Topic: Examining the #altcoin #Québecoin IPO: next scam or next Big Thing? Analysis!

[devnullius]

As it turned out, many people liked my investigation of the Heavycoin IPO. Their numbers went up big. And Heavycoin is going strong while I type

I could not make a definite buy advice for them, but their efforts and honesty certainly stood out.

I hope today I can do the same for Québecoin!

First off: I love country coins. They do not receive the love they should get. But they are long-term investments! For country altcoin to become popular, first bitcoin has to prove itself to the general population. Once accepted there, it could go a long way.

Even further; my vision is that altcoins will go play an important role in regular local economies. You think that is strange? It isn't. In fact, it's very popular already for many decades (I won't go historical and say centuries: but I could). Examples? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Local_currency#Modern_local_currencies And especially take a close look to Germany! The only Western economy  that NOT burned itself out. And one of the few countries where local currencies are extremely popular.

And this is where I see the true long-term potential for local currencies. They are used besides regular transactions, as a "discount" paid by the customer in local coins.

Back to Québec

Who are these guys? What do we know? Does it smell fishy?

Ok, their homepage / domain qbc.io. https://www.nic.io/cgi-bin/whois?query=qbc.io. Contact Name : Jean-Philippe Gagnon (I removed his address here, but it's public too).

It is registered for a year. Alarm! I asked about this, and he told me the domain was rather expensive and he started out with one year subscription. I know I work that way too, but I often expect to fail I only register personal domains for 10 years.

The street from the whois information looked just lovely on Google maps. I felt home immediately and would love to live there. Also, it looks like a regular street, not some industrial site or company. This is a good sign

Back to bad sign ;p His real name, Jean-Philippe Gagnon. It would be the ideal hide-away name. It's really surprisingly general and many people in Montreal have this name. Even a few whom work in the computer industry... I could not pin-point his identity definitely. E.g.: LinkedIn. His joking defense? Well, I guess my parents did not love me enough to give me a really original name... Again: could be a sign of a smart scammer. Or it could be as legit as it can possibly be, with private address exposed and all He later added that he does not want to be too much exposed to prevent any criminals of hurting him in real life, so I expect some day he will anonymize the whois information... I would 

The IPO is transparent: http://www.qbc.io/ipo gives the list of investors. It's the same IPO structure like with Heavycoin (and the first stackcoin scam - which was adopted by TheRealStackcoin). I do not particularly like it, but it is popular with others. It allows for manipulation of stock price.

Do they have a working wallet?? I think that is *the* best way to prove if you are for real. You could still fake stuff, but if you have a coin and blockchain up and running, why do a fake IPO? Wouldn't you like to "have" a real altcoin instead?
So I asked for a copy of the wallet. That was a big NoNo. Again: scam alert!! As a response he at least added a video of the wallet running: (see next reply for more details). Looks kinda legit, despite no working transaction is shown!
He also told me that wallet information is extremely sensitive information; this is the only reason he will not give me a pre-release copy. To be fair: heavycoin didn't do this either.

Is there an exchange? Yes there is! BITTREX is accepting them! Another big pro - though exchanges can be duped too! He is willing to show me the 'papers' too! This is a good sign: this guy definitely is trying to get his fair intentions out. Or he is an extremely smart scammer ;p Nothing we know for 100% until the launch. But I feel I can trust Québecoin...

The IPO 210,000 QBC will be sent gradually after launch on April 15th at 8:00AM EST (12:00PM UTC). THERE WILL BE NO immediate GIVEAWAYS FOR THIS COIN! I think this is smart (although it could backfire if nobody gets interested). Why is this smart? Well, the market does not get flooded by free Quebecoin: so it immediately is rare. The IPO share holders truly get value for their BTC. ALL others (except some bounties) will have to mine or trade if they wanna be in on the action. ONLY in TWO years the first Québecans will receive their *free* Québecoin. That will be repeated in total 5 times over 10 years... Smart! Me like* It boosts trading and greed (we hope) and incense miners to go for it

What else is important to evaluate the risk on fraud? Are there pools? Is there a block explorer? No, both are not yet made. But, from bitcointalk [ANN]: 2 pools have made claims to launch first, and there is a claim on a p2p pool too. The first block explorer has been claimed by BTCT forum user 'btcltcdigger'. Again, this sound promising! Still no definite proof, but it looks real good and trustworthy to me.

