The Checkpoint Controversy Is Caused By A Huge Misunderstanding
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First, let’s debunk the most common misconception. There is no such thing as a tainted, fake, rogue, scam coin. The cryptocoin model by definition assumes everyone is a liar. The mining process is a race between liars. The one thing that makes cryptocoins work is that most people are actually trying to use it honestly and use the services and products they buy. It is easier to be honest in the cryptocoin universe than it is to be a liar, because the race is so widely distributed.
The controversy comes from the idea that the goal is to make sure every coin generated is a true and valid coin. This is precisely what the cryptocoin model tries to avoid. Cryptocoin systems are ledgers of transactions. Coin balances are not stored there, they are calculated. We are not trying to prove every coin as that would recreate the bureaucracy of the real world fiat system when it is not necessary. As long as there’s plenty of momentum and fraud is difficult, coins are usable.
Here’s the thing to remember: As soon as a coin is transferred from an attacker to a random buyer, that coin is a valid coin. The danger is not in the coin, but in the capabilities the attacker possesses to do damage to a market. Worrying about fake coins is a wild goose chase. It’s the transactions that we should care about. It’s the temporary power of the attacker that we should worry about. Once the attacker has sold the coins the attacker is powerless and must repeat the attack to cause further damage.
There is the issue of chain manipulation, but again that’s where checkpoints can help.
If we can stop thinking that cryptocoins are the same as fiat, we’ll stop hyperventilating.
What’s really needed is for every major operation on the chain to be mined, not just the transactions.
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i think people aren’t exactly clear on “what” damages a market.
I think things really fall into these groupings…
Delay in transactions?
Missing coins?
Waste of hash power?
Theft?
Flood of coins onto market?
Control?
Propaganda?Etc…(Please add other generalist methods of crypto problems not listed)
each of those could be labeled into either a confidence problem, manipulation problem, or technical problem. Also any combination of those.
These are really the basic problems that we are consistently trying to address. -
[quote name=“jeremiel” post=“23681” timestamp=“1375198560”]
i think people aren’t exactly clear on “what” damages a market.I think things really fall into these groupings…
Delay in transactions?
Missing coins?
Waste of hash power?
Theft?
Flood of coins onto market?
Control?
Propaganda?Etc…(Please add other generalist methods of crypto problems not listed)
each of those could be labeled into either a confidence problem, manipulation problem, or technical problem. Also any combination of those.
These are really the basic problems that we are consistently trying to address.
[/quote]There’s only ONE grouping that defines the price of a coin: Perception.
Everything you just listed is all tied to perception. Perception drives opinion, and opinion drives buy and sell orders. You change the public’s perception about a coin, you’ll see a change in it’s price. NOTHING else matters. You can have the most amazing services in the world, and your coin can be truly unique and gifted, and if people have the perception that it’s schlock, it’s price will reflect that.
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From the feedback Justabit got in NYC, the use of any features which will stabilise the coin such as this temporary checkpointing, will only make the perception more positive, especially from merchants and investors.
The price has been rising steadily to reflect this.
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[quote name=“iawgoM” post=“24091” timestamp=“1375424178”]
[quote author=Kevlar link=topic=3070.msg24090#msg24090 date=1375424009]
There’s only ONE grouping that defines the price of a coin: Perception.Everything you just listed is all tied to perception. Perception drives opinion, and opinion drives buy and sell orders. You change the public’s perception about a coin, you’ll see a change in it’s price. NOTHING else matters. You can have the most amazing services in the world, and your coin can be truly unique and gifted, and if people have the perception that it’s schlock, it’s price will reflect that.
[/quote]I’ve noticed that you are expert in those things last few days… I hope you got rich.
[/quote]My bot turns a tidy profit after exchange fees. I’ve about tripled my portfolio in the month of July… which is to say I have 6 BTC instead of 2. I wouldn’t call that rich though.
