Bitcoin Forum

Go to the official swarm thread


https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=664071.msg7487628#msg7487628 (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=664071.msg7487628#msg7487628)

the official swarm thread is waiting for your up votes: http://www.reddit.com/r/Swarming/

What will be possible revenue of Swarm and interest on the swarmcoins? On the swarmcorp.com it says "indication of interest: 500 btc" - what doest that mean exactly?

Yo this is actually a really good idea.

Crowd fundings only downfall is teh fact that if the developer runs youre just screwed. But with a public ledger you could invalidate the coins the dev stole and then reissue coins to the victim addresses.

We are getting there...
http://www.swarmcorp.com/images/fundraiser-infographic-3.png (http://www.swarmcorp.com/images/fundraiser-infographic-3.png)
SCENARIO ONE

We raise 1,000 BTC, majority goes to salaries.

Bitcoin address with those 500 BTC collected. More details on a coin, but honestly I wouldn't bother if I were you.

Presale for the counterparty community. It was disclosed on the counterparty thread.

After my question got ignored I definately woun't bother investing..

Hey thanks for the feedback and we certainly don't mean to ignore any questions from the community. We are projecting the revenue from interest on swarm coins to be 500 BTC, which means that through the use of Swarm coins to help projects launch the value of each swarm coin will increase as the number of startups going live on SWARM increases in value. This process will be vetted through due diligence to ensure those which fit the model of SWARM will be adding ROI to the SWARM coin holders over time.

We are using Counterparty for releasing SWARM coin and look to be as transparent as possible, Our supporters include people from the Ethereum project, CounterParty, and Distributed Buzz.

- please let us know if you have any questions

I'll read this post in a few years & be glad I got in on day one :D

What happens if we don't reach the 1,000BTC minimum in the first round? Will you return investors coins?

seems like a scam?

only want to say you are crazy...

MT even gone..how about u..who know

Ok so my Counterwallet now has some GOLDTICKET - can someone please explain to me what this is? Google, Facebook & Twitter bring up no info on it.

Also, do you have an official forum in the works? I need somewhere to go in order to ask questions, get involved with the community etc.

Kind Regards

DEV HELP THIS GUY

Hmm.. so people need to give 13 million dollars (21,000 BTC) to crowdfund a platform that will then allow other people to give even more BTC to crowdfund other projects that are put on the site? Not sure what I'm missing here.

Everyone give me 13 million dollars so I can pay for my estates in Malibu, Miami and Ibiza.. meanwhile I will set a small portion of the funds aside for this crowdfunding platform that will allow other people to crowdfund other projects like mine by trading our pre-mined coins (stakes).

http://www.allmystery.de/i/teed232_seems-legit-axe-murderer-TNJSBn.jpg

This screams scam from the highest reaches of planet Earth.

Can anyone answer my questions please? Is there anywhere else I can go to ask questions? I see no official forum.

Thanks

yes,like a big scam. don't know why so many BTC are invested.   Where is the blockchain address??  we can not check the real amount of BTC which was invested.

We invite anyone who has urgent questions to please PM to join the Swarm skype chat

It would be great to have an open discussion on the forum where everyone can participate.

BTW , what is GoldTicket?

And you can't just post the link to this?

EDIT: for the record- the 24/7 chat never has anyone in it.

Sorry, but 6 figure salaries from our BTC & minimal effort to provide accessibility & support for investors is just plain rude.

I am in the Skype chat room, & even in there they are unresponsive..

They could fix this- I hope they get on it. It's terrible when great ideas are derailed from failure to pay attention to small details. Also, to be fair- with the launch last night at midnight- they were up very late. :-)

EDIT: I too have a golden ticket. Hmmmm!

Hi Marcus - I am chatting with you in the Skype right now and taking in all your concerns, please bear in mind that the headoffice in Berlin is closed as its the middle of the night there and I would like to ensure you are getting your concerns addresssed

[6/18/14 3:27:14 PM] Jef Cavens (SWARM Double Agent): The GOLDTICKET is something we issued today and will be clarified in the following days. Its a little present/experiment, don't worry.

Want to sell 7,500 Swarm @ 10% below market price. PM me if interested.

I offer 23 Goldtickets.

Joe

This coin has a big innovation,  I love this coin

The big innovation is to raising huge BTC. :P

I think you should label your hours. Right now the site says "24/7" support which is something a) you don't really need to provide and b) obviously can't provide. But having it up there only will make people think you're failing to communicate. Also I am sure plenty of people don't realize you are on central european time- something you should clarify as well.

