Quote from: Peter R on May 25, 2014, 06:07:58 PM

Darkcoin and Privacy

Privacy has always been important to the bitcoin community and perhaps it was only a matter of time before this narrative was exploited. Darkcoin is the first example of this: it is a bitcoin-derived coin that uses master nodes to create giant coinjoin transactions, thereby obscuring the link between sender and receiver.

Darkcoin has seen enormous growth with a market cap exceeded by only Bitcoin and Litecoin. This is the power of narrative. But Darkcoin was illegitimately insta-mined, has closed-source binaries, is not technologically innovative, and has a volatility-enhancing block reward equation¹. In fact, since Darkcoin transactions are essentially bitcoin transactions with forced coinjoin, I dont see why wallets like Darkwallet cant achieve similar benefits with little of the drawbacks. I predict Darkcoin will collapse, some will call it a scam, and others will say they shouldn't have invested in something they didn't understand.

But instead of seeing the protocol-enforced privacy narrative as narrative, people might look for a more technically-sound alternative to Darkcoin and without the insta-mine black eye.

Peter R, you seem to be Darkcoin hater. I wonder why. Maybe because you invested in Monero and Darkcoin is its direct competitor? Or you simply missed the DRK train? The information you give is based mostly on rumors that FUDsters gladly spread around.

1. Insta-mine: http://wiki.darkcoin.eu/wiki/FAQ#Was_Darkcoin_Instamined.3F
2. Darkcoin is opensourced. Closed source is Darksend part for the development period only. http://wiki.darkcoin.eu/wiki/FAQ#Is_DarkSend_open_source.3F
3. Your link to Darkcoin whitepaper proves it is technologically innovative.
4. Block reward system (Dark Gravity Well) is enhanced version of Kimoto Gravity Well destined to protect the coin from multipools and miners hopping.
5. Darksend is not classical coinjoin. The main difference is that darksend is decentralized. Discussion here: https://darkcointalk.org/threads/coinjoin-in-bitcoin-and-darksend.560/ Also it is not forced, just turned on by default.

Every your statement can be disproved.

I would also like to quote AlexGR post here as it is going to be removed from the original rpietila's thread.

Quote from: AlexGR on May 25, 2014, 03:51:28 AM

Quote from: darlidada on May 25, 2014, 03:24:48 AM

You tell me to respect the host, but it is you that has no respect Rpetila and his readers: instead of being straightforward and nuanced at the beginning of this thread, you came in here trying to promote something that has no future value for the host and his readers. Worse than that, as you are invested into it, it's a shameless promotion to defend your interest at the expand of all of us.

Now I'll stop engaging you because we are all derailing this thread towards altcoins instead of TA.

I merely pointed out a logic fallacy in grouping all altcoins together. Where is the disrespect towards Risto? You are making stuff up.

As to others, they sit on false information regarding Darkcoin, Monero and stuff. Most in here are trully clueless about +/-'s of the anonymous coins out there yet they pretend to be investment experts having found out about them like a week ago, propagating false information.

I have holdings in pretty much every anonymous coin there is precisely for this moment of boom, when everyone was like "anonymity? naaah... too shady" and stuff like that. So give me a break.

Quote

DRK is on the verge of collapse anytime, we are all aware of it.

I heard that at 0.003, 0.005, 0.007, 0.01, 0.014, 0.02, 0.026. Traders lost their coins to the rise and expected the dump that never came. They are now waiting to get back in, so let it fall if it must.

Keep in mind some fundamentals, whether the price corrects, flash-crashes, or goes to the moon and beyond:

1. Dark is aiming for the private/anonymous market. If just 1 out of 10 transactions are held privately/anonymously in the future, the anonymous coins will hold at least 10% of the whole cryptocurrency marketcap (so ~750mn out of 7.5bn with running prices). That leaves plenty of room for growth.

2. It provides real-world utility and stuff that people can actually use. Some of the top10 cryptos in coinmarketcap have some "fancy" concepts and features that most people do not even understand what they are / what they do / why they are useful. Privacy is something that everyone understands and has a need for in some degree. People do not want to have their bank statements online, so why would we do that with crypto? Businesses too (for competitive reasons).

