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Main => General Discussion => Topic started by: bitbully on November 11, 2013, 03:41:42 pm

Title: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: bitbully on November 11, 2013, 03:41:42 pm
This whole operation is very amateurish and there was no preparation. There is also a likelihood of malice by the project operators.

Firstly, all the clients are being released, unsigned, on a non-ssl server. A recipe for many people to lose their coins.

Secondly, the 2 hour notice hard-fork. Apart from that equating to a breach of contract, and essentially a dictatorial decision, it is ethically unsound since the initial miners all heavily benefit from this.

The market value has spiked because of this decision, and is classic pump and dump behavior. I lost out heavily because I purchased huge amounts of mining servers for this next month, based on a calculated risk/reward decision, and this change puts me in the red for good.

The claim that blocks were being mined too fast is no excuse. No modeling was done, and once the project started the only real option was to start over incase there was such a critical issue. Incase anybody missed the point, it's probably going to take a year if not more to mine what was mined in the first 5 days.

I can't believe people still fall for this stuff. It's like this entire ecosystem is about who can invent the next convincing scam. It's unfortunate because there are many good ideas here, but this is clearly not the team to execute.
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: Lighthouse on November 11, 2013, 04:01:40 pm
It's your right to feel however you want about Invictus, but they definitely did not benefit from what happened.  I'm sorry you invested based off of what was clearly an unsustainable situation, I suspect it was that exact phenomenon - that all the blocks from a 2 year blockchain would be mined out in a few weeks - that led to the decision to fork, because the network power was continuing to grow faster than the max 4x difficulty adjustment could compensate,  which was causing most of the power to not even be doing anything productive since block times were as low as 20 seconds.

This was like an IPO where the founder was not able to arrange the funds to buy ASAP and had no options to exercise - If Invictus called for a do-over it would be other people crying foul because they mined or bought coins that would then be worthless, yet they wouldn't get their cpu cycles or BTC used to purchase back.


As far as the market price goes, its not that the price was inflated now so much as it was deflated before.  The first buy I did was from bytemaster @ .01, like the second trade that ever happened.  As speed increased the market was flooded with supply which caused a glut of sellers and few buyers since everybody who wanted it was mining and finding blocks for themselves.   

As far as the difficulty is concerned, they botched that one real good.   I hope they get it better next time because clearly its better for everyone if this had taken 8 weeks compared to 4 days.

There is no winning this scenario, the question is what happens next.
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: fav on November 11, 2013, 04:02:30 pm
Quote
Firstly, all the clients are being released, unsigned, on a non-ssl server. A recipe for many people to lose their coins.

Fully agree with you, there's no reason not to sign / ssl the compiled clients

Quote
Secondly, the 2 hour notice hard-fork. Apart from that equating to a breach of contract, and essentially a dictatorial decision, it is ethically unsound since the initial miners all heavily benefit from this.

I see your point, but ProtoShares would be rendered worthless (like Phoenixcoin worthless) if there was no hard fork done. Fork was too rushed in my opinion.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but early miners always benefit from mining early?

Quote
The market value has spiked because of this decision, and is classic pump and dump behavior. I lost out heavily because I purchased huge amounts of mining servers for this next month, based on a calculated risk/reward decision, and this change puts me in the red for good.

There is no "market" yet. There are like 550k+ ProtoShares in the wild and I guess 10k have been traded. The price will regulate once it's on an exchange.


Quote
I can't believe people still fall for this stuff. It's like this entire ecosystem is about who can invent the next convincing scam. It's unfortunate because there are many good ideas here, but this is clearly not the team to execute.

Invictus has many good ideas, agreed. Call it scam? No, there are no "evil" intentions visible imo.
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: xxrforone on November 11, 2013, 04:57:10 pm
New things


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk (http://tapatalk.com/m?id=1)
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: soniq on November 11, 2013, 06:29:44 pm
As with any new protocol there is not a manual on how to launch one properly.

You plan as well as you can, launch and make adjustments and listen to  solid constructive advice as you go.

The platform has too many good features to abort now. 

What Invictus needs now is support, and we can all offer that in varying ways.

Mining, trading PTS, moderating sections of the forum and offering solutions to any problems/issues  that might arise.

Rome wasnt built in a day.


Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: bitbully on November 11, 2013, 07:55:51 pm
Nothing is going to happen next, this is worse than the Novacoin premine, since here it can't be fixed as easily.

The decision made to intervene with the difficulty is a glimpse at how Invictus will treat problems in the future, with blatant force. The idea that you can manipulate a market(mining markets included) is philosophically opposed to everything bitcoin is about.

It was a huge mistake, and now this coin is tainted and cursed imho. What should have happened is simple. Let it run it's course, and if everything was mined in 2 weeks well there's nothing you can do about it. Either deal with it, or start over.

If anything, you should have retroactively adjusted the block size mining rewards according to a new preset difficulty scale, and so essentially all balances and txn amounts would have been cut by a consistent %. So those who mined 10k protoshares for example would have been left with 2k (as an example). Yes people who had already bought some would have been screwed with less than they bargained, but it is at the very least morally equivalent to what you did to the rest of us.

Perhaps this is still a viable option, of course those who benefited from this blatant manipulation will all of a sudden wake up and realize manipulating the protocol like this is bad - merely showing their hypocrisy, since everyone who already mined a bunch loved this decision. Limit market supply -> price goes up.

