What's so funny?  A lot of people are losing money.  Many of them bought in at the top due to all the unwarranted hype.  Now they are way underwater with their btc tied up in a rapidly sinking DRK.

Is this just another "Weak Hands" moment?  Because that one has been used up.  What's the excuse for the drop now?  Can it possibly be that people are losing interest and have become disillusioned?  There have been some pretty large holders obviously getting out of DRK.  Big money is usually smart money.     

10-20 usd for a server? You want the gold plated one, don't you? ;-))

Tok when I hire someone to work for me I ask a specific question of each and every applicant.  I ask them, "how do you know you are a good listener?"  I am looking for two things. 1) do they have the ability to use intuition to more effectively communicate and 2) do they properly examine the premise of every statement and word that comes out of another persons mouth. This is good listening.

What happened ? Who DUMP DARK?
 

To prevent rouge Nodes being created which could overwhelm the network with bad actors, the Darkcoin developers have made it financially prohibitive to operate too many Master Nodes.

The funny thing is that the first coin I ever mine was Darkcoin.  That was a long time ago.  Since then I've bought and sold Darkcoin dozens of times.  Making profit all along the way.

And I don't know what is so surprising about making 10% in crypto.  It's not that hard.  But the key is to buy low and sell high.  Not buy and hold.  Had I just held onto my Darkcoin like most people in this thread seem to do then no, I wouldn't make those kinds of gains.  

I actually think that the loudest voices screaming "Hold for the long term" are actually they ones doing the dumping when the price is up and doing the buying when the price is down.  Gotta get those suckers in so you can dump on them and when they panic and sell driving the price even lower they scoop up the cheap coins driving the price back up and the people that just panic sold panic buy at a higher price and do it all over again.  It happens with all coins.  Once I realized that I started to make lots of btc.  But if holding DRK long term is your strtegy that's your decision.

update. looking to introduce sub-headings and quotes from devs tomorrow:

Darkcoin Begins Paying Nodes From Block Rewards

Darkcoin’s much anticipated payments system to reward Master Nodes went live last week with node operators finally receiving a share of Darkcoins from mined block rewards. [

]
After the first hard fork attempt to implement payments to Master Nodes caused the Darkcoin network to fork into several chains, the developers tried twice to implement the new payment protocol before finally seeing the network stable again.

Master Nodes are part of Darkcoin[']s privacy system which anonymises users through random selection of available modes by routing bundles of transactions from several people through them. This process renders the Darkcoin block chain incomprehensible to those trying to track any spending patterns.

To prevent rouge Nodes being created which could overwhelm the network with bad actors, the Darkcoin developers have made it financially prohibitive to operate too many Master Nodes.

To run a Master Node, each node requires a wallet with 1,000 DRK, around $9,500 at time of writing, to be available, typically through cold storage, in order for the network to recognise that nodes are available for mixing.  

This 1,000 DRK requirement has been called a ‘Proof of Service’ feature by the Darkcoin community, as it is a way for nodes to prove they are available to serve the network.
In return for setting up a Master Node and making it available for service, the network pays Nodes 20% of block rewards. It was this payment system which allocates coins from mined blocks which caused the recent Darkcoin fork.

Since the update, Darkcoin blocks are no longer valid without verified votes from Nodes in the same way they would be rejected if they were not recognised as a valid mined block by any network.

Community Member, Camosoul, commented:

Minded blocks and Nodes' votes are both are required for a valid block under new update enforcement rules released as part of the third attempt to implement the RC3 fork.

This third attempt to implement the Master Nodes payment system was changed to a two-stage fork, which became known as a ["]spork["] by the community. The network was updated, but pools and old wallets were not forced to update immediately.

[Some confusion has been generated by parties wilfully refusing to update. Block Generation proceeds as usual, but when a "winning" block is generated by a Bad Actor, the elected Master Node is not being paid. This has led those who aren't paying attention to conclude that the payment system is flawed, wherein reality it is merely still being influenced by black hat pool operators and miners.

The second stage of the network update due in the next few weeks will see an enforced ban from the network if pools and miners do not update their clients. This will prevent them from keeping payments to Master Nodes, something which is currently slowing down the average payments to Master Nodes.

Once enforcement of [Master] Node payments begins, the developers expect to see the number of Master Nodes increase from the current levels of 540 to around 1,000 to 2,000.

The use of Master Nodes and financially incentives through a share of the block rewards could be a way for other alt-coins and even Bitcoin to ensure their network is secured. [Astute crypto-investors will note the steep decline in hosted BTC blockchains. With no incentive to hang on to 40GB of blockchain, and many mobile devices incapable, lite clients are forced to internal, centralized and untrusted strategies to implement their wallets. Often without the users' knowledge. This also makes the BTC blockchain network less resilient by centralizing it. Master Nodes could rectify this problem, among many other potential uses that deserve payment/incentive.]

At present[,] each Node is expected to receive random payments of around 1 DRK per day,. bBut, like mining, the more nodes that join the network, the lower the reward per node. Thus, node operators are gambling the price of Darkcoin will continue to rise.

Darkcoin is now implementing its main anonymity features through the Master Nodes which are elected at random to carry out mixing of transactions. Once these features are added, additional services can be conducted through the Master Nodes, enabling them to earn fees.

The community has identified some of the service that could be conducted through Master Nodes, such as anonymous decentralised markets and anonymous decentralised stock exchanges, but some of the other options are being kept in secret development.

Once Darkcoin releases its anonymity features, the developers have committed to releasing the small remaining development aspects of Darkcoin source code to the community through a final open source release.

The funny thing is that the first coin I ever mine was Darkcoin.  That was a long time ago.  Since then I've bought and sold Darkcoin dozens of times.  Making profit all along the way.

And I don't know what is so surprising about making 10% in crypto.  It's not that hard.  But the key is to buy low and sell high.  Not buy and hold.  Had I just held onto my Darkcoin like most people in this thread seem to do then no, I wouldn't make those kinds of gains.