Why the darkcoin/dash/dashpay instamine matters

[smooth]

If you want one specific victim (and that's all that's really needed in most criminal fraud cases), it could be the miner Evan told to go sleep because it "definitely" wouldn't be launched for a few days. So he foolishly believed Evan and by the time that guy woke up a million coins or so had already been mined!

It's not money that he actually lost, unlike real scamcoins where they say "buy into this ICO/IPO" and then ...pooof. Your money is gone.

And even if that specific "victim" was mining and lost half a million coins (supposing he solomined that half a million - which would be impossible if the announcement was spread wide, so he'd definitely get a very thin slice with many miners), that would be ...12.5btc worth with the prices of then....

Well then you would just make a class action argument where many people were hurt a little instead of one hurt a lot. There is no way that Evan can legitimately come out ahead the way he did as a result of his deception and withholding of relevant information without there being some group of victims.

But the more significant victims are people who do not realize the kind of slippery and profiteering character they are dealing with, and decide to invest in a scheme that somehow, some way, may well end up with a "mistake" or an "accident" where Evan has money in his pocket and others don't.

Well that's quite vague, isn't it... "Somehow", "some way"... well...

Well sure, I don't have crystal ball so I don't know exactly how this is going to play out but I do think that somehow "accidentally" Evan and his buddies will end up with money and you (if you are still involved with DRK) won't. The rest only the future will reveal.

with somehows and some ways, some BTC people are already at 20% of their initial investment. Some LTC people are even worse in this regard. And I haven't even mentioned the dozens of actual scamcoins with "total loss" status for investors, or the dozens of 100% instamined PoW/PoS coins (with very expensive initial distribution through the market that led to huge economic losses in most cases).

No question there have been tons of instamined scam coins that have failed. To me, Evan did the exact same thing, but turned it into a slightly longer and likely bigger con with the masternode HYIP stage (probably in cooperation with some whales) and DRK hasn't failed yet. Other than that, pretty much the same.

[AlexGR]

Well... Evan offered to airdrop millions of new coins to fix the distribution. The community almost lynched him at the idea.

So again, we have a situation where it "wasn't his fault" but somehow the coins ended up staying in his pocket?

Don't you find that a tad bit convenient?

Question: Why did he ask the community about this? They were his coins, right, don't you think he could have just given them away if that's what he wanted to do?

It's not so simple because instamining is not solomining. It just means faster mining for whoever participates and this could be tens of miners, not just Evan.

I know, I know, you probably like DRK and all that. Evan seems like a friendly likable guy, and that's part of it (nearly universally true of scammers btw), but get real, DRK not a puppy or sports team, its a crypto coin in a nasty, ugly world filled with scoundrels, scammers, and whales waiting to dump their bag on your ass. A little detachment is helpful.

I am detached, don't worry. There are various things that I don't like with DRK, but its economy is not one of them because it actually works.

Well then you would just make a class action argument where many people were hurt a little instead of one hurt a lot. There is no way that Evan can legitimately come out ahead the way he did as a result of his deception and withholding of relevant information without there being some group of victims.

You do understand that you are stretching the victim argument here, with those that would mine but never did. There are dozens of cases where people have actually lost money that they gave out for scamcoins, not because ...they didn't mine.

Even if that very stretched argument is presented by a bunch of hypocritical would-be-miners, a judge will ask: How much was the damage incurred? So even if a whole bunch of people gathered to mine the 2mn coins, it would still be 50 bitcoins worth of coins at 0.000025 btc/DRK. That was their market value. You would have to apply retroactive pricing to "magnify" this.

No question there have been tons of instamined scam coins that have failed. To me, Evan did the exact same thing, but turned it into a slightly longer and likely bigger con with the masternode HYIP stage (probably in cooperation with some whales) and DRK hasn't failed yet. Other than that, pretty much the same.

It's not the same because DRK

a) has a vision behind it. Few coins have a vision / a plan to go somewhere. That's what people don't understand. Success is not something that just happens. It's the outgrowth of a vision. Even if obstacles or accidents or mistakes happen, the vision can pull you through.

b) it's not a con: DRK entered the privacy market segment which Bitcoin can't cover. DRK covers a real need and that's why it's getting investment. It then expanded its arsenal with instant transactions and is now heading to a more scalable architecture. Compare that to coins who came in, with pseudonymous "devs" / scammers, showed an ANN page, a mockup wallet client of extraordinary features or a scam-white paper and run away with the money. There is simply no comparison with DRK (developer with a name that actually codes something and tries to deliver). It's a win-win for dev and invested parties as long as DRK delivers and stays cutting-edge.