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[quote name=“iawgoM” post=“24107” timestamp=“1375437323”]
[quote author=Kevlar link=topic=3070.msg24097#msg24097 date=1375429971]
[quote author=iawgoM link=topic=3070.msg24091#msg24091 date=1375424178]
[quote author=Kevlar link=topic=3070.msg24090#msg24090 date=1375424009]
There’s only ONE grouping that defines the price of a coin: Perception.Everything you just listed is all tied to perception. Perception drives opinion, and opinion drives buy and sell orders. You change the public’s perception about a coin, you’ll see a change in it’s price. NOTHING else matters. You can have the most amazing services in the world, and your coin can be truly unique and gifted, and if people have the perception that it’s schlock, it’s price will reflect that.
[/quote]I’ve noticed that you are expert in those things last few days… I hope you got rich.
[/quote]My bot turns a tidy profit after exchange fees. I’ve about tripled my portfolio in the month of July… which is to say I have 6 BTC instead of 2. I wouldn’t call that rich though.
[/quote]Yes, your bot was first nicely set-up, and then it was waiting for the results of your tactics that you described above - your heavy activism that lasted for couple of days all over this forum, raising millions of questions, suspicions, insecurities etc etc. That’s exactly what you wanted to do - change perception about the coin.
Unfortunately I’m one of idiots who you managed to convince to sell - few hours before FTC went dramatically up. That costed me 150US$. After that, you kept low profile, and now you come back here and rub it to our faces and play dumb even if you know what you have done, and why I made this comment that you are expert in those things.
Good luck in politics.
[/quote]Hey chief, I’ve been here since the beginning. I stand by my opinions and I haven’t been laying low, I’ve been proposing solutions for the 51% attack problem in the other forum posts. I don’t think you’re an idiot for selling, but listening to people on the internet is a dangerous sport, especially when it’s related to price speculation.
If you lost $150, you made a bad trade, and you have only yourself to blame for accepting the loss when you bought the coins for a price you thought was fair at the time instead of holding out for profit. I can’t possibly be held responsible for your decision making process, and I stand by my opinions and the reasoning behind them. I’m also human, I can’t accurately predict the future, and I make no claims or warranty of the ability to do so. Do I want the price of my currency to go down? Hell no. I want my portfolio to increase in value! Do I profit whenever a coin dips and then rises again? Yep. And you would too, if you knew how.
I take it this is your first time at the rodeo, so I’m gonna give you a freebie here: Bots own the marketplace because they are ruthlessly efficient and don’t pay any attention to speculation. In fact they thrive on it because it causes predictable movements in the price, and they rely on people like you who do listen to the speculation to determined your values. If you’re NOT a bot, and you want to trade effectively, you have to think like a bot does, and usually that means [i]going against the trend[/i], buying when it heads down, and selling when it goes up… not the other way around as you seem to have done. You have to pick a winner and hold onto it for it’s fundamentals and ride that through thick and thin, doubling your position at half the cost and holding on to it when it shoots up due to some minor announcement. Plan your trade ahead of time. Pick your price, and your profit, and, if you don’t have the stomach for it your stop loss, and trade when the prices reaches your targets. Plan your trade, and then trade your plan. I assure you this is what the pros do, and they don’t listen to speculation when placing buy/sell orders: they consider it when making their trading plan, and they plan ahead knowing going in exactly what they will gain or lose, and once they’re satisfied with the plan, they trade the plan, having already accepted the possible outcomes. Emotional trading just leads to hurt emotions.
I hope your trades in the future are more profitable, and that this particular lesson wasn’t too terribly tragic on your overall portfolio. Best of luck!
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[quote name=“iawgoM” post=“24116” timestamp=“1375442487”]
All that you wrote doesn’t deny the fact that you were doing your best trying to scare everyone - it was so close to yelling “Everything if falling apart, UNOCS is megafail, new features that you are planning are totally wrong, JustaBit has left us, sell it people, run for your lives!”. To be honest, many people here were wondering what the hell are you doing? In the end - it’s perfectly clear what you were doing. Manipulating. If that was not your intention - lots of your criticism and suggestions could be discussed in private with devs. To keep an open to discussion community is one thing, but to publicly cause mass hysteria with purpose to make waves in the market and profit from them - that’s another thing.No more discussions with you. Anthying that you write, try to learn a newbie how not to trade etc. won’t change the fact that you are profithunter that allows himself to play dirty.
