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

[Roy Badami]

Oh, sorry, my hypothesis is this:

The Cryptonote people designed the crypto, wrote the v2 paper, and gave the paper to the Bytecoin team (quite possibly as a LaTeX document) together with supporting documentation, proof of concept code, etc;  and the cryptonote team then stepped back and let matters take their course.

And the entire web presence, including both bytecoin.org and cryptonote.org was stagemanaged by the Bytecoin team.

Sorry, the cryptonote.org web site doesn't ring true.  It doesn't look like the site that a LaTex-using academic would put together - I take it to just be a promotional exercise by the Bytecoin team.

[smooth]

Why go through all the effort and man hours create a sound cryptographic method? to scam people of their savings? I highly doubt it!!  

That is a good question and we don't know who created it or why. One theory I've come up with recently is that whoever created it sold it to the coin mill, either because he didn't want to release it himself, or because the coin mill made a good offer for it, and he decided to go with that rather than try to release himself into a crowded and tricky altcoin space. Or maybe just gave it to them because he wanted it out there but not with his name attached.

I have no evidence for it, but it does logically fit. I don't see a coin mill really having the skill set or frankly culture and disposition to develop something like this themselves, and it is pretty apparent to me we are dealing with a coin mill, so they must have got it from somewhere. There are other possibilities though.

I agree with you that the cryptography itself should stand or fall on its own without regard for where it came from. (I think the OP said this in the first paragraph, right?)

[smooth]

Oh, sorry, my hypothesis is this:

The Cryptonote people designed the crypto, wrote the v2 paper, and gave the paper to the Bytecoin team (quite possibly as a LaTeX document) together with supporting documentation, proof of concept code, etc;  and the cryptonote team then stepped back and let matters take their course.

And the entire web presence, including both bytecoin.org and cryptonote.org was stagemanaged by the Bytecoin team.

Sorry, the cryptonote.org web site doesn't ring true.  It doesn't look like the site that a LaTex-using academic would put together - I take it to just be a promotional exercise by the Bytecoin team.

Oh okay, we agree on this almost if not 100%. My previous post was a theory somewhat along these lines (before I saw yours).

[burnbabyburn71]

I will give it a read later OP, but basically you just said EVERY COIN IS SHIT OTHER THAN MONERO and pointed the middle finger to everyone but Monero. I was going to take you seriously until you said that, I'll still give this a read later but jesus christ man. I want to like Monero but you lot are some arrogant fucks. Damn

Also

Just a reminder that if you found this information useful, a little donation would go a long way. Bitcoin address is 1rysLufu4qdVBRDyrf8ZjXy1nM19smTWd.

Zero respect, if I want to give you money I'll ask, I don't give money to beggars.

[Roy Badami]

Oh, interesting.  I don't know what a 'coin mill' is as I don't really follow the altcoin scene except for Monero.

I hadn't considered the possibility that the cryptographers sold their work, but yes, that fits too.

[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!

He should start with NXT

Actually, that's not a bad idea - for an entire book.

[neuroMode]

Set aside all ego's and beliefs for a minute and try to approach this more subjectively.

Does it really matter if the sigs were altered purposely or out of sheer neglect/stupidity? Isn't the whole point of cryptonote & others, all about the cryptographic technology itself?
We don't know who Satoshi Nakamoto is and why he created Bitcoin in the first place. He could be a perverted genius who thought/created the technology itself to be used as a monetary vehicle for perverts alike to purchase kiddie porn. Who knows? *Speculation* Did it stop the evolution of Bitcoin/community and all the benefits it has to offer.....No!.

Why go through all the effort and man hours create a sound cryptographic method? to scam people of their savings? I highly doubt it!!  

I currently hold Monero, Bytecoin, ducknote, so before I get any type of bashing as a BCN shill. all I am saying is try to be as subjective as possible and don't get carried away.

