[XMR] Monero Speculation

[butdabass]

how about XMR price now? getting -2.29% now,is it will rise again??

[GingerAle]

how about XMR price now? getting -2.29% now,is it will rise again??

Yes, it will rise. I reference many of risto's analyses, american pegasus's "analyses", and the cold hard fact that over the past year, Monero has set research and development goals (tough ones) and has made progress on these. This trend has no reason to stop (how these guys keep cranking this stuff out, I have no idea), so if they continue knocking items off the list https://getmonero.org/design-goals/ , then the only reason monero doesn't rise is that crypto fails entirely as a sector.

[obit33]

Seems we have entered a narrow trading channel with should ultimately get resolve in the beginning of october (about a month after halving day  )



disclaimer: no TA-background at all, just fooling around for fun

edit: spelling correction

[TrueCryptonaire]

The acquisitions of the company of Risto is so invisible that
1) The idea is to buy the last coins when the supply is even narrower
2) There is no buying at all and it was just an attempt to pump Monero and increase the awareness of the community
3) The most of the coins that are meant to buy are actually bought already and the company is running out of bitcoins
4) Something else?

Many tend to think about the first option (including me), but also the other points have some probability.

Next year it is expected to be a breakthrough year when it comes to the price of Monero. It is possible to have the breakthrough later years also but so many are expecting 2016 being the year of Monero that if it will not perform, it might decrease the interest of the coin owners.

Marketcapwise Monero starts to be easier to pump, however the weakness for the pump is that Monero is (probably) too diversified. Ideally a coin has a few big whales that own the most of the coins. Then with smaller amounts of bitcoins it is possible to drive the marketcap high enough to be remarkable.
On the other hand, if the whole community decides to increase their Monero acquisitations by some amount on daily basis we for sure have a pump - and those who sell too early will regret so there is no point in selling (at least any meaningful amounts - the sellers will be bailed out and the price continues rising pattern).

When the emission is getting tighter it is important (if marketcap is wanted to increase) to get extra buying pressure for the coin (from current holders or from noobs adapting XMR). That creates a situation where supply < demand and the marketcap rises. There is no other way to increase the marketcap than pouring out money into the coin.

[dEBRUYNE]

One possibility that may be holding the price back is AnonyMint's vaporcoin that will supposedly fix a lot of centralization (as well as privacy) issues in crypto. Whether it's as revolutionary as he claims (I don't think he's ever delivered code for a crypto project), I'm sure a number of people are curiously waiting on the sidelines to see what comes of it. Though I wouldn't expect much to happen very soon.

Regarding bolded part: That's not true, he'll launch his coin transparently.

Reference:

--snip--

Thus I have decided to put my name on my coin!

I will be leading this coin out in the open, which will make it much easier.

My coin will be launched without any anonymity features. That is a key point.

My anonymity designs will be offloaded to others and these can be added to the coin after the fact by others. I do not want to be held culpable for the anonymity stuff, although I will make sure all my awesome designs are passed on so they can be implemented.

-- snip

So we shouldn't really be worried about that.

@Obit33: Use log next time, it gives a more clear view :-)

[Melbustus]

A POW coin doesn't have to millions of teenagers running miners on their laptops all over the world in order to be *meaningfully* decentralized.

But it would be cool if you could, and with Monero you can.
...

With any POW coin you can while it's small. But with enough demand for the coin (price increases) will come greatly increasing mining competition, and no POW alg is ultimately immune from economies of scale. They are all subject to the same centralizing forces in the end. Which, again, is ok as long as things stay *meaningfully* decentralized.

[Melbustus]

It will therefore always come down to the lowest cost producer

Yes but it is unclear who the lowest cost producer is actually going to be. It could be massive specialized farms in Sweden or Mongolia or wherever, or it could be kids running a miner on a laptop that would otherwise be unused, or botnets stealing electricity from whoever is least effective in protecting their equipment, or people heating water, or something else. It is a mistake to assume that any of these will necessarily be the lowest cost, because we don't know.

