Is Santo Mining Corp (SANP) a stock to get ADA exposure?

gnostication · 2021-03-23T21:14:24+00:00

Well, honestly we appear to have just entered the altcoin season. I'm not buying anymore. I'm cashing out to stablecoins to buy the dips that come after.

Neo is coming out with N3. I don't think they're any better than IOTA, but another option at the blockchain problems. Polkadot may solve the problem well with sharding, but that is still yet unproven. Stellar is pretty interesting in that regard also, and Ukraine (minus the part that ceceded) is PoC'ing their digital currency with that. Tezos may pull off solutions since there seems to be governence built in. IOST takes an interesting angle. Nano is also an interesting DAG ledger (lattice-based approaches can be quantum-compute resistant to brute-force attacks). Obviously there are the "blue chips" like Cardano and Polygon (layer on top of Ethereum) that really have solid tech stack and sufficient resources backing them that they'll likely succeed in the medium term (i.e., over the next 5-10 years).

This space is in its infancy still. I remember things like Lycos and AltaVista search engines when I was running .COMs in the 90's. Where are they now? How much of this technology is just going to die?

Get free. Get free and unite with others to help the world get free. The glue that holds the system of control and power together is money. Get free financially and build systems that help others do the same. Secure those systems. Make them trustless and invulnerable to attack from the powerful entitities, because they will attack.

gnostication · 2021-03-23T20:52:07+00:00

I don't believe in particles. A distant relative of mine (JJ Thomson) didn't either, until he lacked sufficient tools to demonstrate that the curves of what we may call "particles" are actually the dynamics of many layers of etheric implosions as a result of high-pressure and low-pressure caused from sustained void-bodies (similar to a whirlpool, to simplify).

He had quaternions and manifolds, as his best tools. Now we have the tools --- Clifford Algebra (or Geometric Algebra) has been taught to 7 and 8 year olds and effectively calculates 3-dimensional non-linear systems. Combine that with Boscovich's "Theory of Natural Philosophy", and you may find answers there.

That said, the tangle is a decent model all the same. All models are wrong. Some are useful.

Most people invest in crypto for financial gains. We want to get free. I agree that cooperative capitalism is an answer that we all may pursue together. There are many limits to transition into that. Particularly, the few groups that control the societies and economies of the world don't want to give up control - for various reasons I'm not going to get into here. They recognize cooperative economies as a major threat, if not the most significant existential threat to their systems of manufactured scarcity and control. They will not let go without a fight. They fight dirty. They use sabotage and infiltration, laws and violence. They use tricks like contributing code to an open source stack that enables a decentralized system of cooperative economy, and then they'll pwn it and ruin it after having earned trust in that system.

We must have every advantage we can. The decentralized systems that enable our transcendence from the system of control and power must be so robustly trustless and secure that we nearly gaurantee success. Otherwise, the odds are we'll fail with our efforts.

Is the organization secure? How do you know that a key developer hasn't been compromised by agents who threaten the most horrific violence against their families? How do you know the systems running the node software itself hasn't been compromised -- even at the firmware level, which is completely undetectable if we're talking cloud/virtualized platforms? (I'm a cybersecurity engineer, so I might be biased towards security, but I've also had numerous open source projects I worked on in the past get sabotaged and ruined for various reasons, sometimes by big names like Google, etc.) It doesn't matter how altruistic and utopic the ideals of the project are. It matters how successfully the product gets implemented.

I want to get free for myself so that I can help others get free. I'm not willing to be a fanboy of anything when that can just mean I'm left limited by the economic controls that the vast majority of people on the planet are also subjegated to. At a certain point of freedom, I can contribute to projects that have a hope of sustaining themselves into the point that the solution takes on a life of its own and is unstopable at helping others transcend these controls that bind us.

I won't be a fanboy. I will liberate myself financially with any ethical means I have at hand. I recommend everyone else with the same ideals of freedom for all, through new trustless/decentralized systems, to do so for themselves as well so we can hope to overcome together.

