Is it possible to destroy Monero (XMR)?

[CryptoGretzky]

Fair launch. It is just so precious. And never before happened as well. So that the largest holders are not there by accident (or more likely planning by the dev), but because they wanted to buy a crappy coin at a high price. Monero's history is special.

I can only say that if something should happen, but has not yet happened, there is a good chance that it will happen.

I want to say this with as much respect as possible.  But how many alt coins have you been involved with?  How many have you seriously taken a close look at?  I've seen you saying you have had no use for alt coins until Monero which leads me to believe you never took a serious look at previous alt coins.  

I want to say this with as much respect as possible. Show me a coin where the dev holds less than 1% of the coins in circulation.

Of course I respect the devs, but I have to say that equally important is that the devs respect the whales. The whales make the economy. Economy is the reason why the coin exists. I can support Monero without even having a functioning wallet (wrong OS), because the distribution of coins is right.

And how do you ABSOLUTELY know for certain that the Monero dev have under 1% of the coin?   Do you have proof that the dev have no other address that they mined with at the beginning nor any other friends that mined at launch?  

omg people will never get it, the point is if they had it was under fair market conditions, but the math isn't there for devs owning 1% of the coin

OMG XMR people will never get it...  see how that work?

Dude... he said that the dev has under 1% coin...  That's the condition he mentioned as one of the BEST thing about XMR.   MANY altcoins where the dev has no premine nor instamine...  that's the point.  It's not only XMR that have that "fair" condition.

[CryptoGretzky]

Fair launch. It is just so precious. And never before happened as well. So that the largest holders are not there by accident (or more likely planning by the dev), but because they wanted to buy a crappy coin at a high price. Monero's history is special.

I can only say that if something should happen, but has not yet happened, there is a good chance that it will happen.

I want to say this with as much respect as possible.  But how many alt coins have you been involved with?  How many have you seriously taken a close look at?  I've seen you saying you have had no use for alt coins until Monero which leads me to believe you never took a serious look at previous alt coins.  

I want to say this with as much respect as possible. Show me a coin where the dev holds less than 1% of the coins in circulation.

Of course I respect the devs, but I have to say that equally important is that the devs respect the whales. The whales make the economy. Economy is the reason why the coin exists. I can support Monero without even having a functioning wallet (wrong OS), because the distribution of coins is right.

And how do you ABSOLUTELY know for certain that the Monero dev have under 1% of the coin?   Do you have proof that the dev have no other address that they mined with at the beginning nor any other friends that mined at launch?  

omg people will never get it, the point is if they had it was under fair market conditions, but the math isn't there for devs owning 1% of the coin

OMG XMR people will never get it...  see how that work?

Dude... he said that the dev has under 1% coin...  That's the condition he mentioned as one of the BEST thing about XMR.   MANY altcoins where the dev has no premine nor instamine...  that's the point.  It's not only XMR that have that "fair" condition.

OK show us these coins, lets see the gems you are hiding and been mining/buying this entire time.

You really haven't been around the block much right?  The only coin you ever mined was XMR?

[CryptoGretzky]

Fair launch. It is just so precious. And never before happened as well. So that the largest holders are not there by accident (or more likely planning by the dev), but because they wanted to buy a crappy coin at a high price. Monero's history is special.

I can only say that if something should happen, but has not yet happened, there is a good chance that it will happen.

I want to say this with as much respect as possible.  But how many alt coins have you been involved with?  How many have you seriously taken a close look at?  I've seen you saying you have had no use for alt coins until Monero which leads me to believe you never took a serious look at previous alt coins.  

I want to say this with as much respect as possible. Show me a coin where the dev holds less than 1% of the coins in circulation.

Of course I respect the devs, but I have to say that equally important is that the devs respect the whales. The whales make the economy. Economy is the reason why the coin exists. I can support Monero without even having a functioning wallet (wrong OS), because the distribution of coins is right.

And how do you ABSOLUTELY know for certain that the Monero dev have under 1% of the coin?   Do you have proof that the dev have no other address that they mined with at the beginning nor any other friends that mined at launch?  

omg people will never get it, the point is if they had it was under fair market conditions, but the math isn't there for devs owning 1% of the coin

OMG XMR people will never get it...  see how that work?

Dude... he said that the dev has under 1% coin...  That's the condition he mentioned as one of the BEST thing about XMR.   MANY altcoins where the dev has no premine nor instamine...  that's the point.  It's not only XMR that have that "fair" condition.