So... Should you invest???

Up to you If you can spare some BTC, sure! Why not! Go for it. I think long term potential is really good. Chauvinistic people need something to call their own. A country coin gives just that. Same, I think, with Cataloniacoin... Also an "oppressed" region. Part of a "strange, dark, cold and unloved" bigger country... 

The coin is, for now, a 2 man show. The developer has a close friend and partner working on design and marketing part time as much as possible!
Jean-Philippe is eager to show his coin to the world and the [ANN] is written by someone with passion for #altcoins.

I'd like to be a part of it! Despite not having any btc left 

Peace and karma!

Devvie




* though... I still do not like the IPO pool construction! Too easy to manipulate, too many uncertainties! I think it would be best to set fixed amounts on extreme low prices (1 satoshi, 1 litoshi? Dunno what would be best for this coin). For 0.01 BTC you will get (say) 2500 Québecoin. Everybody can invest. When IPO closes you mine the amount of coins needed for IPO shareholders and take another premined amount for the future 2-yearly payouts to Québecans...
I think that would be awesome What do you think???

[devnullius]

FROM: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=552561.0;all

Québecoin [QBC] is a cryptocurrency made for Québec

Release date : April 15th 2014 8:00AM EST (12:00 UTC)

IPO Period : April 1st to 14th 2014

qbc.io

I'm very happy to introduce something very special to the world today. First of all, if you've never heard about Québec before, here's a quick introduction. Québec is a province within Canada (if you've never heard about Canada... Wow, I'm so sorry). In addition to being a province, in 2006 we were recognized by the government of Canada as being our own nation. That means that they recognize that we are united by a common history, culture and language and are a bunch of weirdos apart from Canada but still a part of Canada. We are proud of our history and our way of doing things and even without realizing it, you may have come in contact with many things that were created in Québec.

Have you ever ate Poutine, a heavenly artery-clogging gravy drenched dish with fries and cheese curds? That's us. Have you ever listened to artists like Arcade Fire, Céline Dion and Simple Plan? That's us. Have you ever ridden a train ? Chances are, that's us with Bombardier. Have you ever played a video game made by Ubisoft Montréal, like the Assassins Creed series? That's us. Have you ever seen a Cirque du Soleil show? That's also us! Although we are barely 8 million people, we have a tremendous influence on the world in so many ways. We are in love with technology and love to stay up to date with the latest developments.

Everything we have is the result of hard work and dedication and although we have a lot of flaws as well, as a nation, we are always trying to better ourselves. This is why I created Québecoin. We have a lot of things to call our own, but we don't have our own currency. Starting April 15th 2014 - That won't be the case anymore. But enough about us. Let me show you what's under the hood.

Québecoin Stats

2.5 minute block time

26 coins per block

Subsidy halving at 420480 blocks (~2 years)

Total coins : 42 Million

Premine : 21 Million - 50% for the population of Québec

IPO : 1% of the 50% Premine (210k QBC) (0.5% of the total)

Bounties : 0.1% of the 50% Premine (21k QBC) (0.05% of the total)

Two Big Features

If you take a look at other country-coins you'll notice a deserted wasteland of scrypt and kgw. Scrypt ASICs are here, KGW is outdated and vulnerable to attacks. Why does a country-coin have to be a bad clone? Québec is at the forefront of technology - Québecoin will do the same thing. Pour one out for the homies still mining scrypt this summer.

Proof of Work : X11

People are saying that, now that scrypt asics are here, it's time for X11. It was time for X11 before that, but only now are people starting to realize it. X11 is the definite choice for GPU (and CPU) miners right now and this summer especially. Your graphics cards consume 30-50% less electricity and with that comes a heat reduction in the same range. There's no reason to be mining scrypt and shortening the life of your cards! Additionally, X11's ASIC resistance is on the top of the charts. Creating 11 different chips for each algorithm is complete nonsense from a production and cost perspective. I'd like to say we had a tough decision in choosing X11 but the rest of the algos aren't even in the same league.

