Hey guys, long time no speak.

Is there a Mac binary or Linux version one can download? Also I notice that the download button on the feathercoin homepage is giving off a horrible virus warning in both chrome and firefox.

[quote name=“Kevlar” post=“36061” timestamp=“1385249210”]
Best thread yet. +1, everyone.
[/quote]

Cool, I’ll send you my invoice 8)

First of all hello and welcome to the forum.

TL;DR
Like Kris this is just my opinion and I would say the answer to your question is that it’s the wrong question. This is because:

[list]
[*]You will never get a straight answer since most people in the crypto scene speak from a position of self interest.
[*]It’s a false dichotomy because you can invest in a range of coins proportionate to your investment hypothesis (and betting against yourself is not a bad idea)
[*]This is a giant lab, virgin territory - nobody knows anything especially me
[/list]
[hr]

I never tell anyone to invest in any of these coins because I think it’s irresponsible, this is like a giant laboratory and all of these coins are highly speculative when looked at from a financial perspective as many people are trying increase their purchasing power by buying low selling high. The trouble with [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium]that strategy[/url] is that you are trying to second guess the behaviour of a large group of individuals, an equation that goes something like:

“If other people have the same information I do will they buy this asset? If yes then buy”.

You’re anticipating the demands of future investors and buying what they want ahead of time with the intention of selling in to their buy orders for profit later.

The second part to this strategy involves making predictions on what information future investors will interpret as strong buying signals. Your hypothesis is technical features, other people might prefer survivability or stewardship of the coin by its founders, some might see marketing as the deciding factor. The point is nobody knows anything because this is virgin territory and while there’s no downside to having a hypothesis what you do with yours must be your decision and yours alone.

I can speak from my personal standpoint which is that I chose to invest in a diverse range of coins for the long term (years) with a modest amount of profit release in the medium term to cover my initial investment. I mostly look for:

[list]
[*]The people behind the project and their capabilities
[*]Their ability to understand respond to problems
[*]Their ability to survive and grow from failure (commitment over long term)
[*]Their ability to communicate to new people entering the market and recruit new people on to their team
[*]Marketing and strong leadership
[*]Their intentions - people don’t buy [i]what[/i] you do they buy [i]why[/i] you do it
[/list]

I chose Feathercoin to invest my time in to because it was a group of friendly proactive people who put community at the heart of the project. Since I believe in the [url=https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subjective_theory_of_value]subjective theory of value[/url] I also think all of these coins are propped up by perception, therefore the most important investment must go in to the people behind the project since they are the ones who shape the perception. But this is just my hypothesis and I am just one voice in the market among many.

I also think there’s something that a lot of other coins, including Bitcoin, haven’t taken in to consideration which is the marginal profitability of mining over the long term. Payment processing (the mining) is a huge profit centre at the heart of the global banking system but the question is should it be? With Bitcoin the mining profitability over the long term is marginal, therefore what are we going to do when if many miners decide to switch off their rigs when they start counting losses?

Do we need a new class of worker to provide payment processing not simply for profit but also as a vocation? This is an unanswered question but one that comes up very often around here so I want to be part of this dialogue, I want to surround myself with the most interesting people asking the most relevant questions.

Blockchain projects that I like are: FTC, BTC, NMC, XPM, Gridcoin, Bitmessage, Zerocoin, Dark Wallet, [url=http://invictus-innovations.com/]Invictus Innovations[/url].

Like I say just my opinion, others are sure to disagree which is half the fun.

Looks like it’s being sorted.

Hello friends,

As some of you may know MadBitcoins has been raising funds for me to go to Bitcoin in the Beltway in Washington DC next week.

I am not very good at asking for money so some kind people who seem to like what I have to say about all things crypto have sent me 2.82 Bitcoins which should be enough for me to book some tickets.

When I am there I am available for requests, we have some interviews lined up with people like Andreas, Will, Kristov and the usual suspects but this will be the first time all of us will be together in the same place.

I think one of the things Feathercoin needs is more of a presence outside of this forum. I know this has been said before most recently by Svenn. That is why I regularly appear on World Crypto Network often with the Feathercoin logo. I try to tweet out the link out on @Feathercoin. I appear most Friday’s on the Bitcoin Group which is like a panel discussion. But my favourite format is the Bitcoin Talk Show on Wednesdays which is more interactive and involves audience participation.

Thom (MadBitcoins) has offered us a slot on the weekly network, something like This Week in Feathercoin, I would prefer it if it were more open ended and supportive of all crypto network but feature members of this community. One of the things I love so much about this place is that we don’t hate on other coins. So if anyone would like to collaborate or fancies a go at a live hangout please shoot me an email.

