BitShares Forum
Main => General Discussion => Topic started by: luckybit on July 23, 2014, 02:31:35 pm
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So far they have raised over 4000 BTC in a matter of hours. It seems to be relatively few donors contributing a whole lot of BTC very quickly.
I think investing is a high opportunity cost. I think mining on the other hand could be great if its something we can mine with our CPUs.
https://blog.ethereum.org/2014/07/22/launching-the-ether-sale/ 2000 ETH per BTC.
http://www.coindesk.com/ethereum-launches-ether-coin-millions-already-sold/
http://cointelegraph.com/news/112129/ethereum-raises-3700-btc-in-first-12-hours-of-ether-presale
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BwPulJKP1_Y&feature=youtu.be
Ethereum right now is an experiment. A lot of variables which keep changing. While it might be a good idea to have some small amount I don't see a reason to throw large amounts of Bitcoins at it.
I wish them luck though. Their project is quite important for the ecosystem.
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Considering they have a fixed-price system for their IPO and have set the price at a 10 Million market cap, it is relatively cheap for large investors to BUY IT ALL UP before anyone else can get in the game. Investors simply make an estimate on the valuation of Eth. at launch and assume it works a 10 Million market cap is probably a "safe" bet.
This will cause ETH to have the appearance of extreme centralization in initial ownership. Then they have mining... seems to me that this is the soft underbelly and that by the time ETH arrives mining will be a thing of the past.
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Considering they have a fixed-price system for their IPO and have set the price at a 10 Million market cap, it is relatively cheap for large investors to BUY IT ALL UP before anyone else can get in the game. Investors simply make an estimate on the valuation of Eth. at launch and assume it works a 10 Million market cap is probably a "safe" bet.
This will cause ETH to have the appearance of extreme centralization in initial ownership. Then they have mining... seems to me that this is the soft underbelly and that by the time ETH arrives mining will be a thing of the past.
No, they are adjusting the total supply after the sale so that it is the ~80% which is not premined
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sounds logic
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Considering they have a fixed-price system for their IPO and have set the price at a 10 Million market cap, it is relatively cheap for large investors to BUY IT ALL UP before anyone else can get in the game. Investors simply make an estimate on the valuation of Eth. at launch and assume it works a 10 Million market cap is probably a "safe" bet.
This will cause ETH to have the appearance of extreme centralization in initial ownership. Then they have mining... seems to me that this is the soft underbelly and that by the time ETH arrives mining will be a thing of the past.
The problem is opportunity cost. $10 million in Bitcoins today could be $100 million in 2015. I've seen this before with the Trezor wallet which was going for 1 BTC each back when Bitcoin was around $100 and now it's finally shipping at a price of each Trezor costing the customer $650.
By the time ETH becomes liquid the price of everything else may have gone up dramatically. In the long term Ethereum has a strong chance at being in the top 3 but it's also very risky (not in $ but in BTC). I wouldn't think anything of putting $100 into it but $100 in BTC is like giving it stock which might rise faster than what it's traded for.
Having said all of this I do think even at these prices it's likely to ROI even with the inflation. I can see Ethereum easily having a 10 billion dollar market cap a year or two from now if it works (and that is a very big if).
If we can mine it with our CPUs then the best strategy to have minimal opportunity cost is to invest a very small amount in the crowd sale and focus mostly on mining or providing cloud mining services. Bitshares delegates or users can mine it for us and offer an IOU token so that we can just buy our ETH from within Bitshares itself by buying their ETH cloud mining asset.
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I haven't been following Ethereum much, what is it supposed to do better than BitShares that is worth waiting 6 months for?
(I watched the 'what is Ethereum' video and the only use cases that sounded profitable were one's BitShares is already working on.)
Coindesk said the crowdsale announcement came as a surprise. Is it possible they've looked at BitShares X and realised in a few weeks everyone is going to see BitShares is already doing everything they say they 'might' be able to start doing in 6 months?
I mean I have hedges in NXT and I bought XCP at POB stage but I can't see myself putting a cent here at the moment.
What am I missing?
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I haven't been following Ethereum much, what is it supposed to do better than BitShares that is worth waiting 6 months for?
(I watched the 'what is Ethereum' video and the only use cases that sounded profitable were one's BitShares is already working on.)
Coindesk said the crowdsale announcement came as a surprise. Is it possible they've looked at BitShares X and realised in a few weeks everyone is going to see BitShares is already doing everything they say they 'might' be able to start doing in 6 months?
I mean I have hedges in NXT and I bought XCP at POB stage but I can't see myself putting a cent here at the moment.
What am I missing?
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.
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 the best way to play is to cloud mine ETH and integrate that into Bitshares. This way Bitshares as a community can diversify through the delegates offering a refund in ETH in exchange for voting for them or in the form of cloud mining assets. This would have to be done by the most trusted delegates.