Ah yes, this discussion has became personal. I believe some of moderators might want to lock it before I start calling you names you actually deserve.
[/quote]There’s no playing dirty here. I said I stand by my opinions and the reasoning associated with them. If the reasoning was unsound, maybe the guy wouldn’t have listened. The point is it IS reasonable, and perfectly valid at that. You had a chance to stand up and disagree with your own ability to reason, tackling the salient points head on with contrary opinions and well reasoned argument for why I was wrong, but I didn’t see you doing that. I won’t be held responsible for people’s bad trading decisions, and I’ll sleep just fine at night knowing that the trades my bot makes are because people on the other side of the trade have decided to sell their coins for their own reasons. If I can convince them to do so at a price that benefits me, you better believe I’m gonna make that trade, [b][u][i]AND SO DO YOU EVERYTIME YOU BUY A COIN FOR CHEAP AND SELL IT FOR MORE[/i][/u][/b] so don’t pretend you’re holding crypto-currencies because you think it’s good for the environment and makes people happy and rainbows and unicorns. It’s MONEY. Playing dirty is tricking someone into giving it up or stealing it from them. What I did was speculate on the future of the price, and I was wrong. That’s not manipulation, that’s telling it like it is and not playing into the group-think cheerleader mentality.
The truth is I was already WAY long on FTC, so I was losing my shirt along with everyone else, so I wasn’t about to start buying more, and I’ve said in other posts that we should buy them all back when they’re cheap again. I was as surprised as anyone at the sudden spike and my bot locked in my profits all the way up. This is just good trading skills, and clearly my alleged trolling has had the opposite effect since the price is on the rise. If a newb gets itchy trigger finger because I say the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes, that hardly qualifies me as a playing dirty, especially when the emperor REALLY ISN’T wearing any clothes.
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[quote name=“iawgoM” post=“24125” timestamp=“1375445333”]
[quote author=Kevlar link=topic=3070.msg24120#msg24120 date=1375444442]
If I can convince them to do so at a price that benefits me, you better believe I’m gonna make that trade.
[/quote]Jackpot! Mission accomplished.
[/quote]Don’t quote me out of context. It’s just bad form.
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[quote name=“MrFeathers” post=“24135” timestamp=“1375450800”]
Can we stop the OT attacks in this thread or can you two start a new thread somewhere? I am really interested in learning more about advanced checkpointing and its long term impact on feathercoin. Unfortunately, only the first couple posts are relevant to these issues and I do not want this thread to get locked because I want to hear more about the checkpoint controversy, possible centralization, possible vulnerabilities etc.Thanks :)
[/quote] -
Come on guys, suck it up and move on. For the record Kevlar’s trading advice is spot on. I use the same strategy and it’s served me well. Formulate your plan before hand and stick to it. Everytime I “think” I’m smarter than my plan and don’t obey it, I lose money.
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Oh, come on, wes. Underhanded attacks are really unnecessary, especially from someone who is supposed to be providing some leadership.
The point of cryptocurrencies is that no one is to be trusted. Lack of trust is what everything is centered around. That’s why I take issue with ACP. It requires unverifiable trust, which is totally contrary to everything Bitcoin was built around.
When it comes to my money and valuables, I don’t trust anyone else. I don’t trust you or Bushstar or Kevlar. I only trust me.
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[quote name=“wesphily” post=“24149” timestamp=“1375454101”]
I think what they don’t like is the fact that the trollbox is being brought to Feathercoin similar to how it is brought to other forums. People are not sure what to do since this is new to our community. People who know this is new are taking advantage of it. It is unfortunate.
