Proof of stake isn't as risky as you think. Vitalik has done lots of research on it, there's plenty of 20million marketcap altcoins using proof of stake for years, no big coin has been successful attacked via weaknesses in proof of stake.

Hardcore bitcoiners hate proof of stake, but they hate everything that isn't bitcoin. By railing against it, they have given the impression that it's flawed, but people who have looked into it in detail (like Vitalik) have found it perfectly workable, and that the huge improvements over proof of work mean it is virtually compulsory long term.

Ethereum has lots of issues, proof of stake is the least of them.

This

TY sir.. excellent intro. The way this **** translates in my head, is some weird sci-fi oompa-loompa stuff.

can delete.

DNMs start accepting monero (xmr).

Alphabay Market:
https://np.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarke...ase_of_monero/

Oasis:
https://np.reddit.com/r/DarkNetMarke...pt_monero_xmr/

price is up 500% past couple months and the bid book is ~10x deeper than previous months. Monero is still young, but this is big news.

Steemit:
Guess I should have shorted it...

Monero is gaining fast, I assume people speculate that some of the bulk trade on darknetmarket will shift towards Monero?

ETC from white hat returned now.

ETH +20% in 3days with a market cap > $1e9.

Monero still going strong +100% in 4days, but it seems that the mania has settled down.

Any idea on the size of those darknet markets? Are there any trackers? I know a couple years ago some academic paper estimated the size of silk road, but that has to be waaayy too far out of date now.

http://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR1607.html

The thing about the dark markets, is once someone finds a seller they like, they no longer need to use the market. They just communicate directly with PGP, cut out the commissions and cut out the 3rd party risk. I would bet more/bigger deals are done this way, therefore the actual number of drug transactions are way larger then their estimates.

tokens backed by fiat running on ethereum network?

yes plz

Santander ftw!

http://fortune.com/ethereum-blockchain-vitalik-buterin/

First Blood crowdsale sold out $5.5 million cap on Sunday night in less than 10 seconds. It was actually a few minutes, but effectively it was 10 seconds, just slightly delayed due to transaction per block issue.

Augur (REP tokens) likely to be released on October 4.

That crowdsale was ridiculous. about 80% of the tokens were frontrun on Yunbi. Something like 60% of all tokens are owned by 3 people...easy pump and dump for sure but long term no chance of success imo

Yeah the First Blood one was pretty bizarre.

Is anybody here actively investing (rather than trading) in alot of the recent ICO's or alt coins with a medium-long term out look? If so and want to discuss strategy/coins that me be good etc hit me up.

cant ****ing wait.

Frontrun isn't really the right word. Yunbi took preorders, but Yunbi still had to buyin to the presale at the same time as everyone else. Yunbi had roughly 80% of the total preordered on their exchange, but only was able to purchase about 75% of that amount, so 60% total.

But yes, the 5.5m cap and the power hour, made for a ridiculous crowdsale.

Also tokens are locked up and can't be traded for nearly 3 months, yet anyone who bought in on Yunbi is able to trade their IOUs thru Yunbi's exchange database.

Augur (REP) is released. Will be transferable at noon EST

If I have the numbers right it looks like augur REP is around 20x vs USD, 6x vs btc and ~even vs eth compared to presale on the markets today

And down 99% since the opening.

burning question:

will the dapp ****ing work, or will it not.

idgaf about price right now

that's not true based on volume.

One of the most exciting things in crypto right now is "stablecoins" IMO.

Right now they function as tokens under ethereum, but they really have the ability to re-transform money over the internet. I'm trying to keep this as open and ambiguous as possible because I dont even know yet how to fully rationalize and reconcile their potential impact.

There will be financial entities that will issue tokens on the ethereum network. These tokens will be backed by real fiat &/or commodities. Presumably they will be held in banks or other trusted entities in the physical world. So you can have a token whose value that is backed by the exact balance of currencies inside IMF's SDR basket. Or you can have a token that tracks USD only, Yen only, Yuan only, etc. Or you can have a token that is backed by real precious metals. Or you can have a token that tracks a basket of cryptocurrencies much like an index fund does at a brokerage.

One odd result (paradox arguably) of this tokenization of fiat is that the underlying value of "1" token can be greater than that of "1" ethereum. I dont know how to reconcile that, but it seems totally likely/possible to me.

Just something to look out for in the coming years.