[smooth]

b) it's not a con

With all due respect its impossible for you to know that.

If and when Evan unexpectedly and unavoidably walks away because of some "personal" matter or some other "accident", but conveninently has already dumped his coins (along with a few of his whale friends) you will be left with a worthless bag.

Or perhaps when whales pull their support for whatever reason and the market cascades down in an avalanche of people rapidly trying to salvage some value out of the coins they had tied up in masternodes for the yield (but never really planned to expose to large losses). Most likely Evan and the whales will have already dumped (at least some of their coins). You and especially newer buyers will again be left with a worthless bag.

I can't guarantee that any of this happens, but the red flags of deception and self-interested behavior with poor ethics are there. This whole thing reminds me a lot of people who used to argue with me about MtGox or a few other scams. No way that could be a scam, they said, just technical problems, temporary banking issues, etc.  I'm making money trading there, why should I pull my coins out? (I pulled my coins out even though I too was making money trading there.)

Anyway, we'll have to agree to disagree somewhat.

I'll leave you with this tidbit though. Satoshi did not solo mine, not ever:

1. Satoshi mined almost alone from 1/3/2009 to 1/25/2010 (block 0 to block 36288).

He did not. I mined during that time— so did many other people I've talked to. As you're probably aware the original software mined _very_ slowly, and contemporary hardware was slow. Heck even a fairly current machine with state of the art software can just barely do enough hashrate for difficulty 1. (and god, before more handout requests come: Bitcoin was worthless then, the software was annoying windows-gui only— I ran it in wine+vncserver, and I didn't keep my original wallet)

[illodin]

Look people can be unintentional scammers. I've known people like that IRL, having nothing to do with crypto at all. Maybe they don't plot and scheme to deliberately scam, but they're careless with their promises, forget to mention things, and somehow, someway, everything always ends up being a "mistake" in their favor (almost never the other way). In general you learn to recognize the difference between these people and ones who are merely spontaneous and a bit scatterbrained, and just not to deal with the former people (I happen to adore the latter, however), or at least I have learned that.

Could be confirmation bias on your part. And if it's not, then consider how unlikely it is to win a coin flip 10 times in a row, but still there's always someone who does so in the coin flip championships with 1024 participants.

[smooth]

But why an other one of this topic?

i guess this is broken down better and pin points the many times discussed topic.

also it would be nice if you could link up some of the sources or post that could speculate them

bitwho,  I added several references to the OP. The formatting isn't great, but I'll clean that up later.

If there are any factual claims I make in the OP that are not supported by a reference please point them out. It is not my intention to make unsupported claims.

[toknormal]

It is not my intention to make unsupported claims.

Are you kidding ?

The entire thrust of your argument is that the dev is (to use your exact word) "fraudulent". That he has "scammed" his community and coin holders. Also that he is "incompetent".

You've also attempted to promote the idea, both here and in other threads, that his motivations are questionable and your's are in good faith.

Those are pretty damning and categorical accusations and I think your lucky he's kept quiet about it so far. It's not that you've simply stated this as an opinion in some random thread. You've waged a one-man campaign across the length and breadth of bitcointalk and reddit to malign the integrity of a generally well respected individual who's identity is in the public domain.

Clearly people are free to make up their minds as to the circumstances and implications of Darkcoin's launch but what your up to goes way beyond that. Calling it making "unsupported claims" would be polite.

When and if crypto ever hits the mainstream, this entire industry will look like it was "instamined" by the general public. A great deal of them already look upon it as a one huge ponzi scam by a bunch of bedroom scamsters so be prepared to be tarred by your own brush and don't expect any claims of "it was a fair launch, you had a chance to mine" to wash with them.

Post what technical details you like about who mined what when at what time in the morning and what difficulty. But the broader question of motivation is only one that can be answered by subsequent actions, i.e. like "he dumped his instamine on the market, it went to zero and the dev sloped off to a Caribbean island never to be seen again". If that had been the case then your "intention not to make unsupported claims" with regard to motivation might have a shred of credibility.