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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
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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...
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.
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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
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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 (https://www.ethereum.org/pdfs/TermsAndConditionsOfTheEthereumGenesisSale.pdfl)
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. (:
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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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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."
(http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/rainin.gif)
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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.
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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 :)
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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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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"
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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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
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.)
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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.
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@ Luckybit I think it's just semantics at this point there are some investors in crypto-currency and BitShares owners that have multi-million net worths for sure.
Except for the Litecoin thing, I think we mostly agree on the investment stuff actually.
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.
Oh except that we don't agree there :) If you don't believe we can offer profitable products and services to various markets you shouldn't invest in BitShares I don't think. BitAssets will target traders (If it is user friendly enough) take it to trading forums and people who've never used crypto currency should want to use it if we do it right. Same with Lotto if we take it to lottery/gambling forums etc.
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If you don't have at least a million net worth you're not a real investor because you're unsophisticated.
(http://www.reactiongifs.com/r/cf-dafuq.gif)
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@ Luckybit I think it's just semantics at this point there are some investors in crypto-currency and BitShares owners that have multi-million net worths for sure.
Except for the Litecoin thing, I think we mostly agree on the investment stuff actually.
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.
Oh except that we don't agree there :) If you don't believe we can offer profitable products and services to various markets you shouldn't invest in BitShares I don't think. BitAssets will target traders (If it is user friendly enough) take it to trading forums and people who've never used crypto currency should want to use it if we do it right. Same with Lotto if we take it to lottery/gambling forums etc.
I'm asking who is the demographic? Have you or anyone else conducted any market research?
Where is the data? When you do a business plan usually there is a chart of projected growth, some numbers such as the size of the demographic, the purchasing power of that demographic, and the needs/expectations of that demographic.
How are we supposed to be effective at marketing when we don't have any facts to work with?
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Considering they have a fixed-price system for their IPO and have set the price at a 10 Million market cap,
First, the ether sale is not an IPO. Please read the terms of sale. Second, the market cap is set by the amount purchased and will be reset by active trading- like all coins- once the coin has launched.
it is relatively cheap for large investors to BUY IT ALL UP before anyone else can get in the game.
How exactly can anyone buy it all up if ether is created by the presale? Anyone can create ether at the moment Dan just by clicking buy on the website.
Investors simply make an estimate on the valuation of Eth. at launch and assume it works a 10 Million market cap is probably a "safe" bet.
There are no investors. Again, please read the terms of sale.
This will cause ETH to have the appearance of extreme centralization in initial ownership.
Do you have any hard numbers on the amount of people who currently own ether? Can you calculate a Gini coefficient? There are currently 2201 transactions to the exodus address- many small transactions under 500 dollars in value.
Then they have mining... seems to me that this is the soft underbelly and that by the time ETH arrives mining will be a thing of the past.
Right, every curreny should be 100 percent premined and sold to a small group of early adopters... :o
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This is a plea to everyone who sees "currency" in this space. There is no "currency" with btc or alt btcs. Really, there are shares in companies. The blockchain is the general ledger, very similar to the one Walmart uses. Holding a bitcoin is also very similar to holding stock in Walmart. At most we should concede share-currencies, because using btc at Walmart is like paying for groceries at Walmart with Apple stock.
Further, tuning back to BitShares, BitUSD will be a currency. BitUSD will not be a company, unlike Ethereum or BitShares X and Walmart. BitShares is to BitUSD what the US is to USD. A share of a BitShares company is what a property stake is to the US. BitUSD would be like walking into Walmart and exchanging 1 USdollar for 1 walmart dollar. When you get to the register to buy a snickers you pay 1 walmart dollar while buying a snickers next door at Kmart would cost 1 USdollar. Please stop saying Ethereum or bitcoin is a "currency"
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Edit: I should probably edit this for grammar and clarity. I tend to write like crap with Tapatalk
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Does ethereum plan to enable stealth transactions or zerocoin protocols? Or will all tx's be easily trackable and linked to the party who triggered them?
This is a plea to everyone who sees "currency" in this space. There is no "currency" with btc or alt btcs. Really, there are shares in companies. The blockchain is the general ledger, very similar to the one Walmart uses. Holding a bitcoin is also very similar to holding stock in Walmart. At most we should concede share-currencies, because using btc at Walmart is like paying for groceries at Walmart with Apple stock.
Further, tuning back to BitShares, BitUSD will be a currency. BitUSD will not be a company, unlike Ethereum or BitShares X and Walmart. BitShares is to BitUSD what the US is to USD. A share of a BitShares company is what a property stake is to the US. BitUSD would be like walking into Walmart and exchanging 1 USdollar for 1 walmart dollar. When you get to the register to buy a snickers you pay 1 walmart dollar while buying a snickers next door at Kmart would cost 1 USdollar. Please stop saying Ethereum or bitcoin is a "currency"
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Ether will be an attempt to replace the petro dollar, which is a currency. So at least in effect, his calling it a currency is actually quite apt.