But yeah- you need a forum.

Hi all, 

Some of you will know me, (Ben Ingram) and likewise, plenty more will not.
I am the COO of Swarm.  I'm the old guy.  It is my job, to try to make things work nicely. To gather the criticism and suggestions, consider the costs and interest of SWARM holders, and to respond in the best way to grow the value, and deliver stability to the Swarm.

I am not a silver spooner, or a crony.  I grew up in a rural town, in as modest situation as is possible in a western nation.  I started my career in the IT space, as a help desk operator for Microsoft, supporting dos, then helping the bastards inflict windows on the world. For this I still feel some guilt.

Since then, I've worked for some very interesting companies, including the Australian Stock Exchange, and global consulting companies, I went on to build some of my own ventures. Most recently, founding Tquila which is (warning PR quote follows) now 'one of the most recognised brands, globally in cloud computing services'. 

It was at Tquila, three years ago, where I had the good fortune, to hire a certain Joel Dietz.  He proved to be a talented genius, bordering on unmanageable.  But, one night, we spent pretty much from dusk to sunrise discussing currency, and the idiocy/myriad failings of centralised currency.  Without either of us realising it at the time, this set Joel on the swarm path.  And here we both are, along with the annoyingly intelligent and talented Jef Cravens.

Looking at the names, posting on this forum, there are a many people whom I've had the chance to meet, and discus strategy, goals and progress with at reasonable length, but we also acknowledge that there's a lot more we CAN and will do.

First though, and of highest priority to me, is to express our truly heartfelt appreciation for your investment and trust.  To some, it's just words, but we are not scammers.  We are open and honest individuals, with an utter dedication to delivering something which redefines VC, for all of us.

I want to clarify a couple of things.
We are a small team, which is not an excuse, just fact.
We are trying to cover, and I'm sure I'll forget something, 
1. Phone
2. Twitter
3. Facebook
4. Email
5. Reddit
6. (A lot of) forums
7. Skype
8. Webchat

It's quite a few channels, and I'm sure that we can improve.  We are not a help desk team, we are developers and business people.  I personally would be ashamed of fronting our fledgling company with inexperienced help desk people charged with making reassuring but meaningless responses!

So, Jef, Joel and I spent hours every day chewing on EVERY single question that has been asked, but occasionally there are other aspects of building the company which we must also focus on, especially now, with YOUR bitcoin to protect and develop.

The best we could come up with is as follows.

The two of them (Jef and Joel) are bunkering down, from the now till Monday, with the sole intention of producing a substantive document addressing our intents, plans and capability.  The why we are doing this, and how and when, we will deliver what.   It's broad, a pain in the SSS to write (glad I'm not doing it) but entirely necessary.

To date, we have not paid ANY salary, to anyone.
Like me or hate me for it, but for the past (nearly) 20 years, I have consistently achieved a six figure salary.  Further in my previous role, I achieved annual earnings in excess of 10x that which I will earn for my participation in the Swarm.

We like most startups, have bootstrapped, scrimped, begged, borrowed and burnt too much midnight oil... But we love it, and are all incredibly proud of what we have and are creating.  And we hope that given just a little time, that we'll silence the critics, and deliver another piece of essential infrastructure that will help deliver on the vision of a stable, growing and vibrant distributed economy.

As Joel and Jef put together a better description of life the universe and everything Swarm, I will do my best to hold fort.  I welcome your questions, and will really try to keep up.

There will be forums, and help desks, and better general support, but it will take some days to out together.  Please give us a chance to deliver these things responsibly.

...and Gold ticket?  Yes.  Hold it. It will be useful....

So much of the BTC investment, the author can do anything good?

I'm selling 6000 Swarm for XCP @ 10/15% below the market price. W/escrow or via DEX.
If interested, PM me.

lol another maidsafe scam i suppose, with fake btc donation and all

 More details on a coin, but honestly I wouldn't bother if I were you.

Can you post the address of the headoffice in Berlin?

When did phase 1 funding begin?

what i cant understand is phase 1 funding was at ~25% 1 day ago, and is now ~26%, so a 1% increase in over 24hrs.  at this rate there is no way to reach 4500 BTC by the 27th.

Office in Berlin, was temporary for launch.  It is now vacated as the core team is all on its way back to our respective home locations.

But, it was at Bülowstr. 74

Why did DistributedBUZZ imply the head office would be open today? Late last night he said "the headoffice in Berlin is closed as its the middle of the night".

