eventual whirlwind of interest that happened in September. They may have been some of the first outsiders with wide social connections in the crypto community to take an interest in BTM, but they certainly weren't responsible for all the over exuberant inflow of capital at that time.

I tried to temper peoples expectations, as BTM being a PoW currency natually comes with inflation. And at it's heights would have been minting 14k BTM a day(ignoring the network issues). Which would equate to somewhere around 14k USD at certain points as BTM was floating around USD parity for a little bit. That's a huge amount of demand that would be required to sustain the prices we reached around the peak.

I think the main reasons that BTM shot up as much as it did was that very few people had any desire to sell their BTM as people were expecting Marking to begin to take hold in the near future. So the supply of BTM on the market was small and the demand was high. None of what happened was due to any one individual or group manipulating the market. There were a few whales buying up lots of BTM and most of the ones I know still hold their BTM.

[johndec2]

The good news is that Nathan knows this was wrong, is prepared to face the consequences and most importantly wants to put things right.  I really hope that can happen, and is not just another 'ill do it at the weekend'.  I hope it's taken seriously this time, and I think everyone wants to believe.

The track record you posted does not inspire confidence that he will actually "finally" do the right thing.  It also explains the large dump on Polo today.  I hope I'm wrong but you have painted him a serial liar and conman.