All the excuses I'm hearing remind me of that guy who owes me money and keeps telling me about how he had to pay for his car to be fixed, and then he lost his phone, and then his cat got sick...IT'S IRRELEVANT OF THE PRINCIPLE!
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: Lighthouse on November 11, 2013, 08:07:43 pm
Nothing is going to happen next, this is worse than the Novacoin premine, since here it can't be fixed as easily.

The decision made to intervene with the difficulty is a glimpse at how Invictus will treat problems in the future, with blatant force. The idea that you can manipulate a market(mining markets included) is philosophically opposed to everything bitcoin is about.

It was a huge mistake, and now this coin is tainted and cursed imho. What should have happened is simple. Let it run it's course, and if everything was mined in 2 weeks well there's nothing you can do about it. Either deal with it, or start over.

If anything, you should have retroactively adjusted the block size mining rewards according to a new preset difficulty scale, and so essentially all balances and txn amounts would have been cut by a consistent %. So those who mined 10k protoshares for example would have been left with 2k (as an example). Yes people who had already bought some would have been screwed with less than they bargained, but it is at the very least morally equivalent to what you did to the rest of us.

Perhaps this is still a viable option, of course those who benefited from this blatant manipulation will all of a sudden wake up and realize manipulating the protocol like this is bad - merely showing their hypocrisy, since everyone who already mined a bunch loved this decision. Limit market supply -> price goes up.

All the excuses I'm hearing remind me of that guy who owes me money and keeps telling me about how he had to pay for his car to be fixed, and then he lost his phone, and then his cat got sick...IT'S IRRELEVANT OF THE PRINCIPLE!

If you're right, Invictus will fail and the coins that have been mined will be worthless.  I'm sorry you made an investment in hardware that won't pay off, but at least by not holding any coins you are not exposed to their future mistakes.   

Personally I think this was a painful experience for the invictus team and they will learn from it with the next blockchain launch but only time will tell.
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: ruletheworld on November 12, 2013, 12:31:55 am
Man, sorry that this had to happen to you wrt to the hardware that's not recoverable cost (if you weren't that distraught, I would suggest using that hardware to mine BitShares).
Could things have been done better? Yes. That doesn't imply any malice in my opinion and no 'principles' were violated. Sometimes you gotta do things to survive. Hopefully the whole team can learn a lot from this and the next releases will be smoother.

Also, everything is open source, you're welcome to create your own version if you think people would follow that better.
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: bytemaster on November 12, 2013, 08:45:59 am
Man, sorry that this had to happen to you wrt to the hardware that's not recoverable cost (if you weren't that distraught, I would suggest using that hardware to mine BitShares).
Could things have been done better? Yes. That doesn't imply any malice in my opinion and no 'principles' were violated. Sometimes you gotta do things to survive. Hopefully the whole team can learn a lot from this and the next releases will be smoother.

Also, everything is open source, you're welcome to create your own version if you think people would follow that better.

Hey, Invictus is in a great position!   Our mining pool is securing us about 3% of all ProtoShares which will be about 30,000 PTS.     Keyhotee IDs are generating revenue.   Those 30,000 PTS will be going up in value as the ideas and community grow and ultimately will put us in a very good position.    That hardware will still be productive and profitable and of course will be used to mine DomainShares and BitShares when they launch.   

Without ProtoShares this forum and community would be much smaller, but now EVERYONE has financial incentive to make BitShares a reality in the market place.   We have decentralized our business in the market and *THAT* was our goal.  Invictus is turning itself into a DAC via ProtoShares.    And this is the secret that few understand :)
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: itnom on November 12, 2013, 11:49:26 am
Hi bytemaster,

How are you intending to pay others who help in developing the DACs and all surrounding services?

I've personally got a webdev company and know plenty of good C and C++ developers. We've come around now and would get payed in bitcoin, but most of the team wouldn't accepts PTS at this point.

I'm personally very interested to contribute somehow to the development of DACs, though we're a pure web dev company.

Best,
Itnom
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: ruletheworld on November 12, 2013, 12:12:00 pm
Man, sorry that this had to happen to you wrt to the hardware that's not recoverable cost (if you weren't that distraught, I would suggest using that hardware to mine BitShares).
Could things have been done better? Yes. That doesn't imply any malice in my opinion and no 'principles' were violated. Sometimes you gotta do things to survive. Hopefully the whole team can learn a lot from this and the next releases will be smoother.

Also, everything is open source, you're welcome to create your own version if you think people would follow that better.

Hey, Invictus is in a great position!   Our mining pool is securing us about 3% of all ProtoShares which will be about 30,000 PTS.     Keyhotee IDs are generating revenue.   Those 30,000 PTS will be going up in value as the ideas and community grow and ultimately will put us in a very good position.    That hardware will still be productive and profitable and of course will be used to mine DomainShares and BitShares when they launch.   