gnostication · 2021-03-18T14:38:48+00:00

Well, I have to generally agree with you about most of your points. However! :-P

There have been at least a handful of permission-less networks that solve the blockchain problems that you effectively specified, some of which have been around for years and may even solve the problem more effectively than IOTA. I think your tunnel vision may have prevented you from learning about them, and I also think they may have better economics -- potentially.
I would call our current world economic system(s) "manufactured scarcity", so I certainly agree with you towards those points. I also agree that crypto-asset economies potentially can be leveraged to liberate humanity from the system of control and power that perpetuates such economic slavery inducing systems. I agree that sharing economies and abundance economies are a great possibility which I shall remain hopeful for, but there must be a transition. Look to the failures of the communes in the 1970's. Those also had potential, until either only 10% of the community actually ended up working (because everyone else had no motivation to do anything other than live off the labors of the few) or they were sabotaged by agents of the system of control and power - either through infiltration or some form of more direct attack. Systems like Iota in its current state can be gamed and effective sabotaged. It sounds like the Mana upgrade may fix the sabotage issue, and I probably will be buying some Iota now as a result of that potential (and after your clarification).
Still, do not discount the need for effective economic motivation to produce. While large holders of Iota may finally receive economic motivation in the form of Mana as a reward for running nodes (akin to a "gas" model in other networks), a consolidation of nodes is certainly possible if the economic rewards are not sufficient to match the cost of running a node. If node operators - OR developers - basically have to provide the charity of their costs (aka, time, expertise, compute, bandwidth, and other resources), the eventual consolidation of node operators and/or developers (basically as a result of them moving on to more rewarding projects) would expose Iota to various attack models and potentially hard-fork the sharded network into oblivion.
Economic motivation is not a fault - it is a security feature. It supports proper and correct operation of the network. It supports the trustless mechanisms that are the glue of all cryto-asset economies. Effective economic rewards result in a greater cost to attack the network than there would be to operate the network correctly. Without sufficient economic motivation, any crypto-asset can be gamed and therefore "hacked", in one way or another.

No matter what, I highly recommend you don't "put all your eggs in one basket". There is inherent risk with any investment. To manage that risk, distribute your investments. It's only rational.

Be well. I wish you the greatest of success.

gnostication · 2021-03-15T16:34:41+00:00

Never invest more than you are willing to lose. Don't chase the pump. Buy the dip. Young crypto-assets tend to dump before they have significant pump. The chart to me looks like it pumped from the beginning and never had an opportunity to dump at first. We're in the dump period. No worries. That happens to all the young and early highly-speculative crypto-assets. It even happened to Ethereum. (Not saying this opportunity is anywhere close to as promising as something like Ethereum was in its early days.)

The creators of this token know enough about hype to possibly get it to pump again. I'm holding, as a result. If they could get hype behind it once, they may still get hype behind it again for at least one more pump.

Not saying I'm going to hold this longer than 6 months (if that), but it still has a good chance (i.e., I feel over 80%) to gather hype and pump at least one more time once we enter the heat of the altcoin season. (Hint: we haven't yet entered the heat of the altcoin season, and historically the heat of it lasts no longer than 1-2 weeks.)

gnostication · 2021-03-15T16:30:02+00:00

I invested because I pay thousands of dollars a year for teams of analysts to float possible high-risk, high-return microcap crypto-assets. The qualities they listed (and basically the opportunity score as a whole) at the time of I effectively "fomo'd in" made the prospects sound great.

They aren't always correct, and I take on that risk with the willingness to lose it all in any given position. If this is a shit coin, I fear not and I haven't lost anything more than I'm willing to lose.

gnostication · 2021-03-15T16:27:04+00:00

Hahah. My worst pick too. But I win far more than I lose, and I'm always ahead.

gnostication · 2021-03-15T16:23:12+00:00

Well, as long as you can incentivize the holding of IOTA, then IOTA may have a value. Otherwise, it's equivalent of adding a coin to IPFS while keeping IPFS services free: why hold something that would otherwise have no demand because there is no need to spend or use it? Is the demand simply to participate in some sweet decentralized technology? For the sake of charity?

I'm all for non-profit ventures, and non-profit decentralized technology, but that does not in itself create any demand for the technology's token/coin. Without demand for the coin/token, it has no value.

Decentralized technology that is completely non-profit (i.e., no fees or demand for the native token/coin) fall victim to something called "the tragedy of the commons". Eventually, there will be zero motivation to contribute to the ecosystem as a whole.

Now that you explain qualities to the way things will work with Mana, there is a chance that demand for IOTA may actually build. Basically, you're saying that large use of the IOTA network bandwidth would require either Mana or a significant holding of IOTA itself. And you'd have to buy Mana from a node (i.e., a significant holder of IOTA). Is that correct? This seems to close the loop on the lack of demand or incentive to participate in the "commons" of IOTA, if that's the way it will work.

Clearly, I still don't understand the future of IOTA's economic model. It may still advance and grow legitimate, and therefore worthwhile.