As it is, if it's a question of your word against his I sure know who's I'm taking.

[smooth]

It is not my intention to make unsupported claims.

Are you kidding ?

No.

Please identify which factual statements are not supported. They will have sources added or they will be removed.

You are entitled to disagree with my opinions. I disagree with that.

one-man campaign across the length and breadth of bitcointalk and reddit

I don't use reddit at all. Oops.

[smooth]

Look people can be unintentional scammers. I've known people like that IRL, having nothing to do with crypto at all. Maybe they don't plot and scheme to deliberately scam, but they're careless with their promises, forget to mention things, and somehow, someway, everything always ends up being a "mistake" in their favor (almost never the other way). In general you learn to recognize the difference between these people and ones who are merely spontaneous and a bit scatterbrained, and just not to deal with the former people (I happen to adore the latter, however), or at least I have learned that.

Could be confirmation bias on your part. And if it's not, then consider how unlikely it is to win a coin flip 10 times in a row, but still there's always someone who does so in the coin flip championships with 1024 participants.

Agreed. But you know what. I didn't look closely at 1024 different coin launches. I looked at one (or maybe in my life maybe a half dozen or so). Still, maybe that 10-in-row came up this time. Could happen.

[toknormal]

Please identify which factual statements are not supported.

I wasn't alluding to your "factual statements". I was alluding your "unsupported claims" with regard to motivation.

I don't use reddit at all. Oops.

No, that gets left to you co-hort who's also a conflicted devteam member. So make that a 2-man campaign.

[stealth923]

To all who have invested in Monero and Smooth - this is the quality of your dev.

He doesnt have the skill/talent to further his own coin so he spends his effort slandering other coins.....needs to out source 3rd parties to code the coin wallet and cant even begin to fix the problems that Monero has....

Take your money and run.

[smooth]

To all who have invested in Monero and Smooth - this is the quality of your dev.

He doesnt have the skill/talent to further his own coin so he spends his effort slandering other coins.....needs to out source 3rd parties to code the coin wallet and cant even begin to fix the problems that Monero has....

Take your money and run.

You know what is interesting. The only response so many of the drooling DRKtards have to criticism and skepticism is to bring up another coin. This excludes illodin and teknormal who are at least responding on substance rather than going into attack-the-messenger mode.

[smooth]

Please identify which factual statements are not supported.

I wasn't alluding to your "factual statements". I was alluding your "unsupported claims" with regard to motivation.

Those are my opinion based on the facts presented, and my decision to decline to interpret each and every fact in the manner most favorable to DRK so as to invalidate any inference of possible impropriety and get to the "it was all a mistake" conclusion. You need not share it, just as I may not share yours.

I'm asking if you dispute any of the facts.

[illodin]

Look people can be unintentional scammers. I've known people like that IRL, having nothing to do with crypto at all. Maybe they don't plot and scheme to deliberately scam, but they're careless with their promises, forget to mention things, and somehow, someway, everything always ends up being a "mistake" in their favor (almost never the other way). In general you learn to recognize the difference between these people and ones who are merely spontaneous and a bit scatterbrained, and just not to deal with the former people (I happen to adore the latter, however), or at least I have learned that.

Could be confirmation bias on your part. And if it's not, then consider how unlikely it is to win a coin flip 10 times in a row, but still there's always someone who does so in the coin flip championships with 1024 participants.

Agreed. But you know what. I didn't look closely at 1024 different coin launches. I looked at one (or maybe in my life maybe a half dozen or so). Still, maybe that 10-in-row came up this time. Could happen.

And why did you decide to cherry pick that one? Because it gained success? And because herds of trolls spamming about instamine day in day out? Now that might be the confirmation bias in action again.

[smooth]

Look people can be unintentional scammers. I've known people like that IRL, having nothing to do with crypto at all. Maybe they don't plot and scheme to deliberately scam, but they're careless with their promises, forget to mention things, and somehow, someway, everything always ends up being a "mistake" in their favor (almost never the other way). In general you learn to recognize the difference between these people and ones who are merely spontaneous and a bit scatterbrained, and just not to deal with the former people (I happen to adore the latter, however), or at least I have learned that.

