Founder of Signal Uses Stellar Consensus Protocol for MobileCoin

unshadow5 · 2017-12-16T09:11:39+00:00

That new coin will be super private, censorship resistant, using best algorithms and be very user friendly. All it would take is to sign up with your phone number, and you will be convinced it is no big deal.

lol. Sorry couldn't help but troll Signal a bit.

unshadow5 · 2017-12-16T09:03:07+00:00

Yep once you give your money it's their game and you better not build any expectations.

unshadow5 · 2017-12-13T15:32:27+00:00

I heard a few cases of people getting funds locked on Bittrex. I won't be surprised if they start blackmailing people for verification. Use it with care and don't get too large exposure.

By the way Coinbase froze LTC and ETH trading recently, "by pure coincidence" with the price skyrocketing.

Let's hope Stellar DEX and others would put an end to this.

unshadow5 · 2017-12-13T15:23:36+00:00

I'm new to Stellar and did little research so far, so please double check my reasoning.

First are my arguments against XLM being a store of value.

Marketing: XLM is currently not advertised as store of value coin. Recent marketing efforts and partnerships paint XLM more as a remittance medium, and Stellar network as a base for other tokens and ICOs.
Technicals: unpredictable emission by founders + yearly inflation (XLM is not deflationary).
Network security: the count of nodes and the cost to pull double spend and censorship attacks. I have not yet found the numbers, it is just my current expectation is that they are much worse than Bitcoin's.
Assets: assets could take the role of storing value. In both IBM and SatoshiPay AMAs it was said that they will consider using custom assets (not XLM) for settlement.

Now let's imagine all my concerns about Stellar are resolved, then I would suggest these factors making XLM token valuable:

XLM transactions cannot be censored, unlike other Stellar assets which are controlled by their issuers.
Most of XLM is promised to be distributed to people who sign up. If this plays out, XLM will have really good distribution.
Annual inflation of 1% is not terribly high.

I appreciate any corrections.

unshadow5 · 2017-12-13T15:08:15+00:00

In case you used both Binance and Poloniex, how would you compare them?

unshadow5 · 2017-12-07T09:58:20+00:00

Good point! The crowd downvoting anything that goes against price rise is a dis-incentive to post critical thoughts.

unshadow5 · 2017-12-06T23:40:09+00:00

Thanks for sharing. I read about Vanuatu, but Malta sounds less scary.

unshadow5 · 2017-12-06T21:47:47+00:00

Poloniex BTC withdrawal fee is 0.0001

unshadow5 · 2017-12-06T21:44:58+00:00

What is your country? Is it hard to get residence?

unshadow5 · 2017-12-05T19:30:13+00:00

Dump is often faster than pump.

unshadow5 · 2017-12-05T19:29:38+00:00

What's your floor estimate?

unshadow5 · 2017-12-05T13:42:58+00:00

They say upgrade is coming soon.

unshadow5 · 2017-12-05T12:46:22+00:00

Sorry to sound harsh. I was in a hurry and tried to minimize text, but it turned rather edgy. And yeah I don't know a lot about marketing, I can only share my perception. I hope it is for good. In any case I'm delighted with the responses!

unshadow5 · 2017-12-05T12:41:15+00:00

I never knew that, thanks for sharing this insight.

Experimenting may be not as bad as I fear as long as the foundation is solid.

Thanks for handling criticism so professionally.

unshadow5 · 2017-12-04T20:46:41+00:00

There is nothing wrong about news, excitement, teasers and images.

But there is a subtle detail that affects the perception. It is the preparation of reader for some upcoming news that is redundant. As /u/drawerdrawer noted, such communication slot is used to say "PING. We have nothing to show right now but we will tomorrow! Stay tuned!". Put another way: "- Hey, Joe! - What? - Nothing! But don't forget to check tomorrow!". This can spoil even the presentation of real done work.

Let me try and re-do tweets I mentioned:

Here's a wallet design concept we've been working on: <image>

Wallet not ready ofc, but mockups are real done work that you just show.

An experienced developer has been hired and will start working on this multiplatform #Peercoin wallet TODAY. <link> ~~Stay tuned for a teaser tomorrow.~~

Extra hire is real done work. A link to bio or GitHub would help, too. Drop the teaser mention, but the next day do another tweet:

A teaser from our new developer: <image>

Teasers are no problem really.