In what way does the ego impact on Satoshi’s Incentive Engineering?

Mining is a zero sum game. The only way to profit is by being first in line, to get your rigs started before everyone else and to sell just before that difficulty jump. You can eek out a profit but not without someone else losing out. It’s all about timing. Time. When is it time to start mining? When is it time to stop? When is it time to hold the coins? When is it time to sell?

What role does the ego play in all this?

My ego tells me that I know just the right time to buy the rig, and just the right time to sell. “Surely”, my ego says, “I am smarter than the market and surely I am clever enough to anticipate other people’s demands and decisions before everyone else.”

But when it comes to mining it isn’t just the ‘lucky’ that make the money it’s also the ones selling the shovels and spades. I’m talking about the manufacturers like KnC and Butterfly Labs; the ones who escape the rate race by giving the rats what they want. Surely that’s where the profit lies. They take your money up front (like the banks) and they teach you a lesson but you don’t see any profit until you learn from it.

Hello everyone.

Following a conversation on The Bitcoin Group on Friday I got a comment from @Coin_Artist on Twitter saying that we were showing hostility towards altcoins, in particular Dogecoin. I felt that the way the thread was going that this topic of whether alt coins end up getting used as pump and dumps, and managing people’s expectations was in much need of debate.

So tonight at 8pm BST / 12pm PST we will be doing a show live to discuss the ethics of alt coins. The intentions of the founders and how to manage the public relations.

Is it time we started being more honest with ourselves about what we are really trying to achieve with these blockchains? I think you all know how I feel about it. Whether the altcoin developers intended it or not (mostly not I suspect) the way it seems to me is that most altcoins are just glorified slot machines and the people who make the money are the ones who are able to control the information with paid articles in the press, shills on the chat rooms and painting pictures on the charts to reinforce all of those messages.

This is the Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/WorldCryptoNetwork

Let’s keep it civilised and constructive. We all have good experience here and we still have a well deserved reputation for being the nicest bunch of people in Crypto here at Feathercoin.

Your opinions and views, as always, are much appreciated.

Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #29

Tuesday 22nd April 2014

Celebrations

Feathercoin Key Stats

370 days since genesis block creation
Approx. 40,600,000 of Feathercoins created
Approx. 17 days behind target generation rate

We have just departed a big milestone and how better to celebrate than with a mandatory software update and a celebratory drink at the Oxford Blue.

Update Your Wallets Please

by @Uncle_Muddy

It’s not a drill friends, Feathercoin 0.8.6.2 has now been released and it is a mandatory upgrade! You can find it on the homepage. Not only for the wallet application but for all pool software. The new release also uses the latest version of OpenSSL so has the fix against the Heartbleed vulnerability.

The aim of the new version is to limit the effect of multipools, they are currently mining Feathercoin in such a way that leaves no room at all for people who want to solely mine us. Our last effort to fix this issue worked for a while but the multipools figured out a way to use the last change against us and manage to mine us without moving the difficulty as much as they should but leave the difficulty higher overall. Considering this Wrapper and Wellenreiter have put months into analyzing our current difficulty and multipools including how they mine other coins, not just us.

The new update is available to download from the front page of the website. The changes are already live on GitHub in the master-0.8 default repository. This update is mandatory and involves a hard fork on block 204,639 to add the following features in a defence against strip mining.

1. Block times.

The Feathercoin Transaction block time will be reduced from 2.5 minutes to 1 minute. The miner block payment will reduce to 80 FTC to compensate for the increased frequency but maintain the same coin supply…

2. eHRC or enhanced Hash Rate Compensation,

eHRC uses the standard Bitcoin protocol to calculate the the next block difficulty, but adds 2 extra historical block lookups, or block average times to calculate the new difficulty more accurately. The difficulty ReTarget has been increased to every block.

Please help us make the move as simplistic as possible, by upgrading now and making sure the pools you are using are aware of the upcoming hard fork.

Birthday Bash

by @ChrisJ

It’s someone 's birthday party this Saturday and it would be great if you could join the fun at the Oxford Blue.

Don 't worry if you are not in our region of the globe there may be a live linkup on our Youtube Channel and by the way, remember our video that we made back in the summer? It now has now received over 36,000 views and I still get people coming up to me in London telling me how it inspired them to get in to crypto.