Could be confirmation bias on your part. And if it's not, then consider how unlikely it is to win a coin flip 10 times in a row, but still there's always someone who does so in the coin flip championships with 1024 participants.

Agreed. But you know what. I didn't look closely at 1024 different coin launches. I looked at one (or maybe in my life maybe a half dozen or so). Still, maybe that 10-in-row came up this time. Could happen.

And why did you decide to cherry pick that one? Because it gained success? And because herds of trolls spamming about instamine day in day out? Now that might be the confirmation bias in action again.

Because the dashcoin "buyout" happened to turn into an obnoxious shitstorm from the DRK folks on a thread I was watching because they had a chain fork six months ago, and that motivated me to look a little closer and more critically at what this DRK thing was all about.

Hard to see how you get closer to random than that, but I still am not entirely discounting your suggestion. It just fairly unlikely.

Also, if people are spamming instamine day in and day out, I've never seen it, at least not until I got onto the DRK thread. It's not something I follow normally. I have seen the devtome instamine thing and yes as I said before an occasional mention of the DRK instamine but never paid much attention to that either.

[AlexGR]

b) it's not a con

With all due respect its impossible for you to know that.

Well, Evan is coding and delivering on promises. He's not scamming people with promises or actual scams of the "take the money and run" type.

If and when Evan unexpectedly and unavoidably walks away because of some "personal" matter or some other "accident", but conveninently has already dumped his coins (along with a few of his whale friends) you will be left with a worthless bag.

That might happen a year ago when DRK was one-man's project. DRK now has an entire dev team and it could expand to include more. Besides, Evan's initial commitment was for two years in the project as a full-time job and then gradually taking a more co-ordinating and presentation role...

Even the dump scenario isn't frightening. I've seen so many dumps that it's not even funny. Hacked BTCs to DRK dumps, prolonged daily dumps, fork dumps, uber-whale dump, mintpal cold wallet dump, whale-dumps etc... and price is at 0.017, while fully factoring-in the instamine.

Dumps are manageable if a coin has true value. Btw, even in the scenario where Evan dumped his coins (which I estimate in the 300k range) the long-term fundamentals for coin distribution get better and the uncertainty of a dump is reduced. The same applies for BTC if Satoshi decides to do it with BTC (and the market price of BTC also factors-in the Satoshi stash). It will have a one-off effect and then fundamentals will get even better for the long term prospects...

I'll leave you with this tidbit though. Satoshi did not solo mine, not ever:

1. Satoshi mined almost alone from 1/3/2009 to 1/25/2010 (block 0 to block 36288).

He did not. I mined during that time— so did many other people I've talked to. As you're probably aware the original software mined _very_ slowly, and contemporary hardware was slow. Heck even a fairly current machine with state of the art software can just barely do enough hashrate for difficulty 1. (and god, before more handout requests come: Bitcoin was worthless then, the software was annoying windows-gui only— I ran it in wine+vncserver, and I didn't keep my original wallet)

For consistency sake, if "Bitcoin was worthless then", wasn't the same true for Darkcoin?

To attack Darkcoin one must bend logic and apply today's facts to mid-Jan 2014 reality. A reality which was like "with a coin that spews millions, these coins are worthless" - and nobody paid serious money for these worthless instamined coins.

That's precisely why these coins had a price of 0.000025btc/DRK and not 0.017btc/DRK. It's as simple as that. It's very easy to discern hypocrisy when you see it in DRK's criticism, as the entire scam argument is based on retroactive pricing. It's like saying "wow, people were really idiots for buying a 10.000 BTC pizza" when in fact, at their time-space coordinates, these 10.000 BTCs were worthless, just as the instamined Darkcoins were.

If people could become rich by simply launching an instamined coin, they would do that. Premines, instamines, ICOs, plain scams - we've seen it all. It needs substance to have value and preserve that value in the long run and DRK has that.

[smooth]

b) it's not a con

With all due respect its impossible for you to know that.

Well, Evan is coding and delivering on promises. He's not scamming people with promises or actual scams of the "take the money and run" type.

Agree, and I never claimed otherwise.

