Author Topic: Ethereum crowd sale is live  (Read 10041 times)

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Offline luckybit

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Do you own BTSX? If so, job done  :D

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venture_capital

It's really semantics but Venture Capital often comes in before any ROI is generated I believe.

If you mean much bigger significant Wall Street type general investor funds, yes they probably only take notice at a much bigger CAP. It's less to do with ROI, a 10% ROI for the year might interest them depending on the risk/opportunity etc. but  I think it's more to do with the fact that they manage such a big fund they need somewhere they can put at least $X million. So you need to be big enough to accommodate that.

(In the process of getting to that CAP we'll obviously generate significant ROI) The way we get to that CAP is either by some amazing marketing hype or providing a good service and product to the market. I think it will be the latter and the investors you are referring to will come in as a by-product of that success at various stages along the way. (From momo alt-coin people the first time we go up 50% on CoinmarketCap to others taking notice when we pass LiteCoin, then when we pass a $Billion etc.)

When I say VCs I'm talking about people with real money and not us. If you don't have at least a million net worth you're not a real investor because you're unsophisticated. We are early adopters who donated or mined but not real investors unless we have a net worth high enough to be.

The day when some of us do have a net worth over a million dollars then that person can go on TV giving interviews about how they are an investment genius and tell others to invest. Today we just are not being taken seriously or perceived in the way you hope.

I think at this point it's all about ROI for the retail and institutional investors. They don't understand this stuff and never will. They look at the spread sheet and see 1000% ROI and compare it to their other stocks.

When you talk about providing some good or service to the market what market are you talking about? Rich crypto-anarchists? Gold bugs? Who is the market? It's possible that the supply of crypto-anarchist money has dried up and we have to build a new market for ourselves.


« Last Edit: July 23, 2014, 10:40:53 pm by luckybit »
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Offline Empirical1

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Okay prove me wrong. Attract just one VC to Bitshares X without Bitshares X proving itself on the ROI stage.

Do you own BTSX? If so, job done  :D

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venture_capital

Quote
Venture capital (VC) is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, growth startup companies

It's really semantics but Venture Capital often comes in before any ROI is generated I believe.

If you mean much bigger significant Wall Street type general investor funds, yes they probably only take notice at a much bigger CAP. It's less to do with ROI, a 10% ROI for the year might interest them depending on the risk/opportunity etc. but  I think it's more to do with the fact that they manage such a big fund they need somewhere they can put at least $X million. So you need to be big enough to accommodate that.

(In the process of getting to that CAP we'll obviously generate significant ROI) The way we get to that CAP is either by some amazing marketing hype or providing a good service and product to the market. I think it will be the latter and the investors you are referring to will come in as a by-product of that success at various stages along the way. (From momo alt-coin people the first time we go up 50% on CoinmarketCap to others taking notice when we pass LiteCoin, then when we pass a $Billion etc.) 
 
« Last Edit: July 23, 2014, 10:27:47 pm by Empirical1 »

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To the points about building a well perceived brand - We need to disassociate with bitcoin, especially in our webpage page slogan because bitcoin is a brand of "scary" and "crazy" and "nonsense" and "why would I bother"


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Offline luckybit

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@ Luckybit, Yeah I have heard the silver to Bitcoin's gold marketing message. But even that falls away without their USP.

In your ROI  stuff, you are talking about technical analysis traders. Yeah especially Western ones, if the price is rising and has momentum and is big enough it will generate some of that investment.  However that's a by-product. You don't really target that. (Unless you're doing it on a small scale with a pump and dump type deal.)  Also the majority of investors will use some form of fundamental analysis, meaning they're not going to buy just because the price is rising but only if they genuinely believe the fundamentals of the business make sense and there will be genuine end user demand for the product/service in the future.

BitShares X has a product that will do that. BitAssets provide huge advantages and utility to traders, merchants and private investors. That's a HUGE market. They will come to X not as an investment but to actually make use of the product and service it provides. As a by-product of the share price rising, yes, it will attract many of the 'momo traders' you are referring to as well. It will also attract fundamental analysis investors who look at the market X is targeting, our dominant position, competitor analysis etc.

In reality X should have attracted more VC investor interest (which includes alt-coin investors) for the release but I would say the main reasons we haven't been as successful as we could in that area is because BitShares has quite a steep learning curve, we've been off the map since February, until last month marketing was lagging and instead of spending all their time talking a good game, BitShares has instead focused on getting things done. As a result this is literally the buying opportunity of a lifetime imo. The investors you are thinking of will be here soon enough :)

Okay prove me wrong. Attract just one VC to Bitshares X without Bitshares X proving itself on the ROI stage.
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Offline Empirical1

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@ Luckybit, Yeah I have heard the silver to Bitcoin's gold marketing message. But even that falls away without their USP.