As far as bitshares goes...it will do just fine, but they will likely be forced by fiat to play with ether using legal frameworks already in place. Anyone who doesn't comply will likely be considered a...what is the word i'm looking for? Oh, terrorist...that's it. In this way, crypto can be harnessed by deep pockets.
I find it funny that most people actually thought the owners of the old paradigm's infrastructure would not want to have a piece of this and wouldn't use their already-vast amount of fiat monopoly reserves to be VC's. I disagree with BM, Ethereum or at least some iteration of it, will survive. Not only that, they will almost single handedly make POW Technocracies seem both trendy and benevolent.
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This is a plea to everyone who sees "currency" in this space. There is no "currency" with btc or alt btcs. Really, there are shares in companies. The blockchain is the general ledger, very similar to the one Walmart uses. Holding a bitcoin is also very similar to holding stock in Walmart. At most we should concede share-currencies, because using btc at Walmart is like paying for groceries at Walmart with Apple stock.
Further, tuning back to BitShares, BitUSD will be a currency. BitUSD will not be a company, unlike Ethereum or BitShares X and Walmart. BitShares is to BitUSD what the US is to USD. A share of a BitShares company is what a property stake is to the US. BitUSD would be like walking into Walmart and exchanging 1 USdollar for 1 walmart dollar. When you get to the register to buy a snickers you pay 1 walmart dollar while buying a snickers next door at Kmart would cost 1 USdollar. Please stop saying Ethereum or bitcoin is a "currency"
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
+5%
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Then they have mining... seems to me that this is the soft underbelly and that by the time ETH arrives mining will be a thing of the past.
Right, every curreny should be 100 percent premined and sold to a small group of early adopters... :o
(Premined is kind of a misnomer for a system that will never use mining.)
What is the difference between purchasing and mining? Either way there is a cost. That cost in either case will reflect the market value, and I'd expect it to be nearly equivalent. Mining for coins/shares doesn't magically make them cheaper, easier to get, or more fairly distributed. If anything the reliance on mining increases the cost, introduces waist and inefficiencies, makes it more difficult to acquire, and is available to a much smaller group because it requires some special technical knowledge.
If mining isn't necessary to secure a network. I don't see that it serves any purpose at all, except revenue for mining manufactures and electric companies.
If a slow controlled release of supply is the goal, there are better ways to do this than mining.
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Bitshares delegates or users can mine it for us and offer an IOU token so that we can just buy our ETH from within Bitshares itself by buying their ETH cloud mining asset.
Not related to topic at hand but this is a very bad idea. This is how most scams on btctalk start - an IOU to mine with a huge hash rate promise which is never met. I am yet to get BTSX working but if we already have some assets like that with volume - I think we might be looking at first scams coming out of BTSX.
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Considering they have a fixed-price system for their IPO and have set the price at a 10 Million market cap,
First, the ether sale is not an IPO. Please read the terms of sale. Second, the market cap is set by the amount purchased and will be reset by active trading- like all coins- once the coin has launched.
it is relatively cheap for large investors to BUY IT ALL UP before anyone else can get in the game.
How exactly can anyone buy it all up if ether is created by the presale? Anyone can create ether at the moment Dan just by clicking buy on the website.
Investors simply make an estimate on the valuation of Eth. at launch and assume it works a 10 Million market cap is probably a "safe" bet.
There are no investors. Again, please read the terms of sale.
This will cause ETH to have the appearance of extreme centralization in initial ownership.
Do you have any hard numbers on the amount of people who currently own ether? Can you calculate a Gini coefficient? There are currently 2201 transactions to the exodus address- many small transactions under 500 dollars in value.
Then they have mining... seems to me that this is the soft underbelly and that by the time ETH arrives mining will be a thing of the past.
Right, every curreny should be 100 percent premined and sold to a small group of early adopters... :o
I had bad information relayed to me when I posted that. Thanks for the clarification.
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Then they have mining... seems to me that this is the soft underbelly and that by the time ETH arrives mining will be a thing of the past.
Right, every curreny should be 100 percent premined and sold to a small group of early adopters... :o
(Premined is kind of a misnomer for a system that will never use mining.)
What is the difference between purchasing and mining? Either way there is a cost. That cost in either case will reflect the market value, and I'd expect it to be nearly equivalent. Mining for coins/shares doesn't magically make them cheaper, easier to get, or more fairly distributed. If anything the reliance on mining increases the cost, introduces waist and inefficiencies, makes it more difficult to acquire, and is available to a much smaller group because it requires some special technical knowledge.