Without ProtoShares this forum and community would be much smaller, but now EVERYONE has financial incentive to make BitShares a reality in the market place.   We have decentralized our business in the market and *THAT* was our goal.  Invictus is turning itself into a DAC via ProtoShares.    And this is the secret that few understand :)
Fair enough, but remember this also multiplies the expectations from BitShares. Not that it's a bad thing, just saying!
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: luckybit on November 12, 2013, 12:28:39 pm
Man, sorry that this had to happen to you wrt to the hardware that's not recoverable cost (if you weren't that distraught, I would suggest using that hardware to mine BitShares).
Could things have been done better? Yes. That doesn't imply any malice in my opinion and no 'principles' were violated. Sometimes you gotta do things to survive. Hopefully the whole team can learn a lot from this and the next releases will be smoother.

Also, everything is open source, you're welcome to create your own version if you think people would follow that better.

Hey, Invictus is in a great position!   Our mining pool is securing us about 3% of all ProtoShares which will be about 30,000 PTS.     Keyhotee IDs are generating revenue.   Those 30,000 PTS will be going up in value as the ideas and community grow and ultimately will put us in a very good position.    That hardware will still be productive and profitable and of course will be used to mine DomainShares and BitShares when they launch.   

Without ProtoShares this forum and community would be much smaller, but now EVERYONE has financial incentive to make BitShares a reality in the market place.   We have decentralized our business in the market and *THAT* was our goal.  Invictus is turning itself into a DAC via ProtoShares.    And this is the secret that few understand :)

I figured that Protoshares were a stock in Invictus and that it is a DAC. Will we get dividends if we hold onto the Protoshares?
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: Lighthouse on November 12, 2013, 02:08:04 pm
Man, sorry that this had to happen to you wrt to the hardware that's not recoverable cost (if you weren't that distraught, I would suggest using that hardware to mine BitShares).
Could things have been done better? Yes. That doesn't imply any malice in my opinion and no 'principles' were violated. Sometimes you gotta do things to survive. Hopefully the whole team can learn a lot from this and the next releases will be smoother.

Also, everything is open source, you're welcome to create your own version if you think people would follow that better.

Hey, Invictus is in a great position!   Our mining pool is securing us about 3% of all ProtoShares which will be about 30,000 PTS.     Keyhotee IDs are generating revenue.   Those 30,000 PTS will be going up in value as the ideas and community grow and ultimately will put us in a very good position.    That hardware will still be productive and profitable and of course will be used to mine DomainShares and BitShares when they launch.   

Without ProtoShares this forum and community would be much smaller, but now EVERYONE has financial incentive to make BitShares a reality in the market place.   We have decentralized our business in the market and *THAT* was our goal.  Invictus is turning itself into a DAC via ProtoShares.    And this is the secret that few understand :)

I figured that Protoshares were a stock in Invictus and that it is a DAC. Will we get dividends if we hold onto the Protoshares?

Not sure why you think that, if you've read any of the material about Protoshares you should know it is fundamentally different from stock in Invictus - Stock in invictus implies you own part of the company, whereas owning Protoshares is essentially prepaying for the results of the company, the different products.

So Protoshares is different in that it has a tangible payoff behind it that will occur on a specific date, but it's not stock.
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: Stan on November 12, 2013, 02:34:08 pm
Agreed.  Invictus common stock is privately held and subject to all the usual regulations about if, when and how we can offer it to the public.

That said, ProtoShares is innovative in that it exhibits some of the benefits of owning actual stock in a company.  They serve as a surrogate for measuring the market's assessment of a company's future potential (or at least the potential of its announced and potential products) and thus a way for perceptive investors to indirectly participate in any growth of that assessment. 

Of course, if other competitors choose to honor ProtoShares in a social contract for their DACs, then ProtoShares might better be viewed as a vehicle for speculating on a whole new market sector.

Watch for a coming article where I lay out some of the emerging theory behind how DACs can spawn DACs.

This is a new frontier with many unknown risks and rewards.
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: Stan on November 12, 2013, 02:52:20 pm
In a number of current articles at LetsTalkBitcoin.com we have documented our definition of what constitutes a true Distributed Autonomous Corporation (DAC). You can find them on the links tab at Invictus-Innovations.com

Invictus Innovations, INC is a flesh and blood company subject to all of the risks and regulations of the jurisdictions in which we operate.  We are highly distributed by design, but we are not autonomous and do not have DAC-like immunity to coercion from the Powers That Be.  We remain Invictus Innovations, INC.  ProtoShares might in some ways be viewed metaphorically as Invictus, DAC
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: barwizi on November 13, 2013, 02:30:40 pm
Truth is i see much butthurt in this post, sorry to be crass.

1) the announcement was pretty public and early
2) the network issues and unexpected adoption was way beyond projected estimates and cannot be controlled, remember it was solo first
3) The fork came just in time to save the investment of ALL holders, not just early miners. Later guys are actually lucky to be getting anything
4) just like any race if you get there first, you get first place you cant come in @ the back and expect us to celebrate you.
5) This is actually one of the most viable ideas in recent months with a large enough community interest to go far plus room for improvement and expansion. I'm no expert, but if you can clearly argue against my points , i may reconsider your butthurt opinions.
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: ken on November 16, 2013, 11:19:47 pm
3) The fork came just in time to save the investment of ALL holders, not just early miners. Later guys are actually lucky to be getting anything
4) just like any race if you get there first, you get first place you cant come in @ the back and expect us to celebrate you.

Do you hear yourself talking? "Later" ?? "the back" ??