On a personal note I would like to say that being here in this community with you all has had a very positive impact on my life. This domain certainly sucks you in to a time warp and I feel that right now there is more that we are thinking than we are saying and often we forget to speak our minds. But I think I speak for everyone who has been in to crypto-currencies for more than 12 months that it can be exhausting, in a good way. Not just in terms of work but also it movement really hijacks the mind, I cannot stop thinking about all of the ideas and possibilities this technology could have.

Feathercoin came in to my life and it gave me a purpose. I was just a troll in the Trollbox, unsure of what to do with my life. I had been sitting on my hands for a year after quitting my job. Then I saw FTC float on BTCe, I watched it go up to 1 Bitcoin and crash back down. I noticed what Bush was saying on the forums and admired the way he just pushed himself out there, doing something he was afraid of and doing, what at the time, few people dared to do but that in the end his courage paved the way and now everyone does it.

Feathercoin set the standard, we made it safe for other people to enter the market. I get more and more emails with every week from people entering the space asking me for advice, asking me what it was like. Right now I feel that the more educated public are waiting for the next big rise in popularity. I have been penciled in to give another talk at Hull City by David Gilson in a few months.

Thank-you very much to all of you for making this experience so memorable. It has taught me a lot not least because we tend to learn the most when we are surprised.

Let 's Talk Bitcoin with Andreas

by @ChrisJ

I was pleasantly surprised when Andreas approached me to appear on Let 's Talk Bitcoin back in February. My calendar got so full I completely forgot about it and then people on Twitter started sending their thanks.

I hate listening to myself so I have not had the courage to listen back yet but if you would like to take a listen check out Episode 101 - The Why of Bitcoin.

I want your feedback, questions and critique. You are free to challenge me here in the forum or on Twitter @MrChrisEllis. I am still trying to develop my understanding of this technology and its underlying philosophy so I welcome any intellectual testing.

Merchant Watch

by @Ruthie

Last week Bush and I with kiddies in tow met up with ChekaZ and his friend Sven to visit Dahms Vineyard in Germany.

Jürgen Dahms gave us all the pleasure of a tour of the vinyard where the wine is grown and historic castle buildings where they have the wine tasting events.
After the tour of the castle and surrounding vinyard we also got to take a tour around the shop and where they produce their wine.

Peterstirn, the castle of the Marquis Berthold from the 10th Century is the landmark of the city of Schweinfurt and the winery Dahms.
Here, in the castle, family owned , the wine tastings and the annual wine festivals that take up an old tradition of the city . On the grounds of the castle today is also the home of Jürgen Dahm family , which was restored in 1999.
The castle can only be visited as part of wine tasting .

The Castle above the Main River is nestled in 2.5 hectares of vineyards, where the classic Franconia grape varieties are grown:
Silvaner, Müller-Thurgau, Bacchus, Scheurebe, Traminer and Riesling and red wine as the interspecific varieties Rondo.

Most importantly Dahms winery shipping deatils:

Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Luxuembourg, Netherlands, Spain, France, GB and Italy.
If your country is not listed, just drop them an email for shipping in your area.

You can find the last official newsletter here: Rewarding the Loyal. Today special thanks go to @Chrisj, @Ruthie and @Uncle_Muddy for their contributions to this newsletter.

You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook or come on to the forum to stay up to date.

Thank-you for your time.

Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #28

Tuesday 15th April 2014

Rewarding the Loyal

Feathercoin Key Stats

363 days since genesis block creation
Approx. 39,800,000 of Feathercoins created
Approx. 17.1 days behind target generation rate

One of the biggest challenges we face in this emerging digital economy is striking the right balance of incentives between the loyal miners and those who mine for nothing but short term profit, sometimes referred to as strip mining.

Those who believe in the idea itself and continue to secure our blockchain deserve the ongoing commitment of the developers to ensure they are fairly rewarded for their effort.

Profit cannot be the only goal, it must be the result of getting things right. The ability to relate the long term to the short term. And showing up is half the work which is why this week we must pay special thanks to @Bushstar, @Wrapper, @Uncle_Muddy, @Wellenreite, @kstenson and @llocans who continue to chip away at the code meaning we continue to make an impact even during a time when the public attention on crypto-currency is waning.

The public may not realise this but the work taking place right now is probably some of the most important work going on when it comes to the long term survivability of a blockchain based currency. The people we need to be celebrating are the ones honest enough to realise how little they know and determined enough to do the work necessary to find out what works.