Amen. I don't understand all the finger pointing at all the other cryptonote coins. "They are scams and should be avoided like the plague," we are told, but how are they scams? We are left to do guesswork based on circumstantial evidence that really doesn't mean jack shit even if it were all true anyways. How does their existence represent some spiteful vengeance against Monero by the Bytecoin team? How can the various coins and this Cryptonote coingen actually impact the price of Monero to any substantial degree? If anything an attempt to dilute the cryptonote community with vast number of cryptonote forks will only exacerbate the indifference to any coin not named Monero.

CryptoNote coins are still very rough around the edges. The technology still needs to be developed. We have a healthy number of coins that are all developing cryptonote down their own unique paths, just as if 5-10 bitcoin alternatives existed a month after Satoshi released bitcoin. Why not let those groups try different things and see which one applies the best ideas of the bunch? Natural selection by a free market.

[smooth]

I don't know what a 'coin mill' is as I don't really follow the altcoin scene except for Monero.

A coin mill is what you get when you have hundreds and now approaching thousands of altcoins. People naturally begin to specialize in creating coins and turn it into a business and then into a streamlined process. You didn't really think that all 1000 altcoins were each created by inspired individuals who think they are the next Satoshi. In fact many are cranked out by well oiled machines.

To run a coin mill you make small variations (or sometimes exact clones), create a marketing plans for each one, create a pretty web site and sometimes a "white paper", figure out what you can get away with when it comes to premines/instamines/etc., pump them up using shills, PR campaigns, etc., and then dump for some net profit before winding down your involvement as the coin spirals the drain. The net profit on each coin doesn't even need to be that large, because you can do lots of them easily.

With respect what the other guy said about variations and survival of the fittest, that is certainly going to happen, and you are free to make your own guess about the eventual winners. But as a buyer you had better beware when you are buying one of these coin mills' coins because almost by definition they are pump-and-dumps.

In my view the OP really believes he is warning people, not telling people, not to get involved with these scams (and that is certainly where I'm coming from). If you choose to ignore the red flags, do so at your own peril.

[DarkHarry]

I will give it a read later OP, but basically you just said EVERY COIN IS SHIT OTHER THAN MONERO and pointed the middle finger to everyone but Monero. I was going to take you seriously until you said that, I'll still give this a read later but jesus christ man. I want to like Monero but you lot are some arrogant fucks. Damn

+1 Looks like children in a kindergarten

[NewLiberty]

I will give it a read later OP, but basically you just said EVERY COIN IS SHIT OTHER THAN MONERO and pointed the middle finger to everyone but Monero. I was going to take you seriously until you said that, I'll still give this a read later but jesus christ man. I want to like Monero but you lot are some arrogant fucks. Damn

+1 Looks like children in a kindergarten

I like monero, and cryptonote technology.  The fighting brings them all down, including monero.  
I'm not generally a fan of alt coins at all, they are experiments generally.  
This technology is maybe something more, time will tell.  
Raising questions is fine, but the vitriol is not so good for anyone.
When 99.9% of the world is against you and the 0.1% is fighting with each other, the winners are the 99.9%
I look forward to hearing some answers for the questions raised. 
For folks who are pretty good at creating privacy through technical design, these seem like clumbsy fumbling unbecoming of a cryptographer with the date manipulations, and backstory fabrication.  Seems to be a different group, creator vs marketer.

[Jungian]

Why are you guys so afraid of someone calling these guys out? It's obvious that their story has holes in it, and the refuse to answer questions regarding it.

This is "infighting" or "childish" how?

[rethink-your-strategy]

I will give it a read later OP, but basically you just said EVERY COIN IS SHIT OTHER THAN MONERO and pointed the middle finger to everyone but Monero. I was going to take you seriously until you said that, I'll still give this a read later but jesus christ man. I want to like Monero but you lot are some arrogant fucks. Damn

Also

Just a reminder that if you found this information useful, a little donation would go a long way. Bitcoin address is 1rysLufu4qdVBRDyrf8ZjXy1nM19smTWd.

Zero respect, if I want to give you money I'll ask, I don't give money to beggars.

