Author Topic: How many friends would you gift BitAssets to when they're ready for mainstream?  (Read 2156 times)

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Offline Empirical1.1

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On a different note I was trying to sell this English girl at a coffee shop right where a physical bitcoin exchange was (wont go into detail) and she would not even investigate or go into what I was saying.

That's the point. Crypto is 90%+ male. Trying to sell crypto-currency wastefully right now to woman or the wrong demographic  is like selling tampons to men.  Sure maybe we can convince a few guys to try shoving one up their ass for $100  but that's still not likely to make them future users.

But please please please, let's not be so conservative to not see that 15% possible dilution can be no more damaging than about 15% dilution, but offers a chance for the project to really grow exponentially... hell even it's survival might be put on the line by prejudices and utter refusal to take a 15% loss and decent chance of 500%-1000% or more appreciation...

I know DAC's are businesses and dilution can be a standard tool but unfortunately the risk is more than the dilution by far. I love risk, if I think there's a 0.5% edge I'll put decent money down, hell if I'm bored I'll flip with reasonable sums for fun. The reason I'm highly skeptical is because I believe the risks are much greater. I've seen this kind of sales pitch from Invictus and within BitShares many times and variants of it tried all over crypto-land. This is just the same stuff in slightly different packaging.

A while ago Stan was pushing for taking the 1.6 million PTS and making it 2 million, giving it to Invictus and promising great marketing riches in return. We've guys like DA pushing the same approach as well as a decent share of this community. Like any bad idea for the masses it's always essentially the same sales pitch, soothing then fear & greed. Fear that without giving away lots of shit, your competitors will destroy you and with it great easy glory and a fast track to success awaits.

Luckily BitShares has avoided those pitfalls and now has a no.3 in crypto-land DAC (ignore XRP) despite still being in a buggy, centralised risk stage. PTS in the top 10 and two/three other DACs have a lot of potential.

Others have not been so lucky..

 
+- A month ago, Auroracoin's high was $800 million. Today?... It's worth $1.3 million. - A 99.8% shareholder loss.

+- A month ago, Stan excitedly drew our attention to -

Have you guys noticed the theory behind SiliconValleyCoin?

They are doing a "helicopter air-drop" of their currency into certain "zip" mailing codes in Silicon Valley under the theory that it directs their shares into the hands of a demographic more likely to be good supporters of their currency.

Quote
This coin is Premined 50%. Silicon Valley Coin will serve as a bridge between Silicon Valley innovation and the Crypto Community effectively by distributing our premined coins to certain zip codes surrounding the big tech companies of Silicon Valley. The distribution of our coins to these zip codes will commence on April 25, 2014.




+- A month ago, SiliconValleyCoin's high was $20 million. Today?... It's worth $4 417. (Also a 99.8% shareholder loss.)


Not knowing those coins – are you saying they have tanked because of the airdrop.

SpainCoin achieved a high of $80 million and is now $20 000...  (99.9% Shareholder loss)
MazaCoin achieved a high of $6 million and is now $140 000...  (97.5% Shareholder loss)

Perhaps. It could be some evidence that targeted airdrops are over-valued/over-rated.




The most recent is Stellar, now Stellar will probably look like it's increasing its value for a while as they can say they're releasing shares onto the market. As for their Sharedrop & referral programme that they thought would work via FB. It got crushed & gamed so hard and bad in less than week. It created a lot of bad PR and I think they were giving away tiny silly amounts. They have a limited future because of their 10 000% inflation still to come. At least they defined it though.

Everyone on the above list thought they were bootstrapping communities & adoptions by giveaways. Everyone after the next thinking they had a better approach.

Anyway you will get sold this all the time. In this case they've reached all the way out of crypto 10 years + back to a PayPal case study. They've told you to rest assured, we have KYC, everybody is unique etc. Then after the same fear and greed. 'Shit our competitors' and '10 000% plus gains, overnight bootstrapped network effect' etc.

The reason the big guys can egg them on is easy - some third party kickback or because they can afford hit and miss investments and use BTSX as one even if the miss risk is high.

It's not that dilution couldn't be part of a DAC, though I probably wouldn't be a fan of the approaches to date, though I must say MethodX has some good ideas and experience in referral approaches. I would personally be inclined to pay for advertising rather than the PayPal and every other sad failed crypto air-drop route.

Make no mistake 10% inflation is a lot, you might look at the CAP and think how many users a bit of inflation buys, and that BTC has mining ( Actually a lot of investment has gone indirectly into BitCoin as well as free advertising that would have cost 10% this year.) but they don't realise BTSX may have its CAP because they don't have inflation.