Feathercoin 0.8.6.2

_by @Bushstar_Feathercoin 0.8.6.2 is now released and is available to download from the front page of the official Feathercoin website. This update is mandatory and involves a hard fork on block 204,639 which will happen roughly at 12:00GMT on the 24th April. The new release uses the latest version of OpenSSL so has the fix against the Heartbleed vulnerability.

Wrapper and Wellenreiter have made simulations to see the effect of multipools on us and can see how bad their impact on us is. They have also been able to use these simulations to work out the best possible defense against these pools. After months of analysis the best possible solution was chosen and we have spent the last month running this on the testnet in various forms to gather as much data as possible. The testnet showed that the changes performed exactly as the simulations predicted and that the difficulty closely follows the network hashrate. This is a sign of quality in the simulations that were created, we have powerful tools for developing Feathercoin.

A hard fork can only mean one thing… an excuse to reuse this cool graphic!_
After block 204,639 the following changes will come into effect._

• Block time reduced to 1 minute. We handle more transactions and reduce the window for double spend.
• Block reward is reduced to 80 coins a block to maintain the same inflation model. 80 coins * 2.5 minutes = 200 coins
• Retarget every block compared to every 126 block currently
• _Use combined average from 15, 120 and 480 block averages with .25 damping_The new Mac client has been built with QR code support. Note that there was a 0.8.6.1 release that had an issue with full blockchain sync, you are having trouble synchronizing the blockchain please download and install 0.8.6.2.

Android Feathercoin Wallet 2

by @Uncle_Muddy

You may remember a couple of weeks ago we reported that the Android version of the feathercoin wallet had stopped working. Well I’m very pleased to say that thanks to the hard work of Wellenreiter, kstenson, and llocans we now have a mobile wallet app back!

_
_The new wallet available now on the Google Play store__Further development work is planned for the app in the near future, if your interested in getting involved please put a post in the original development thread.

___Link to the App in the play store and Android Wallet App Upgrade/Install Guide

We also owe thanks to David Gilson for reporting on this in his article in Coinbuzz._

Merchant Watch

by Ruthie

bitbooks.co

BitBooks.co is a marketplace for self-published authors (or their agents) to sell books directly to readers using nothing but digital currency. We currently accept Bitcoin, Dogecoin, Feathercoin and Litecoin.

Not only can you buy books from us, if your a budding author you can publish your books with them too, more information can be found here

This now regular section of the news letter, is not far away from getting a new section of the site to provide a merchant directory, we hope to have the work completed and the new section setup by the end of April so keep your eyes open for even more places to spend your feathers.

You can find the last official newsletter here: Progressive. Today special thanks go to @Uncle_Muddy, @Bushstar & @ChrisJ for their contributions to this newsletter.

You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook or come on to the forum to stay up to date.

Thank-you for your time.

Feathercoin Official Weekly Update #27

Tuesday 8th April 2014

Progressive

Feathercoin Key Stats

356 days since genesis block creation
Approx. 39,000,000 of Feathercoins created
Approx. 16.27 days behind target generation rate

Feathercoin is almost a year old, we said from early on that we believed the most important feature of any currency was survivability. People want to know that you’re going to stick around because if their currency doesn’t hold its value it’s not much use as money.

I don’t think a crypto currency is about trying to take over the world and become the new Dollar. The opposite of a global super power is not another global super power. I think a good crypto is backed against its people and their ability to care, a well distributed Blockchain can never die, the mathematics in the protocol gives it a resilience but it’s up to us to provide the passion and enthusiasm.

Feathercoin 1st Birthday Bash

by Uncle_Muddy

We want your ideas for our Birthday bash on 26th April at the Oxford Blue, tell us how we should celebrate over here on the thread. But just to wet your whistle, we have managed to secure a barrel of fine ale as part of the Prostate Cancer UK fund raiser, so will be selling FeatherAle over the weekend! So not only can you pay with feathercoins, you can also drink a pint of our very own beer!

There are a few of us going to get together for a quite drink on the Friday evening at the pub, and then the main event takes place on the Saturday. We are still working on some of the finer details of the Saturday but rest assured that we will have plenty going on. So please feel free to pop in and see us if your in the area, and if your not keep an eye open for information on live streams from the event.

Wallet Feature Enhancement

by @Uncle_Muddy
A conversation between Claire and Bushstar, came up with the idea of adding the ability to import a key via QRCode to the feathercoin-QT wallet via the webcam. Now for those of you that use paper wallets you’ll realize just how useful this can be. So Claire set about doing some work and here is the result

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NCiHGIMB2c

Claire’s implementation using Legocoin via the screen capture
We are looking into adding this exciting new feature to the next wallet release and will keep you updated on the progress as it happens.