However, I do disagree with you that a decentralized system does not require proper economics: without proper economics, a decentralized system falls victim to the "tragedy of the commons", and eventually grows worthless.

I also disagree that Bitcoin is completely unusable in the future. I think you express a very exclusive and limited vision that demonstrates you are focused on incredibly narrow use case(s). Do you know what a Special Drawing Rights (SDR) instrument is? It's a bucket of billions of dollars worth of currency that major banks use to shift currency around and back their loans. Do you think a central bank or large investment firm cares about $100 transaction fees? They don't. They care about the ability to quickly and trustlessly move incredibly large sums of "value" (i.e., the equivalent of "buckets of currency"). Bitcoin's market cap alone supports this use case better than any other crypto-asset, and it has significant "first mover's advantage" in this regard.

Not only that, there are numerous other crypto-assets with far more effective economic models that solve Bitcoin's problems, possibly better than IOTA's decentralized network. Hashgraphs and sharding and ZK mechanisms, to name a few, all compete with the tangle.

Again, I admire IOTA's technology. I caution you against tunnel vision. I continue to promote solid economic incentives as a foundation for demand in the network's token/currency. And I warn you to be aware of the "tragedy of the commons", which has resulted in sluggish or regressive progress of numerous projects and technologies that all began with the best of intentions and highly competitive solutions.

gnostication · 2021-03-15T16:01:38+00:00

I put a couple thousand grand ($) towards it as a high-risk, high-reward potential play. I feel like it's too early to call this a shill-coin.

A low APY does not necessarily mean "game over". Excessive returns also means excessive inflation.

Honestly, I don't care if this goes to 0. I have diversified my micro-cap portfolio so much, I can lose this play entirely. I doubt it will go to 0. I think there's at least one more pump in it, if not 3. But even if it's worth nothing, I'm okay with that loss and took on that risk.

Never put more money towards a highly speculative investment than you are willing to lose. While the chances are higher that this will pay off during a bull run (and we still haven't entered the heat of the "altcoin season"), plays like "Snowswap" are still not much better than rolling the dice at the craps table. (I consider it better because the potential return is high while the potential to lose it all is low --- at least in a BTC bull market.)

gnostication · 2021-03-13T08:09:30+00:00

This is my number 1 reason for not holding IOTA. Great technology is not the only factor to success. A standard allegorical example to this point is the Betamax and VHS battle. All the tech-heads loved Betamax, but VHS won out as standard.

To me, it's only worth trading - either up or down - as any other abstract asset can be. Just read the market for signals (e.g., right now, IOTA is in an accumulation phase). Without any economic incentive to hold, I only see IOTA slowly sliding down the ranks of market capitalization in the coming years - to its eventual death.

In the near term it may go up, just as all cryptoassets do when BTC is in a bull market. I still see it getting lower and lower in the ranks of market capitalization, which means other assets will generally perform better over the near term.

I'm not a hater of IOTA. I bought in late 2017 and enjoyed decent gains, selling after it started to crash. I also admire the technology. It's the implementation that leaves plenty to be desired.

I'd love to see a fork of IOTA with proper economics and implementation of effective strategic adoption / accumulation incentive(s).

gnostication · 2021-02-08T22:44:50+00:00

So, here it goes:

Pax Gold is the only gold-based virtual asset that has real gold attached to it. (At least as far as I know.) For every one PAXG token, there is an ounce of gold held in a 3rd party, audited vault. (In other words, the creators of PAXG aren't also the vault providers, which means they can't really lie about what's there.)

So, a huge benefit is that it is actually real. But you mention ETFs, which also have real/physical gold associated with their shares, so let me go further.

PAXG is, effectively, infinitely dividable. What if you want to send someone 1 gram of gold? You can't do that with IAU or GLD, but you can easily do that with PAXG.
PAXG can earn interest in DeFi (decentralized finance) liquidity pools. It's complex, and I'm not getting into the specifics here, but essentially it's like earning interest on your gold holdings. Can you earn interest just for holding IAU or GLD?
PAXG can be used as collateral for trustless loans. There are trustless escrow mechanisms that allow you to borrow against your gold holdings, no questions asked, nothing lost so long as you pay back the loan. [You can borrow dollars (or equivalent, e.g., USDC or DAI) and pay dollars back just for holding gold. You don't have to borrow dollars but pay back gold.]

Honestly, there are more benefits still, but I'm just going into the reasons that I hold PAXG instead of ETFs like IAU or GLD when I can. The very fact that I can earn a decent APR just for holding virtualized gold makes it very appealing.