For fucks sake, can everyone stop talking about fucking Monero! I have nothing to do with Monero. I had to write about Monero because it WAS launched by the CryptoNote developers as Bitmonero, so it was unavoidable. But I still wanted to make clear the cavernous difference between Monero as it is today and Bitmonero as it was launched. If any other CryptoNote-based coin were to be launched/run/whatever by a person who is well known in this community (or a group containing more than one well known person) then I would point a finger at that too. As it stands, all of the CN coins are either obviously shady as fuck, or too insignificant to matter. Can we leave Monero the fuck out of this and focus on the scammy dipshits that started this whole thing? Good.

My post didn't initially have a donation address, I only put a donation address up because someone pm'd me and said I should get paid for the effort I put in. Fuck you too if you think I'm begging. Donating is not a fucking requirement nor does it invalidate what I said.

[smooth]

@smooth  Are you complaining that most of the sites are using "font-awesome"? It's a modern standard. You can find more info here: http://fortawesome.github.io/Font-Awesome/

No I'm referring to a particular combination of icons that were chosen. For example, some sites use a Apple icon, some use a Mac OS icon. All of the cryptonote-related coins use the Apple. Some sites use a Linux penguin icon for source downloads. I'm not even sure what that icon they are using for source code is -- looks like something related to HTML -- but no other sites I can find use it. There is an actual github icon, which other sites do use; they don't.

I clicked around to several other coin sites that I'm pretty sure don't come from a coin mill and I could not find any that used the same combination of icons. Yet all the cryptonote-related coins did.

Furthermore, as I suspected there are appear to be other notable commonalities between the sites. On IRC someone reported that they are all using the same provider and had something else in common (something about how they use Google Analytics). That is not really my area of expertise so I'll leave it at that.

Also Sourceforge provides public tracking for download count, Mega.co.nz does not. It's a simple choice which one to use if the dev wants all the users to have accurate knowledge of the actual usage of the coin.

Then why are there only 36 cryptocurrency-related projects listed of which 4 are cryptonote-related? That is out of a thousand or so altcoins and many other cryptocurency-related projects.

I hate math but I'll let you figure out how likely this is if the projects using sourceforge were chosen at random from the universe of cryptocurrency projects. Not very likely.

[rethink-your-strategy]

Amen. I don't understand all the finger pointing at all the other cryptonote coins. "They are scams and should be avoided like the plague," we are told, but how are they scams? We are left to do guesswork based on circumstantial evidence that really doesn't mean jack shit even if it were all true anyways. How does their existence represent some spiteful vengeance against Monero by the Bytecoin team? How can the various coins and this Cryptonote coingen actually impact the price of Monero to any substantial degree? If anything an attempt to dilute the cryptonote community with vast number of cryptonote forks will only exacerbate the indifference to any coin not named Monero.

CryptoNote coins are still very rough around the edges. The technology still needs to be developed. We have a healthy number of coins that are all developing cryptonote down their own unique paths, just as if 5-10 bitcoin alternatives existed a month after Satoshi released bitcoin. Why not let those groups try different things and see which one applies the best ideas of the bunch? Natural selection by a free market.

neuroMoan, I added another section called "All Tied Up in a Bow" that goes further to prove the link between all the scamcoins. Go read it.

I'm not against new CN-based coins hitting the market, but given the evidence we've seen of the CryptoNote/Bytecoin fuckery it's best to treat them all with ridiculous amounts of caution unless a very well known member of the community is involved.

[Este Nuno]

Do you guys really think that crypto_zoidberg is part of CN or Bytecoin?

The post is quite good but I think that part seems the weakest. But I'd like to hear other opinions.

[smooth]

Do you guys really think that crypto_zoidberg is part of CN or Bytecoin?

The post is quiet good but I think that part seems the weakest. But I'd like to hear other opinions.

OP seems convinced but I'm not sure. He didn't mention Boolberry in the web hosting stuff and just looking at the web site I would guess that it did not come from the same coin mill. Furthermore it doesn't really fit the pattern of minor changes or no changes from the reference code that characterizes the rest of the crop.

Personally I found it interesting that crypto_zoidberg knew exactly what he wanted to change and how to do it within just a few weeks of the first public disclosure of the code. On the surface that seems unlikely for an independent developer.

So at this point, to me, Boolberry is a bit of an outlier. It has some apparent connections, but not as many as the others.