(ie, who has the cheapest energy)

This is not necessarily the lowest cost. That is only the case if non-variable costs are zero (or equal, but as you point out on the question of specialization, they almost certainly won't be), which in general is not the case. Also being able to use the waste heat productively is part of (net) energy cost, and it isn't clear who will end up being able to do that most efficiently.

It only doesn't come down to energy cost if there's some *unique* entity (or small set thereof) that can harness heat cost-effectively while everyone else cannot, or if hashpower can be stolen at large scale (botnets). I'm skeptical of both, but agree that they're possible.

[Melbustus]

...
It's not scalable,

There'll be a solution to the blocksize issue that lets bitcoin scale, one way or another. It's also worth observing that Bitcoin is currently the only crypto-currency operating at *any* sort of scale.
...

I am not so sure. It is not that simple to come up with an adaptive blocksize limit, that also allows for a fee market to develop in the absence of a block reward. I am not convinced it is even possible. The Cryptonote adaptive blocksize limit formula works in Monero only because there is a tail emission. Take away the tail emission, as in for example Bytecoin, and the blocksize can grow to infinity with no penalty once the emission runs out. This prevents a fee market from developing, and could cause the difficulty and security to plummet. It is this kind of issue that gives credence to those in the Bitcoin community that oppose growing the blocksize.

In any case I will believe a scaling solution in Bitcoin only when I see it, not before.

I think the idea that development of a fee market *requires* a limit to blocksize is bogus. That suggests that miners are irrational and would price their service under their operational cost... Or, it assumes that there's zero cost penalty to a miner for creating a larger block. But there is indeed a real cost for creating larger and larger blocks (orphan risk), so a net-rational mining-fee market would price blockspace against that risk, thereby creating a fee-market in a much more free-market manner than people picking a magic number (or magic adaptive algorithm) and hard coding it in.

[smooth]

...
It's not scalable,

There'll be a solution to the blocksize issue that lets bitcoin scale, one way or another. It's also worth observing that Bitcoin is currently the only crypto-currency operating at *any* sort of scale.
...

I am not so sure. It is not that simple to come up with an adaptive blocksize limit, that also allows for a fee market to develop in the absence of a block reward. I am not convinced it is even possible. The Cryptonote adaptive blocksize limit formula works in Monero only because there is a tail emission. Take away the tail emission, as in for example Bytecoin, and the blocksize can grow to infinity with no penalty once the emission runs out. This prevents a fee market from developing, and could cause the difficulty and security to plummet. It is this kind of issue that gives credence to those in the Bitcoin community that oppose growing the blocksize.

In any case I will believe a scaling solution in Bitcoin only when I see it, not before.

I think the idea that development of a fee market *requires* a limit to blocksize is bogus. That suggests that miners are irrational and would price their service under their operational cost... Or, it assumes that there's zero cost penalty to a miner for creating a larger block. But there is indeed a real cost for creating larger and larger blocks (orphan risk), so a net-rational mining-fee market would price blockspace against that risk, thereby creating a fee-market in a much more free-market manner than people picking a magic number (or magic adaptive algorithm) and hard coding it in.

The math that supports a fee market on that basis fails if there is no subsidy. That won't be the case for Bitcoin for a long time, but it will be the case eventually. And markets are forward looking...

[Melbustus]

...

I think the idea that development of a fee market *requires* a limit to blocksize is bogus. That suggests that miners are irrational and would price their service under their operational cost... Or, it assumes that there's zero cost penalty to a miner for creating a larger block. But there is indeed a real cost for creating larger and larger blocks (orphan risk), so a net-rational mining-fee market would price blockspace against that risk, thereby creating a fee-market in a much more free-market manner than people picking a magic number (or magic adaptive algorithm) and hard coding it in.

The math that supports a fee market on that basis fails if there is no subsidy. ...