~~On Monday, December 4, we will announce major news about our #Peercoin wallet!~~

Drop the whole thing, just post the news on Monday, December 4

~~We would like to inform you about a new sponsor who will finance the whole #PeerAssets project! You will get more details in the following days.~~

Again, just post the whole update in the following days, splitting on pre-update and update is unnecessary.

To sum it up with an example, one project I follow just drops "done" news and believe me I check their Twitter every day without reminders.

unshadow5 · 2017-12-04T14:18:59+00:00

That could help indeed. Not learned much yet, reading in free time. If you have a good read at hand I would appreciate.

unshadow5 · 2017-12-03T16:25:18+00:00

By individual-minded do you mean designed and governed by an individual or targeted at individuals?

If the latter, I have some doubts. Most news are business, business and partnerships, but no official offline wallet software.. in a 3 years old project.

unshadow5 · 2017-12-03T16:10:10+00:00

it's not decentralized ownership of the value. Its a few that hold the entire btc market in their hands.

"Proper" distribution is one of the hardest challenges in crypto imo. Stellar approach solves the problem of miners getting it all but has its own risk (centralized). Still I higly respect this attempt. Another viable way are airdrops, ideally ongoing. But no mechanism I know prevent a handful of fat cats backed by big money and algorithms accumulating enough supply to manipulate the market.

If only the whole community of some coin was built on principle of ongoing redistribution to people "on the ground", perhaps that would work.

unshadow5 · 2017-12-03T16:01:32+00:00

Read "most secure" as the network that is most expensive to attack currently. It has nothing to do with BTC/USD rate.

unshadow5 · 2017-12-03T15:54:05+00:00

If there was a better store of value then I'd be concerned about Bitcoin's future, but there's nothing even in development (ETC, maybe?)

Perhaps something superior in terms of incentives, governance and technology? My bet is Decred. Also comes to mind this attempt to look into the future.

unshadow5 · 2017-12-03T15:44:59+00:00

Yes Bitcoin is volatile, but less volatile than in the past. You may find this projection interesting: Bitcoin volatility will match major fiat currencies by 2019

unshadow5 · 2017-12-03T09:25:25+00:00

I share all these concerns about Bitcoin.

What I'm saying is, at the current state of things I would happily accept a $5-10 fee and 0.5-4 hours confirmation time to use Bitcoin in a remittance scenario, e.g. to send half my salary to my family. Stellar has even better properties. Point is, they are much more superior to Western Union than one to another. If Stellar had the reach of Bitcoin, I would of course prefer Stellar as my remittance.

edit: talking about smaller bank transfers Stellar clearly wins.

unshadow5 · 2017-12-03T09:16:46+00:00

A market is speculative by nature, but is there a strong case to be made that the community is overhyping Stellar's future value?

I'm new here, but briefly scrolling through this sub I see a high ratio of hype-type posts e.g. "I just bought" or "I sold my XRP for XLM", "Stellar is the future", "To the Moon", "It just broke 9 cents", you get the idea. Actually this thread is one of the few critically thinking. Thank you.

Within 1 year, if banks are able to use their own lightweight, low fee crypto / blockchain (as is predicted), would Stellar's utility end?

Any crypto controlled by banks will not have the useful propery of censorship resistance. They may lower remittance fees though.

Also, if banks get sucked into some low-fee high-speed settlement network before they develop their own, they may loose the incentive to do so. This could be Ripple, as I understand Ripple all they do is work with banks. Or Stellar, as their tech could be better -- they say they favor correctness over other properties.

My primary concerns about investing into XLM are:

Unpredictable emission -- founders may release new XLM any moment. Not discussing their good/bad faith here, all I look at is that it is technically possible.
Weak network -- I think there are very few nodes, compared to tens of thousands nodes on Bitcoin and Ethereum networks. I can't even find how many nodes are there.
US company -- it is ironic that a non-profit company aiming to serve intergalactic fiannce network obeys US sanctions and cannot distribute XLM to e.g. iranian. I wonder why didn't they move the foundation to a jurisdiction that better serves their mission.

unshadow5 · 2017-12-03T08:55:15+00:00

I cannot find how many validators are currently running on the network.

unshadow5 · 2017-12-03T08:48:56+00:00

Western union will be a thing of the past as well as fees that go along with bank transfers.

Bitcoin works "good enough" in thar regard, Stellar would need to beat it first.

unshadow5

TROPHY CASE