[David Latapie]

Oh, sorry, my hypothesis is this:

The Cryptonote people designed the crypto

And why if they did NOT designed the algo, but "obtained" it from someone else? Think about the behaviour of the Bytecoin and CryptoNote team. Granded, you can be a genius and a bastard all at the same time, but being genius-only or bastard-only is more common. I let you extrapolate on this.

[balparti]

If you take a look at the main CSS file linked in the source code for monetaverde.org, fantomcoin.org, quazarcoin.org, cryptonotefoundation.org, cryptonote-coin.org, cryptonote.org, and bytecoin.org, we find a CSS reset snippet at the top. It has a comment at the top that says "/* CSS Reset */", and then where it resets/sets the height it has the comment "/* always display scrollbars */".

Those comments also appear in bitmonero.org's CSS (http://bitmonero.org/css/common.css).

And it is bytecoiner.org's CSS, not bytecoin.org's.

[r3wt]

If you take a look at the main CSS file linked in the source code for monetaverde.org, fantomcoin.org, quazarcoin.org, cryptonotefoundation.org, cryptonote-coin.org, cryptonote.org, and bytecoin.org, we find a CSS reset snippet at the top. It has a comment at the top that says "/* CSS Reset */", and then where it resets/sets the height it has the comment "/* always display scrollbars */".

Those comments also appear in bitmonero.org's CSS (http://bitmonero.org/css/common.css).

And it is bytecoiner.org's CSS, not bytecoin.org's.

hmm, new account signed up to post this message... we know what that means! guilty as charged!

[neuroMode]

Amen. I don't understand all the finger pointing at all the other cryptonote coins. "They are scams and should be avoided like the plague," we are told, but how are they scams? We are left to do guesswork based on circumstantial evidence that really doesn't mean jack shit even if it were all true anyways. How does their existence represent some spiteful vengeance against Monero by the Bytecoin team? How can the various coins and this Cryptonote coingen actually impact the price of Monero to any substantial degree? If anything an attempt to dilute the cryptonote community with vast number of cryptonote forks will only exacerbate the indifference to any coin not named Monero.

CryptoNote coins are still very rough around the edges. The technology still needs to be developed. We have a healthy number of coins that are all developing cryptonote down their own unique paths, just as if 5-10 bitcoin alternatives existed a month after Satoshi released bitcoin. Why not let those groups try different things and see which one applies the best ideas of the bunch? Natural selection by a free market.

neuroMoan, I added another section called "All Tied Up in a Bow" that goes further to prove the link between all the scamcoins. Go read it.

I'm not against new CN-based coins hitting the market, but given the evidence we've seen of the CryptoNote/Bytecoin fuckery it's best to treat them all with ridiculous amounts of caution unless a very well known member of the community is involved.

Ok, I read it. You have brought forth more evidence that the cryptonote coins are likely related. Cool.

Now let's assume that you have 100% undeniable, completely verifiable proof that people connected to Bytecoin/CryptoNote at some level are responsible for the launches of QCN, FCN, MCN, etc. Now answer this for me:

What is the extent of fuckery that they can perform using these coins and how can they scam people with it? Or are they just out to get Monero (which would be accomplished how? By making their coin as successful as possible and prying the community away from Monero? By not doing any of the things below to risk the integrity of their coin?
-Hidden blocks?
-Falsified premine?
-Ninja launch/instamine?
-Pump on fake developments in order to cash out botnet earnings?
-Use botnets to pulverize the value of the coin into nothing (no pumping, just pure downhill sledding) and then launch a new coin and repeat?
-Secret weapons of mass mining destruction?
-Ring signatures are actually square?
-Anything else?

How many of these things are actually happening in any of the coins right now?
How many of these things are accompanied by a dev that acts strangely?
How many of these things can be sniffed out fairly easily by the community?

If the cryptonote coins are being malevolently run by scammers then these scammers are an odd bunch compared to the POS coin scammers. Who the heck gets all pissy at Monero for exposing their Bytecoin scam and decides to release a few merge mining coins that make the guys they are all pissed at richer? This alone makes no sense and I would like an explanation.