This thing went from being a viable idea to a cesspool run by cloud miners and botnets in 2 weeks flat. It wasn't months or years like previous crypto currencies. It was 2 WEEKS! It has to be a world record.

This is purely led by greed. Big cloud mining farms drain the pond and suck up all the money. Everyone else gets nothing. In the end you'll have 10 guys sitting on 2,000,000 PTS each and the rest of the people will have 2 or 3. Most people will move on and look for the next new CPU mining opportunity and this project will fade away just like FTC or TRC or CNC. So, enjoy your 2,000,000 shares of nothing. Hopefully you'll dump early and make some money.

 

Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: bytemaster on November 16, 2013, 11:27:30 pm
3) The fork came just in time to save the investment of ALL holders, not just early miners. Later guys are actually lucky to be getting anything
4) just like any race if you get there first, you get first place you cant come in @ the back and expect us to celebrate you.

Do you hear yourself talking? "Later" ?? "the back" ???

This thing went from being a viable idea to a cesspool run by cloud miners and botnets in 2 weeks flat. It wasn't months or years like previous crypto currencies. It was 2 WEEKS! It has to be a world record.

This is purely led by greed. Big cloud mining farms drain the pond and suck up all the money. Everyone else gets nothing. In the end you'll have 10 guys sitting on 2,000,000 PTS each and the rest of the people will have 2 or 3. Most people will move on and look for the next new CPU mining opportunity and this project will fade away just like FTC or TRC or CNC. So, enjoy your 2,000,000 shares of nothing. Hopefully you'll dump early and make some money.

First of all, cloud mining is more or less equal opportunity and is not free.   Those paying for cloud hosting a paying more per PTS than those mining at home.  Lastly, it doesn't matter who mines them it matters who holds them while they appreciate.  Most of the major miners out there must turn around and sell their PTS to cover their expenses which means the price is lower right now because of their efforts and you can get it cheaper.

The jealousy and greed of people who feel they deserve FREE PTS without having to work for it astounds me.   At the current price of PTS you could be earning a very high profit margin operating from home, but instead you choose to compare yourself to those entrepreneurs who realized if they invest more they can make more.    There are no free lunches in this life, and right now mining PTS at home is the closest you will get.



   
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: ken on November 16, 2013, 11:34:26 pm
it doesn't matter who mines them it matters who holds them while they appreciate.  Most of the major miners out there must turn around and sell their PTS to cover their expense

That's where you're wrong. It DOES matter who mines them. Because if you get 10,000 small guys mining a bit and making some coin they'll stick around and support your project. If you get 10 guys sucking up all the resources with vast cloud mining pools you'll have nobody to support you. As soon as the financial opportunity dries up those 10 guys will dump their PTS and move on. You'll end up being the leader of a broken down crypto experiment that nobody cares about any more.

If you don't get the wide base of supporters in the beginning your project is doomed. I hope you figure out some way to make it work. Maybe on the next DAC you should focus all your efforts on trying to make it accessible to the millions of CPU miners at home who don't want to compete with botnets. Figure out a way to block cloud miners and botnets and you'll become the king of cryptos.
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: bytemaster on November 16, 2013, 11:38:03 pm
it doesn't matter who mines them it matters who holds them while they appreciate.  Most of the major miners out there must turn around and sell their PTS to cover their expense

That's where you're wrong. It DOES matter who mines them. Because if you get 10,000 small guys mining a bit and making some coin they'll stick around and support your project. If you get 10 guys sucking up all the resources with vast cloud mining pools you'll have nobody to support you. As soon as the financial opportunity dries up those 10 guys will dump their PTS and move on. You'll end up being the leader of a broken down crypto experiment that nobody cares about any more. If you don't get the wide base of supporters in the beginning your project is doomed. I hope you figure out some way to make it work. Maybe on the next DAC you should focus all your efforts on trying to make it accessible to the millions of CPU miners at home who don't want to compete with botnets.

Well, if they dump them on the market cheap, then there is ample opportunity for everyone.   I happen to know that most of the large cloud miners are turning around and selling their PTS to people highly invested in the success of this project.   Anyone following us for the past month and started mining in the first few days has received SEVERAL HUNDRED DOLLARS worth of PTS. 
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: flower1024 on November 16, 2013, 11:38:08 pm
it doesn't matter who mines them it matters who holds them while they appreciate.  Most of the major miners out there must turn around and sell their PTS to cover their expense

That's where you're wrong. It DOES matter who mines them. Because if you get 10,000 small guys mining a bit and making some coin they'll stick around and support your project. If you get 10 guys sucking up all the resources with vast cloud mining pools you'll have nobody to support you. As soon as the financial opportunity dries up those 10 guys will dump their PTS and move on. You'll end up being the leader of a broken down crypto experiment that nobody cares about any more.

If you don't get the wide base of supporters in the beginning your project is doomed. I hope you figure out some way to make it work. Maybe on the next DAC you should focus all your efforts on trying to make it accessible to the millions of CPU miners at home who don't want to compete with botnets. Figure out a way to block cloud miners and botnets and you'll become the king of cryptos.

what do you think dumping means?
it means selling to other people: the new supporters
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: Stan on November 17, 2013, 01:09:08 am
it doesn't matter who mines them it matters who holds them while they appreciate.  Most of the major miners out there must turn around and sell their PTS to cover their expense

That's where you're wrong. It DOES matter who mines them. Because if you get 10,000 small guys mining a bit and making some coin they'll stick around and support your project. If you get 10 guys sucking up all the resources with vast cloud mining pools you'll have nobody to support you. As soon as the financial opportunity dries up those 10 guys will dump their PTS and move on. You'll end up being the leader of a broken down crypto experiment that nobody cares about any more.

