Im in,
although without tight obligations, on volunteer base, i have flexible schedule so i could answer questions which i know .

Nxt's transparent mining is good but not the best because it still involves mining and is still CENTRALIZED one-block at a time.  It is also still block based.

With what we are planning you get Ripple style confirmation speed and no ONE node can specify the block contents.   This means that no one node can use their opportunity to generate a block to manipulate the on-chain market.

The space is heating up.

bytemaster, what about emunies, are they serious rival to Bts?
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Transactional Model

Originally the eMunie transaction model shared a lot in common with the Bitcoin design, single chain, in and out transactions cross signed using ECDSA scripts and other similarities. From day one, this did not "feel" correct, it is limiting, it is susceptible to 51% attacks via forking and while its design is acceptable to a minor currency implementation, moving forward, it does not scale well enough to be considered a "fiat" challenger.

We decided to redesign 70% of our transaction model and refactor our code.

So how does it work now?

Confirming transactions continues to operate in much the same manner, a forward and back search of the block chain is performed, verifying that the current transaction dependencies are legitimate and continuing in a recursive fashion until an eMu generation block is encountered, or the genesis. Coupled with our efficient POW algorithm (although slightly revised which I'll get into later on) this original method is still the basis of our transaction confirmation functionality and processing.

The main changes are in the "block chain" itself, and the way that transactions are recorded and stored.

eMunie now uses multiple chains, think of the ledger as more of a block tree, than a block chain. There may be many 1000's of small, interconnected chains, all holding valid transactions, and all able to validate transactions across other chain sections. "Forks", or new chains in eMunie are good, they strengthen the system and make a 51% attack impractical if not nigh on impossible, as there are so many chains, taking them all over is rather difficult. Transactions are verified in multiple blocks, with many "hatchers" (or miners as is the lingo here) in the system verifying the same transaction over and over and including a reference to that transaction in many blocks, within many chains.

Double spends are also EXTREMELY difficult with eMunie, as the system now favors a rolling balance over a "transaction in/out" method such as Bitcoin. As soon as you create a transaction, that transaction is distributed to the network as an intention, and it is logged. All nodes now know about this intended transaction and will include it in any subsequent balance calculation should they need it.

Upon the transaction clearing, that transaction is included in 1 or many blocks, and your rolling balance will calculate to the same as when performed using the transaction intention.

Transaction intentions take huge priority over other system messages, so to perform that double spend would require you to be very targeted in where it is sent to, know all about the current network position (its very dynamic) and sent immediately after the original transaction. Should you successfully achieve a double spend, soon after your rolling balance when calculated by nodes in the system will enter a negative balance, that peer and wallet address will then be immediately blacklisted forever.

Supply, Demand & eMu Generation

Currencies, or money supply, work with reliance to supply and demand, the more demand the more supply, the problem is of course, that in the fiat world, this is manipulated by the central banks to their own agenda, and dilutes the fiat supply... or inflation.

A stable currency needs a stable value, and a stable value can only be achieved with a solid supply and demand model that doesn't dilute the already in circulation money supply. If it does, new money steals the value from your current money supply and thus is devalued, as it has not "earned" its own value yet.

With eMunie we have looked at these issues in great detail, and believe we have a solution, that will ensure a fair, stable, honest currency value that does not dilute the holding of any single person in the system anywhere.

Save for the details of the mathematics (which will be in the white paper), demand is simply a call for new eMu, whether that be new accounts with new people coming on board, or regular users of eMunie wanting to have more of a holding.

Demand in the system is always closely chased, via an trailing elastic supply model, so there is just enough eMu in circulation to almost meet to the current demand trends....unless demand comes to a halt or is exceeded by supply. When this happens, no more eMu is created until the current excess supply available is used by demand. This recognition of excess supply happens quickly, so the excess will always be a very small percentage of the entire money supply, thus the effect of this supply will be nominal at best.

Where does the supply come from you ask? It comes from the hatchers. Hatchers perform work while clearing transactions, the amount of work any single hatcher in the system does, is easily calculated from the block tree, and thus, a % portion of the work done by that hatcher in a specific time period can be determined. A hatcher will then receive that % portion, of the systems calculated supply of new eMu required from the current demand.

eMu can not be spent from a hatcher account, it can only be transferred to either an exchange account, or a regular eMu wallet via a mediator. This mediator records the movement of supply eMu into the system and is included in future supply calculations. Hatcher owners are then free to do with the eMu as they so wish, hopefully, trading some or all of it out into the system.

