-------------  
SUMMARY:  

In a nutshell, the good news is that there is an indication of interest from Bittrex Global and Coinbase to list bitcoinR.  Talks are ongoing and no agreement has been made.  There is a backlog of asset listings at both exchanges, even if an agreement were made immediately (which it will not be), we are told that the time to list would be 90 days+. 

bitcoinR (XBR) is only ~160 days old.  When Bitcoin (BTC) was four months old, it wasn't listed anywhere and didn't have a market price.  It took 547 days from release for Bitcoin to have ANY value, and then it was only worth $0.000008 - $0.08 per share.
  
You can fact check this here:  
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/forex/121815/bitcoins-price-history.asp  

Unfortunately, a number of challenges at present far outweigh the good news.  Put bluntly, the listing process has been a massive hassle and the bitcoinR community at large has not yet been helpful by way of growing the community or offering any financial help.  For now, we will continue the listing conversations but will need to find a means to pay for the listing, if the interaction with the mining community does not improve, or we cannot find means to pay for the exchange listing we may have no choice but to transition away from the bitcoinR project.

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DETAIL:

1.  The Bittrex Global listing fee is ~$265k USD, plus we must commit to $10-20k USD per month in "market making" fees to a 3rd party like Jump Trading to ensure liquidity for the first 6 months.

2.  THIS IS THE BIGGEST ISSUE WE ARE CURRENTLY FACED WITH: Bittrex Global indicated that they will require bitcoinR to indemnify them for 100% customer losses in case XBR suffers a 51% attack.  They require a personal guarantee from the project founders.  We haven't seen the contract language yet, but if it's anything along their verbal, it's untenable.  It's unthinkable that ANY business person would take on an unquantifiable risk like that.  
Any PoW cryptocurrency can be 51% attacked.  Period.  Even Bitcoin could be 51% attacked if one had enough patience and funding.  XBR is more susceptible to this kind of attack due to the accelerated cryptonomics when compared to BTC as well.  This is a very scary liability indeed and if it happened as it would incur said liability all at once.

Thus, we may need to find yet another alternative to Bittrex Global for listing pending the analysis of the language in the listing agreement.

3.  Coinbase has agreed to continued discussions regarding listing and has requested that we consider custodying our treasury XBR units with them for a fee.  This might work surprisingly well and also has the advantage from a transparency perspective; we'd be happy to do this in order to strengthen our relationship with Coinbase.

4.  It was explained that the nature of Coinbase is such that they will not be "first to list" a new project, though in some cases, they are happy to follow another AML/KYC compliant exchange if the other exchange lists XBR first.  So the way it is now, it looks like Bittrex Global is still the front runner for initial listing if we can figure out the 51% indemnification clause.

5.  There is evidently a new hurdle for companies that wish to list with major US exchanges.  It is an LLC that functions as an adjudicator of what is or isn't defined as a "security" in the US.  It's called "The Crypto Rating Council" (CRC).  A project is scored on a scale of 1-5 in order to participate for Bittrex US (in the US vs Global) and Coinbase doesn't require a rating but it helps improve listing priority.  We cannot know this because we have no contact with the CRC, we have to trust Coinbase that this is true.  More information here:

The cost for the review is unknown, as is their method of prioritizing a project review.  They have made clear on their website that we as a developer team cannot put our project forth to review as the "members of the Council" select their own review targets and set their own priorities.  We consider the scenario that our rating might be closer to a 1 than a 5 since there was never a token sale or ICO and we are a PoW coin, but this is just a hypothesis.

More detail regarding the CRC here:  https://www.cryptoratingcouncil.com/faq    

6.  The constant onslaught of XBR miners asking inane questions repeatedly like:  "What exchange?"  "What is the listing price?"  "When will it be listed?"  "Is this a scam?" is both irritating and disheartening. 

One would think miners would ask "How can we help XBR list on an exchange?"  "How can we help determine a listing price for XBR?"  "How can we contribute to the costs to make listing XBR on an exchange quicker?" and "What actions can we take to further legitimize the bitcoinR project?"


Alas, it seems our community is currently teeming with greed and impatience.  If a community member cannot be proactively helpful, please refrain from taking precious time away from the development team for silly, selfish questions or Tweeting the founders / developers.  Again, Bitcoin did not have a market price for 547 days, and then it was <$0.10.

7.  The founders have funded every nickel of this project personally since 2018 when design started with the exception of a $30k loan to DG from two investors that is now in its repayment period via installments.  This repayment was unexpected and ultimately diverts money from deployment into the bitcoinR network, in fact: $30k could likely have paid for the bulk of the listing feels for XBR on at least one international exchange.