OK show us these coins, lets see the gems you are hiding and been mining/buying this entire time.

You really haven't been around the block much right?  The only coin you ever mined was XMR?

Yeah. I'm not into pump and dumps. I'm waiting the coins you said have no premine or instamine and have better features than XMR, you may even persuade OP to change his investment.

What are these features you talk about?  No gui wallet, huge blockchain, forking from attack, etc?

[CryptoGretzky]

What are these features you talk about?  No gui wallet, huge blockchain, forking from attack, etc?

Congratulations you just destroyed your remaining credibility, you can cease posting as your opinion wont really be considered more than FUD.

All I know about XMR is that supposedly they have anon.   What OTHER features??   All I hear about XMR these days are the problems above.   Please do tell us that aren't investor nor expert in XMR....

[rpietila]

And how do you ABSOLUTELY know for certain that the Monero dev have under 1% of the coin?   Do you have proof that the dev have no other address that they mined with at the beginning nor any other friends that mined at launch?   

omg people will never get it, the point is if they had it was under fair market conditions, but the math isn't there for devs owning 1% of the coin

Exactly. There never was a perior where you could have created value out of nothing. In private placements (pre-IPO) we do it all the time. Company is owned by its directors who typically paid not much for their own shares. Then investors come and it's marked up +10000%. This is fine and pretty much the only way to do things in that world. But coins are not stocks, and doing it with a coin hurts the coin.

The devs have had the same chances to buy it as anyone else. The devs' average buyins are in the same BTC0.004 range. The devs own a lot compared to their total stash, but none of them is even listed in the TOP-5 holders. This is rare. This is precious. This bodes well for the economy because it creates the possibility for those interested in economy to take the leadership, which is lacking in nerd-controlled coins.

[rikkejohn]

Why are people pushing the coin this hard when it has this many problems?

My previous long post answers this:

Fair launch. It is just so precious. And never before happened as well. So that the largest holders are not there by accident (or more likely planning by the dev), but because they wanted to buy a crappy coin at a high price. Monero's history is special.

Just tell me one example of a coin where the dev is not the largest owner.

I believe it is very good that the coins are not dev pet projects.

"Why is this coin not taking off when so many big names are supporting it"

I can only say that if something should happen, but has not yet happened, there is a good chance that it will happen.

Fallacy again using the modal verb "should". This is a tactic of the XMR people.

"if something should happen, but has not yet happened, there is a good chance that it will happen."

There is no "should" about it, no reason to believe it will do anything at all. You are bestowing it with an "end", like it can be measured. But this is impossible in crypto.

Actually, scrub the last comment. Of 1000 coins, only a handful have made a wave, and only bitcoin and perhaps litecoin have had a meaningful impact in market terms and popularity.

So if we throw "should" about, we have a duty (should) to use it properly. XMR should crash and burn, or just muddle along or disappear.

[DoubleSwapper]

Rpietila, could you please elaborate on the network attacks against Monero? A summary or a thread where I can read it up would be good. I had no idea that the network is that vulnerable.
I personally am staggered as well by the hate against Monero when it has such a slow price increase and calm movement. Compared to BTCDark for example which has exploded in price recently and of which I am still trying to find any solid criticisms but it looks like nobody even tries to take a serious look at the coin it's all pump, pump, pump.
People here have talked about the large problems monero has but what are these? I've only ever read about the potential large blockchain bloat, nothing else? That would be hugely positive imho.

Edit: Oh right, and there was some article about a guy who mined like $150k of monero with amazon or something.

[Anotheranonlol]

Yeah most people think NXT IPO was bad, but IMO it was great, but it can only happen once. No other PoS coin will ever get away with a coin IPO like BCNext had - too many scams now, too oversubscribed so no upward potential for price, not enough whales created who make things happen etc

NXT distribution was an act of genius, and look, it worked. NXT is thriving.