2. Low inflation: BTC gives out 3600 BTCs per day. LTC gives out 28.800 LTC per day. DRK produces only 2880 DRK per day - and it will lower 7% next year.

3. Due to low inflation a significantly smaller amount of fiat (or fiat equivalent in BTCs) is required to keep the price stable compared to either LTC or BTC.

4. Due to low production of coins, coupled with the coins held for masternodes, the buying pressure for existing coins escalates.

5. BTC and LTC holders may hedge some of their investments with DRK, as DRK makes its ascent and scares them. Large bagholders of LTC in particular may have problems sleeping well and will either sell LTC or hedge with DRK. This creates a feedback loop that narrows the gap between LTC/DRK as money from LTC flows to DRK, allowing DRK to go to #2.

6. DRK represents a hedge of various forms. For example its security is not dependent on only 1 hash. It is also a bad-news-hedge in the sense that when news like "Bitcoin was banned in X country" hit, it can go the opposite way of Bitcoin. Kind'a like USD/EUR pairs when USD goes bad and EUR goes up and vice versa. Fiat hedging for BTC is unrealistic because it's a binary market. You either have BTC or fiat. But BTC/DRK is an actual hedge inside cryptos. "Bitcoin banned where? Great.. DRK to the mooooooon".

7. The numbers of coins in circulation is heavily in favor of DRK, in terms of scarcity: ~4 million DRKs vs ~12mn BTCs vs ~28mn LTCs.

8. Coin-numbers-adjusted, the price of DRK is 1/7th of LTC and 1/120th of BTC. This is grossly undervalued if one assumes that at least 5 or 10% of cryptocurrency transactions will be performed privately/anonymously and thus the price should move upwards to reflect this fact, even if DRK only occupies a far smaller percentage than now in the private/anonymous market.

9. The possibility of "mining" with masternodes, is like buying a mining ring that is free (you don't actually pay it as you still keep your DRKs) but also not obsoleted with time or new technology. Beats GPU / ASICs investment in both CAPEX and OPEX.

10. DRK is ahead of the competition. The competition has severe weaknesses and "blocker" issues. Zerocoin is the best solution but doesn't exist - and if it does come out, there will be a huge trust issue with the initial key. Bytecoin has good anonymity as a mixer but is based on an unproven/untested blockchain technology and consequently people can't trust much money on it, compared to the 5 years of running of Bitcoin. It's more like a gamble option - not something that you can throw heavy money. It also scales badly, has usability issues and is not interoperable with the bitcoin-based payment systems for merchants etc. These will hamper it for quite some time.

The fact that Cryptonote technology is superior to the current implementation of DarkSend (which will change in next revision), doesn't make it NSA-proof in itself. This means that both coins are private, not anonymous, not nearly 100% anonymous and anything else is snake oil. In essence both DRK + Cryptonote coins will be adequate for privacy, combined with IP obfuscation and "best practices" followed by the user, except if the NSA has other plans. This is like 99% privacy and the 1% to make it 100%, will require extra work from both camps. So the "superiority" aspect of Cryptonote's anonymity is null and void, unless NSA-proofing is achieved. In the meantime, the drawbacks of the whole Bytecoin system are enormous and cannot justify the "costs" for the user or the merchant. So, overall, there is no advantage in going with a Bytecoin system, over a Bitcoin-based system which is proven.

11. DRK has a coder that codes. Darkcoin has become something like a development platform of new features instead of a regular "shitcoin"-clone that offers nothing or that is stagnant.

12. Compared to LTC (which is ahead of DRK), LTC is a technological dinosaur. The LTC camp itself is worried:

https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=19819
https://litecointalk.org/index.php?topic=19955

Additionally, the LTC camp has failed in its primary mission to "sell" ASIC resistance, a point that would improve Bitcoin's "inadequacy". In other words, there is no reason why DRK could not exceed LTC and take #2.

13. Top-100 richlist keeps stacking when weak hands are like "maybe I should cash out": http://chainz.cryptoid.info/drk/#!rich

14. DRK has first mover advantage as the public anonymous coin which succeeded and initiated the anonymity pursuit in other coins (which are now scrambling to say DRK is scam, is a fail, is this, that, so we should take its place because we are, of course, better). Bytecoin existed from 2012 but nobody knew it until March-April 2014. By then people were already DarkSending money with Darkcoin.