In your ROI  stuff, you are talking about technical analysis traders. Yeah especially Western ones, if the price is rising and has momentum and is big enough it will generate some of that investment.  However that's a by-product. You don't really target that. (Unless you're doing it on a small scale with a pump and dump type deal.)  Also the majority of investors will use some form of fundamental analysis, meaning they're not going to buy just because the price is rising but only if they genuinely believe the fundamentals of the business make sense and there will be genuine end user demand for the product/service in the future.

BitShares X has a product that will do that. BitAssets provide huge advantages and utility to traders, merchants and private investors. That's a HUGE market. They will come to X not as an investment but to actually make use of the product and service it provides. As a by-product of the share price rising, yes, it will attract many of the 'momo traders' you are referring to as well. It will also attract fundamental analysis investors who look at the market X is targeting, our dominant position, competitor analysis etc.

In reality X should have attracted more VC investor interest (which includes alt-coin investors) for the release but I would say the main reasons we haven't been as successful as we could in that area is because BitShares has quite a steep learning curve, we've been off the map since February, until last month marketing was lagging and instead of spending all their time talking a good game, BitShares has instead focused on getting things done. As a result this is literally the buying opportunity of a lifetime imo. The investors you are thinking of will be here soon enough :)
 
« Last Edit: July 23, 2014, 09:55:32 pm by Empirical1 »

Offline luckybit

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Litecoin is not losing value due to losing the mining demographic imo. Litecoin is losing value due to losing it's USP.

All of the current alt-coins have value because their communities believe they have a system that can potentially challenge Bitcoin.

LiteCoin's main USP was that because it was ASIC resistant it was more centralisation resistant. So while Bitcoin would consolidate in the hands of a few miners, who could be easily compromised or attacked. Litecoin would remain more decentralised and could potentially wait in the wings for such an event to happen.
This argument would apply to the true believers in Litecoin. But Litecoin was also marketed as the silver to Bitcoin's gold. They seemed to be targeting second place from the start and while I personally did believe it was more decentralized at the time I also expected developers to put forth some effort to maintain that perception. The developers haven't done this which leads me to believe they are more about ROI than USP. How hard would it have been to switch the hashing algorithm?
Now that it's succumbing to ASIC's, there's essentially nothing particularly special about it and no conceivable reason why it could potentially ever replace Bitcoin. As a result it's value will decline slowly until there will be probably be some sort of rapid dump as the herd 'gets it'. (The mining community no doubt play a part in it's high value and support but a large part of it's current value is partly 'early mover advantage' it was one of the first Crypto-currencies created after Bitcoin.)

The real question is why aren't developers innovating? Why aren't they trying to make a case for Litecoin? It seems to be that Litecoin holders at this time are Bitcoin holders who couldn't get in on Bitcoin early enough to get a lot of Bitcoins so they created Litecoin as a silver to the gold with no other intention except to maximize ROI.
Bitcoin has achieved such a big network effect and has so much utility (Via Merchants accepting it and third parties providing services etc.) it's actually very hard to replace it unless it's attacked or you provide some really incredible utility. Luckily BitAssets do that.

I think Bitcoin would be replaced as soon as something else offers a better ROI to investors. Bitcoin is heavily controlled by moneyed investors. If sophisticated investors start to see Bitshares as a better store of value or better investment then Bitcoin will not be able to compete for the investor demographic as easily.

For example Bitcoin is trying to court investors while at the same time diluting via mining. Bitshares doesn't have to do this. Investors don't know Bitshares exists yet because there is no chart so there is no reason for investors who track statistics to pay attention to Bitshares. When there are record making profits to show then investors will smell blood and want to load up on Bitshares and only when Bitshares has its first real bubble will it start making the news.

Bitshares doesn't have the merchant support but merchants selling Bitcoins for dollars is actually keeping the Bitcoin price down. Bitshares investors may have more of a reason to hold and so the price could go up exponentially very easily while merchants could potentially use BitUSD.
@luckybit

Do not make me lough hard again… I already did the first time I read ‘ROI as a marketing tool’.

… OK last attempt – you are basically saying that if I am Warren Buffett it will be great from PR standpoint and I will be very famous.
Sounds like a plan to me, tell me how to make his money.

Should I guess - Mining...

Why else would people care about Bitshares if not to make a ROI? Do you really think the majority of the people in the world with a lot of money are computer geeks who can make sense of TITAN or even know how DPoS works?