Some things are so crazy they end up working perfectly, and NXT distribution is one of them. Plenty of people will try and find another method for a PoS distro, but none will ever beat NXT. For mine, the NXT distro worked for two reasons:
1- The IPO had enough detail, and BCNext appeared so weird, that it attracted crypto true believers, people interested in innovation, and the legacy of bitcoin. IPO's since attract greedy people, but NXT IPO was almost like a fundraiser for a mad scientist working on a garage project
2- The whales NXT created mostly accepted their roll, and co-operated to get things done. This was a natural consequence flowing from point 1

It was a stroke of genius. Find a core group of people really interested in crypto, and then make them millionaires, but only if they work together to make NXT viable. No other coin could do this now, because everyone wants to think the next IPO will make them rich. The NXT whales didn't join NXT IPO to be rich, but that's what happened. Genius, but a one off, and never to be repeated.

edit: I think NXT is very relevant to monero, same point risto made - fair distribution, enough whales, dev owns small stack

In my mind, the fairest launch mechanisms of any alt in recent memory was demonstrated by CounterParty.

Bitcoins were destroyed in exchange for shares.  No single entity had a guaranteed opportunity to earn at that stage since the raised funds went into the ether, instead of to a marketing foundation or pockets of the devs. The burn period was clearly enforced by a protocol, not an entity which could arbitarily adjust the time limit to invest, the amount allowed to be invested, or the number of buyers. It also had the side-effect of decreasing the total amount of BTC that could possibly circulate.

More detailed write-up is linked here: https://www.counterparty.co/why-proof-of-burn/

[fluffypony]

Rpietila, could you please elaborate on the network attacks against Monero? A summary or a thread where I can read it up would be good. I had no idea that the network is that vulnerable.
I personally am staggered as well by the hate against Monero when it has such a slow price increase and calm movement. Compared to BTCDark for example which has exploded in price recently and of which I am still trying to find any solid criticisms but it looks like nobody even tries to take a serious look at the coin it's all pump, pump, pump.
People here have talked about the large problems monero has but what are these? I've only ever read about the potential large blockchain bloat, nothing else? That would be hugely positive imho.

Edit: Oh right, and there was some article about a guy who mined like $150k of monero with amazon or something.

From our OP -

Announcements

September 7 - Block 202612 attack patch released, please update immediately
September 4 - Block 202612 attack, technical update
September 4 - Block 202612 attack, update 1
August 25 - Blockchain Spam Attack post-mortem, part II
August 24 - Blockchain Spam Attack post-mortem, part I

With regards to dga's article, it's important to read it thoroughly to understand that there are no negative implications for Monero: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.msg8578519#msg8578519

[vuduchyld]

Exactly. There never was a perior where you could have created value out of nothing. In private placements (pre-IPO) we do it all the time. Company is owned by its directors who typically paid not much for their own shares. Then investors come and it's marked up +10000%. This is fine and pretty much the only way to do things in that world. But coins are not stocks, and doing it with a coin hurts the coin.

The devs have had the same chances to buy it as anyone else. The devs' average buyins are in the same BTC0.004 range. The devs own a lot compared to their total stash, but none of them is even listed in the TOP-5 holders. This is rare. This is precious. This bodes well for the economy because it creates the possibility for those interested in economy to take the leadership, which is lacking in nerd-controlled coins.

People do tend to forget that coins are not stocks.  It's a great point.

Is it possible to destroy Monero?  I recently quoted Warren Buffet in a thread.  Now I'm going to go with a philosophical predecessor of his, Benjamin Graham.  Graham said that in the short term, markets are voting machines.  In the long term, markets are weighing machines.  In the short term, people can have opinions, and FUD can rule the day.  Price can be driven down, and that may be happening with Monero. (Or it may not.)

In the long run, though, if Monero has true advantages and innovation, the short-term price "destruction" that results from FUD, hatred, etc... simply gives us a buying opportunity.

This is where it's important to realize that cryptos are NOT stocks.  They are MORE resilient and LESS subject to pressures like bankruptcy, de-listing, etc...

My take is that the advantages of 1) talented and deep team of devs, 2) fair launch, certainly compared to many cryptos, 3) innovation with regard to anonymity, 4) maybe even whale support--in the long run, I think the weighing machine theory makes it unlikely that Monero will be destroyed.

Makes me want to accumulate more, in fact, because the short-term price pressures might make buying more attractive.

[DoubleSwapper]

Rpietila, could you please elaborate on the network attacks against Monero? A summary or a thread where I can read it up would be good. I had no idea that the network is that vulnerable.
I personally am staggered as well by the hate against Monero when it has such a slow price increase and calm movement. Compared to BTCDark for example which has exploded in price recently and of which I am still trying to find any solid criticisms but it looks like nobody even tries to take a serious look at the coin it's all pump, pump, pump.
People here have talked about the large problems monero has but what are these? I've only ever read about the potential large blockchain bloat, nothing else? That would be hugely positive imho.

