Discussion is always good and should not be confused with attacking someone. I like that you are into that!
I also like the idea of merge mining too. It can create massive exposure to miners currently only mining LTC, never hearing of other coins except the ones on btc-e.
Downside is that current pools have nothing anymore after the merge. The hashrate would simply be too low.
It might create more individuals selling, as they got it for "free" while mining for instance LTC, but a lot will hold as well. As there are more individuals with a small amount of coins, they can do less harm to the market than few individuals holding large amounts.
i wouldn't say that the normal pools have nothing to offer... (to be honest i personally love the layout of the charityminingpool site). especially in the case of Noble, mainly the charity pools... which i do recommend by the way. also the normal pools would still have a place for new and beginner miners. just some of my thoughts.
as far as the selling... i thought that that is a good thing, creating circulation. and in total volume not large lump sums. it could do much for many coins.
a thought... if merge mining gains a stronger footing, could the normal pools begin to offer incentives? like frequent flier points?
also i'm not sure if all algos are compatible with merge mining, so there is that, and new algos are coming out every month, just most of them are not utilized ( from my understanding)
Im glad you enjoy the back and forth discussion. I enjoy it quite a bit too!
Merged mining is tricky because it functions as a double-edged sword in a way. Merged mining brings in the all so valuable boon of network security (at least in the perspective of a single hashing algorithm) at the cost of financial dilution due to the relative lack of competition. The way the various markets work, its kinda like watching a weird combination of ForEx and Stock Market trading (although the level of financial sophistication is not quite the same). Part of me strongly believes that its the competition (whether or not they are in same hashing space), that drive a lot of the price at times; although I cant prove this is the case since there arent too many merged mined coins. The other issue is how many chains would be reasonable to merge mine with? That inherently brings the question of which coins should get to merge mine and what the parent chain is (although, its likely going to be Litecoin).
That said, I still like the prospect of merged mining Noblecoin down the road, even it is means a hit due to dilution. I think the infrastructure that has already been built and continues to be built around Noblecoin will go very far in negating the effects that would likely come with merged mining.
Speaking of dilution, as noted, the spread of coins would also be diluted. This actually can act as a financial boon since it would generally cause an influx of market activity for various reasons (making gains from free coins being one of the primary impetuses; whether that means going long or short is another story), and the well-established infrastructure would actually help foster the market impact in the right direction. Dilution also, as noted, provides further awareness to proponents of the parent chain which can generally be looked at positively.
Regarding which algorithm to merge mine on, the idea of sticking to a chain with a lot of POW (i.e. sCrypt in this case) is usually a good idea, especially with the added security benefit of ASICs (we could get into all of the financial implications of them, but thats a whole other can of worms). I like the idea of pool loyalty (especially when merged mining occurs), as long as the threats of 51% can be reconciled.
from what i've seen a "parent" chain can be what ever the pool operator decides on, also i have seen one site that you can chose from 5 different "primary" coins, the down side to that site is they all have the same secondary coins ( which kinda makes me wonder about the intentions of the pool operator, since some of the coins arn't even on an exchange yet, or they have been taken down).
what i was referring to, as far as merge mining is concerned, was a pool that used Noble as a primary and a series of other coins to be mined along side as secondaries. this would allow the community at large to not only mine Noble, but also mine other coins ( in my case) to be able to build up a reservoir of capital. so that way we, as a community or individually, can then generate buy support in the interest of stabilizing the marketplace and retaining and gaining value.
with the increase in value within the crypto economy, it would then become easier to maintain commerce since more people will be less inclined to "JUST HOLD", thereby generating additional circulation and gaining a broader utilization of the currency.
as far a asics go, i've been looking at a few and i've been seeing a drastic drop in price, almost to the point of universal affordability. that being said if we were to go into merge mining, it might be prudent to impose hashrate limits. say a cap of 60mhs for example. so as to not give the big guys such a huge advantage over the people just coming into crypto, that said i must acknowlege that the vast majority of the people involved in crypto are not miners, most seem to be investors and speculators playing it like a stockmarket.
as long as there are caps on total hashrate per account, that should help to even the playing field, since the price of asics are coming down to below that of a good GPU.
