How much is a new user worth?

[bitmarket]

5. Another level of awesome on top of this is to get a reward for businesses to start accepting bitUSD direct, without the credit card intermediary.  If that could be managed somehow that would be awesome.

Yup, next step is to convince some places to accept BitUSD and this debit card.

Well I assume that this debit card is connected to the visa or mastercard network and so is accepted everywhere they are.

Oh another important consideration... Do you have to give up your personal details to get the card or is privacy kept in tact.   If it is then this would be a huge win and a very unique solution for the crypto world.

[donkeypong]

5. Another level of awesome on top of this is to get a reward for businesses to start accepting bitUSD direct, without the credit card intermediary.  If that could be managed somehow that would be awesome.

Yup, next step is to convince some places to accept BitUSD and this debit card.

[bitmarket]

Some thoughts.

1.  You would need to be careful with the ramping up and ramping down marketing.   These BitUSD's sit on Credit cards that will get spent.  As they are liquidated prices fall.  You would want to be very smooth on the ramp up and ramp down.

2. What is the interest earned for holding bitUSD?  As I can see this is the only benefit for a consumer. Are there other benefits I am missing? 

3. As part of the process, I think we want customers to become very educated about btsx and bitUSD.  At the end of it, they should be so excited they are salivating to hold onto their btsx.   Perhaps reduce the referral reward a touch and add a reward for answering simple multi-choice questions that they just learned while watching educational videos.   In fact, you can reduce the referral award significantly.  I own an email list with 20,000 names on it.  I am very happy receiving 2$ per unique visitor I send to a website.  Giving away free money will surely get a better conversion than 1 in 50.  But time will tell.

4. I think the community will really like this Bit drop idea.   For them it will help answer the question of "fair distribution"

5. Another level of awesome on top of this is to get a reward for businesses to start accepting bitUSD direct, without the credit card intermediary.  If that could be managed somehow that would be awesome.

[alphaBar]

Firstly - It is not giving way free money, it is giving money for certain actions performed. As in getting used to the product and spending 1K with it. - read the previous post in the thread.
On the protocol changes I am partly with you... I would not want to see it... but for @10X return... I could be bought for that

... and you cannot?

I would be for 10X return, but it sounds like wishful thinking. In fact, I'm not convinced that the return wont be negative in the long run...

[Musewhale]

Smart people don't just write code, marketing is also very good   

[Riverhead]

This is very exciting, still a couple things I'm not grasping:

What is the relationship between merchants who only (for now) take USD, the card issuer that I am guessing is populating the cards with USD, and the end customer that buys bitUSD?

The step I'm missing is bitUSD->USD.

Also, if people are "depositing" a lot of money as "savings" isn't that getting close to the big "B" word and regulatory hell? Or is this more like people buying gold and having it stored/secured by a third party?

[tonyk]

I do not want to be too harsh here, but tactics like this are not even close to what is seen as bad business practices... Don't you receive Credit cards offers to get $150-$500, just for signing up and spending $500-$1500, in 3 -6 mo. period? (something that you already do, anyway)
Do you feel offended to get such offers? I know, I am not. The only thing I'm sorry is that I can only sign for one of them at a time....

I have two objections to this and you only addressed one of them. My first point is that giving away money to users is probably ineffective and gimmicky. My second point is that hard forking the protocol to increase supply for something as speculative as direct marketing may lead to a short term bump in users, but will spook serious investors and big money (ie, the Overstocks of the world). Really you have to ask yourself what type of users and what type of money you want to attract. Protocol changes and money supply are sacred ground to many people.

Firstly - It is not giving way free money, it is giving money for certain actions performed. As in getting used to the product and spending 1K with it. - read the previous post in the thread.
On the protocol changes I am partly with you... I would not want to see it... but for @10X return... I could be bought for that

... and you cannot?

[alphaBar]

I do not want to be too harsh here, but tactics like this are not even close to what is seen as bad business practices... Don't you receive Credit cards offers to get $150-$500, just for signing up and spending $500-$1500, in 3 -6 mo. period? (something that you already do, anyway)
Do you feel offended to get such offers? I know, I am not. The only thing I'm sorry is that I can only sign for one of them at a time....

I have two objections to this and you only addressed one of them. My first point is that giving away money to users is probably ineffective and gimmicky. My second point is that hard forking the protocol to increase supply for something as speculative as direct marketing may lead to a short term bump in users, but will spook serious investors and big money (ie, the Overstocks of the world). Really you have to ask yourself what type of users and what type of money you want to attract. Protocol changes and money supply are sacred ground to many people.

[bitmarket]

Brilliant.   I love the idea.

Although just curios about your 500k Bitcoin user estimation.

I have heard 5 Mill.   With Coinbase having 1.5 million wallets, Blockchain having over 2 million, I think there would be lots more than that.