These generated eMu's will have "value" as the hatchers have performed real world work to acquire them, however, a caveat of this, is that as the system load increases, and more work is done by more hatchers, these eMu's increase in deemed value, thus devaluing the already present eMu's in the system....and thus acts like traditional INFLATION.

Interest

To combat this inflation due to the effect of the increasing work in the system, a portion of the supply eMu's are passed to the accounts already holding eMu as "interest". Interest is calculated as the current annual % increase in eMu supply, as per demand, plus a % increase to ensure equilibrium. This ensures that while the new supply of eMu entering into the system may have higher "value" due to more work done to achieve them, all other eMu's in the system, while worth less, are topped up with new, more valuable eMu to guarantee that stake holder of current eMu does not loose out.

Interest is ALWAYS higher than new supply %, even if just marginally, except in the event, that demand ceases to exist, or is 0. Interest is then also 0 to ensure the equilibrium and solidify the value of all eMu in the system.
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http://forum.emunie.com/index.php?/topic/139-emunie-latest-technical-and-feature-set-ramblings-29th-june-2013/

i just want to add 1 cent here,
besides Ripple consensus mechanism, its loyalty and compatibility with mainstream financial system give it advantage in short term to adapt Ripple technology to banking system network. (Seems like its not our case..)
Its not unusual, because one of the cofounders of Ripple is MtGox alumni..

Regarding Nxt, here is old kinda "whitepaper" of how nxt mining innovate the mining process, idk if you already read this, they called it transparent mining:
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In Nxt this problem doesn't arise coz all participants (miners) r known. This is a side-effect of 100% proof-of-stake currency. So, let's move to the most interesting part...

As u may know, Bitcoin et al. can be attacked by an entity that possesses 51% of hashing power. 2 main scenarios r possible:
1. Part of the miners leave the "legit" branch of the blockchain and start mining their own branch.
2. Someone buys/produces mining equipment and starts mining secret branch.

The 2nd scenario can't be applied to Nxt, coz no NXTs exist outside the network. Let's look closer at the 1st scenario.

Yesterday the average base target was ~700%. This means that only 1/7 of all stakeholders were generating blocks, we can't say if the rest 6/7 were hit by bus or trying to fork Nxt blockchain. This is in the current Nxt implementation. BCNext is satisfied with the results shown during last 2 weeks and now is going to adjust the mining algo a little bit to make it transparent.

What does this transparency mean? It means that anyone can predict (with very high probability) who and when will generate next block(s). And this gives us superior advantages:
1. Transactions can be sent directly to the miner who will mine the next block (if he decides to reveal his location on the Internet), thus saving traffic and coming much closer to VISA/MasterCard processing volumes.
2. Blocks can be generated in advance and sent to most of the miners before they become valid (timestamp validation), thus greatly reducing rate of orphaned blocks.
3. Due to ability to predict timestamps of future blocks (rate of blocks) it becomes possible to set appropriate fees to assure quick confirmations for important transactions (without paying too much for inclusion into a block).

And the most important feature:
The network can detect which miners don't take part in block generation and act accordingly.

The last point deserves to be described with more details.

Imagine someone is going to do a "51%" attack against Nxt and he owns 90% of all coins. The adversary must stop generating blocks for legit branch coz he won't be able to compete against 100% mining power with his 90%. So he decides to "skip" his turn to generate a block. The rest 10% of the network detects this and penalizes the adversary by setting his mining power to 0 and distributing it among other miners. Now the network is back to 100% power coz everyone got 10-fold increase. The adversary can mine other branch in a secret place but it won't be able to replace the legit branch. Of course, the 2nd branch will have 100% "hashing" power tied to it as well, coz the attacker will get his 90% bumped to 100% but this can be counteracted by some mechanisms of advanced consensus (still not revealed).

As a 100% PoS currency Nxt is protected against a government wealthy entity that could buy/produce a lot of ASICs, with the transparent mining it's protected even against someone buying most of the coins.

So, what does make Nxt a really next-gen currency? Not those nice features like decentralized exchange, or decentralized DNS, or decentralized app store. The transparent mining algo does, and this is only the 1st part of BCNext's plan...
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https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=364218.0;all

Actually, I expect that the easiest way to trade in person is BitGold for Gold because you have reduced the spread to within the realm of a normal transaction fee. 