If and when Evan unexpectedly and unavoidably walks away because of some "personal" matter or some other "accident", but conveninently has already dumped his coins (along with a few of his whale friends) you will be left with a worthless bag.

That might happen a year ago when DRK was one-man's project. DRK now has an entire dev team and it could expand to include more. Besides, Evan's initial commitment was for two years in the project as a full-time job and then gradually taking a more co-ordinating and presentation role...

Even the dump scenario isn't frightening. I've seen so many dumps that it's not even funny. Hacked BTCs to DRK dumps, prolonged daily dumps, fork dumps, uber-whale dump, mintpal cold wallet dump, whale-dumps etc... and price is at 0.017, while fully factoring-in the instamine.

Dumps are manageable if a coin has true value. Btw, even in the scenario where Evan dumped his coins (which I estimate in the 300k range) the long-term fundamentals for coin distribution get better and the uncertainty of a dump is reduced. The same applies for BTC if Satoshi decides to do it with BTC (and the market price of BTC also factors-in the Satoshi stash). It will have a one-off effect and then fundamentals will get even better for the long term prospects...

Hey like I said, nothing like this may ever happen. Everything may go great and DRK may go to the moon. I see (very) red flags, you don't, that's fair and that's why we have markets.

For consistency sake, if "Bitcoin was worthless then", wasn't the same true for Darkcoin?

No because there was a financial infrastructure to sell into if you have a plan to accumulate cheap or free coins and then pump them. For the first year or two of Bitcoin, even the concept Bitcoin could even be worth money at all was a fantasy. No exchanges, no trading, no price, no nothing. That's why people didn't even keep their mined coins. Seriously would you considering mining a coin today and not even keep it, just in case it goes up? Obviously the difference here is rather enormous.

[iCEBREAKER]

XPOST:

Please use this sig if you want to help.

"DARKCOIN" : { HYIP - scam - InstaMined: [500k/1st hr, 2MM/1st day] - Broken Privacy - Broken Security - Broken Masternodes -  Trused 3rd Paries - Stolen Name - No Fundamentals - BusFactor=1 }

// Duffield, Moncada, & Co should GO TO JAIL for fraud.

Code:

"[url=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=999886.0][color=brown]DARKCOIN[/color][/url]": { [url=http://darkcoin.guide/wp-content/uploads/2014/12/masternode_payment_plan.png]HYIP[/url] - [url=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=995710.0]scam[/url] - [url=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=999886.0]InstaMined[/url]: [url=https://i.imgur.com/dSe9cRz.jpg][500k/1st hr, 2MM/1st day][/url] - [url=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=978447.0]Broken Privacy[/url] - [url=http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/2zufu1/a_great_podcast_by_lets_talk_bitcoin_discussing/cpmvogy]Broken Security[/url] - [url=https://botbot.me/freenode/bitcoin-wizards/2014-11-27/?msg=26349785&page=4]Broken Masternodes[/url] -  [url=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=954451.msg10845049#msg10845049]Trused 3rd Paries[/url] - [url=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=678232.msg10758003;topicseen#msg10758003]Stolen Name[/url] - [url=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=421615.msg10846424#msg10846424]No Fundamentals[/url] - [url=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=421615.msg10825066#msg10825066]BusFactor=1[/url] }

// [url=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=421615.msg8585965#msg8585965]Duffield, Moncada, & Co[/url] should [url=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=999084.msg10858478#msg10858478]GO TO JAIL[/url] for [url=https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=999084.0]fraud[/url].

"You are a den of vipers and thieves. I intend to rout you out, and by the eternal God, I will rout you out."  -Andrew Jackson, 1832

If you were ripped off by the DARKCOIN scam, here are some proper authorities who may help bring the perpetrators to justice:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=999084.msg10846841#msg10846841

[nachoig]

I think there is a large color spectrum that involves "fraud" and "illegitimacy".

The classic form of scam/fraud is a scheme were people put their money and then lose it.

Does DRK have these characteristics? Are people losing money here? Or have they multiplied their bitcoins 10-100-1000x depending their point of entry?

Year to year performance (and March 23 of 2014 was over two months after the launch of Darkcoin) is something like 12-14x. Month-to-month is also exceptional (1.7x)

Just because it's profitable it doesn't mean necessarialy it's not a scam. For example, Herbalife is a typical case of a Ponzi, but more than 30 years later it's still profitable for a lot of people.