Edit: Oh right, and there was some article about a guy who mined like $150k of monero with amazon or something.

From our OP -

Announcements

September 7 - Block 202612 attack patch released, please update immediately
September 4 - Block 202612 attack, technical update
September 4 - Block 202612 attack, update 1
August 25 - Blockchain Spam Attack post-mortem, part II
August 24 - Blockchain Spam Attack post-mortem, part I

With regards to dga's article, it's important to read it thoroughly to understand that there are no negative implications for Monero: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=583449.msg8578519#msg8578519

Thank you for this elaborate answer! I'll make sure to read it.

[Anotheranonlol]

Why are people pushing the coin this hard when it has this many problems?

My previous long post answers this:

Fair launch. It is just so precious. And never before happened as well. So that the largest holders are not there by accident (or more likely planning by the dev), but because they wanted to buy a crappy coin at a high price. Monero's history is special.

Just tell me one example of a coin where the dev is not the largest owner.

I believe it is very good that the coins are not dev pet projects.

"Why is this coin not taking off when so many big names are supporting it"

I can only say that if something should happen, but has not yet happened, there is a good chance that it will happen.

I really would rather not delve back into the whole BBR vs XMR argument again; the bickering is getting tiresome and I'm a supporter of cryptonote in general. --  it's a plain fact in both cases certain entities were operating at some advantage at some point in time. It's not surprising whatsoever.

With that being said, how can you say this of XMR launch without being disingenuous?
"It is just so precious. And never before happened as well."
"Monero's history is special. "

As far as I see, It's just a false statement- The gap between the fastest BBR miners and the average BBR miner, compared with the gap between the fastest XMR miner and the average XMR miner was smaller for some time. Considering the emission rate differences, less of the total BBR supply was up for grabs to those in an advantaged position too.

Sure, this

https://github.com/NoodleDoodleNoodleDoodleNoodleDoodleNoo/bitmonero/commit/3cc45e9324a402aee91e2f46861b2ca393d711aa was a slight oversight, because took a while after launch to spot. It would of been ideal if the proof-of-work had a few eyes over it prior to the coin launch,

Reference:

Like I stated in IRC, I am not part of the "dev team", I never was. Just so happens I took a look at the code and changed some extremely easy to spot "errors". I then decided to release the binary because I thought MRO would benefit from it. I made this decision individually and nobody else should be culpable, especially the community of individuals who have come together to maintain and foster the software.

By the way, I'm not even a real coder, so whatever changes I made should be easy to spot; especially for experienced developers.
Cheers.

But to the credit of XMR dev team, the fix was pushed less than 30 minutes after it was spotted.   I understand it was something which was introduced by TFT, and monero developers were not familiar with the code at that stage, when they "relaunched" it under a new name. It is not like they themselves crippled it, on the contrary they managed to fix it after a tip-off.

I just posted the commit

Personally, my opinion is In the grand scheme of things it's barely a hiccup at all and pales in comparison to some of the shenanigans that went on during early BTC days - even forgetting satoshi, ( artforz owned 30% of net hash from early days- continued on to run gpus, fpgas and s-asics, before anyone else and then proceeded to launch crippled scrypt- have absolutely no doubt he knew the weaknesses in that implementation) for instance.

As you say it's also pretty well documented a lot of XMR changed hands in the early days from such miners taking profit from their advantaged positions, and those are freely disbursed in the market very early on. -- I do remember buying some XMR in the OTC days prior to it being listed on the exchange, I got a small quantity, checked back and the price had already shot up 10x. There really was not an opportunity to buy in big quantities as significantly lower prices than the general populous that I saw,  So yes, people were paying more or less the same price for these coins which is a good thing indeed.

[bclcjunkie]

Good discussion guys.. couldn't say better so here are some great quotes that i found interesting...

The competitive nature of the altcoin forum and the "fighting" among the defenders of various altcoins results in attack and/or hate.

privacy is the *one niche* that people who've thought long and hard about bitcoin/alts/crypto for years have identified as having potential merit. And that XMR is the first coin to implement technically sufficient privacy with a fair-enough launch.

The forces that are trying to discredit it are only strengthening the coin and the community. Monero should be thankful that they are getting such a hard "peer review". This is something that most minor altcoins escape.