[alphaBar]

* Any type of direct payment for user adoption will generate very bad PR

Be realistic. At the end of the day, this is a business. It will only succeed by growing. It will only grow by attracting new people. Marketing helps us reach these new people. It may seem a bit crude to calculate the cost of each new user, but if we were just pouring money down a marketing hole, people would start demanding this sort of accounting anyway. Think of it differently if you want, that we are reaching new users, and this is the price of reaching them + getting them interested enough to give BTSX/BitUSD a try. Try it; you'll like it!

I'm not against marketing in general, just direct payment to users. There are many different types of marketing that don't involve paying users directly. Advertising and sponsorships are the traditional way. I'd prefer something more creative, or something that incentivizes people to build infrastructure. Maybe a non-currency giveaway would work. For example, if we can pay an artist for a commercial license to their music and then list a fixed number of tokens for sale as an asset at a discounted rate or simply give them away... Just off the top of my head.

Another very important effort is to sponsor and have a strong presence at Bitcoin conferences (which we are currently doing). Having Dan as a keynote speaker at Inside Bitcoins does more in terms of marketing than anything I can think of. Many people in the Bitcoin community (and especially the shibes) know nothing about the advantages of BTSX. We need short, powerful, and pervasive messaging at these events.

[tonyk]

* Any type of direct payment for user adoption will generate very bad PR and possibly some serious "troll fodder" (ie, comparisons to pyramid schemes, etc).
* It just sounds gimmicky.
* ANY inflationary change to the protocol will create serious backlash. Do you think Overstock or Reddit would consider an IPO on the Bitshares platform if they see us changing the protocol “on a whim” and for extremely speculative purposes?

The best way to grow user adoption is to integrate as seamlessly as possible with OTHER cryptos. Trustless and easy exchange of BTSX-BTC, BTSX-DOGE, BTSX-LTC, BTSX-NXT, and other cryptos IN THE CLIENT is the first step. Bitassets solve a different problem, though there could be a conversion of BTC-BitBTC involved. We should think about using trustless multisig transactions for Bitassets that represent other currencies (instead of "lending them" into existence). The lending method is only necessary for non-crypto assets and is actually a step backward for other cryptos. But ultimately, as long as users of other cryptos can use our client without the friction of going through an exchange, we win.

If we could enable users to keep their BTC and to utilize our network and features, we win. I imagine a scenario where you can send and receive Bitcoin seamlessly between the BTSX and Bitcoinqt client. The pitch is that if you like Bitcoin you can keep it, but at the same time you can take advantage of our 10 second transactions and trading features.

I do not want to be too harsh here, but tactics like this are not even close to what is seen as bad business practices... Don't you receive Credit cards offers to get $150-$500, just for signing up and spending $500-$1500, in 3 -6 mo. period? (something that you already do, anyway)
Do you feel offended to get such offers? I know, I am not. The only thing I'm sorry is that I can only sign for one of them at a time....

[donkeypong]

* Any type of direct payment for user adoption will generate very bad PR

Be realistic. At the end of the day, this is a business. It will only succeed by growing. It will only grow by attracting new people. Marketing helps us reach these new people. It may seem a bit crude to calculate the cost of each new user, but if we were just pouring money down a marketing hole, people would start demanding this sort of accounting anyway. Think of it differently if you want, that we are reaching new users, and this is the price of reaching them + getting them interested enough to give BTSX/BitUSD a try. Try it; you'll like it!

[James212]

support  bm

I too am willing to differ to BM on this...(at least until I understand it better).  However, I agree with TonyK that there should be some built in limits. 

[alphaBar]

* Any type of direct payment for user adoption will generate very bad PR and possibly some serious "troll fodder" (ie, comparisons to pyramid schemes, etc).
* It just sounds gimmicky.
* ANY inflationary change to the protocol will create serious backlash. Do you think Overstock or Reddit would consider an IPO on the Bitshares platform if they see us changing the protocol “on a whim” and for extremely speculative purposes?

The best way to grow user adoption is to integrate as seamlessly as possible with OTHER cryptos. Trustless and easy exchange of BTSX-BTC, BTSX-DOGE, BTSX-LTC, BTSX-NXT, and other cryptos IN THE CLIENT is the first step. Bitassets solve a different problem, though there could be a conversion of BTC-BitBTC involved. We should think about using trustless multisig transactions for Bitassets that represent other currencies (instead of "lending them" into existence). The lending method is only necessary for non-crypto assets and is actually a step backward for other cryptos. But ultimately, as long as users of other cryptos can use our client without the friction of going through an exchange, we win.

If we could enable users to keep their BTC and to utilize our network and features, we win. I imagine a scenario where you can send and receive Bitcoin seamlessly between the BTSX and Bitcoinqt client. The pitch is that if you like Bitcoin you can keep it, but at the same time you can take advantage of our 10 second transactions and trading features.

[James212]

So is this the big marketing "secret sauce" that everyone was so hush, hush about or is there an additional marketing plan?