Blowing the lid off the CryptoNote/Bytecoin scam (with the exception of Monero)

[damashup]

This OP has given me food for thought...

I've been torn over endorsing Boolberry.

Been really impressed by the work done by the dev on this coin.

However suspicious market activity, has lead me to believe that one person has been mining the majority of BBR (possibly using a botnet) and dumping on Poloniex: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=577267.msg8203714#msg8203714

Also suspect transaction activity has also lend me to believe that one person holds at least a third of all coins: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=577267.msg8048106#msg8048106

Reading this post was like a massive light bulb (and red flag) for me... glad I stumbled upon it. Will watch this thread with interest!

[Brilliantrocket]

This OP has given me food for thought...

I've been torn over endorsing Boolberry.

Been really impressed by the work done by the dev on this coin.

However suspicious market activity, has lead me to believe that one person has been mining the majority of BBR (possibly using a botnet) and dumping on Poloniex: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=577267.msg8203714#msg8203714

Also suspect transaction activity has also lend me to believe that one person holds at least a third of all coins: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=577267.msg8048106#msg8048106

Reading this post was like a massive light bulb (and red flag) for me... glad I stumbled upon it. Will watch this thread with interest!

Even if one person has a very large number of coins, the fact that they're dumping guarantees that the distribution will improve over time.

[Johnny Mnemonic]

This was an interesting read. You forgot to include the fact that QuazaarCoin was a malicious fork of Monero originally intended to confuse/hijack the community I hope nobody forgot about that.

[damashup]

This OP has given me food for thought...

I've been torn over endorsing Boolberry.

Been really impressed by the work done by the dev on this coin.

However suspicious market activity, has lead me to believe that one person has been mining the majority of BBR (possibly using a botnet) and dumping on Poloniex: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=577267.msg8203714#msg8203714

Also suspect transaction activity has also lend me to believe that one person holds at least a third of all coins: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=577267.msg8048106#msg8048106

Reading this post was like a massive light bulb (and red flag) for me... glad I stumbled upon it. Will watch this thread with interest!

Even if one person has a very large number of coins, the fact that they're dumping guarantees that the distribution will improve over time.

Not sure it guarantees anything. Shortly after I posted, the dumping slowed, disproportionately large/ fake buy and sell walls started appearing/ disappearing... I'll reserve final judgment Boolberry until I see how/if the allegations in this OP are addressed. Right now, red flag for me.

[Johnny Mnemonic]

After that interview I was certain that cryptonote was a scam.

Yup. I remember arguing with you in defense of bytecoin. I just couldn't believe these people would attempt such an elaborate scheme with technology that was so promising.

It makes me wonder if they really were the original cryptonote developers, or if they stole the tech from someone else and rebranded it as cryptonote.

[arielbit]

hmmmmm...very nice and interesting information. you guys rocks  

[Este Nuno]

The question on my mind now is how the heck Bytecoin still has a 3 million dollar marketcap.

Who's buying it?

It must be pure manipulation.

[kbm]

After that interview I was certain that cryptonote was a scam.

Yup. I remember arguing with you in defense of bytecoin. I just couldn't believe these people would attempt such an elaborate scheme with technology that was so promising.

It makes me wonder if they really were the original cryptonote developers, or if they stole the tech from someone else and rebranded it as cryptonote.

Regardless of whatever the speculation is (my favorite is also the rebrand) .. with the crippled mining code skewing the original distribution to over a thousand people .. and now that it's been restored to a speed that makes sense, and has revealed that there were very likely less than ten computers .. we're left to a situation where we've collectively placed a value of about 6049 BTC (at current prices) into the hands of likely less than ten people. Even at 1 satoshi, this is still a sum of 1512 BTC. That is something to focus on. Just a cross comparison, Monero developers have a sum of about 50k XMR (163 BTC) and <10 donated BTC.

I don't think there will be any shortage of people willing to buy BCN at 1 satoshi, so long as these people keep putting out updates (hope I'm wrong though .. but pumpers will pump and if someone thinks they can profit off of it .. you know the rest). These people have secured funding for themselves .. and are currently making it known that they're not very happy when they're not leading the pack.

[ArticMine]

All I can say to the OP is thank you for your analysis. Many among those of us who have invested in XMR (Monero) have very strong suspicions and concerns regarding the whole CryptoNote/Bytecoin situation (that is why we invested in XMR), and your analysis has confirmed our suspicions and concerns. 

[cAPSLOCK]

This OP has given me food for thought...

I've been torn over endorsing Boolberry.

Been really impressed by the work done by the dev on this coin.

However suspicious market activity, has lead me to believe that one person has been mining the majority of BBR (possibly using a botnet) and dumping on Poloniex: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=577267.msg8203714#msg8203714

Also suspect transaction activity has also lend me to believe that one person holds at least a third of all coins: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=577267.msg8048106#msg8048106

Reading this post was like a massive light bulb (and red flag) for me... glad I stumbled upon it. Will watch this thread with interest!

Even if one person has a very large number of coins, the fact that they're dumping guarantees that the distribution will improve over time.

And suicide by handgun is a wonderful workout for the index finger.

[ibuyltc]

All I can say to the OP is thank you for your analysis. Many among those of us who have invested in XMR (Monero) have very strong suspicions and concerns regarding the whole CryptoNote/Bytecoin situation (that is why we invested in XMR), and your analysis has confirmed our suspicions and concerns. 

Ditto!

[NewLiberty]

After that interview I was certain that cryptonote was a scam.

Yup. I remember arguing with you in defense of bytecoin. I just couldn't believe these people would attempt such an elaborate scheme with technology that was so promising.

It makes me wonder if they really were the original cryptonote developers, or if they stole the tech from someone else and rebranded it as cryptonote.