8.  We were in discussions with an entity who self-described as KuCoin.  It wasn't KuCoin, but rather a team of hackers that were emailing us from a cleverly spoofed domain and using man in the middle (MITM) attacks attempting to steal almost $10k in listing fees.  We reported the hackers to the real KuCoin team who said they'd happily consider our coin for listing, but did not indicate what the fee would be.  This was a massive waste of time and resources 

9. When an XBR or BitcoinTalk community member asks if bitcoinR is a "scam" because it has not yet been listed after four months, it discourages the founding team from wanting to continue to invest time and money into bitcoinR on a monthly basis.

The fact that certain members of the international XBR mining community may need or desire money immediately does not constitute an emergency for the bitcoinR development team, nor does it make bitcoinR a scam.  The founders have paid 100% of the expenses associated with bitcoinR and have not sought money from either the global mining community or the global investor community.  How could there be a scam if no funding has changed hands or been solicited?  There was no ICO.  No IPO.  No IEO.  We haven't taken a single dollar from a single person with the exception of the loan from the two aforementioned investors who are in the midst of repayment.

If this type of scam-accusation-disguised-as-inquiry persists, the founders and development team will further tire and likely become interested in investing their time and money elsewhere.    

-------------
ACTION:

For all of the above reasons, I suspect one of four paths will be taken with the bitcoinR project:

A.  We will sell all or part of the bitcoinR project to a yet-to-be-identified entity that has access to greater monetary resources and can better deal with DETAIL items 1-5 above.  This may take the better part of a year or more.

OR

B.  Accept mining community donations to list XBR with an international exchange and custody the XBR OMO treasury units with a qualified custodian (such as Coinbase).  The founders will dissolve the operating company in favor of a non-profit entity controlled by the mining community for the governance of the project in a similar manner to Bitcoin.

Depending upon the interest from the mining community, Option B could happen quickly or not at all.

OR

C.  We will continue to poll international exchanges to find one that has a good mix of transparency and listing fee value, and the founders will make one last contribution out of pocket to list XBR.  This action is not guaranteed, and the founders / developers are under no obligation to do so.  Again, community participation to pay the listing fees (Option B) is far preferred and shows good faith from the community.

OR

D.  Eventually, if there is no interest in acquisition of bitcoinR or donations to further support the listing and operations of bitcoinR, or bitcoinR cannot obtain an economically feasible listing agreement, the project will likely cease to be supported by the existing team and seed nodes will be shut down.  Even with these actions taken, bitcoinR may inadvertently live on as a distributed ledger and could find governance and eventual success through a responsible, active community of caring, long-term thinkers, such is the nature of blockchain.

Regardless of the path chosen, the success or failure of bitcoinR is and will be determined by the community.  

-------------
CLOSING:

It is now clear to us the wisdom Satoshi displayed in choosing to remain anonymous and by further choosing to disappear from sight as figurehead of Bitcoin:  The nature of blockchain is such that it does not need a central governing entity or figurehead.  Crypto is, in-fact, better governed by a community of stakeholders who both collectively and individually have something to either gain or lose through strong control of ownership.  

The job of a founding team is thankless and cash flow negative in the early days, though for now we will continue our efforts so long as the community evolves into being respectful and helpful. 

NS

PS-  Mamas, don't let your babies grow up to be crypto founders.

It is impossible to increase the number of XBR, the money supply is limited to 21,000,000 units. 

NS

The hard cap is 21,000,000 XBR.  Half of which have been pre-mined for the uses described in this post:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=5249685.msg54468236#msg54468236

NS

Appreciate the kind words but I don't understand your post.  There is no account necessary to mine bitcoinR.

The only "account" that would be necessary is if one wanted to trade XBR via a virtual currency exchange like Bittrex or Coinbase.

NS

Hi tex173,

Thanks for the note.  Ubuntu is a standard Linux flavor, so you can most certainly download the Linux binaries.

NS

Thank you for the compliment.  Regarding traditional qualifications, we feel as though our team is without par in the crypto world with the possible exception of Ripple Labs.

Yes, we are constantly looking for smart, hardworking people to help us!  For ways to earn XBR without mining, please look at our XBR Bounty Hunter page:  https://bitcoinr.org/partners/xbr-bounty-hunters/

There's more work to do, certainly.

This is a good question and one that is difficult to answer without making promises; so what I will do is present data so one can make their own inference:

Yesterday the bitcoinR network eclipsed the hashpower equivalent of Bitcoin on November 1, 2013 (3582 TH/s).   On 1-NOV-13, the value of BTC was $198.51.

You can verify this here on the bitcoinR Block Explorer.

We are approaching AML/KYC compliant exchanges soon so we can list.  The first quantitative easing / tightening function to attempt to stabilize to our target price is 1-JUL-2020, so we would ideally like to be listed prior to that time.