Because it was open, from 8am till 11.30 am, when the last of the team departed,  I now write this from my hotel lobby from which I shall shortly depart, London bound.  This will restrict my ability to respond for many hours.  Sorry.

No nefarious intent, just logistics.


Phase 1 began Tuesday at midnight.

There are upcoming local 'launch' events in cities all over the world,  it's a chance for us to meet (you) discuss at length, and of course, the goal for swarm is to raise more btc at each.  

We are trying to create a combination of incubator and kickstarter.  There are many worthy projects which need promotion and assistance at grass roots level.  That's the intention of this enterprise.  If you don't like the idea, please don't participate.  If you do, then please work with us.

You are trying to do too much with too little. Cover one communication channel, and one channel only. Drop the Skype, Webchat, Facebook, Phone, (Lot of Forums) and get one simple place you can stay in touch. Run your own simple discussion forum or just use Reddit. Period. I understand you are very talented and have a great track record, and I'm as excited about swarm as anyone, but you are freaking me the heck out concerning your abilities to pull this off by focusing on a 8+ channels of communication with 3 dudes that can't get back in touch using a single one of them. It's screaming style over substance (Like that 24/7 chat room that is empty). PLEASE cut out all of this and just stick to either your own forum, or better yet JUST stick to reddit (So you don't have to actually run the forum yourself). Nothing else. Screw the twitter, facebook, Skype, etc.. until you actually have a product and not just our money. In the meantime, keep in touch non-stop, but one channel of communication, and skip the chatrooms. Honestly. If your developers have time at this point in the project to chat to anyone who drops into the skype lounge, then please let me have my Bitcoin back. Because those are not the developers I thought I was funding.

EDIT: I don't mean to be harsh. Sorry if I sound that way. Maybe instead of Reddit, just use this thread here. Keep it simple. Answer everyones questions in one go. :-)  
EDIT2: Maybe just pick a time of day questions will be answered as well IE: 10am each day, all the questions from the previous day will be address. It's a simple way to wait until everything has been asked, and that way people know when to expect and answer, and you get a chance to carefully think through each answer so it's comprehensive, well composed and clear. Also it will cut down on needing to answer the same "Whats the golden ticket?" question that gets asked over and over. And People can be refered to earlier answers if they are being repetitive. You can then just compile each daily answer into an FAQ that gts uploaded to the site. So you don't have to answer old questions more then once, you just say, "See FAQ". Simple.

Good suggestions, and I will say, that from my perspective I absolutely agree with reduction of channels.
It's a balance between that, and satisfying the many who conversely seem to demand that we are available by whatever channels they prefer.

Also, there is still an outstanding need to market, promote and fundraise, which is better suited to other channels. 

Finally, our devs, are sheltered.  We keep them away from this.  I often wish I could put my head down, headphones on and crunch away some more too.  But it's a balance.

I'm resigned to the idiom that we won't please all the people all the time.  But I'll try.

I agree with the above. My experience so far as an investor has been nothing short of shocking. In fact, I want out. I have placed a sell order below market price at www.counterwallet.co/#pages/buysell.html (http://www.counterwallet.co/#pages/buysell.html)

You have our hard earned money, but you fail to earn our trust.

For a project of this magnitude with this much funding, it is inconceivable to me that minimal planning has been put in place to support investors.

I second that!  Wish there were better communication.  Would like regular email updates targeted to swarmcoin holders.  The newsletter has not told me much other than promote the launch party.

Understood, and I apologise, but we are working on improving it.

Emails to swarm holders may seem very obvious, but please consider, that the nature of our coin purchase process, does NOT provide us with coin purchaser contact information.

Update - I have promised for Monday, and we will then provide weekly updates from that point forward.
Each week our tools, will improve, and the team will grow.


NOW - I am about to leave for the airport.  I will likely be offline for some hours. 

Sorry a few are upset, we have others who are happy and enthusiastic.  Quite honestly, I do only want the latter, and will try to fix.

Well, give them a little bit of a break- It's only been a couple days. stuff takes months to take shape. I think they get the point and will get on it.  Good luck with your sell- but saying you want out because you think it's maybe a failure isn't really such a good way to make a sale! :-)

Thank you for removing me from the Skype channel, despite myself being polite & not swearing.

Might want to work on your PR a little. Just saying.

http://i37.photobucket.com/albums/e69/Marcus_Crypto-Enthusiast/aaa_zpsa1991f55.jpg

Perhaps I value honesty above money.

I think swarm is da best coin, dis will end well  ;D

Why are you the only person who sounds logical in this entire thread?