If you don't get the wide base of supporters in the beginning your project is doomed. I hope you figure out some way to make it work. Maybe on the next DAC you should focus all your efforts on trying to make it accessible to the millions of CPU miners at home who don't want to compete with botnets. Figure out a way to block cloud miners and botnets and you'll become the king of cryptos.

what do you think dumping means?
it means selling to other people: the new supporters

Two profound observations:

1.  We would love to please everybody.
2.  You can't please everybody.

Everybody has a different definition of "fair", usually meaning "what works best for them."

The momentum algorithm was the result of a lot of R&D and bounties to come up with a "more fair" solution and to achieve the goal of maximum decentralizationOur Prime Directive.  Maximum decentralization inherently means "benefit the little guys".

We will continue to search for better ways to achieve this goal and sponsor bounties to stimulate community research toward that end.

But this is an arms race.  People with great resources will always find a way to out-compete those who don't.  Every move we make will have counter moves.  We will then make counter-counter moves. 

Because Distributed Autonomous Corporations are not incorruptible if they are not distributed and autonomous.

Centralization is the enemy of everything we stand for. 
And fighting it is more important to us than personal wealth.




Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: Lighthouse on November 17, 2013, 01:32:57 am
it doesn't matter who mines them it matters who holds them while they appreciate.  Most of the major miners out there must turn around and sell their PTS to cover their expense

That's where you're wrong. It DOES matter who mines them. Because if you get 10,000 small guys mining a bit and making some coin they'll stick around and support your project. If you get 10 guys sucking up all the resources with vast cloud mining pools you'll have nobody to support you. As soon as the financial opportunity dries up those 10 guys will dump their PTS and move on. You'll end up being the leader of a broken down crypto experiment that nobody cares about any more.

If you don't get the wide base of supporters in the beginning your project is doomed. I hope you figure out some way to make it work. Maybe on the next DAC you should focus all your efforts on trying to make it accessible to the millions of CPU miners at home who don't want to compete with botnets. Figure out a way to block cloud miners and botnets and you'll become the king of cryptos.

what do you think dumping means?
it means selling to other people: the new supporters

Two profound observations:

1.  We would love to please everybody.
2.  You can't please everybody.

Everybody has a different definition of "fair", usually meaning "what works best for them."

The momentum algorithm was the result of a lot of R&D and bounties to come up with a "more fair" solution and to achieve the goal of maximum decentralizationOur Prime Directive.  Maximum decentralization inherently means "benefit the little guys".

We will continue to search for better ways to achieve this goal and sponsor bounties to stimulate community research toward that end.

But this is an arms race.  People with great resources will always find a way to out-compete those who don't.  Every move we make will have counter moves.  We will then make counter-counter moves. 

Because Distributed Autonomous Corporations are not incorruptible if they are not distributed and autonomous.

Centralization is the enemy of everything we stand for. 
And fighting it is more important to us than personal wealth.

+1
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: liberman on November 17, 2013, 12:57:41 pm
it doesn't matter who mines them it matters who holds them while they appreciate.  Most of the major miners out there must turn around and sell their PTS to cover their expense

That's where you're wrong. It DOES matter who mines them. Because if you get 10,000 small guys mining a bit and making some coin they'll stick around and support your project. If you get 10 guys sucking up all the resources with vast cloud mining pools you'll have nobody to support you. As soon as the financial opportunity dries up those 10 guys will dump their PTS and move on. You'll end up being the leader of a broken down crypto experiment that nobody cares about any more.

If you don't get the wide base of supporters in the beginning your project is doomed. I hope you figure out some way to make it work. Maybe on the next DAC you should focus all your efforts on trying to make it accessible to the millions of CPU miners at home who don't want to compete with botnets. Figure out a way to block cloud miners and botnets and you'll become the king of cryptos.

Amen.  ;)
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: sonulrk on November 17, 2013, 01:12:44 pm
it doesn't matter who mines them it matters who holds them while they appreciate.  Most of the major miners out there must turn around and sell their PTS to cover their expense

That's where you're wrong. It DOES matter who mines them. Because if you get 10,000 small guys mining a bit and making some coin they'll stick around and support your project. If you get 10 guys sucking up all the resources with vast cloud mining pools you'll have nobody to support you. As soon as the financial opportunity dries up those 10 guys will dump their PTS and move on. You'll end up being the leader of a broken down crypto experiment that nobody cares about any more.

If you don't get the wide base of supporters in the beginning your project is doomed. I hope you figure out some way to make it work. Maybe on the next DAC you should focus all your efforts on trying to make it accessible to the millions of CPU miners at home who don't want to compete with botnets. Figure out a way to block cloud miners and botnets and you'll become the king of cryptos.