It will be interesting to hear the explanation for the weird dates.  Popcorn for everyone!
I suspect the innovators and the shillers are not the same.  The shilling seems amateurish.  The design is actually quite nice.  It gives them all a bad name, including Monero, which is tragic because there is a strong pull for a more private version of bitcoin for use in applications where the competition knowing the transactions are happening is problematic.  

If you are doing business in a region where the banks are all owned by your competition, it is difficult to fund your business without them knowing your every move.  CryptoNote provides this potential, and am hopeful for the maturing of Monero (at least) to provide this function.  Any of them would do, but it seems to have the best promise given the circumstances.

[2112]

@rethink-your-strategy:

One think that seriously detracts from the flow-of-rage in your original post is the inconsistency and ambiguity in the formatting of dates. It took me a while to figure out that you are using DD/MM/YYYY, I even almost dismissed your points when following your hyperlinks and looking at dates as MM/DD/YYYY.

So, either:

1) state your date formatting at the beginning
2) change numerical dates everywhere in the text to YYYY/MM/DD

I know it is a minor point, bordering on nitpicking. But the whole point of your missive is date inconsistency; and from where I sit reading it was unnecessary hard and simply didn't flow well. And without good flow the rage doesn't transmit well. It needs to be open-eyed rage, not the blind rage.

TL,DR: rethink-your-date-formatting.

[fran2k]

Great post man.

Thanks for such a research.

[stslimited]

this is hilarious

I do analytical stuff like this with equities sometimes

if anyone wants to read more in depth analysis I would suggest checking out www.citronresearch.com and sometimes www.timothysykes.com for similar language

[Nxtblg]

Damn, that was great detective work!

@rethink-your-strategy: Have you considered starting your own online altcoin-magazine Website? With your talent, you could make it the #1 go-to scam-exposer Website in the entire altcoin universe.

Even it would technically be a journal of opinion.

Anyways, a top-notch job! Thanks!

[transient858]

The question on my mind now is how the heck Bytecoin still has a 3 million dollar marketcap.

Who's buying it?

It must be pure manipulation.

Thinly traded coin can be pump very easily when there is no supply and trade volume is thin.

[Zer0Sum]

Well the entire Bytecoin thing has been exposed again and again. The OP has done it himself several times. The difference this time is he is now attacking the only other CN coin of significance which is Boolberry. It was announced in the BBR thread that it was soon going to be rebranded, which is a good idea.

But let's track this down a bit more.

it doesn't matter that Sabelnikov can shovel bullshit features into his poorly named cryptocurrency,

Monero is streets ahead, partly because of the way they're developing the currency, but mostly because the "core devs" or whatever they're called are made up of reasonably well-known people. That there are a bunch of them (6 or 7?) plus a bunch of other people contributing code means that they're sanity checking each other.

Yah that doesn't make it monero truthing at all because you know they are "core devs or whatever they are called", you know because he doesn't keep track of them as there aren't enough threads to keep track of what they are called.

And that fake fight stuff between amjuarez and zoidberg, genius stuff   it spilled over to the cryptonote forum. Very nice  


Monero is hands down the best CN coin, no doubt. But excessive fucking shilling and arrogance will kill it. Arrogance and fucktardness killed Litecoin. Everything that happened in Litecoin can be traced to the arrogance of the community. The short sightedness to think that they can be Bitcoin, and everything they did revolved around it.

I see similar characteristics building in Monero. Remember, it is about consensus and comes with congeniality amongst various other factors. You cannot simply repel others with short sightedness of shitting everything and everyone else into oblivion by force. Do NOT overshill and don't try hard to come off as only subtly trying to sell Monero. There is little to no subtlety left. It is coming off as desperation day by day.

Wow, someone's been reading my posts.

Regardless of Monero's merits...
The over-the-top hubris... and auto-Bitcoin status demanded by Monero Truthers is absurd...
Building and enforcing a silly mini-cult probably hurts more than it helps.

The coin is mired at 300K sats... 40% underwater for any typical investor using ave prices.

Also, if you are bringing promoters like McRisto on board...
Where is the f***king money... talk is cheap... spend $100K on some Devs already...
This is the fastest paced Space on earth with zero intellectual property protection.

As for BCN...
By my count the total volume on Polo has been about 5-6 billion at maybe ave 7-8 sats...
So even if you count all the clones... and even if these guys are expert traders and done half the volume...
We are talking at most maybe $100-200,000... which doesn't go a long way once you start splitting it up. 

[gmaxwell]

My favorite redflag so far, if you look at the timestamps of the first BCN block: https://minergate.com/blockchain/bcn/block/1 it says:
 2012-07-04 05:00:00 (2 years ago)
How the heck did they mined the first block at this exact zeroed time period,

It's completely normal and unsurprising for the genesis block timestamp to be 'rigged'. ... I don't know about in BCN, but in Bitcoin there really is no facility to mine a genesis block, it's hard coded... so you end up building a separate tool to create one. Your tool _could_ read the current time, but thats ~2 more lines of code than just manually setting the time at some value. By itself I wouldn't find that concerning.

[smooth]

Disliking XMR for whatever reason is perfectly reasonable. Different strokes and all that. But on this...

As for BCN...
By my count the total volume on Polo has been about 5-6 billion at maybe ave 7-8 sats...
So even if you count all the clones... and even if these guys are expert traders and done half the volume...
We are talking at most maybe $100-200,000... which doesn't go a long way once you start splitting it up.  

you are also very much missing the point.

The scam most certainly did not go as intended. Monero (i.e. bitmonero) was not supposed to be turned into a community-run project and suck up (nearly) all of the investor interest in the cryptonote space, leaving only scraps for the scammers at BCN et al. Which explains a lot of the anger, hostility, shills, scorched earth, etc. toward Monero (theirs not yours).