The strategy in general is old hat. It will mostly attract frugal people trying to penny pinch. These kind of give-aways were unique 10 years ago when PayPal did it... not so much anymore. I see this as basically airdropping BitUSD on a strategically poor demographic. There are WAY better places to seed BitUSD. Example: Airdrop BitUSD on the OpenBazaar community (after integrating BitUSD into their code). This way it'll be spent within a community that will genuinely benefit from a non-volatile crypto and it has a good potential of spreading to other markets after OB success. We get to piggyback on OB publicity, real demand is created for BitUSD, important eyes are on OB, the PEG is enforced through increased volume, etc, etc etc. See this post.
BitUSD integration with OB is certainly a winning tactic, however this is accomplished, I have confidence it will be executed with the same level of brilliance I have seen from this crew thus far.
But this doesn't seem to be an either or situation. All fronts must be advanced upon, be they viewed as strategically importance spaces such as OB, or simultaneous forays into "mainstream audience".
Traditional monetary structures are themselves seeming increasingly "nebulous and risky" among large segments of the population who are not exactly mainstream and not quite crypto-core either.
I've personally recruited 8 non-crypto friends in the last two weeks to invest in BTSX with just raw enthusiasm and making time to sit down with them and show them how to get set up. That was without any better on-ramp than plummeting BTC.
In an ocean of predatory financial entities, there is emerging a oasis called BTSX / BitUSD. This is of huge social consequence which can hardly be overstated, and if articulated correctly to reasonable people I believe we can see significant levels of adoption among "regular folks".
Maybe I'm a touch old fashioned, but I'm pretty sure 'we are the network effect!' It is not some inscrutable magic process. It is people talking with people talking with people. I'm sure there are great viral insertion points, but you never really know where that's going to be precisely, still you make your best efforts.
To reach folks on the periphery of our (crypto) world, some must be willing to go out and promote face to face. I think there is no replacement for a person to person approach, especially at this stage of the game when the barriers to entry are significant enough to keep many out. Having individuals who are willing to reach out to and walk new adoptees through the process, possibly earning a fee in the process, will be of huge benefit. A good referral program could help to fuel such outreach, but obviously we musn't wait on perfection to introduce more folks to btsx / BitUSD
I bring all this up because I think BM's idea of a pre-paid BitUSD card would be gold in the hands of a sharp team of meetup organizers, and would pay huge dividends. Online marketing is great, but outside the crypto-world, we're more in the heavy lifting phase of adoption efforts as far as I can tell.
4.I love referral programs because they are the least risky form of marketing. You only pay once you have a result. The key is to clearly identify your result so you are happy when you pay. I think Stan's suggestion of being a bank first and later a currency is profound. The goal of the referral is to get people to buy and hold bitUSD.
People trust people more than systems. If I tell my mother that this will work, and she can put her savings in BitUSD and earn a better yield than with a traditional account, she will believe me. She will believe in the system because she believes in me. We must leverage our own credibility... the collective credibility of our whole community.
There are two issues at play here:
1) Should we issue more shares to fund marketing.
2) Is a $100 debit card bonus a worthwhile use of capital.
I see a lot of discussion on the merits of issuing new shares but almost nothing related to #2.
As to point #2, I see banks and credit cards offering $50-100 in free money just for opening a checking account with them.
One problem we face by being decentralized is to get shareholders to spend money on development. If I don't know if others will pay the cost, I won't either. With inflation and delegates we have to some extent solved this problem. However, another problem presents itself: If the cost is now and the return is later then shareholders can sell out now and buy back later.
While the first problem is lack of spatial consensus that we all chip in, the second problem is a lack of temporal consensus that we all stick around when spending happens. Perhaps like we solve the spatial problem by modifying the supply we all embody, we can solve the temporal problem by modifying the spending we all have to suffer.
One way is to have delays on the spending, as we have seen in many instances. Another way is to have continuous spending which essentially distributes the spending across time much like inflation distributes the donations across all users. Perhaps optimally, the "cost" of the spending should hit exactly when the return on the spending hits..
A good longterm solution to this issue is to implement Workers or Superdels; delegates that do not run servers/sign transactions but have a very high pay rate/burn allocation (budget).
A Worker/Superdel for each business function - Marketing, Legal, Development, etc.
Workers/Superdels spend their allocations to further BTSX interests (marketing campaigns, legal lobbying, new features etc.)
Voted in/out using same mechanisms as current delegates (security delegates).
Short term these business functions are funded from AGS donations; longer term AGS will be exhausted and they will need to be funded from BTSX revenue.
There needs to be something in place to keep these business functions both decentralized and automated. A DAC needs to be constructed like any other business with the critical divisions you mention.
Really
really intriguing ideas! ^
Show Posts