[/quote]If we constantly talk about ftc in the trollbox it makes sense for it fall back here. Two way street.
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You can trust whoever you want, but advising other people to trust someone else with their valuables is incredibly bad advice. That’s how we got into the monetary position we’re in right now with central banks and bailouts and inflation. We’re trying to solve those problems, not recreate them with a different coat of paint.
Off topic sidebar:
Taking pop shots at valuable members of this community is bad form. You may not like everyone here or trust them (I certainly have members I dislike), but you are not high sultan and are still subject to the [url=http://forum.feathercoin.com/index.php?topic=466.0]forum code of conduct[/url], as are the rest of us. I want to see this community remain positive and productive, even in the face of major disagreements. I hope you do as well. -
[quote name=“Aldanga” post=“24203” timestamp=“1375464221”]
You can trust whoever you want, but advising other people to trust someone else with their valuables is incredibly bad advice. That’s how we got into the monetary position we’re in right now with central banks and bailouts and inflation. We’re trying to solve those problems, not recreate them with a different coat of paint.Off topic sidebar:
Taking pop shots at valuable members of this community is bad form. You may not like everyone here or trust them (I certainly have members I dislike), but you are not high sultan and are still subject to the [url=http://forum.feathercoin.com/index.php?topic=466.0]forum code of conduct[/url], as are the rest of us. I want to see this community remain positive and productive, even in the face of major disagreements. I hope you do as well.
[/quote][img]http://theurbantiger.blog.com/files/2012/07/borat-thumbs-up.jpg[/img]
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+1
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[quote name=“wesphily” post=“24238” timestamp=“1375474924”]
I purposely mentioned no names.You are saying you don’t trust anybody.
I’m am saying I don’t trust people who don’t trust Bushstar.
How are we different. Are we both taking shots at people?
[/quote]
Your implication was obvious to any one with a shred of sense. Such behavior is unbecoming of anyone who claims to be a leader.Are you interested in actually having a discussion or do you just intend to keep circling with veiled accusations against community members? I, for one, would like to continue the discussion on ACP.
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[quote name=“Aldanga” post=“24242” timestamp=“1375475583”]
[quote author=wesphily link=topic=3070.msg24238#msg24238 date=1375474924]
I purposely mentioned no names.You are saying you don’t trust anybody.
I’m am saying I don’t trust people who don’t trust Bushstar.
How are we different. Are we both taking shots at people?
[/quote]
Your implication was obvious to any one with a shred of sense. Such behavior is unbecoming of anyone who claims to be a leader.Are you interested in actually having a discussion or do you just intend to keep circling with veiled accusations against community members? I, for one, would like to continue the discussion on ACP.
[/quote]Ladies, ladies! You’re both pretty!
Seriously, there’s no need for all this. A small-timer got burnt on a bad trade, and I’m the devil in disguise because I thought the price would follow the perception, and not the market manipulation. Can we all please move on with our collective lives now that that’s out in the open?
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[quote name=“Kevlar” post=“24276” timestamp=“1375481844”]
[quote author=Aldanga link=topic=3070.msg24242#msg24242 date=1375475583]
[quote author=wesphily link=topic=3070.msg24238#msg24238 date=1375474924]
I purposely mentioned no names.You are saying you don’t trust anybody.
I’m am saying I don’t trust people who don’t trust Bushstar.
How are we different. Are we both taking shots at people?
[/quote]
Your implication was obvious to any one with a shred of sense. Such behavior is unbecoming of anyone who claims to be a leader.Are you interested in actually having a discussion or do you just intend to keep circling with veiled accusations against community members? I, for one, would like to continue the discussion on ACP.
[/quote]Ladies, ladies! You’re both pretty!
Seriously, there’s no need for all this. A small-timer got burnt on a bad trade, and I’m the devil in disguise because I thought the price would follow the perception, and not the market manipulation. Can we all please move on with our collective lives now that that’s out in the open?
[/quote]I was told you were the second coming of the Fontas? It’s not true? :'(