Brave New Coin

_by ChrisJ_The guys from Brave New Coin joined us this morning to tell us about their new website which tracks key economic data about crypto currencies. The goal is to create a platform which gives reliable information about a range of cryptos including Feathercoin.

Click on the arrow on the right column and it includes Market Cap, Price and Volume. There’s also a neat Export button on the top right of the graph.

The vision at Brave New Coin is to be transparent about the way the data is collected and displayed. Many other data aggregation services are not up front with way the data is sliced. They seem to have the team to support the project so I look forward to seeing how they progress with it.

For a long time sites like Crypto Coin Charts and Coin Market Cap have been the go to sources for information but I think it’s important that new entrants enter this domain as otherwise we risk centralising our information flow. I am sure the guys would appreciate some feedback you can hit them up on Twitter @bravenewcoin.

Merchant Watch

by Ruthie

newloge.com

Newlodge.com an on-line electrical superstore where you can buy the latest top brand electrical devices and appliances at the best possible prices. No matter whether you are a pro, a techie, a hobbyist or a business customer, when it comes to electronics and household technology, we provide ideas and practical solutions around the clock. We have a huge range of product, available by mail order.

Newlodge.com have always been a proud advocate and support of high quality open source systems and for this and many other reason we are pleased to announce the we now accept payment via crypto currencies. This includes feathercoin, so please show your support and consider them for your next purchase.

As promised last week this is now going to be a regular section of the news letter, we are still working away in the background to bring you a new section of the site to provide a merchant directory, and will keep you updated with progress as we work out some of the finer points.

You can find the last official newsletter here: Unstoppable. Today special thanks go to @Uncle_Muddy and @ChrisJ for their contributions to this newsletter.

You can follow us on Twitter, Facebook or come on to the forum to stay up to date.

Thank-you for your time.

Hey guys, long time no speak.

Is there a Mac binary or Linux version one can download? Also I notice that the download button on the feathercoin homepage is giving off a horrible virus warning in both chrome and firefox.

I’d be really interested in working on this. I have a little pet project called World Citizenship which is a protocol for helping anyone in the world setup a passport service using blockchain notorisation. I want to make it blockchain agnostic and include documentation that points people towards all the different coins and options they have.

Let me know where you are with your project and I will help out anyway I can.

About to go live http://youtu.be/fsmP1Nxmfe8

Their coffee break takes too long.

That’s because they are busy meeting captains of industry

I made a post on Bitcointalk, I would like to know what you think here about an exclusive event for entrepreneurs and VCs in the financial capital with tickets at £720 each!

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=684361.new#new

The livestream is here: http://livestream.coinsumm.it/

https://twitter.com/hashtag/coinsummit

Hey guys, I couldn’t record my talk as I had to use my laptop for the slides but this is the follow up I did on World Crypto Network:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuUfCxwC-eM

The presentation was basically to give them an insight on how easy it is to create your own crypto, how we did it and why.

Chris got your Skype but out and about, have text you

Tomorrow morning at 11am.

Okay a bit last minute. I had a talk booked in at Lloyds Bank on Bitcoin but now my friend Max who works there has asked me to centre it around Feathercoin and why we chose to start our own currency. I will mix up the presentation I did in Amsterdam but if you guys have any pictures or particular stories you want me to share please send them in here.

I will be working on it this afternoon/this evening.

They are on Twitter:

https://twitter.com/Steven_McKie/status/480403495007170560

This is the Blackcoin guys who said they mine Feathercoin on their ethical multipool. They talk about it in this video.

This is the one with Hank: https://twitter.com/Feathercoin/status/480416164506374145

This is the panel but you can’t see me as I am on the edge on the right: https://twitter.com/BlackCoinPool/status/480412882241204224

Thom got a video of it but I haven’t seen it yet as he can’t upload it. Internet here is pretty lousy.

Hey guys just a quick one to say that I have had a great and very hectic time since landing 3 days ago. The conference is almost over but I represented Feathercoin on an impromptu Alt Coin panel discussion and have tweeted out pictures of Feathercoin fans including Hank who made the first Android Wallet, make sure you are following @Feathercoin.

I am also making videos on World Crypto Net including “Chris Before Coffee” every morning :)

We have a very good reputation in crypto, everyone knows us as the nice coin who set the standards for community activism in the space. It’s really lovely to hear such positive feedback.

I am off to New Hampshire for Porc Fest and will check in again as soon as I get the chance.