Think of the guy who has $100,000 of retirement money to invest. What do you think that person is most concerned about? Bitshares is like another stock in their portfolio and if it underperforms then it gets sold. You're asking people who think like this who have real gold in their portfolio to sell it for some digital gold which they can't even understand how it works yet you expect technological buzzwords to impress them?

The ROI is what will impress them.
« Last Edit: July 23, 2014, 09:12:49 pm by luckybit »
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Tuck Fheman

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I'm in the camp that is predicting all mined coins, including Bitcoin, will become worthless once BitShares X get going, proving that you don't need the high cost of mining.

http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/154/7

Brent Allsop

"Our prediction is that the market cap of Bitshares X will surpass the market cap of Bitcoin before the end of 2014. This will lead to a significant crash in all “Mineable” currencies, including Bitcoin."


Offline Empirical1

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Prove it's nonsense

I have long given up proving anything to you, as you know.

Then why make the statement?

At least my statement I can show the Litecoin chartshttp://www.cryptocoincharts.info/v2/pair/ltc/usd/btc-e/alltime  (Litecoin is a miners cryptocurrency which is losing the mining demographic as it switches to ASICs) and the Bitcoin charts.

Both are successful in terms of ROI and have different marketing. Bitcoin is primarily being marketed to sophisticated investors, hedge fund managers and ETFs.
http://www.coindesk.com/6-new-hedge-funds-seeking-bitcoin-returns/

What makes you think they care about anything other than ROI? If you're an investor why wouldn't you care most about ROI? Miners care about this too which is why they stop mining with GPUs when it's no longer profitable and switch to something which is.

Litecoin is not losing value due to losing the mining demographic imo. Litecoin is losing value due to losing it's USP.

All of the current alt-coins have value because their communities believe they have a system that can potentially challenge Bitcoin.

LiteCoin's main USP was that because it was ASIC resistant it was more centralisation resistant. So while Bitcoin would consolidate in the hands of a few miners, who could be easily compromised or attacked. Litecoin would remain more decentralised and could potentially wait in the wings for such an event to happen.

Now that it's succumbing to ASIC's, there's essentially nothing particularly special about it and no conceivable reason why it could potentially ever replace Bitcoin. As a result it's value will decline slowly until there will be probably be some sort of rapid dump as the herd 'gets it'. (The mining community no doubt play a part in it's high value and support but a large part of it's current value is partly 'early mover advantage' it was one of the first Crypto-currencies created after Bitcoin.)

Bitcoin has achieved such a big network effect and has so much utility (Via Merchants accepting it and third parties providing services etc.) it's actually very hard to replace it unless it's attacked or you provide some really incredible utility. Luckily BitAssets do that.


Offline luckybit

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Prove it's nonsense

I have long given up proving anything to you, as you know.

Then why make the statement?

http://www.cryptocoincharts.info/v2/pair/ltc/usd/btc-e/alltime 

At least my statement I can show the Litecoin charts (Litecoin is a miners cryptocurrency which is losing the mining demographic as it switches to ASICs) and the Bitcoin charts. The Litecoin chart above seems to show that people switched to Litecoin right around the time when Bitcoin rose to 100+ and possibly in response to Bitcoin being too expensive. People who discovered Bitcoin may have thought they could have a chance to get rich if they buy or mine Litecoins back when it could be mined with a GPU and a Litecoin was less than $1. Bitcoin also transitioned into ASICs at around the same time period which may have had something to do with it too.

http://www.nature.com/srep/2013/131204/srep03415/fig_tab/srep03415_F2.html

Bitcoin Google search trend popularity is highly correlated with price increase which seems to show that when the price increases there are more positive articles written about Bitcoin which markets Bitcoin to greater numbers of investors who then invest causing the price to rise exponentially until the bubble pops. My conclusion from this chart is that price increases generate positive interest but at the same time there is a threshold where people start thinking something is too expensive (I don't really understand why people don't like to buy fractions because it's entirely unreasonable).

Both are successful so far in terms of ROI and have different marketing and user demographics to appeal to. Bitcoin is primarily being marketed to sophisticated investors, hedge fund managers and ETFs. Litecoin was marketed toward GPU owners (now they have ASICs so I don't know where they go from here).
http://www.coindesk.com/6-new-hedge-funds-seeking-bitcoin-returns/

What makes you think they care about anything other than ROI? If you're an investor why wouldn't you care most about ROI? Miners care about this too which is why they stop mining with GPUs when it's no longer profitable and switch to something which is.
« Last Edit: July 23, 2014, 08:56:22 pm by luckybit »
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Offline luckybit

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I think if it were all about technology you would be right. Technology and math would say that Bitshares is measurably and demonstrably better than Bitcoin/PoW.