If mining isn't necessary to secure a network. I don't see that it serves any purpose at all, except revenue for mining manufactures and electric companies.
If a slow controlled release of supply is the goal, there are better ways to do this than mining.
+5% +5% +5%
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Then they have mining... seems to me that this is the soft underbelly and that by the time ETH arrives mining will be a thing of the past.
Right, every curreny should be 100 percent premined and sold to a small group of early adopters... :o
(Premined is kind of a misnomer for a system that will never use mining.)
What is the difference between purchasing and mining? Either way there is a cost. That cost in either case will reflect the market value, and I'd expect it to be nearly equivalent. Mining for coins/shares doesn't magically make them cheaper, easier to get, or more fairly distributed. If anything the reliance on mining increases the cost, introduces waist and inefficiencies, makes it more difficult to acquire, and is available to a much smaller group because it requires some special technical knowledge.
If mining isn't necessary to secure a network. I don't see that it serves any purpose at all, except revenue for mining manufactures and electric companies.
If a slow controlled release of supply is the goal, there are better ways to do this than mining.
+5% +5% +5%
If you're talking about mining with ASICs then there are up front costs. It's a business to mine.
On the other hand if you're mining with the CPU as we would ideally want it to be then everyone can mine.
The problem is the hashing algorithm doesn't change and there isn't enough random variances. I think the Ethereum team can make mining something everyone with a general purpose computer can take part in.
It will not be completely fair but it would be more fair than asking for money. More people have access to computers than have money. I could for sure find a homeless person or person in a developing country somewhere who has a smart phone or even a laptop to mine with but I don't think they'll have money to buy something they probably don't fully understand.
At the end I don't think mining alone stays fair for long and it attracts only the technical or intellectual elite. This is kinda cool for us because we are among them but it's not going to be so cool for people who don't understand what hashing, or what the difference between SHA-256 and MD5 is. The learning curve is becoming steeper and steeper which excludes people who lack the specialized knowledge.
Mining as a serious game has a shelf life. It's purpose is to attract people like ourselves to these communities. Gamers, programmers, engineers, scientists, (the sort of people likely to have access to computer labs or home computers with powerful CPUs). After a certain point though you have to figure out how to get other demographics interested in this technology.
Statistics reveal certain facts that the majority of people involved with Bitcoin are highly educated white males with an average age in the early to mid 30s. Bitcoin is not going to take over the world if the only people using it are the same demographic because eventually that well is going to run dry.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/28/bitcoin-user-demographics-libertarian-men_n_4874727.html
How do you bring the other demographics in? You have to find other ways to distribute stakes which aren't mining or asking people to purchase shares. You do have to make sure the people who receive stakes prove that they really want it that proof doesn't have to come from money or from mining.
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It isn't about "fairness"... it is about the good of mankind. Mining is rewarding people for consuming resources that produces no residual value and makes all of society poorer for it.
Ie: because of mining electricity costs more and everyone pays for it.
Socially awkward geeks living in their parents basement distributing coins by burning electricity is no basis for a fair distribution.
(http://i.imgur.com/GsLE8a2.jpg)
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I think the Ethereum team can make mining something everyone with a general purpose computer can take part in.
Are you ready to put money behind this statement? :)
I purchased some ETH.
Memory hardness is possible, storage hardness is possible. In 2013 I was trying to solve this same problem and the best solution I saw was from Tacotime http://mc2.xwebnetwork.com/storage/mc2_0.05.pdf which was to have an hashing algorithm which changes intermittently.
If the hashing algorithm keeps changing then it takes a lot longer to optimize it. ASICs do cost a lot of money to produce at first so they would have to create an ASIC for each one. Memorycoin for example was memory hard so there isn't any ASIC to make that optimized that I know of. Primecoin is another good example.
I think theoretically it is possible to do it but it's very difficult and there is no guarantee how long it would be before people figure out ways to game the algorithm. For example Primecoin and Memorycoin could be gamed by botnets and the cloud. Once it's in the cloud and controlled by botnets you end up paying cash for coins again so the algorithm would have to constantly keep changing in my opinion.
If the algorithm changed a lot then you wouldn't be able to mine it with one setup. The other possibility is to use BOINC combined with the algorithm changing so that everyone is encouraged to mine BOINC when the algorithm changes to something they aren't best able to mine.
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It isn't about "fairness"... it is about the good of mankind. Mining is rewarding people for consuming resources that produces no residual value and makes all of society poorer for it.
Ie: because of mining electricity costs more and everyone pays for it.
Socially awkward geeks living in their parents basement distributing coins by burning electricity is no basis for a fair distribution.
(http://i.imgur.com/GsLE8a2.jpg)
+5% I've used that image in a response on BTT https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=679185.msg8027034#msg8027034