How? Link?

[smooth]

A POW coin doesn't have to millions of teenagers running miners on their laptops all over the world in order to be *meaningfully* decentralized.

But it would be cool if you could, and with Monero you can.
...

With any POW coin you can while it's small. But with enough demand for the coin (price increases) will come greatly increasing mining competition, and no POW alg is ultimately immune from economies of scale. They are all subject to the same centralizing forces in the end. Which, again, is ok as long as things stay *meaningfully* decentralized.

There really is such a thing as diseconomies of scale too. These are real factors that exist and the outcome can't be correctly determined on the basis of considering one factor in this kind of simplistic analysis.

Again, you are using very simplistic models (e.g. mining cost comes down to energy cost) that is no less inaccurate in principle than simplistic models on the other end up of the spectrum like "I'll mine it on my CPU". Various outcomes are possible and it is more difficult to accurately predict the behavior of real systems in the real world than to employ simplistic one-factor models (especially when considering finite time instead of some arbitrary "long run")

Even Bitcoin's centralized current state is somewhat outside of expectations since it isn't entirely based on economy of scale or energy costs but in fact mining is largely controlled by the few successful developers of efficient ASICs. Of course it isn't the case that will necessary stay the same over time either, but predicting it's future outcome is no less difficult, or subject to getting it wrong.

[smooth]

...

I think the idea that development of a fee market *requires* a limit to blocksize is bogus. That suggests that miners are irrational and would price their service under their operational cost... Or, it assumes that there's zero cost penalty to a miner for creating a larger block. But there is indeed a real cost for creating larger and larger blocks (orphan risk), so a net-rational mining-fee market would price blockspace against that risk, thereby creating a fee-market in a much more free-market manner than people picking a magic number (or magic adaptive algorithm) and hard coding it in.

The math that supports a fee market on that basis fails if there is no subsidy. ...

How? Link?

It's in Peter R's paper, last paragraph or two. I think the link is easy to find.

The intuitive explanation for it is pretty simple. If you are a miner and there is no subsidy, what are you really risking of your block gets orphaned? Just the transaction fees, but you are using orphan risk as the basis for supporting a fee market, and in a competitive market that will be break even. So you have nothing at stake in whether block gets orphaned or not. This also breaks the security model, since at that point you don't really care whether you extend the longest chain or pick another one.

You can't use orphan risk to support a fee market and use orphan risk to incentivize correct miner behavior. Bitcoin's eventual fee-only model (without some other sort of implied subsidy such as a block size limit) is defective.

[Melbustus]

A POW coin doesn't have to millions of teenagers running miners on their laptops all over the world in order to be *meaningfully* decentralized.

But it would be cool if you could, and with Monero you can.
...

With any POW coin you can while it's small. But with enough demand for the coin (price increases) will come greatly increasing mining competition, and no POW alg is ultimately immune from economies of scale. They are all subject to the same centralizing forces in the end. Which, again, is ok as long as things stay *meaningfully* decentralized.

There really is such a thing as diseconomies of scale too. These are real factors that exist and the outcome can't be correctly determined on the basis of considering one factor in this kind of simplistic analysis.

Again, you are using very simplistic models (e.g. mining cost comes down to energy cost) that is no less inaccurate in principle than simplistic models on the other end up of the spectrum like "I'll mine it on my CPU". Various outcomes are possible and it is more difficult to accurately predict the behavior of real systems in the real world than to employ simplistic one-factor models (especially when considering finite time instead of some arbitrary "long run")

Even Bitcoin's centralized current state is somewhat outside of expectations since it isn't entirely based on economy of scale or energy costs but in fact mining is largely controlled by the few successful developers of efficient ASICs. Of course it isn't the case that will necessary stay the same over time either, but predicting it's future outcome is no less difficult, or subject to getting it wrong.