But really the secret sauce is in the marketing. If you get the marketing wrong then it doesn't matter how good your product is. Bitcoin had 1000+% return on investment and due to marketing people still thought it was a ponzi scheme. On the other hand those high returns are what has attracted the media attention which brought in high net worth investors.

Marketing is what mining does and it's very difficult to compare PoW to PoS in terms of marketing. Maybe with the delegates you could do something similar where the delegates can function like the miners in DPoS but we really don't know enough yet in my opinion to predict Bitshares will have a higher market cap.

I think if we were going by technology right now it would be Nxt with the highest market cap. Explain why Litecoin is so high?

What I think Bitshares should do for marketing to attract high net worth investors is first prove it's successful and measure success in the return on investment. If the ROI is very high for the people who bought in early on then a year from now a case can be made that Bitshares is an even better investment than Bitcoin. People who invest don't necessary understand the technology or care but they want to know how Bitshares is doing on coinmarketcap and see long term exponential growth.
'...Marketing is what mining does...'

'...What I think Bitshares should do for marketing to attract high net worth investors is first prove it's successful and measure success in the return on investment...'

This is total nonsense...

Prove it's nonsense. Show that the market cap can surpass Litecoin without relying on marketing the price charts.

Litecoin has a high market cap because a lot more people own GPUs than who can do technical analysis. It's well marketed because those people who have GPUs don't want all their mined coins to become worthless but as they find they cannot mine with GPUs anymore the price of Litecoin will go down as it's doing.

Bitcoin is popular not because people know how it works but because people who could do technical analysis heard the price was going up and then they had a look at the price charts.

If you want to market Bitshares to sophisticated investors then you need to show growth on the charts. Most sophisticated investors don't have a clue what TITAN is and probably don't care about that. What they want to know if whether or not it will be a ROI if they put $100,000 into it.

In fact if you can show that for the past few years that it has had consistent growth there is no better form of marketing to an investor. That is why Bitcoin is attracting Wall Street. People who buy stocks aren't necessarily cryptography experts and you're going to have a hard time explaining to them why they should invest in Bitshares over Bitcoin.

If you think I'm wrong and what I'm saying is nonsense then please start a Bitshares Investment Trust. Then go market to sophisticated investors and see which form of marketing attracts more investment.

Friendly marketing advice for GUI developers

Once the technology has market assets working and it's fully explained then we can make the transition from focusing on explaining the beauty of the technology into focusing on price models, technical analysis, interest rates, burn rates, etc.

So it's a good idea to make sure that the user can see their portfolios and how much money they make in whichever currency they choose throughout the day. The currency conversion should be built into Bitshares itself and the user should be able to select how to view it. If there is an arbitrage opportunity the GUI should indicate it to the user and there should be some ways for the user to automate transactions based on conditionals (right now I don't see much of this in the GUI).

1) For instance if I'm making money doing arbitrage or from some kind of contract for difference then I might want to automate taking the profits from that and putting it into a particular BitAsset. This would automate the process of buying the particular BitAsset (automatic reinvestment).

Another example is if I'm trying to determine the value of my portfolio in Bitcoins it should show me as easy as point and click (just like Bter). If I'm trying to see the value of my portfolio in dollars, the euro, or any BitAsset, it should show me by point and click. It would be helpful if there were pretty graphs, pie charts, and useful models which can forecast where the price should be if the price trend continues.

This way the users can do some basic technical analysis from within the app itself. A cool feature would be if a particularly successful investor could somehow prove their investment history is good so that when they blog and/or tweet their technical analysis it's somehow backed by the blockchain evidence without revealing all their details but I realize it might be hard to do this.

In my opinion the best marketing for investors starts with the GUI. If the GUI is geared so that it makes it both fun and easy to be an investor, and if it simplifies technical analysis, then it will be great. The more automation the better.


« Last Edit: July 23, 2014, 07:42:51 pm by luckybit »
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Offline luckybit

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The problem is opportunity cost. $10 million in Bitcoins today could be $100 million in 2015.

I'm in the camp that is predicting all mined coins, including Bitcoin, will become worthless once BitShares X get going, proving that you don't need the high cost of mining.

http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/154/7

if you think differently, please indicate such in that survey topic, and explain why you think this, so we can track the expert consensus as the future proof comes in.

If Bitshares X surpasses the market cap of Bitcoin, think of how fast people will be abandoning it to get in on the next new superior thing.  People that wait too long will loose a LOT in the transition, all this money going to the smart money, way ahead of the crowd.

I don't own any bitcoin.