1000 BTC just for salaries? (1000 * ($600 * BTC)) = $600,000
So... I guess you are paying 10 people 60k a year salaries? for a startup?
what? you have less than 10 people? now thats interesting, how much are you expecting as a salary?
Are you expecting to secure salaries for multiple years? Oh wouldn't that be nice!
Do you understand the concept of bootstrapping?
To successfully start a business you should be asking for ONLY WHAT YOU NEED.
What are your bills? $2000 a month? why should you expect any more than $24,000 a year? to start a business that is going to pay you? If you need $24,000 a year, why are you asking for $600,000?
Where is the breakdown?

People I could hire two programmers and build a crowdfunding platform, release a copycoin that it runs on and still not spend over $100,000. There seems to be $500,000 unaccounted for or severely mismanaged.

Please think before you invest. There are a lot of problems with this picture.

Assuming you have already decided to jump and invest in SWARM, something that is not the wisest of choices BTW, imho.

I  read in the other thread that there is limited supply of swarms on the secondary market (i.e. counterwallet) that offer a better rate, something like 5500+ swarmspre/btc. So chance for those that feel confident that this project is good to get a better price.

2c

No surprise there since the closed pre-sale was initiated at 8000 per btc.

Guys you gotta do better than this really. I sent some pocket change your way because I like the idea and I honestly think it could work but still. People are voicing honest concerns here and you should be wise and put someone on the forums 24/7 to answer questions and act as a liaison to the community.

You can't act the 2.0 wonder crypto entrepreneur here and just ignore what is being posted on these forums. As I have told you, Ethereum has met its Waterloo here before. And if you think you can just go ahead and ignore the community its probably going to cost you. Google has a long memory.

Sorry for being so aggressive. But you're asking for A LOT of money here. And the community is willing to pay up. But that comes with certain respect and responsibility. And right now I'm not sure whether you fully realize that.

There's a lot of feedback here and we should keep in mind that the people behind this project are known to the community, and they are not scammers.

When we evaluate the budget breakdown - which we should be thankful that this was even shared, it is not uncommon for startups to pay their employees a high starting salary. This is very common in many parts of the world to secure top talent. I live in Canada and reached this salary bracket during my corporate career in tech when I was 25.

The numbers reflect the magnitude of this project and the amount of effort required to see it through.

As Ben the COO of Swarm explains, they have bootstrapped this project.

Here are some general answers to some common critiques while we work on a more robust FAQ.

First, there are no six figure salaries.  All of our salaries are calculated on minimum "startup salary" given the cost of living in Silicon Valley. Although it is possible to work for less or elsewhere, I find that there are tons of advantages to hiring top talent and working in Silicon Valley and you need a bit of money to do these things.

Second, we did take in some XCP (and even some MSC and DOGE) in our presale, which is why some of the numbers don't add up perfectly when it comes to the percentage. We are planning to start accepting XCP officially early next week and when we do that we will make sure that all of the funds raised are auditable so people can see exactly how much has come in.

Third, the initial target of 1,000 BTC was done with the idea of what we would need to support operations to build a very robust platform. This was actually my original targeted raise. We've already achieved this goal and thank you for everyone who supported us.

Our decision to accept 21,500 BTC if the market decides that our project is with goals were developed with the idea of what we could do to actually support other project as an "accelerator." If we do a large raise then we will have a lot of funds to use to support other types of coin-powered incubator in a couple different cities, including projects like Ethereum. 

I had a major concern that if we raised such a large amount we wouldn't spend it well, so I put together an advisory board that includes Vitalik Buterin, one of the Counterparty core devs, David Johnston of DApps Fund / Bitangels, and some people who haven't been announced yet.

The format for the advisory board is this:

Advisory

I expect we will have this meeting in the next week with this format. This way people can see what we are doing and will do with the funds raised.

Feel free to ask more questions. Sorry again we aren't getting back to them immediately but we were super busy in the couple days post launch.

i'm waiting to watch a bunch of stupid investers crawling back here and crying for scam pretty soon!!

So.... what is a GOLDTICKET ? and why do I have it ?

Here's what was posted to the Swarm Facebook feed:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qltooq69hcii6mt/Screenshot%202014-06-21%2017.16.54.png

We're gonna meet Oompa Loompas!

Is this a reference to some common joke that I have missed?

Not a joke, but a plot point in a movie from 1971, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.

Investors in Swarm have been issued an additional asset called "GOLDTICKET."

I see…

So let me take a shot at guessing what unique opportunity the GOLDTICKET will offer:

“Every holder will have a chance, after the IPO, to buy as much swarms as (s)he wants, at the Grate rate of 1000 swarms/BTC”

Can’t wait to see what the master….minds have in mind! 