Heh, the above seems in your typical vein of (paraphrasing): "well, we don't have enough data yet, so stop speculating" . I respect that to some extent, but I personally find it illuminating to think about the potential range of outcomes and pinpoint the ones I think are most likely based on what seems to be reasonable theory. Of course the real world is more complex. That doesn't make the exercise useless or any less illuminating so long as one allows for the *possibility* of other outcomes. I therefore stand by my arguments.

[Melbustus]

...

I think the idea that development of a fee market *requires* a limit to blocksize is bogus. That suggests that miners are irrational and would price their service under their operational cost... Or, it assumes that there's zero cost penalty to a miner for creating a larger block. But there is indeed a real cost for creating larger and larger blocks (orphan risk), so a net-rational mining-fee market would price blockspace against that risk, thereby creating a fee-market in a much more free-market manner than people picking a magic number (or magic adaptive algorithm) and hard coding it in.

The math that supports a fee market on that basis fails if there is no subsidy. ...

How? Link?

It's in Peter R's paper, last paragraph or two. I think the link is easy to find.
...

Will review. Thanks.

[smooth]

A POW coin doesn't have to millions of teenagers running miners on their laptops all over the world in order to be *meaningfully* decentralized.

But it would be cool if you could, and with Monero you can.
...

With any POW coin you can while it's small. But with enough demand for the coin (price increases) will come greatly increasing mining competition, and no POW alg is ultimately immune from economies of scale. They are all subject to the same centralizing forces in the end. Which, again, is ok as long as things stay *meaningfully* decentralized.

There really is such a thing as diseconomies of scale too. These are real factors that exist and the outcome can't be correctly determined on the basis of considering one factor in this kind of simplistic analysis.

Again, you are using very simplistic models (e.g. mining cost comes down to energy cost) that is no less inaccurate in principle than simplistic models on the other end up of the spectrum like "I'll mine it on my CPU". Various outcomes are possible and it is more difficult to accurately predict the behavior of real systems in the real world than to employ simplistic one-factor models (especially when considering finite time instead of some arbitrary "long run")

Even Bitcoin's centralized current state is somewhat outside of expectations since it isn't entirely based on economy of scale or energy costs but in fact mining is largely controlled by the few successful developers of efficient ASICs. Of course it isn't the case that will necessary stay the same over time either, but predicting it's future outcome is no less difficult, or subject to getting it wrong.

Heh, the above seems in your typical vein of (paraphrasing): "well, we don't have enough data yet, so stop speculating" . I respect that to some extent, but I personally find it illuminating to think about the potential range of outcomes and pinpoint the ones I think are most likely based on what seems to be reasonable theory. Of course the real world is more complex. That doesn't make the exercise useless or any less illuminating so long as one allows for the *possibility* of other outcomes. I therefore stand by my arguments.

Fair enough, but let me ask this: If mining costs are equal to energy costs then that implies no money at all for R&D, manufacturing, operating and maintenance of mining facilities, etc.

Doesn't that in turn mean that the only kind of mining that can actually occur is CPU (possibly GPU) mining by people on computers they already own (using otherwise-idle CPU time)?

You can't consistently argue from the perspective of a market where marginal revenue equals marginal costs and at the same time argue that such a market requires large scale up front investment and fixed operating costs for centralized facilities. That is inconsistent.

[americanpegasus]

I highly doubt that is why the price is where it is at.

His project is vaporware.

Remains to be seen.

XMR is real and exists today. Hence there is support for it.

 
 
I really enjoy anonyMint's (tptb_need_war) commentary on economics but I have learned not to believe anything until I see it.  That includes zerocash, ultimate anonymous vaporware, quantum prime cracking, etc. 
 
Monero is the real deal and building up greater network effect every day.  If a better currency comes along, it still might not be enough to dethrone Monero.  For example, consider that we are obviously superior to bitcoin, and yet you don't see a mass exodus; instead you see bitcoin belieber's maintain that Monero isn't even necessary. 
 
