Quote from: dooglus on November 13, 2015, 06:41:14 PM

Quote from: nicolaennio on November 13, 2015, 07:29:27 AM

I am trying to follow the discussion. Some opinions that I have (disclaimers: I own clams held in JD):

- Are CLAM holders concerned about the whale digger? I think they shouldn't. It's not a surprising fact that a whale digger arrived and the staking of clams is proceeding quite quickly, at least at the same rate as the whale is digging (even though nobody know why).

In so far as the digger is dumping and forcing the price down, yes.

I'm not sure you meant "staking" there, since it doesn't make much sense. Staking happens once per minute, by design, whoever is digging, dumping, or whatever else.

Quote from: nicolaennio on November 13, 2015, 07:29:27 AM

- Are CLAM holders concerned about the "low" price? I hope nobody here really thinks to be able to modify the price (like 'pumping' it) with some smart decision about the CLAM protocol, the market will always self-correct and these kind of bubbles are common to any cryptocoin anyway.

I really do think that if the rules were changed to stop new CLAMs being dug up then there would be less supply, more demand, and an increase in price. I'm surprised you don't. As I understand it, nobody is claiming that stopping the digging wouldn't cause the price to rise. The objection is only whether it is fair to do such a thing.

Quote from: nicolaennio on November 13, 2015, 07:29:27 AM

- Are CLAM holders concerned about future diggings? Since the rate of staking new coins is quite high, in two or three years new dug wallets *should* be irrelevant to the overall economy.

I think the concern is that we don't have two or three years. If the price continues dropping for another year will anyone still be interested in the coin? There are hundreds if not thousands of dead altcoins out there which would be staking nicely if only anyone could be bothered to still have the wallet running.

Quote from: nicolaennio on November 13, 2015, 07:29:27 AM

I personally think that currently we have another more important problem: staking is going very fast (we already have more staked coins than dug ones)

This seems to be a common misconception:

"Staking is like inflation, and inflation is bad"

We feel that inflation is bad, because in the fiat world we put $1000 in a savings account, earn 2% interest on it, but in the mean time the money supply has been inflated 10% by quantitative easing. Our $1002 now has less buying power than it had before. It is a smaller percentage of the total money supply.

This is even true with PoW coins like DogeCoin. Miners get to earn block rewards forever. We buy a million DOGE, save it, and every day our million DOGE represents a smaller and smaller percentage of the money supply.

However! For PoS coins this isn't the case. We buy 1000 CLAMs, and it's 0.1% of the 1 million total money supply, say. If there's no digging, and only staking, then a year later another 500k CLAMs have been staked. But we have staked 500 of that 500k, since we are 0.1% of the staking weight. So now we have 1500 of the 1.5 million supply, and still have 0.1% of the total money supply. Sure, assuming a constant market cap the price will have decreased by 50%, but our holdings have increased by 50% too, so our net worth in CLAM has remained constant.

In this way staking is NOT the same as the inflation we see in USD, BTC, or DOGE, since the newly created coins are shared out to existing holders in proportion to their holdings.

Quote from: nicolaennio on November 13, 2015, 07:29:27 AM

and it seems to push owners to hoard CLAMS and hold them indefinitely.

but it shouldn't. Staking is "running to stay still". The only people you will be overtaking are those who aren't running (staking). I mean, staking isn't some magic wealth creation system. If everyone is staking, where does all that extra value come from? It doesn't. It increases the money supply while decreasing the per-unit value of that supply.

It's not value destruction as long as the economy is growing with the money supply, but exactly what economy is there underneath CLAM? I suppose a couple gambling sites could constitute an economy in the broadest measure of the word, but unless those sites grow their gambling base at the same rate as CLAM inflation, isn't inflation devaluing the coin? Perhaps CLAMs' ultimate weakness is its low utility. You just can't do much with it. Unless a (more robust) economy springs up around the coin, the current inflation rate is bound to devalue it relative to other currencies.