Anyone want to sell me a lot of BitShares X?

Brent Allsop

I think if it were all about technology you would be right. Technology and math would say that Bitshares is measurably and demonstrably better than Bitcoin/PoW.

But really the secret sauce is in the marketing. If you get the marketing wrong then it doesn't matter how good your product is. Bitcoin had 1000+% return on investment and due to marketing people still thought it was a ponzi scheme. On the other hand those high returns are what has attracted the media attention which brought in high net worth investors.

Marketing is what mining does and it's very difficult to compare PoW to PoS in terms of marketing. Maybe with the delegates you could do something similar where the delegates can function like the miners in DPoS but we really don't know enough yet in my opinion to predict Bitshares will have a higher market cap.

I think if we were going by technology right now it would be Nxt with the highest market cap. Explain why Litecoin is so high?

What I think Bitshares should do for marketing to attract high net worth investors is first prove it's successful and measure success in the return on investment. If the ROI is very high for the people who bought in early on then a year from now a case can be made that Bitshares is an even better investment than Bitcoin. People who invest don't necessary understand the technology or care but they want to know how Bitshares is doing on coinmarketcap and see long term exponential growth.

« Last Edit: July 23, 2014, 05:33:45 pm by luckybit »
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Offline Brent.Allsop

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The problem is opportunity cost. $10 million in Bitcoins today could be $100 million in 2015.

I'm in the camp that is predicting all mined coins, including Bitcoin, will become worthless once BitShares X get going, proving that you don't need the high cost of mining.

http://canonizer.com/topic.asp/154/7

if you think differently, please indicate such in that survey topic, and explain why you think this, so we can track the expert consensus as the future proof comes in.

If Bitshares X surpasses the market cap of Bitcoin, think of how fast people will be abandoning it to get in on the next new superior thing.  People that wait too long will loose a LOT in the transition, all this money going to the smart money, way ahead of the crowd.

I don't own any bitcoin.

Anyone want to sell me a lot of BitShares X?

Brent Allsop





« Last Edit: July 23, 2014, 05:06:53 pm by Brent.Allsop »

Offline CLains

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Toast is probably right, but I can't find where it is written.


Terms and Conditions of the Ethereum Genesis Sale

p. 13 EthSuisse will not place a cap on the number of ETH that can be purchased by the community.EthSuisse reserves the right to change the duration of any affected discounting period for any reason,including the unavailability of the website https://www.ethereum.org or other unforeseen procedural or security issues.
p.12 EthSuisse reserves the right to change the date when the Genesis Sale will begin and further reserves the right to extend the sale duration for any reason, including the unavailability of the website https://www.ethereum.org or other unforeseen security or procedural issues. Though it does not currently anticipate doing so, EthSuisse also reserves the right to shorten the sale duration for any reason.


Thanks. (:

Offline Empirical1

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Toast is probably right, but I can't find where it is written.

If that is right then basically the people who buy in now have no idea what they are paying for. This crowd sale can easily capture 50 000 BTC, leaving investors with slim to no return at launch in an inflationary currency..

http://www.ted.com/talks/malcolm_gladwell_the_unheard_story_of_david_and_goliath

Yeah that's the thing even if it's 25 000 BTC, with an inflationary currency, having to wait months for something competitors are delivering a lot of already. I don't see the value in buying now

Offline Empirical1

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Thanks for the reply Luckybit

It's not necessarily going to be better it's just more general purposed. If you wanted to build a distributed state for example you might be better off with the flexibility that Ethereum offers you. Ethereum offers you flexibility, options, and a place to experiment with the most cutting edge ideas and technologies.


I'll have to look into it more. I'd have to see an example, like a business trying to do 'Y' on a DPOS BlockChain/With BitShares will be out competed by one using Ethereum because...


Quote
The way to profit from ETH is because ETH is the gas/fuel and must be mined for running any contract. So if you're a miner you'll make a fortune if the popularity of smart contracts grows (and it's likely going to grow over time).

I think this is what people are basing most of the value on but I don't get it.  If there is value to be gained that way, individual companies and their investors would rather have those gains flow directly to them. (Chance Coin makes bettors convert to CHA rather than BTC to increase their value. BlackCoin pays out POW miners in BC rather than BTC to increase value. BitShares X brings people into a BTSX denominated system to increase value rather than operating in BTC.)

I must be misunderstanding something about smart contracts & why developers will keep them on the Ethereum blockchain to benefit all Ether holders, when the could have seperate blockchains people can buy into with BTC.

Oh and obviously Bitcoin is doomed anyway.
« Last Edit: July 23, 2014, 05:27:33 pm by Empirical1 »