I've addressed the distribution part on the reply to Joshuar which I'll repeat here:

---
Some of us who follow DRK closely know who the DRK whales are / were and we know their stories. Personally I've talked with most of them (or if I haven't, I've read their stories). I know how they got their DRKs and this pretty much narrows down what Evan has. It's not two million and it's not one million either. If my assessment is correct it should be closer to 300k coins - some of which he probably bought for 0.25btc/10k DRK. I believe he must have suffered serious losses with the Mintpal "confiscation" and consequent dumping at market prices.

I was also there while wave, after wave, after wave of dumping was happening every day at Cryptsy near the 0.0012-0.0016 range. Every day the same bitching "ohhh the dumping". We're talking quantities that were multiple the daily production. How can the instamine be ...intact if all this dumping had occurred? But now we are >10x that price with 0.017, so, in retrospect, it was very cheap distribution.

Same with thousands of coins during the first exchange days. Quite a big volume in DRKs (not so much in BTCs) at insanely low prices (0.000020-0.000080 then 0.000180, then 0.000500, then it got to 0.002 before the c-cex hack of 330 btc which brought huge reshuffling in the market). Hacker bought DRKs up to 0.008, moved them to the poloniex and was selling/dumping them for 0.0008-0.0012... again, significant re-distribution of coins.

Then you have the May pump... you have coins that you have acquired at 0.000025 up to 0.001x and the price goes 0.028 by the massive whale, which IMO was probably a stolen-BTCs-whale playing with various altcoins and having DRK as his "pet"... so at that point, the market took over the redistribution.
---

You are trying to claim about redistribution in an anonymous coin. But even if this wasn't being an anonnymous, how could you claim about the ownership of the new addresses?

The changes have been made, indeed, but if it is of benefit to existing holders, it is also of benefit to a buyer that decides to buy NOW. If a deflationary change is made that preserves one's wealth better, or an economic incentive is placed that will increase value in the long term, why would a buyer that buys NOW, not get the same benefit that the current holder has? They will gain equally.

Ensuring that the coin does good is also ensuring the interests of the participants. This does not constitute a fraud / scam. You can argue that future buyers will buy at an increased price, but they will still buy because of that specific feature set that will give them even greater price at a later point of time.

On the other hand, if, say, you tuned a coin to be more inflationary (with current holders losing), this is also something that will impact current and future buyers 6 months from now. They will be thinking "why buy this over-inflationary coin if it can't preserve my BTCs?".

Hey, Bitcoin dropped very hard on its price, we think the problem is because we are generating more coins than the market can absorve, so, let's change the block reward system now and reduce the amount of coins per block from 25 to 20.

Or in other words: "hey, we are not liking the results, we are loosing in this way, so, let's cheat this and change the rules of the game."

Yes, but it only took 1 block to get 50 BTCs and less than a week to get 34.000 BTCs (the entire worth of DRK's instamine right now).

If DRK is a scam, the scam has an economic value. Say you are a reporter and you have to make an article on how big a scam DRK is. You'll either use Jan 2014 valuation of the 2mn DRKs, or current valuation of the 2mn DRKs.

The 2 prices you will come up is 50 BTCs (0.000025 x 2mn coins) or 34.000 BTCs (0.017 x 2mn coins).

And, again, 50 BTC was just the initial block of Bitcoin and 34.000 BTCs are like what? 4 days of solo-mining it?

What a nonsense. Let me explain one thing: I'm not against instamines at all. Serious. For example, Blackcoin was entire mined in less than 2 weeks and after this, they turned at a 100% proof-of-stake coin. But there's an important difference here: they stated this at the announcement when they putted how the reward system would work. OTOH, Darkcoin at the launch never claimed anything about this. Probably Darkcoin at the first hours launch couldn't be considered an instamine case. But what happened? They changed the reward system, so, proportionally, they generated a lot of coins in the first blocks than it should be generated. Did Bitcoin do this? No. And when this happened ( https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=823.0;all ) they fixed the exploit and the block too. Darkcoin changed the entire rewards system in order to benefit themselves.