Fair launch. It is just so precious. And never before happened as well. So that the largest holders are not there by accident (or more likely planning by the dev), but because they wanted to buy a crappy coin at a high price. Monero's history is special.

fair launching and distance from the muddy CN coins to the transparent team of dedicate developers that leads it today with only the donations and the community support, I ask that right now just read what OP said and think about why Monero is being attacked both with an army of trolls and an army of skilled coders when as technology its completely neutral and have not made anyone a multimillionaire, yet.

the fairness how everyone can acquire coin virtually at the same term as everyone else, all-time-average price is 0.004, same price of XMR now... lol

it has ring signatures that provides untraceability of transaction, CN protocol also solves the fungibility problems of bitcoin, its a really simple coin and the real investors don't need much besides what been already said on OP.

People do tend to forget that coins are not stocks.  It's a great point.
In the long term, markets are weighing machines.  In the short term, people can have opinions, and FUD can rule the day.  Price can be driven down, and that may be happening with Monero. (Or it may not.)

In the long run, though, if Monero has true advantages and innovation, the short-term price "destruction" that results from FUD, hatred, etc... simply gives us a buying opportunity.

This is where it's important to realize that cryptos are NOT stocks.  They are MORE resilient and LESS subject to pressures like bankruptcy, de-listing, etc...

My take is that the advantages of 1) talented and deep team of devs, 2) fair launch, certainly compared to many cryptos, 3) innovation with regard to anonymity, 4) maybe even whale support--in the long run, I think the weighing machine theory makes it unlikely that Monero will be destroyed.

Makes me want to accumulate more, in fact, because the short-term price pressures might make buying more attractive.

[drawingthesun]

I feel that Monero will forever be under attack, there will always be smaller coins where the users amase mega cheap stacks and then they are incentivised to wage war against the bigger coin.

[Anotheranonlol]

I feel that Monero will forever be under attack, there will always be smaller coins where the users amase mega cheap stacks and then they are incentivised to wage war against the bigger coin.

You could replace Monero with Bitcoin in your sentence above, going by that logic.

[drawingthesun]

I feel that Monero will forever be under attack, there will always be smaller coins where the users amase mega cheap stacks and then they are incentivised to wage war against the bigger coin.

You could replace Monero with Bitcoin in your sentence above, going by that logic.

Except that Monero offers an order of magnitude more capabilities than Bitcoin.

Also, what rpietila said is true, because of the price of monero rising relatively fast it means there are no mega stacks out there, other coins sat low for too long allowing few to buy them all up.

On two counts, monero is more advanced than bitcoin and more fair, most other coins lack the advanced and for certain lack the fair.

[dga]

Fair launch. It is just so precious. And never before happened as well. So that the largest holders are not there by accident (or more likely planning by the dev), but because they wanted to buy a crappy coin at a high price. Monero's history is special.

I can only say that if something should happen, but has not yet happened, there is a good chance that it will happen.

I want to say this with as much respect as possible.  But how many alt coins have you been involved with?  How many have you seriously taken a close look at?  I've seen you saying you have had no use for alt coins until Monero which leads me to believe you never took a serious look at previous alt coins. 

I want to say this with as much respect as possible. Show me a coin where the dev holds less than 1% of the coins in circulation.

Of course I respect the devs, but I have to say that equally important is that the devs respect the whales. The whales make the economy. Economy is the reason why the coin exists. I can support Monero without even having a functioning wallet (wrong OS), because the distribution of coins is right.

Several that I've been involved in mining - Boolberry, Riecoin, to name a few.

If you want an example of a truly admirable launch, look at how Gatra handled Riecoin.  Others should learn from it -- soft launch with a tiny block reward that slowly ramped up to full to reduce the "first day adopter" benefit.

(What Riecoin got wrong was the difficulty adaptation, compared to something like DGW, so when jh00 released his super-optimized miner, there was a brief splurge, but it wasn't a classical instamine.  The diff was already elevated, at least, well above the release value.)

I give him huge kudos for doing it in a very ethical and transparent way:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=446703.0

Since this is a new PoW, it is very hard to define a starting difficulty that avoids instamining. To overcome this and contribute to a fair launch, the first 576 blocks will have no reward and the next 576 will linearly increase and reach the full reward at block 1152, after 4 difficulty adjustments were performed. Besides avoiding instamining, this should allow time for those who want to compile their own clients.
Expect the starting difficulty to be hard.
Source code will be provided a few days before launch, but the PoW functions will be replaced by stubs. The idea is that everyone would be able to examine the code and confirm that there's nothing strange and it is indeed pretty similar to bitcoin's. Everyone would be able to compile it, see if they have the correct dependencies, etc, but it won't run. At launch time, when the final code is released, everyone could easily check that the only thing that changed is the PoW code, so you'd only have to check the diff of a few lines of code and recompile.