Bingo.

NS

Hi RomiM,

This is a great question; and the answer is one that is socioeconomic in nature.

Look around in your life at the people who are successful and those who are not successful.  Those who are not successful are generally paid more frequently than those who are successful.  Here are some simple examples to illustrate the traditional model of socioeconomically determined monetary velocity:

Daily Pay:

A laborer who in exchange for his or her physical effort in digging a hole in the earth or carrying scrap metal is paid daily.  This person uses his pay to pay for food and shelter for the night, with a little bit of funds left over to buy a small breakfast and lunch the next day.  There is no concept of saving, just work to survive.  This person does not plan for the future.

Weekly Pay:

A foreman who supervises the manual laborers in the field is paid weekly.  This person has a bit longer of a time horizon and can generally afford to save a little to pay for a used car and rent an apartment.  While the foreman generally has an easier life than the laborer, often there is little difference in their ability to save or plan for the future.

Bi-Weekly or Semi-Monthly Pay:

This is where most of the middle class is, they get paid on the 1st and the 15th of every month, or every other Friday.  They generally have had some success planning for the future, attending at least some college and are a bit more comfortable with the idea that they must invest time and effort without the happy result of immediate gratification.  Many in this category finance new automobiles and obtain mortgages for comfortable homes for their families. 

Monthly Pay

These are most self-employed individuals or small business entrepreneurs.  They must plan for the future every single month, carefully calculating how much time, effort and money they can invest in their business activities.  At the end of each month, they pay their laborers, foremen and managers along with overhead for the month, saving some funds in reserve and pay themselves from whatever profit is left over.  Many of these individuals have the ability to pay cash for their automobiles and homes.

Quarterly Pay

Many investment managers are paid quarterly.  Compensation for the best investment managers range from the millions into the billions of dollars annually.  They are paid partially upon performance of their investment ideas and execution and partially upon the tallied dollars that they "manage" in any given quarter.  Generally these individuals hold advanced degrees and have invested significantly into their educations (often in the several-hundred-thousand-dollar range).  They have planned for the future since they were children and have often had the benefit of guidance from a capable family member or mentor.

Annual Pay

Founders and CEOs of publicly traded companies will often take a very small salary, sometimes as low as $1 a year.  This salary is obviously far lower than what our laborer examples can make in an hour, let alone an entire year; however, these individuals are visionaries, and they are willing to exert tremendous effort, energy and personal funds to ensure that they are paid handsomely at year-end through the exercising of their stock options, which could be worth tens or hundreds of millions of dollars.  While it varies whether or not these individuals have heavily invested in education, they are not adverse to risk and they do not expect immediate gratification of any kind.  Often, they have the discipline to live far below their means, driving used cars and living in small homes to save their focus, funds and energy to invest in a worthwhile effort that will pay them an outrageous sum once per annum or at some future time.


So, while I cannot promise that mining XBR will be a profitable endeavor and I cannot point to any exchange listing today to establish a price, I can tell you that there are some very smart men and women who have chosen to invest their time, effort, energy and personal funds into making bitcoinR a success and that it may behoove others to do likewise.

PS- bitcoinR has had listing offerings from multiple exchanges, but since they were non KYC/AML compliant, we declined listing.

Hey ToothlessCoin,

Thanks for the note.  We started with CPU mining in late March with little coordination, simply letting friends and family know via text message and Facebook posts that they could mine XBR with their hardware at home.  At that time, difficulty was <1 and we proved that a 1.8GHz processor and as few as 4GB RAM worked well enough whether it was Mac or Windows.  The announcement was met with varying interest and most people were plagued by short term thinking (how much is it worth, where is it traded) thinking that they could just flip out of it quickly.  The allure of easy money has a very strong appeal; but, when you add the necessity for people to wait between investing effort and reaping reward the number of initial participants becomes vanishingly small.

bitcoinR is not unique in this way, all PoW coins go through this same adoption curve.  Those who are early in (CPU/GPU and early ASIC) prior to a price being established are the obvious long run winners.  This method has the disadvantage of zero immediate gratification, but then there are legitimate examples of those who achieved success by taking an early PoW risk for a subsequent, non-guaranteed payoff.

NS

Hi PARIVEENN,

This is a bit of a loaded question, so I'll preface my answer with the disclaimer that my response is not legal advice.

With that said, if a country has banned crypto then I imagine the citizens of that country cannot purchase or mine XBR since XBR is a cryptocurrency and they are ostensibly citizens of a country in which cryptocurrency is banned.  Either way, if they somehow purchase XBR from an AML/KYC exchange, they will necessarily need to divulge their identity and contact information.  So, at best, it seems very risky for a person in a country that has banned crypto to attempt to acquire XBR or any other crypto like XRP, ETH or BTC.