I have never been very good at subterfuge, and though I'm not a Satoshi-level genius on my own, I believe I'm pretty good at recognizing the signs.  If something truly better comes along that is heads and shoulders better than Monero, **and** has the development behind it necessary to overcome what we are seeing... you'll know.  Keep watching my account and a few others.  It won't be a secret to those with perception. 
 
As well, it's entirely possible something superior *does* come along that will coexist/compliment the existing blockchains of Monero/Bitcoin very well.  Ideally, I'd like to see some revolutionary new proof be integrated into Dogecoin to allow it to suddenly instantly verify transactions and scale to infinity-transactions per second.  With a public blockchain and instant verification it would become the "coffee" currency; it still holds the record as the only crypto to ever (though briefly) become more popular than bitcoin itself. 

[Anon136]

...
It's not scalable,

There'll be a solution to the blocksize issue that lets bitcoin scale, one way or another. It's also worth observing that Bitcoin is currently the only crypto-currency operating at *any* sort of scale.
...

I am not so sure. It is not that simple to come up with an adaptive blocksize limit, that also allows for a fee market to develop in the absence of a block reward. I am not convinced it is even possible. The Cryptonote adaptive blocksize limit formula works in Monero only because there is a tail emission. Take away the tail emission, as in for example Bytecoin, and the blocksize can grow to infinity with no penalty once the emission runs out. This prevents a fee market from developing, and could cause the difficulty and security to plummet. It is this kind of issue that gives credence to those in the Bitcoin community that oppose growing the blocksize.

In any case I will believe a scaling solution in Bitcoin only when I see it, not before.

I think the idea that development of a fee market *requires* a limit to blocksize is bogus. That suggests that miners are irrational and would price their service under their operational cost... Or, it assumes that there's zero cost penalty to a miner for creating a larger block. But there is indeed a real cost for creating larger and larger blocks (orphan risk), so a net-rational mining-fee market would price blockspace against that risk, thereby creating a fee-market in a much more free-market manner than people picking a magic number (or magic adaptive algorithm) and hard coding it in.

This is not the concern. The concern is the advantage that actors who live in areas with high bandwidth would have over those who live in areas with low bandwidth. Thus casing mining resources to be more heavily concentrated in high bandwidth areas than low. Even potentially to the point of all of the major miners moving to the same city and building their own dedicated infrastructure. The point is less block restrictions equals more centralization.

Don't confuse this with me saying that arbitrarily picking a number is a good solution either. Its just that this is a very thorny public goods problem. There is an advantage to decentralization but that benefit is a public good with no mechanism of internalizing that benefit yet discovered. Limiting the block size is a bad but to some degree effective way of atleast some what addressing this.

[americanpegasus]

When all trading happens on a central computer on Wall Street, the way to get an advantage is to build extremely fast connections to this computer and pay for the highest tier of access. 
 
When all trading happens on a decentralized network where any given node might become the most important for a brief time, the only way to get an advantage is to build up faster and faster throughput across the entire network, which just happens to be global. 
 
Its possible that crypto-profits might also drive us to new heights of global bandwidth as well.

[akaman]

When all trading happens on a decentralized network where any given node might become the most important for a brief time, the only way to get an advantage is to build up faster and faster throughput across the entire network, which just happens to be global. 

Trading happens on a decentralized network, but takes place on centralized exchanges. So, as an ultra-fast trader as such you're just interested in the activity on the exchanges (which may not even be registered on any blockchain), not the network as a whole.

As for 'traditional' fund/stock trading, this also takes place on multiple exchanges, rather like cryptocurrencies.

I don't see trading with either as being more/less centralized than the other.

[dEBRUYNE]

Great news guys! Another developer/contributer pitched a proposal for a part-time contract, see details below:

https://forum.getmonero.org/8/funding-required/2373/documentation-and-cleanup-of-source-code

PS: It's open for funding already!