Amen.  ;)
+1
Protoshare will becomes a pseudo-centralize currency!
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: Stan on November 17, 2013, 02:12:39 pm
it doesn't matter who mines them it matters who holds them while they appreciate.  Most of the major miners out there must turn around and sell their PTS to cover their expense

That's where you're wrong. It DOES matter who mines them. Because if you get 10,000 small guys mining a bit and making some coin they'll stick around and support your project. If you get 10 guys sucking up all the resources with vast cloud mining pools you'll have nobody to support you. As soon as the financial opportunity dries up those 10 guys will dump their PTS and move on. You'll end up being the leader of a broken down crypto experiment that nobody cares about any more.

If you don't get the wide base of supporters in the beginning your project is doomed. I hope you figure out some way to make it work. Maybe on the next DAC you should focus all your efforts on trying to make it accessible to the millions of CPU miners at home who don't want to compete with botnets. Figure out a way to block cloud miners and botnets and you'll become the king of cryptos.

what do you think dumping means?
it means selling to other people: the new supporters

Two profound observations:

1.  We would love to please everybody.
2.  You can't please everybody.

Everybody has a different definition of "fair", usually meaning "what works best for them."

The momentum algorithm was the result of a lot of R&D and bounties to come up with a "more fair" solution and to achieve the goal of maximum decentralizationOur Prime Directive.  Maximum decentralization inherently means "benefit the little guys".

We will continue to search for better ways to achieve this goal and sponsor bounties to stimulate community research toward that end.

But this is an arms race.  People with great resources will always find a way to out-compete those who don't.  Every move we make will have counter moves.  We will then make counter-counter moves. 

Because Distributed Autonomous Corporations are not incorruptible if they are not distributed and autonomous.

Centralization is the enemy of everything we stand for. 
And fighting it is more important to us than personal wealth.

+1

At least we all seem to agree that continued efforts to enfranchise the "little guy" are critically important.  We will continue to sponsor research to do just that.
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: td services on November 17, 2013, 08:30:36 pm
I too was caught off guard with the sheer resources thrown into mining at the outset. Evidently there were already highly skilled CPU miners with experience from Primecoin who were able to rapidly deploy and optimize. This wasn't very evident from the discussion and level of interest appearing in the forums for the few of months leading up to the launch. My main interest was the decentralized p2p direct trading being developed with Bitshares. The plan of favoring CPU mining over GPU and ASIC was very appealing to me. I did not expect cloud mining to actually be viable.

I've had to pivot from mining to purchasing on the markets, and just treat it like investing in pre-mined coin in a very promising, innovative project. I would rather have seen the money go to funding development on the project, like the Mastercoin launch, than to mass miners. Overall, I also think there is a huge potential in this project, I'm glad to see the founders have still managed to end up with a large enough stake to encourage them to keep working on it.
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: stuartcharles on November 18, 2013, 11:09:28 am
I don't really understand the point in moaning. Even if you start today mining pts today its way more profitable than feather coin or litecoin (which i also mine).

We all know from btc to pts this is all a gamble. My advise is try and get a small piece from as many of the pies as you like the look of. Forget moaning, we are all likely to win in the end. (group hug!)
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: udeluxe on November 18, 2013, 12:36:11 pm
At least we all seem to agree that continued efforts to enfranchise the "little guy" are critically important.  We will continue to sponsor research to do just that.

^^ this is absolutely crucial. people will rapidly lose interest in watching an 100x accelerated bitcoin where the vast majority of the wealth has already been siphoned off by those with access to cloud compute clusters and botnets. meanwhile mining collecting 0.2 a day whilst people selling 10k at a time..wtf? what a turn off!! how can it feel like completely missing the boat at such a short time after official launch, is that right?

left to pick up a pizza crumbs @ 10x price from mere fortnight ago, hoping there is a someone with bigger greed out there to allow them to earn, it needs to be more than that cause it's just depressing to see such a disparity already.

This had potential, hope it can still turn things around.
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: MisO69 on November 18, 2013, 08:25:09 pm
I hear you guys with 3000+ vps accounts were pulling in 250pts/hour. Let me tell you what happened here. Greed overcame logic and you lost out on your gamble. Everyone knows that alt coins, even bit coins are not a sure thing. Good luck recovering you losses. I'm sure glad I didn't have coinlust at the time and did something stupid like I did a few months ago..  :o

Live and learn...
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: Lighthouse on November 18, 2013, 08:50:01 pm
I hear you guys with 3000+ vps accounts were pulling in 250pts/hour. Let me tell you what happened here. Greed overcame logic and you lost out on your gamble. Everyone knows that alt coins, even bit coins are not a sure thing. Good luck recovering you losses. I'm sure glad I didn't have coinlust at the time and did something stupid like I did a few months ago..  :o

Live and learn...

What are you talking about?
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: bytemaster on November 18, 2013, 08:50:49 pm
I hear you guys with 3000+ vps accounts were pulling in 250pts/hour. Let me tell you what happened here. Greed overcame logic and you lost out on your gamble. Everyone knows that alt coins, even bit coins are not a sure thing. Good luck recovering you losses. I'm sure glad I didn't have coinlust at the time and did something stupid like I did a few months ago..  :o

Live and learn...