NS

Thank you RUOFERTT-

We are hoping that our proactive compliance with the U.S. Government will show our commitment to integrity and transparency.

It certainly has not been simple trying to navigate the regulatory environment in the United States, but I do think the regulators have an open mind about crypto and are doing their level best to ensure people are not being scammed.

We appreciate and commend their work.

NS

No problem, as you can see I made a mistake linking to the wrong github repository earlier in the thread. 

You might also check your links, as when I click on them, my browser indicates that it the site is blocked?

Lastly, if you could please limit your posts a bit so as not to overwhelm the thread. 

Thanks again for your enthusiastic participation, good luck mining XBR!

NS

Hey CjMapope,

Thanks for your note.  I appreciate you raising this concern; however, I don't understand entirely.

Our difficulty retargeting algorithm is set to 15 minutes; so even if the hashpower increases or decreases drastically, the difficulty will retarget within 15 minutes (every three blocks) and the miners who continue mining XBR will retain the ability to mine a block in approximately the same standard five-minute period.

This is all explained on page 10 of the Official Whitepaper.

NS

Thank you.  Everyone that is on the bitcoinR team currently are on the bitcoinR.org website and are listed in the whitepaper. 

We had three former advisors who are no longer with the project due to professional conflicts.  One was the former CTO of a large credit card company in the US, another was the Chief Information Officer of a high-frequency hedge fund who was a founding quant on the Goldman prop-trading desk and the last was a finance specialist from a publicly traded telecommunications company.  Since they are no longer with the project in any official capacity, they are no longer listed on the website or in the whitepaper.  In any event, our entity is not structured as a partnership.

This is interesting, thank you for your enthusiasm.  Looks like a fairly well put together site.

NS

I appreciate your enthusiasm, but it doesn't appear as though your pool is targeted for XBR.  Your links indicate a currency called XRB.

Hey Moreen_ico,

Thanks for the encouragement.  I think we have the right team, we have Harvard trained economists and law scholars and MIT educated distributed computing experts.

They 100% believe in the project and are being paid in part with XBR.  We've been working together for two years before we made this ANN thread.  We are here to stay. 

Hey Kalin79-

Thanks for your continued interest.  We considered the possibility of a CPU-only algorithm like CryptoNight, but felt that widespread adoption of bitcoinR mining would be best accomplished by staying with SHA-256 for three reasons:

1.  Few individuals who mine with CPUs know much about hashing algorithms and are unlikely to prefer one over another.  They simply download and install a miner and await a block discovery.  The somewhat hesitant adoption of this in early April reinforced the case that most people weren't able to understand it.  We knew then we'd made the right decision using SHA-256 to eventually approach veteran miners.

2.  For those individuals who are veteran miners, we posited that they likely have access to equipment that they previously used to mine BTC and were unable to sell / liquidate via eBay or Amazon.  Due to the individually held backlog of SHA-256 mining equipment we envisioned a veteran mining cohort that could get going faster in the mining of XBR by redeploying this unused / obsolete BTC mining inventory.

3.  A substantial aggregate network hashpower, evenly spread over a great number of individuals or entities has a better chance of decreasing the probability of a 51% attack.

Once serious miners can get their heads around the hashpower and difficulty going up and up, they can assess what individual hashpower requirements will be necessary to mine a block individually or as part of a pool.  Smart miners will make an attempt to jump the queue at a discount by going to a place like eBay, Craigslist, Ganji, Xianyu and pick up a used Antminer S9 for less than $200 USD which should, at present, be adequate to mine XBR.  Some vendors on Alibaba will give miners a discount (<$100 each) if they buy massive quantities of 10 or more.

CPU mining of XBR is now largely a lost cause I'm afraid.  I updated and uploaded v.29 of the Official Whitepaper today to reflect this.

Hey prettiestgirl,

Thanks for the kind words.  It should be noted that currency price "manipulation" and "stabilization" are very different objectives indeed, backed by wholly different intent.  A big advantage that we have is that we have been very transparent from the start and we have been careful not to commit any arbitrary actions.

We are telegraphing our actions far in advance via the outline of our Open Market Operations (OMO) in the whitepaper with the stated intent to adjust the currency for stability within a (+/- 15%) range of target to achieve the dual purpose of store-of-value stability and a triangular arbitrage price-range to encourage trading volume for liquidity purposes.   

For these reasons, I respectfully submit that our planned activities fall far outside the boundaries of "manipulation" and well within the boundaries of "stabilization".

So, thanks again for the nice post and sorry for the lecture.   

NS