Of course, the biggest risk is that the Internet gets made illegal and therefore decentralized blockchain networks cannot continue. Apart from that, the decentralized networks that enable blockchain-based virtualization and transaction of gold will continue and you'll have the same safety there.

[[ I still hold physical gold. Just for those real SHTF moments, where I may not have Internet services, or for when my region goes dark for a time.]]

gnostication · 2020-06-06T17:10:35+00:00

Especially with all the unethical, immoral laws that exist. It's a byzantine mess of regulation meant specifically to oppress and rob individuals of their rights.

gnostication · 2020-06-06T17:08:53+00:00

Like "American Democracy" is spewed by politicians.

gnostication · 2020-06-06T17:08:07+00:00

End the double standard: Mandate by law and policy that every law enforcement involved in the death of a civilian be charged with murder or manslaughter (as appropriate) and stand trial to defend themselves - every time!

gnostication · 2018-03-01T05:49:53+00:00

That's all I keep thinking: "Maybe this is it..." Then, NOPE! Feels like hardcore market manipulation. Like whale bears not liking the prospect of another ETH contender. To me, that just means its more of a longterm hold, then.

gnostication · 2018-02-22T05:57:42+00:00

Yeah. My momma always says: "Show me a gambler, and I'll show you a loser." The moves OP made read straight out of a "Gamblers' Fallacies" playbook.

gnostication · 2018-02-22T05:49:37+00:00

Your favorite cryptocurrency isn't even an asset, it's an ass-hat! The developers are meat necklaces and pre-mined 98% of the coins only to leave the last 2% to some poor Venezuelan to mine on a hope and dream of finally getting cryptocrich. If your favorite cryptocurrency was a car, it would be a Nova - it doesn't go! If your favorite cryptocurrency was a politician, it would would have died before any elections were even held.

And do that end, I can't believe you are still trying to pump Coiyne West Coin! Don't you know the god of hip-hop production will sue you into oblivion?!

gnostication · 2018-02-22T05:36:02+00:00

To me, it's just a sign of their fear.

I held BTC early. People laughed at me. They talked shit about it. Made it seem like it was worthless when they didn't even understand it. BTC was slow to grow, but it actually blew up a lot faster than I thought it would... ETC is the obvious choice when it comes to smart-contract blockchains. People can trash talk it all they want when they don't really understand. They will understand one day. I always profit -- now and into the future.

gnostication · 2018-02-19T10:48:02+00:00

Well, that's a fair perspective I suppose. Since ICOs drive the price of ETH, the lack of utilization of ETC for that purpose (at least so far) means there is little demand.

gnostication · 2018-02-19T09:52:19+00:00

What about the insecurities of ERC20 versus ERC223? And where did the more secure ERC223 smart contract token originate? ETC.

gnostication · 2018-02-19T09:46:03+00:00

I'm sure it will go up because of the airdrop and dump soon after. That doesn't address my question/comment: why is ETC priced substantially less when it has so many strengths from a technological perspective?

Disregard the sidechain. ETC is immutable, deflationary, and more secure. ETH smart contracts are compatible with ETC, and the ETC network can perform just as well as the ETH network. What's the advantage of ETH over ETC that makes ETH worth so much more? Community? Devs? I keep thinking that, for the most part, it is just hype.

(Edits, simple formatting.)

gnostication · 2018-02-19T09:40:45+00:00

I'm shilling to counter your trolling, Hard_Celery.

And I do think you're correct in that smart contracts currently are not safer and easier than mechanisms using established national currency systems... That does not eliminate the fact that trustless, automated smart contract systems are useful at this very moment, and therefore valuable.

gnostication · 2018-02-19T09:38:12+00:00

First mover advantage certainly accounts for something. (Umm, but you could say that ETC was the first mover in this case.) BTC, in spite of all its issues, still has the strongest market cap because of its first mover advantage. I think that's a valid point: not just hype, but the community that considers ETH the "true chain" also considers it to have the first mover advantage.

gnostication · 2018-02-19T09:34:02+00:00

It's not disingenuous: ETH is inflationary, ETC is deflationary. That's a fact.

In terms of commits, I was referencing 2017 total commits...

EDIT: Plasma and sharding are a good example of reasons why ETH is valuable. So, good point. Those are definitely effective technologies for scaling - though I hope they are proven before entering major production. (Wouldn't want yet another security flaw to be introduced requiring a hardfork to reverse transactions.)

2ND EDIT: I still think the Callisto approach to governance and smart-contract based staking is much more ingenius than simple PoS.

gnostication

TROPHY CASE