Dark Gravity Wave (DGW)

DGW is currently the best difficulty adjustment algorithm available. It fixes the KGW timewarp exploit and allows a very accurate difficulty adjustment. X11 multipools will soon be a reality and hashrate manipulation will be easily prevented with DGW. Once again, there's simply no alternative if you want the best.

Evan Duffield

I absolutely have to give credit where credit is due. Both X11 and DGW are the best solutions out there right now and they are the creation of one man, Evan Duffield, the Darkcoin developer. I've read through almost the entire Darkcoin thread and I was humbled by his dedication and professionalism. Whenever there was a problem, shortly followed a solution. Whenever there was a question, there was an answer. Darkcoin is one of the few coins with a dedicated full time developer like Evan and the entire crypto community is in his debt. He is continually advancing the entire field and he seems incredibly passionate about it. He is my inspiration in what it takes to be a cryptocurrency developer and I will try to follow in his footsteps. Thank you Evan.

Airdrop?

Recent airdrops have shown miners, investors and airdrop receivers that the value of the coin tends to drop sharply when it is 'dropped'. The coin is basically a newborn and they put it in the streets where it's not ready to face the world. Québecoin will be the first country-coin with a delayed distribution period. We will distribute one fifth of the premine at every block reward halving (2 years), which means it will take place 5 times in 10 years. This allows QBC to grow naturally at a steady rate and be adopted by the population of Québec on a voluntary basis. This also means that miners and investors won't be facing artificial drops in value. We think it's a win-win all around.

Wallets - Exchanges - Mining - Pools

Wallets

At launch you'll be able to download wallets for Windows, Macintosh and Linux as well as having access to the source code if you want to compile your own. The Québecoin-Qt clients have a nice touch of customization to fit with the blue theme. Additionally we have a DNS seed node to help initial clients to connect.






I've added a gif of the working wallet further in the thread - I'll post it here too. (Once again sorry for the slow speed, it's a clean windows virtual machine used for compiling and my PC is a bit outdated)

Exchanges



UPDATE - April 3rd 12:58 AM (cause I work on this coin all day and night!) - I have gotten official confirmation that we are going to be on BITTREX after launch. They are a great exchange and were our first choice - We are exceedingly happy to have them launch us. Expect some heavy trading of QBC!

All additional interested exchanges should come in contact with us first before initiating trading of QBC in any way. Thank you!

Mining

Miners will be able to use existing software from Darkcoin to mine Québecoin without a problem. We'll provide download links to everything on www.qbc.io and in this thread shortly before launch. DGW will be in place from the beginning and the 72 first blocks (approx. 3h) will have no block reward. Hopefully this gives enough time to everyone to set up their mining gear and be ready for a smooth launch.

Pools

We'll have a variety of bounties up and they will include first and second pools which makes them available at launch.

Bounties (21K QBC available - 0.1% of the premine or 0.05% of the total)

• French PRE-ANN translation - 0 QBC - Claimed by my bilingual self
• First Mining Pool - 500 QBC [A CLAIM HAS BEEN MADE BY SUCHPOOL]
• Second Mining Pool - 500 QBC [A CLAIM HAS BEEN MADE BY SUPRNOVA.CC]
• First P2P Pool - 500 QBC [A CLAIM HAS BEEN MADE BY USER 'tesquenure']
• First Block Explorer - 1500 QBC [A CLAIM HAS BEEN MADE BY USER 'btcltcdigger']
• Android Wallet (Clean look) - 4000 QBC
• Real translation into Dutch proposed by 'Devnullius' 125 QBC - Awarded to Devnullius
• First article published worldwide - 250 QBC
• First article published in Québec - 250 QBC
• First informative blog post - 150 QBC
• Québecoin themed X11 Mining infographic/tutorial - 250 QBC
• Active promotion of Quebecoin during the PRE-ANN/Kickstarter period - 750 QBC [Reserved for bicointalk user 'devnullius']

Bounties will be distributed after launch and additional bounties will be added as we go along and we will keep an eye out on twitter for any deserving mentions to reward with some QBC. Translation bounties have been eliminated but will always be considered from REAL native speakers. I really want to avoid google translate users.