Problems at launch happen with a lot of altcoins. IIRC even LTC has an instamine issue due to problems with the difficulty adjustment algorithm (DRK was forked by LTC btw).

One thing is an in issue about block interval caused by an issue in the difficulty adjustement (and BTW, Litecoin uses the same dificulty adjusment scheme of Bitcoin). Another completely different thing is generating more or less coins per block than it should be generated.

The problem was publicly admitted and remember that he offered an airdrop solution that was voted down from the community. Evan knew that the instamine issue will be brought up again and again and that's why he wanted it solved. It's not his fault that people voted down the airdrop. At that point Evan's responsibility and blame ends, and it becomes a community responsibility. And the community had its reasons to say no.

As for the "fraud", remember what I said earlier. If people are getting massive ROI, they aren't really "scammed". A quote that brings a smile to my face is some forum members who were writing (as they watched their DRK worth multiply) "Evan scam us some more"...  

2-3 months after the incident happened he purpose this? Also, how this would be posible at that point? Of course he wasn't being serious about that proposal and a conclusion of this was just did to create a false sensation of legitimacy to the coin wouldn't surprise me.

[AlexGR]

Just because it's profitable it doesn't mean necessarialy it's not a scam. For example, Herbalife is a typical case of a Ponzi, but more than 30 years later it's still profitable for a lot of people.

If you go the Pyramid/Ponzi route, every crypto has the same characteristic, including Bitcoin. Buyers buy and expect to sell higher to someone who will buy at a higher price, later, either due to speculative reasons, or the technology reaching a point of greater maturity and adoption.

In the same wave-length, Satoshi is a pyramid "scammer" for establishing a "pyramid" with deflationary characteristics over the longer run, coupled with scarcity, while he owns 1m coins that have made him a 9 digit net worth....

You are trying to claim about redistribution in an anonymous coin. But even if this wasn't being an anonnymous, how could you claim about the ownership of the new addresses?

DRK wasn't anonymous to begin with. Serious anonymity started being implemented by summer 2014 and even then, few people started mixing. Coin mixing is optional, not mandatory. So, in a sense, DRK can be used exactly as BTC, or it can also be used with DarkSend. It's not a prerequisite.

Hey, Bitcoin dropped very hard on its price, we think the problem is because we are generating more coins than the market can absorve, so, let's change the block reward system now and reduce the amount of coins per block from 25 to 20.

Or in other words: "hey, we are not liking the results, we are loosing in this way, so, let's cheat this and change the rules of the game."

Even if we accept the above example, who exactly is cheated? People who have the coins get better value for it. People who don't have it, gain or lose nothing as they are not invested. As *potential buyers*, and if they choose to buy, they will gain more wealth preservation from a lower-inflation model.

The only people who feel "cheated", are in the context of an informal altcoin race, where altcoin holders of other coins perceive the change in inflation of a competitor as something that negatively affects their own coin, as it becomes less preferable to the competitor with less inflation and better price-potential.

What a nonsense.

The differences in launches and parameters are known. How does that invalidate the economic impact of each "scam"? Why are you saying "nonsense"?

2mn coins x 0.000025 = 50 btc max, with the scenario of Evan solomining and retaining everything (it didn't happen like that, but anyway let's say it did). That's the furthest extent of the proposed "scam" with the economic value back then.

And again, 50 btc was just the first BTC block.

2-3 months after the incident happened he purpose this? Also, how this would be posible at that point? Of course he wasn't being serious about that proposal and a conclusion of this was just did to create a false sensation of legitimacy to the coin wouldn't surprise me.

Nobody would be happy anyway, so it's useless to discuss any of this.

If it wasn't the instamine, it would be "masternodes", it would be the economic incentives, it would be the closed source and the NSA "backdoors" (as it was for quite a while) and other $hit like that.

The reality is that some people are butthurt because they have some other coin that like to do well, but it typically doesn't and thus they are anxiously trying to troll DRK to somehow bring it down in their twisted logic. This isn't working (because the FUD or legitimate criticism they are using is already priced-in) and they get even crazier, and then they troll harder etc etc.

[Joshuar]

If you classify premined coins as "scams", then instamined coins like drk who've had their block reward and coin supply drastically changed after a huge amount of coins were emitted at launch, should be in the same category. It's basically the same thing honestly.