Quote from: Cheesus on August 25, 2014, 10:29:30 AM

The Monero XMR Scam Uncovered

Monero is being pushed very hard everywhere in this forum. XMR supporters are radically aggressive appearing in each and every single thread, flooding the discussions, and FUDing all the coins that appear on their way. The crypto community is already dead tired of the Monero shill accounts unprecedented activity.

proof

proof

proof

I'm not saying that promoting your coin is illegal activity by itself. After all, the altcoin market is 99.9% about shouting louder than everyone else. PR usually helps get it going until it suddenly burns itself out (like with Doge). However, I came across a number of stinky facts that may prove that Monero is a completely artificial bubble.

How it looks like

If you've been reading the forum thoroughly for the last months, you might have noticed a couple of things about XMR.

You might have an impression that there are a lot of XMR supporters.
You might have an impression that the trade volume is very high.
You might have an impression that the developers are active.

You might also have an impression that something is very weird about this raw newborn coin.

Most likely because every single thing you see about XMR looks artificial.

The Hypotheses

H1. Monero's posting activity is artificial
H2. Monero's trades volumes are artificial
H3. Monero's developers are not capable of developing the coin

If all of the three hypotheses hold, then I'd say that Monero is scam and/or bubble. However, let the research be fair.

H1. Monero's posting activity is artificial

Recently, I stumbled upon a thread where Spoetnik points to a WTB hero member account thread started by Come-from-Above.

Here's the thread by Come-from-Above where he claims that he is paying 5-10 BTC for Sr. Member and Hero Member accounts. And apparently he needs a substantial number of such accounts.
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=728902.0

Think about it for a moment. Why one need to buy old accounts? Hero Members make greater sense of community approval then the Newbies. If someone so respected is claiming something, plenty of users are likely to believe him. And of course,

Quote

these accs are NOT used for bad causes, just my opinions and forum presences Smiley

Of course, because you're buying Hero Members to post on flood threads about TV shows, right?
Nope. You are not.

1.1. Who is the beneficiary of the bought accounts?

Let's have a look at Come-from-Above's posting activity. There is a number of the things that might point us to Monero.

proof, mirror

Other evidence:
proof, mirror
proof, mirror (please, check out the mirror link and notice that the original post has been changed to "Monero TO THE STARS". Is someone competing with Doge's "to the moon?")
proof, mirror (how sweet!)
proof, mirror
proof, mirror

He keeps on buying large Monero sizes even when the price is stagnant. Come-from-Above has even started a new thread:

proof, mirror

1.2. How much is the fish? A weird fact

Come-from-Above has donated 5000 XMR for the XMR GUI wallet.

proof, mirror

Based on XMR and BTC prices on July 19,
5000 XMR = 5000 * 0.00455 = 22.75 BTC
5000 XMR = 22.75 * 627 = $14,624

Can you even imagine somebody wanting the GUI wallet so badly that he donates $14,000? For an already available totally free software? Which runs on .NET and cannot be used without an ugly extension? While the market price of such a development would be way beyond $1,000, more like 1 BTC?

I'm not even sure which of the two explanations is worse. Try answering yourself:
Case 1: a whale donating $14k to a XMR wallet developer and buying hero accounts
Case 2: a shill account pretending to have donated $14k and buying hero accounts

As a side note, the GUI wallet developer Jojatekok has quite an interesting activity history. He's commenting only on XMR thread and is mainly supporting his wallet only. Doesn't he look more like a maintainer of GUI thread to help conceal that all GUI wallets are being developed by the core team with no 3rd party developers around the coin? I do not want to seem too obsessed with the conspiracy theories, but those things just don't add up.

1.3. Compromised accs

This section is in progress

Suspect 1

Searching for compromised accounts requires a lot of time and effort but there is clear evidence already. Consider this user: Joshuar. Once he used to hate XMR:

proof, mirror

Another evidence:
proof, mirror

Then suddenly he's in the WTB accs thread:

proof, mirror

And then he's all for Monero:

proof, mirror

proof, mirror

Suspect 2

When I first saw saddambitcoin on forum, I thought he's goddamn hero member so he should be trustworthy. Apparently, he isn't.

Check out his posts in 2013. They are all so lame you would immediately recognize the account being maintained for sale.

Then suddenly, after 4 months of being absent (since December 2013 by the way) he re-appears with the different writing style and all for Monero:

Coincidence?

Other suspects

There has been a remarkable "coming-out" that claims that certain XMR accounts were run by the bot maintainers. The person claims that such users as surfer43, smooth, mickey_miner, and novag were used by the ghost writers.

proof, mirror

However, this might well be FUD.

If you happen to know any other XMR troll or sold account, share it with the community.

1.4 An interesting observation

If you were reading the recent thread where XMR trolls are accusing Bytecoin/CryptoNote, you might agree with the post below. Monero bots somehow manage to turn any discussion into the XMR PR machine:

proof

Implications

That being said, Monero has a number of shady supporters including purchased hero accounts and shill writers. Next time you see a hero member, a senior member, or even a junior member that is posting for Monero, keep in mind that the account may actually be bought or maintained by an outsourced pr manager.