Watch how fast the perception changes when the share price is dropping and people thinks it's others cashing in on their dime. The race for the exits will begin.

Unlike the range of ideas you can try and backtrack on, adapt and evolve with, changing the initial consensus at this stage really is a Pandora's box or a Humpty Dumpty. You'd probably have to fork off a DPOS 2 Billion crypto-currency only, even though of limited value it could be a way of preserving integrity.

The myopic majority of companies, currencies and countries can always be swayed by the lure of short term gains and the soothing promises of limited blowback. In the case of airdrops it backfires in as little as a few days of 90% of their implementation, so at least we won't have long to wait.

The majority has already come around now to dilution imo. However if BTSX delivers share drop losses and has messed with the 2 billion BTSX to do it. Then you might be kissing goodbye to a dream you didn't need to kill because in reality there wasn't a competitor on our heels to warrant such excessive measures. I would now say there's a reasonable chance (20%> imo) that BTSX will historically become the vessel that advertised the power of BitAssets for a chain that is more decentralised with a hard capped inflation limit perhaps not linked to BitShares.

Many will be glad to hear that's the last broken record stuff I'll say on the subject for the next week.

Offline eagleeye

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Its all just about rewards.  If they know they will be highly rewarded to become bitshares users they will join us.

On a different note I was trying to sell this English girl at a coffee shop right where a physical bitcoin exchange was (wont go into detail) and she would not even investigate or go into what I was saying.

The average person will need to see it on the news.  From 3 cents to $10 dollars, in so and so period of time.  People dont read zerohedge.com they are sheep they will go on what the news says and the news will say "the currency of the future bitshares."

Offline tonyk

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I hate dilution more than the next guy (although according to  Empirical v.0.0, less then him), and I even came up with a solution that does not involve inflation and should work, if a critical mass support is achieved.

But please please please, let's not be so conservative to not see that 15% possible dilution can be no more damaging than about 15% dilution, but offers a chance for the project to really grow exponentially... hell even it's survival might be put on the line by prejudices and utter refusal to take a 15% loss and decent chance of 500%-1000% or more appreciation...
Lack of arbitrage is the problem, isn't it. And this 'should' solves it.

Offline arhag

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If BitUSD was ready to market and had fiat on ramps and easy prepaid cards and mobile sending options. I would definitely recommend & refer it to my friends and send/gift them money out of my own pocket at various levels that I think would incentivise them.

You're forgetting one precondition. I wouldn't recommend it at all to technologically unsophisticated friends/family/acquaintances (aka the vast majority of people) until it supports easy to setup cold storage AND multisig security in the style of BitGo (although we can go further and do better). Otherwise, I might as well tell them to just save the time and set their dollars on fire (their machines WILL get hacked as BitShares becomes popular if there is a large pool of money just there for the taking or even if there is no two-factor authentication for smaller transfers).

I think making easy to use tools that provide actual security against the serious threats out there while still being very easy to use for the vast majority of the population is going to be the hardest challenge of all to solve.

Offline Mysto

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...referral program in question is expensive...

Remember the topic was titled "How much is a new user worth?".
I asked some of my family and friends how much it would take for them to get interested and start using something like this, the answers I got were between $25-$50.
And bytemaster quoted David O Sacks in bold saying "The bonuses were gradually phased out, first by reducing them to $5, then by adding more verification hoops (like bank account verification) so they became more difficult to get. Then they were eliminated altogether."
So I assume the plan is to start with something high that will grab people's attention then as it gets popular slowly lessen the reward until it is eliminated.

...will likely be gamed...

Yes of course it will be gamed to some degree as all referral programs are but that is accounted for and it won't be easily gamed.

Offline Mysto

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While it's a good start I don't think it would be nearly enough.

Offline Empirical1.1

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If BitUSD was ready to market and had fiat on ramps and easy prepaid cards and mobile sending options. I would definitely recommend & refer it to my friends and send/gift them money out of my own pocket at various levels that I think would incentivise them.

My thinking is that unlike a small company with a handful of staff, investors or a company that just has users. BTSX has a 'few thousand investors' already. I imagine once BItUSD is more marketable we will do a great job referring people for free using our own money. Essentially diluting ourselves but in a way that maximises growth because we'll know which friends will be likely users and what it would take to incentivise them and we'll want to share it with them.

I'm not against a smaller, cheaper, more focused referral programme but I think the referral program in question is expensive, will likely be gamed, has a wide net of uncertain leads and of course also potentially requires introducing dilution to BTSX which is risky depending on how much value the market assigns to sticking to the original 2 Billion BTSX design.

I actually think we will do a better job for 'free' and the leads we bring in are more likely to share it and gift it too. Thoughts?