[rdnkjdi]

Fair launch. It is just so precious. And never before happened as well. So that the largest holders are not there by accident (or more likely planning by the dev), but because they wanted to buy a crappy coin at a high price. Monero's history is special.

I can only say that if something should happen, but has not yet happened, there is a good chance that it will happen.

I want to say this with as much respect as possible.  But how many alt coins have you been involved with?  How many have you seriously taken a close look at?  I've seen you saying you have had no use for alt coins until Monero which leads me to believe you never took a serious look at previous alt coins.  

I want to say this with as much respect as possible. Show me a coin where the dev holds less than 1% of the coins in circulation.

Of course I respect the devs, but I have to say that equally important is that the devs respect the whales. The whales make the economy. Economy is the reason why the coin exists. I can support Monero without even having a functioning wallet (wrong OS), because the distribution of coins is right.

Several that I've been involved in mining - Boolberry, Riecoin, to name a few.

If you want an example of a truly admirable launch, look at how Gatra handled Riecoin.  Others should learn from it -- soft launch with a tiny block reward that slowly ramped up to full to reduce the "first day adopter" benefit.

(What Riecoin got wrong was the difficulty adaptation, compared to something like DGW, so when jh00 released his super-optimized miner, there was a brief splurge, but it wasn't a classical instamine.  The diff was already elevated, at least, well above the release value.)

I give him huge kudos for doing it in a very ethical and transparent way:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=446703.0

Since this is a new PoW, it is very hard to define a starting difficulty that avoids instamining. To overcome this and contribute to a fair launch, the first 576 blocks will have no reward and the next 576 will linearly increase and reach the full reward at block 1152, after 4 difficulty adjustments were performed. Besides avoiding instamining, this should allow time for those who want to compile their own clients.
Expect the starting difficulty to be hard.
Source code will be provided a few days before launch, but the PoW functions will be replaced by stubs. The idea is that everyone would be able to examine the code and confirm that there's nothing strange and it is indeed pretty similar to bitcoin's. Everyone would be able to compile it, see if they have the correct dependencies, etc, but it won't run. At launch time, when the final code is released, everyone could easily check that the only thing that changed is the PoW code, so you'd only have to check the diff of a few lines of code and recompile.

Thank you.  I think this might be why rptelia comes off wrong to some.  He has bragged about never being involved in an altcoin before this one but makes broad assertions.  Which lead people to question his other assertions.  

[pa]

I think it's possible that we'll look back on this time, when the main threat to Monero is other alts, as a honeymoon period. When an anonymous coin separates from the pack, it will become a lightning rod for the enemies of financial privacy and freedom. This may take some of the heat off of Bitcoin, which will be seen as more friendly to the powers that be. Monero is Promethean, and may be subjected to the same punishment as that Titan, but it may also endow humanity with the fire of freedom.

[bigj]

Fair launch. It is just so precious. And never before happened as well. So that the largest holders are not there by accident (or more likely planning by the dev), but because they wanted to buy a crappy coin at a high price. Monero's history is special.

I can only say that if something should happen, but has not yet happened, there is a good chance that it will happen.

I want to say this with as much respect as possible.  But how many alt coins have you been involved with?  How many have you seriously taken a close look at?  I've seen you saying you have had no use for alt coins until Monero which leads me to believe you never took a serious look at previous alt coins.  

I want to say this with as much respect as possible. Show me a coin where the dev holds less than 1% of the coins in circulation.

Of course I respect the devs, but I have to say that equally important is that the devs respect the whales. The whales make the economy. Economy is the reason why the coin exists. I can support Monero without even having a functioning wallet (wrong OS), because the distribution of coins is right.

Disagreed: Whales don't "make" the economy. If they were to, the whole economy would be a cartel, or at best a club.

Whales (if clever enough) just profit the most from a working economy. Don't forget "with great whale comes great responsibility"--

That devs hold >=1% of the currency is probably due to accessibility (first-come first-served) and economic thinking paired with an emotional attachment (love your growing child).