Hypothesis 1 is accepted. Monero's posting activity is likely to be largely artificial.

H2. Monero's trade volumes are artificial

Fact one large daily emission
Monero is emitted at the rate of roughly 22,000 XMR/day at the moment. At the time of writing this is roughly 78 BTC or $40,000.

Take a look at the XMR emission chart (depicted as "Bitmonero"). The emission rate is much higher than Bitcoin's or pretty much any other PoW altcoin.

proof, mirror

Fact two botnets
Monero is largely botnet mined and that has been confirmed on a number of occasions (even by the XMR devs themselves):

1. A 4 MHash/sec botnet confirmed (you may wish to read several pages starting with the post below, as there are some speculations on botnet mining economy):

proof, mirror

2. Two other botnet operators have been confirmed. How many botnets do those operators have? What is their hash rate? Nobody knows.

proof, mirror

3. What's more, there is an infamous XMR silent miner issue (used as a botnet software that runs on the vulnerable PCs):
XMR silent miner is being actively sold for $10

4. Monero Stealth miner affecting PCs already in June 2014 (mirror)

5. Here's a link to the virus base with this trojan (link from the thread above): https://www.virustotal.com/en/file/e2e6b6938879142c4e35542b5fe8d3eeec7bf9e682f915213fda009097c3878e/analysis/1401909211/

6. Another report on the issue on Reddit. Check this comment.

Fact three whale support
rpietila is currently a Monero whale. Being a bitcoin millionaire he's capable of buying out large stakes of XMR that are dumped on the market. I'm not going to mirror those links, as everyone knows that rpietila is a whale and supports XMR. E.g.: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=702140

Fact four natural trend is declining
During the last 4 months that have passed since Monero launch, the price has never broken the peak. It simply fails to grow in spite of all the PR hype and fake forum activity. Of course, there are periods of growth, but have a look at the historic chart:

Below the chart you may see the trade volumes. When XMR is being traded as usual at 100 BTC volume (standard XMR market behavior), the price gradually declines. The explanation for that is fairly simple (go back to facts #1 and #2). The botnet owners are slowly dumping their coins and drive XMR market down.

Secondly, notice that upward trend coincides with the significant spikes in volume (up to 300 BTC and more). Recheck it with #1 and #3. As the natural demand can in no way match the botnet supply, someone has to step in from time to time to help get it going further. This is most likely the whale buying large XMR sizes out. Alternatively, the XMR trade volume spikes may also be someone on the core team trying to sustain the price.

Implications

That being said, XMR is likely to be mined mostly by the botnets at the rate that is not justified by the demand. Botnet owners dump the coin as it is not showing any stable growth. That's it folks, the 78 BTC of daily trades come simply from the daily emission rate being pushed to the market. No surprise, why the price is generally going down.

Why is that so? CryptoNote has created new ways for the botnet owners to profit. Monero was largely botnet mined from the inception, so the main stakeholders are basically botnet operators. How do you make sure your profits are secure? You need someone buying out those daily volumes. There are two simple ways to ensure that:

1. Artificial PR/hype through purchased hero accounts.
2. Secure yourself a whale.

This has serious implications and may actually link us back to H1 on fake marketing/PR hype. Botnet owners are securing their profits by purchasing accounts and hiring shills. However, everything they do is for just one particular purpose: profit from their botnet mined coin. They make you feel that XMR is largely supported so that you give your money to them.

It's hard to say whether XMR core team is involved. Of course, they would deny any potential connection. However, I wonder why they're not very interested with botnets and fake accounts and pretend that nothing weird is going on.

Another point is that I'm not sure why such a prominent investor and cryptocurrency activist as rpietila supports the coin with such serious issues. I assume that he was somehow tricked into believing that XMR has the future. It might also be the case that core developers are not seeing the whole picture themselces and honestly believe that Monero is actually supported by a large number of people who are willing to buy more and more Monero. However, the reality is that all these people are dead wrong. Monero is being dominated by botnet owners; everything they do with the black PR techniques is to fuel its scam growth. My last thought might be a bit brave, but could rpietila's money be the actual target of this scam scheme?

Don't worry, XMR will be deep mined in half a year. When the emission declines to 20 BTC per day, the botnet interest will disappear naturally. After they choose another victim, the Monero's black PR hype will disappear and the coin will fall down.

If you're not convinced, you may continue giving your USD to botnet owners in exchange of worthless XMR.

Hypothesis 2 is accepted. Monero's trades are artificial.

H3. Monero's developers are not capable of developing the coin

The XMR team in their missives report a lot of work being done. However, we haven't seen any meaningful update for the last several months. Of course, the work on GUI wallet is in progress, buy GUI is not related to the underlying protocol, which XMR copied form Bytecoin and apparently cannot maintain any further.

Evidence 1 bullshit Monero missives

Have a glance at the compilation of XMR missives. How many of them are meaningful? The problem is that XMR devs are good at creating the illusion of development while not touching any underlying module (unlike Bytecoin which e.g. implemented multisigs and reworked so many code lines in a month that GitHub cannot even show the diff).