From what I can see btc38 is still trading above $9 and the current price on coingrounds of around $6 still covers cloud computing mining costs.   
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: Lighthouse on November 18, 2013, 08:54:07 pm
Oh he's implying people cloud mining now will take a loss because the price went down from the recent highs?   Yeah, the cost of cloud mining is less than $4 per PTS, the price is high because most people would rather hold for the first payout than sell for these low valuations.   Just because a thing is undervalued doesn't mean the price goes straight up to the correct level, look at how long it's taking people to figure out how valuable Bitcoin is - Protoshares is where Bitcoin was three years ago, covered those first two years in about two weeks!
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: AJ_ on November 20, 2013, 10:22:45 pm
it doesn't matter who mines them it matters who holds them while they appreciate.  Most of the major miners out there must turn around and sell their PTS to cover their expense

That's where you're wrong. It DOES matter who mines them. Because if you get 10,000 small guys mining a bit and making some coin they'll stick around and support your project. If you get 10 guys sucking up all the resources with vast cloud mining pools you'll have nobody to support you. As soon as the financial opportunity dries up those 10 guys will dump their PTS and move on. You'll end up being the leader of a broken down crypto experiment that nobody cares about any more.

If you don't get the wide base of supporters in the beginning your project is doomed. I hope you figure out some way to make it work. Maybe on the next DAC you should focus all your efforts on trying to make it accessible to the millions of CPU miners at home who don't want to compete with botnets. Figure out a way to block cloud miners and botnets and you'll become the king of cryptos.

Amen.  ;)
+1
Protoshare will becomes a pseudo-centralize currency!
A centralized or even pseudo-centralized currency is something we want to avoid.
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: Stan on November 20, 2013, 10:28:40 pm
it doesn't matter who mines them it matters who holds them while they appreciate.  Most of the major miners out there must turn around and sell their PTS to cover their expense

That's where you're wrong. It DOES matter who mines them. Because if you get 10,000 small guys mining a bit and making some coin they'll stick around and support your project. If you get 10 guys sucking up all the resources with vast cloud mining pools you'll have nobody to support you. As soon as the financial opportunity dries up those 10 guys will dump their PTS and move on. You'll end up being the leader of a broken down crypto experiment that nobody cares about any more.

If you don't get the wide base of supporters in the beginning your project is doomed. I hope you figure out some way to make it work. Maybe on the next DAC you should focus all your efforts on trying to make it accessible to the millions of CPU miners at home who don't want to compete with botnets. Figure out a way to block cloud miners and botnets and you'll become the king of cryptos.

Amen.  ;)
+1
Protoshare will becomes a pseudo-centralize currency!
A centralized or even pseudo-centralized currency is something we want to avoid.

Which is the whole point of our proposed Alternative DACs experiment for PowerBall, DAC.
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: earthbound on December 31, 2013, 05:19:05 am
[Quite belated as this may be, nevertheless . . .]

First, a personal note, and then I'll try to back away and take a more neutrally observant tone.

Most of my ProtoShares have now been invested in a Keyhotee Founder ID, and will probably next go towards AngelShares, but dude, for whatever it's worth, yes I see your pain (I hope I even feel it--Lord knows I've had some serious misfortune in my days), but I can't nary do a thing for it. Well, maybe I can throw some shreds of specks of PTS your way. I'd recommend anyone else to do the same (or even send you a lot of PTS, if they can) just to buy back your support :)

Second, there's an underlying silly, prima facae idea here, that if choices made by one (or many) lead anyone else to misfortune, it could only mean the misfortune was intended by the one (and that the one should be regarded guilty unless proven innocent). This position is unreasonable, because it simply discards the self-evident truth that people in general have good will, so that it is usually more reasonable to assume or hope that others meant well, even if they could not always do as well as others hope.

But on balance, it seems to be Invictus is doing a lot of good and creating a lot of value, and if in the mix they make errors (it is safest to assume), doesn't that mean that they are . . . human?

(And, quite topically, not robots?)

Now, that said . . .

I'm astonished. Herein was an argument which both accused of ill-willed manipulation, and in the same breaths, with quite the very same ill-will it accused others of, proposed somehow forcibly excluding others (cloud miners) from a market?

(By "the very same ill-will," I refer to the manifest ill-will toward cloud miners.)

And trying to exclude a whole class of investors wouldn't be ill-willed manipulation?*

And this quite hypocritical proposal, at the same time an aspersion of hypocrisy is thrown out?

What?!

Swallowed up as it is in pain, this argument doesn't even see that it proposes exactly the same kind of inequality which it (erroneously) accuses others of deliberately creating.

On the principle of equality, Mr. Lincoln and his supporters were very insightful. I recommend a watch of the film "LINCOLN." Therein is a performance of a venerable Statesman, who argued that the phrase " . . . all men are created equal . . . " should not be taken to mean that all men are equally great. He properly insulted the racist ill logic of a Statesman (whom he opposed), by saying his opponent is proof that all men are not created equal (or in other words, his opponent is a small-minded fool). He argued rather that the phrase speaks of equality before the law, or in other words, it means that the principle of law (and the human rights it defends) should have equal application to all men.

(This argument was evidently one of the influences that led to the abolition of slavery.)

What does this have to do with anything here? Well, an argument which was had here sought to enforce unequal opportunity on others, to recompense for a supposed wrong.

That kind of argument will always beget misery.

The fact is that life is unfair. Men are not created equal (in greatness, and in resources, etc.), but men do have a right to be given equal opportunity. These two facts must logically lead to the conclusion that, assuming a level playing field, those who invest their resources more wisely will come out ahead. It also means that brutal chance may dish a good deal to one and a bad deal to another. In other words, everyone has equal opportunity for either fortune or misfortune--you can never predict what kind of misfortune will befall anyone. It can happen to anyone and everyone.