IPO/Kickstarter

69.5 BTC

Now that that's out of the way, I'll be able to say why we want an IPO. I think Québecoin has the potential to be huge here, we absolutely love stuff like this and are proud of those who make it happen. When I look at most of the other country-coins I see developers making big promises about saving the economy and the people who live there from poverty. Québecoin isn't like that, I want to create something that Québecers can be proud to call their own and use everyday. Everyone here loves technology and isn't afraid to try new things. I want to work on Québecoin full time and make sure everyone knows about it. I'm not saying I want to be the face of the coin, I want it to live on its own while being promoted and developed constantly. An IPO will allow me to do that and it will help with a few other things as well.

IPOs allow people who don't know how to mine or simply don't mine to be amongst the early adopters. Anyone can chip in some BTC and be part of a project which they consider to be promising, similar to Kickstarter. Cryptocurrency IPOs are a mix of regular IPO and Kickstarter. Kickstarter doesn't give shares of the company to the investors, it gives them a product. Cryptocurrencies are both a product and a share and in that they are unique.

Lastly, an IPO does indeed set an initial price range for Québecoin which will allow it to grow from there as a foundation. QBC will have great visibility on sites like coinmarketcap.com as the market cap will start big and be able to grow from there.

Procedure

The IPO will take place from April 1st at 8:00 AM EST (12:00 PM UTC) to April 14th at 8:00 AM EST (12:00 PM UTC)

There will be a total of 210 000 QBC available - 1% of the premine or 0.5% of the total

I looked at a lot of different IPOs here on bitcointalk and I think the most successful one was Heavycoin. It was a very transparent IPO and the devs kept the thread and website updated to keep their investors happy. Props to Heavycoin for that one, two great developers.

Québecoin IPO page

You will be able to follow the IPO and amounts invested in a transparent manner on the page above and I will be posting updates in this thread as well. QBC received will be proportional to your share in BTC to the total invested.

Steps

1. Starting today (April 1st) at 8:00AM EST (12:00PM UTC) you can send any amount of BTC to the address below and record the transaction ID

1Gx1FQqLByduumKPyaXVChi7SrknAtDZJE

BTC received before the IPO launch will be refunded minus transaction costs

2. You will post your transaction ID and the amount sent in this thread or if you want your investment to remain private you can send a PM here on bitcointalk or an e-mail to jpgagnon@qbc.io or support@qbc.io. Like this

BTC transaction ID : 1e3ed6f35d785b48d7967e66ae9925f14944169aedbd9d1dcd2cde71e336e1ae
Amount : 0.24916695 BTC

3. You will receive a confirmation either in the thread, by PM or by e-mail and we will add the amount to the IPO table on the Québecoin IPO page. You can always contact us if there is any error on the IPO page.

4. The 210 000 QBC will be sent gradually after launch on April 15th at 8:00AM EST (12:00PM UTC) starting with the earliest investment and moving forward. Everything will have been sent within 24h of launch.

BONUS

The first 5 investors of 0.1 BTC or more will receive a can of Québec Maple Syrup - Shipped anywhere in the world

After that anyone who invests 1 BTC or more will receive the same can of Maple Syrup for the entire duration of the IPO

I'm sorry to interrupt you, Vermont, but Québec has the best maple syrup of all time.

IPO STATUS : OPEN

[devnullius]

I showed Québecoin my analysis.

I'll copy paste his reactions

A bit brutal on some points but overall I think it's good. We're not a one man show by the way.
Québecoin
11h
I have a close friend and partner working on design and marketing part time as much as possible!
Québecoin
11h
The brutal part is exposing all my info in the forum, I'm not looking to get hunted down if the price of QBC ever drops a bit!
Québecoin
11h
Also it's normal that I wouldn't send the wallet file, it's very sensitive information and I provided good proof.
Québecoin
11h
I also have confirmation from Bittrex which I can show you so there's no dupe there either.
Québecoin
11h
So like I said, overall pretty good, brutal on some points as well.

I updated my first post with this information.