The reason LocalBitcoins is not used more often is because you have to pair bid/ask/location which is a much smaller market and thus wider bid/ask spread.

..There are so many problems poping out, with trust, with scaleablility, with speed of exchange of Bitgold for Gold..
if somebody would cheat with and inject to system 1kg of gold, but then disappear (or maybe dead or stolen), how we manage such problems?

PhLURX7SMvQsxmPNre8ihkQowGsGa6FMgb

hello,
i have paid for keyhotee 3 days ago and still didnt got response, something happened?

Article on Coindesk:
http://www.coindesk.com/jp-morgan-chase-patent-digital-payment-system/
JP Morgan Chase is building its own digital currency for use with digital ‘wallets’, it has been reported.

The banking giant filed a patent application relating to a “method and system for processing internet payments using the electronic funds transfer network”.

Let’s Talk Bitcoin claimed the patent application was actually filed on 5th August, and published 28th November. The application’s abstract says:

“Embodiments of the invention include a method and system for conducting financial transactions over a payment network.

The method may include associating a payment address of an account with an account holder name, the account residing at a financial institution and the associated payment address of the account configured to allow withdrawals by the account holder only and to allow a plurality of deposits to be made at different times.

The method further includes freely publishing the payment address and making it available to users of an internet portal or search engine. The method further includes receiving data over a network identifying a deposit to be made to the account, assigning the deposit to the account using the payment address, and notifying the payer of the assignment.

At least one directory is used for associating the account holder with the payment address.”

Direct payment addresses, freely publishing such addresses for deposits over data networks… apart from the ‘account residing at a financial institution’ part, many might be familiar with a similar system already in widespread use.

In its lengthy application, JP Morgan Chase has avoided mentioning bitcoin at all, though it did allude to the fact that “new Internet payment mechanisms have been rapidly emerging”.

Of course, it could be referring to PayPal, or one of the many retail loyalty point systems attempting to become their own kind of currency. But the application also notes the drawbacks of these existing systems, such as the need to enter PINs, high processing fees, and shortage of consumer-to-consumer payment methods.

Before anyone says “prior art”, the application also mentions “prior art electronic Wallets”, but refers to software that stores existing account information rather than being self-contained.

Other highlights from the application include:

“A computer-implemented method of providing an anonymous payment from a mobile device to a payee device to enable an electronic payment between a payer and a payee without provision of an account number or name from the payer…”

and:

“payment message including a transaction ID; transmitting the transaction ID to the payer, the transaction ID permitting the payer to initiate transmission of a payment amount; generating a payment authorization message from the payer, the payment authorization message including a payment amount to be tendered to the payee and the transaction ID, the transaction ID allowing identification of the payment, thereby enabling redemption of the payment amount after the payee receives the transaction ID.”

Is this anything for bitcoin users to be concerned about? Is Chase, as the headlines said, ‘building a Bitcoin Killer?’

It’s no secret that the Internet, and the world at large, needs better payment options. The legacy system of credit cards and international wire transfers is being shoehorned into the Internet like Cinderella’s ugly stepsister into a glass slipper, often with the same unattractive results.

PayPal introduced the world to the concept of easy trans-currency payments, but also to those of account freezes, verification processes and 3% flat transaction fees.

But supposing Chase decided to use the patent to build its own cryptocurrency, would users flock to it? The initial reaction to Chase’s patent application from bitcoin fans was to point out a centralized system controlled by a large financial institution is hardly what cryptocurrency users want.

What about everyone else? Maybe all large financial institutions need to do is offer something identical to bitcoin, but without all the volatility, black market fearmongering and exchange shutdowns. Large banks, despite actions and events over the past five years, are still seen by most as safe places to store wealth.

Banks have also tried repeatedly to lock customers and companies out of the financial system for using bitcoin (including Chase itself), and perhaps having their own competing digital currencies would give them extra incentive to do so.

Holding a patent could also enable Chase to slow down or even stifle development of services relating to other digital currencies.

For those who don’t understand decentralization or its advantages, a controlling hand might even be seen as desirable. Neil Irwin of the Washington Post echoed this view with his ‘Bitcoin Needs a Central Banker‘ article in November.

Everyone from alt-coin developers to large corporations will probably try to build a better bitcoin in the coming years, and some users will be looking for one. Whether they succeed could well depend on more than just innovative features.