Where circumstance has dealt misfortune, pointing fingers (seeking to blame anyone--and thereby forming a supposed pretext to create inequality against them--which is vengeful, by the way) isn't going to go anywhere other than somewhere miserable. Granted, misery is a strangely comforting place, because at least a miserable person can safely predict to themselves that they will not so enthusiastically prepare for future opportunities, where they could be exposed to risk and be possibly hurt again.

Serious shit happened to Batman, but he got back up! :)

*And how the hockeysticks would any design even block cloud miners? So not worth it. A system should allow equal access to all participants, regardless of how much or how little power those participants wield. Otherwise, it simply isn't equal. Those who put in greater resources will probably get greater returns, but ideally, those with less resources can get a similar return (proportionally) for their smaller investment. And look around! Just today, someone unleashed a GPU POW miner, which apparently only increases returns four-fold (ish), where previous algorithms were simply decimated by GPUs. If going to all the trouble of designing and open-sourcing an algorithm which, at least, people are having a much harder time "cracking" for an unequal advantage--if that isn't proof of good will, I don't know what is.
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: cogitativecurve on December 31, 2013, 06:52:40 am
In a number of current articles at LetsTalkBitcoin.com we have documented our definition of what constitutes a true Distributed Autonomous Corporation (DAC). You can find them on the links tab at Invictus-Innovations.com

Invictus Innovations, INC is a flesh and blood company subject to all of the risks and regulations of the jurisdictions in which we operate.  We are highly distributed by design, but we are not autonomous and do not have DAC-like immunity to coercion from the Powers That Be.  We remain Invictus Innovations, INC.  ProtoShares might in some ways be viewed metaphorically as Invictus, DAC.

I love the careful wording. For instance, the word "metaphorically" dismisses any mutually inclusive elements between what is "real" and what is "virtual".

By the way, I liked what you wrote about definitions in your "social consensus" post, as well. I'm trying to find that post right now. I'm in the middle of reading "Ethics of Liberty"...remarkable content! I found chapter 19 "Property Rights and Theory of Contracts" particularly intriguing. It brings up the idea of a broken promise not being indictable if theft of property did not take place in some form. So, I like also how you keep things tentative so as to not have evidence of unfulfilled promises. Invictus has held true on both counts. It has not only avoided any kind of theft, but has done quite the opposite, evidenced by my free Memory Coins. And, it has not broken any promises due to keeping everything voluntarily transparent and tentative, rather than stating absolutes about the future.

The original post seems unmitigated and unsubstantiated.
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: smiley35 on December 31, 2013, 06:55:26 am
I know I got to this thread late but in response to the OP,

You are entitled to your opinion... Then leave.... I am sticking around, I believe in Dan and Invictus I have invested in protoshares, and I plan to sink another 200+ btc into angle shares in the coming months. I believe in the vision, I've seen bytemaster's history both in general and on DAC's (bitcoin included) and I believe he is the man to pull this off, and I'm behind this team until it succeeds or crashes and burns. It's to bad you don't feel the same OP but I wish you the best of luck. Dan n team.... I am amazed by the idea's put forth in this forum on a daily basis. I have not been this excited since I discovered bitcoin. Cheers

(fap fap fap I know, I should post this to r/circlejerk)
Title: Re: Why I am no longer supporting Invictus-Innovations
Post by: cogitativecurve on December 31, 2013, 07:02:28 am
it doesn't matter who mines them it matters who holds them while they appreciate.  Most of the major miners out there must turn around and sell their PTS to cover their expense

That's where you're wrong. It DOES matter who mines them. Because if you get 10,000 small guys mining a bit and making some coin they'll stick around and support your project. If you get 10 guys sucking up all the resources with vast cloud mining pools you'll have nobody to support you. As soon as the financial opportunity dries up those 10 guys will dump their PTS and move on. You'll end up being the leader of a broken down crypto experiment that nobody cares about any more.

If you don't get the wide base of supporters in the beginning your project is doomed. I hope you figure out some way to make it work. Maybe on the next DAC you should focus all your efforts on trying to make it accessible to the millions of CPU miners at home who don't want to compete with botnets. Figure out a way to block cloud miners and botnets and you'll become the king of cryptos.

what do you think dumping means?
it means selling to other people: the new supporters

Two profound observations:

1.  We would love to please everybody.
2.  You can't please everybody.

Everybody has a different definition of "fair", usually meaning "what works best for them."

The momentum algorithm was the result of a lot of R&D and bounties to come up with a "more fair" solution and to achieve the goal of maximum decentralizationOur Prime Directive.  Maximum decentralization inherently means "benefit the little guys".

We will continue to search for better ways to achieve this goal and sponsor bounties to stimulate community research toward that end.

But this is an arms race.  People with great resources will always find a way to out-compete those who don't.  Every move we make will have counter moves.  We will then make counter-counter moves. 

Because Distributed Autonomous Corporations are not incorruptible if they are not distributed and autonomous.

Centralization is the enemy of everything we stand for. 
And fighting it is more important to us than personal wealth.
+++++++++++++++++++1111111!1