Jun 2nd - nothing special
Jun 10th - determenistic wallet is a nice usability improvement to add but it has nothing to do with the protocol
Jun 18th - nothing special
Jun 27th - transaction splitting is somewhat close to the hardcore work
July 6th nothing at all
July 20th nothing special
July 23rd nothing special
August 3rd nothing special
August 10th nothing special
August 16th nothing special

The truth is, among all the well-promoted XMR "development" activities, they've only managed so far to release transaction splitting and deterministic wallet. Everything else you see is either an irrelevant micro change or "a work in progress", which has never been released. It's easy to make an illusion of hardwork development going on, but the fact is XMR developers are not delivering.

Take i2p integration as an example:

The original blog post about "XMR partnership with i2p" has even been removed from the i2p project's blog. It is quoted in fluffypony's post, but cannot be found on the i2p website: fluffypony bragging (mirror), the blog post has been deleted

This situation is the best evidence. XMR devs are incompetent. Their "partnership" with i2p was yet another hype.

Evidence 2 - bugs

XMR devs roll out an undergraduate level C++ bug that might end up with users' money being lost:

proof, mirror
proof, mirror

Evidence 3 - copy&paste

XMR devs used to copy&paste code from other repositories (mostly, Bytecoin & Boolberry) without attribution.
Here is a pastebin of the Reddit post deleted from XMR subreddit.

Quote

   Monero XMR devs are copycats

   Bytecoin GitHub commit (5/15/2014): https://github.com/amjuarez/bytecoin/commit/baaa3484271e11398790bbf01ee4d7b19c68e3bb#diff-74021cb60bde0670646eb96a91e4443cR707

   Monero GitHub commit (5/25/2014):https://github.com/monero-project/bitmonero/commit/3a3a8176782a4fa75b0607fba0393c9d4a1746be#diff-74021cb60bde0670646eb96a91e4443cR707


   After that Monero guys made a huuuuge PR company "Look what we have done to technology! We've fixed the bug while BCN devs haven't!".
   Congrats! You guys are so good at copy and paste! And you are super-pro at stealing ideas and passing them off as your own (from the very beginning of BitMonero, lol)


   I just want all MRO fans/investors to know about it.

XMR copies the code from BCN, but trolls to death anyone who does the same to their code. One particular case is out of all proportions. Here XMR devs blame XDN devs for breaking the copyright. However, it turns out that the code in question was originally developed by BCN and taken by XMR without attribution.

proof, mirror

Evidence 4 unable to even launch Monero

You may not know it kids, but Monero was originally launched as Bitmonero on April 18th by thankful_for_today: the original thread (mirror).

What happened next is a bit of a mystery as thankful_for_today was absent for a couple of days only to find out that Bitmonero was taken over by the "community" and renamed to Monero. This implies that current XMR devs were even unable to launch their coin, which forced them to hijack the website and the github. They have just decided to exclude thankful_for_today from the team and that is how Monero was born.

That's it. The XMR core team knows the CryptoNote protocol that bad they couldn't even launch Bytecoin's fork themselves.

Evidence 5 - external opinions

All of this might well be the reason why the observers believe that XMR devs are incompetent

Help us get more unbiased opinions on XMR devs' capabilities

Implications

The XMR devs are not capable of maintaining their coin as they simply do not grasp CryptoNote tech in full. Bytecoin developers are the ones who created it and keep contributing. Having such an enemy is very scary if you cannot develop the protocol yourself. And that is why XMR bagholders are so cruel to both Bytecoin and CryptoNote. They don't need such an enemy, they aim to discredit it. No matter what it takes.

If we go back to H1 & H2, we can conclude that everything you see about Monero is fake. The Monero developers are not able to maintain and update the coin they've hijacked from thankful_for_today. In the meantime, botnet owners secure their profits by promoting XMR through purchased accounts, black PR, and fake trades. They continue to lure you into investing into their botnet mined currency so that they can profit.

There is no way to tell whether XMR developers are related to the botnet owners, but the reality is that each time you invest your money into XMR you are giving it away to the botnet owners.

Hypothesis 3 is accepted. Monero devs are not capable of Monero development (at least as of now).

Conclusions & TL-DR

1. Monero is largely botnet mined.
2. The trade volume on the exchanges is artificial and is mostly created by the botnet owners that are constantly selling the coin to those who has fell into their fake PR hype. Occasionally the exchange rate is saved by the XMR whale. Fundamentally, XMR is doomed to have a negative trend.
3. The PR activity on this forum is fake. The Monero community is much smaller than XMR shills pretend it to be. There are a lot of purchased hero and senior member accounts and relentless black PR activities. Everything is aimed at making you part with your money to supporting botnet operators by investing in XMR.
4. XMR devs cannot make any significant updates/improvements to the CryptoNote protocol and are doomed to stick to PR hype only while helping the botnets profit.

Based on the evidence above you are free to make your own conclusions.

If you manage to read the whole post, you will understand that XMR is a scam coin that you should avoid. There are no fundamentals for it to grow and develop and we're going to see XMR value go down to zero in the next half a year. Hopefully, afterwards this forum will finally have a break from their shills.

When will you publicly ask for forgiveness?
Are you brave enough to admit you were wrong all the way?