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ChristianKl comments on Open thread, Oct. 13 - Oct. 19, 2014 - Less Wrong
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They're worse than a random walk. They are basically a scam targeting libertarians.
The process goes like this; Come up with a cryptocurrency. Mint some, and make some libertarianish / anarchist /ect noise. Sell some for actual money, and draft some more people into the minting game. Now watch as the suckers who bought in engage in motivated reasoning about the future value / inevitable dominance / technical brilliance of the crypto currency, drawing in more suckers. This may, or may not cause the price to go up, but it is certain to cause the market for your currency (which you made some off cheaply back at step one) to become deeper, so now you can sell more. For actual money.
Don't bite this hook. There is a line attached to it.
The first time someone told me that was when Bitcoin was at 7$.
Darkcoin is basically a bet on the idea that the kind of people who want to use a cryptocurrency don't want to use a cryptocurrency that's traceable and that there a valid market with say 1 billion total capitalisation for that currency. Currently the tor blackmarkets however only run on bitcoin: http://www.gwern.net/Black-market%20survival#data
It's no trivial decision but it's not straightforward in any direction.
But it's better than say Litecoin which reason to be is that it can effectively mined on normal computer and botnet owners can mine it.
Worth noting that a few have tried Litecoin or Darkcoin; today I'm adding to the list a new cannabis market, Diabolus, which claims to support both Bitcoin and Darkcoin.
(However, despite a little dabbling by the black-markets, I don't expect altcoins to supplant Bitcoin anytime soon for them: currently anonymity doesn't matter to the sellers since I still know of no one who has been busted even partially due to tracing coin movements! What they need are ways to cash out, and Bitcoin is king in that respect.)
I didn't say they weren't successful scams. You can make vast fortunes riding a bubble that is rising, even if it has zero, or - as bitcoin does - negative, underlying value. But what you are doing is making bets on the psychology of crowds. You are not investing, you are gambling.
And poker is both more fun and less wasteful of perfectly good electricity.
In this case, the value proposition of darkcoin is specifically facilitating international crime. This is not likely to be viewed with any amusement whatsoever by the state. Any state.
My post above used the term bet, so I'm not thinking in terms of strict investment but in terms of trading.
If you focus on having fun that's okay. On the other hand other people might focus on making money.
States not liking it doesn't do that much. There are no good policy tools to go after it.
As Stellar and Ripple progress you also won't need a centralized market anymore to buy and sell Darkcoin or Bitcoin currency.
Crypto Wars I was lost by the government. There was a time where a few people in the Obama administration went for Crypto War II but that didn't went through either. Business just want encryption and even China can't outlaw it because of the desires of their business community.
The thing is, bitcoin and clones has much worse average return than poker when considered over the life span of each currency - poker doesn't have a house rake unless you are playing at a casino, all crypto-currencies do - the sums spent on electricity and hardware are leaving the pot. And that's most of the money people are investing in coins!
Further, the lack of good policy tools is a problem if you want to hold them. Because it makes it fairly likely that something draconic will be adopted as a deterrent. For example, just one possibility that jumped into my head is to consider the mere possession of dark coin evidence of involvement in the drug trade. Hello Asset Forfeiture.
The US is still somewhat a country of laws. It has courts. That means that a persecutor has a burden of proof. It's no good career decision to wage uncertain fights for a US government official. Any signal government official is usually just togging along the party line and grabs whatever safe opportunity he can to advance his career.
The US didn't put anybody at HSBC into prison for washing billions of drug money. The US government is to weak, to fight those battles.
Bitcoin does provide some economic value today. There money going into the pot because of economic reasons, even if you don't like some of them because they are about black markets.
Hiding crypto currency behind crypto isn't that hard.
It is often simultaneously true that laws are enforced too harshly against people who are mostly law-abiding but do minor illegal things, while not enforced enough against serious criminals. Law-abiding people are easier to track down and catch, less dangerous for the police to go after, more likely to have a lot to lose from fighting the government, less likely to be in a demographic that can claim discrimination, and less able to do anything useful to the police in exchange for leniency (such as naming co-conspirators).
Using a crypto-currency is not something that's easy to persecute. Standing in front of a jury and telling them someone should be sent to prison because he brought a dark coin is no easy sell. Organisation such as EFF + ACLU also provide for a well funded legal defense.
Darkcoin usage isn't something that's easy to track down and catch if it's hidden behind crypto.