I am in, it will be a good platform.

I just skipped through the website, the OP and the coindesk article http://www.coindesk.com/swarm-take-bitcoin-crowdfunding-new-heights/. As far as I got it it is supposed be a crowd based VC company for "Bitcoin business ideas" (of chain or on chain businesses or both?). They take the money from the investors in swarmcoin and invest it in those businesses.
Correct?

The questions for me are:
1) How does the crowd assesment process work? Does the Swarm team make a preselection and all Swarmcoin holders (proportional to their stake size?) then vote on which business to fund? 
3) Why give money to swarm if I can invest it into Andreessen/Horowitz?
4) If a business is funded, do Swarmcoin holders only get a standard fee that is charged or do Swarmcoin holders get a stake in the funded business like an investor in a VC fund would get if a VC company funds a business?
4) I strongly assume the latte is the case. If so: How can I be SURE that all the equity in the company that Swarm gets for their "VC money" they give to the business goes ALL to the Swarm holders? Is there a trustless process of verifying that the Swarm team didn't make a deal with the funded business so they get an extra cut?
5) What about the legal issues addressed in the coin desk article? Contingency plan?
6) How far is the platform away form (full) functionality (in weeks/month not in % :) )?

Just wanted to let everyone know I completed a review of our responses to questions so far. As probably everyone here has noticed, our responses on Bitcointalk have been pretty poor, partially because we had a team member drop out at the last minute. Apologies.

Here is this assessment:

http://s13.postimg.org/ck4a9yj4n/Screenshot_2014_06_23_12_42_25.png
 
I have a complete list of every question that asked that hasn't been answered and am going to spend a good chunk of time making sure that we answer every question moving forward.

I'm actually looking at creating a new Swarm thread that I control and that we will use for all future communications.

I know a lot of people have also asked about our financials, including the non BTC assets. That's listed here:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1L22MqtUU9wTUICeQKOtV4m6DbUq1asykvG4BRxxiBPM/edit#gid=0

Generally correct, but requiring clarification on two points.

(1) One of the primary values of the Swarm coin is early access to Swarm events and participation in preferred presales of coins launched via the Swarm network.  

(2) What we can and can't do will largely depend on the legal jurisdiction. This is a bit sticky since there are a lot of different regulations concerning these things, so we can't make blanket promises regarding our ability to do things as an "investment." For example, a lot of the projects we are looking at now are DAOs that run on top of a non-profit, which is not a "business" in the normal sense of that word.  


This is a feature we are planning to unveil at Coinsummit in London in a couple weeks.  

Early access to a crypto-YCombinator vs. an established VC fund? Not sure, but generally early access to a promising new model in preferable to the old guard. Also VC funds have a substantial lock period whereas everything Swarm related is extraordinarily liquid (relatively speaking).


This is also something we are planning to unveil at Coinsummit. The most compelling model looks a lot like YCombinator but more fluid and flexible.    


I strongly doubt that there is a completely trustless way of verifying this, but if you can design something like this I'm very open. Given that we are very excited by and focused on Blockchain businesses, it is very possible to have a fully auditable chain of transactions.

 I strongly suspect we will be forced to play the jurisdictional thing and register in multiple countries and lock out certain countries from certain types of offers. We were discussing this last night and even in event of a total lockout from the SEC, we could still offer crypto-fundraising for non-profits in the US with voting rights attached to those tokens (not great as an investment, but still a business model as valid as Kickstarter). That's to say that there are a lot of options and we are exploring all of them.


3 months. There are a lot of auxiliary features we want to add (like coin-powered voting), but we would plan to add most if not all of them via externally managed products financed by coins. That's why we are actively taking solicitations now. We are also planning to announce the next couple coins that will be swarmed at CoinSummit.

Thanks for the clarifications so far!

Good, I am in.

 :Dcrazy

Not quite sure how this became the "official thread," but it isn't any longer. See this thread for more information (https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=664071.msg7487628#msg7487628).

Requesting DistributedBuzz post link in original post and remove any other information.

very good coin.

I want out. Who wants to buy my SWARMPRE for discounted price?

what price?

I'm selling Swarm if you're interested.

SWARM should be listed in a centralized exchange, like SJCX etc. I don't see why it hasn't been done yet

need a more support in order to do that.If this coin can gather more members than it can be listed for sure.

I'm selling swarm on counterpart dex if interested.

Is there a basic list anywhere of all projects SWARM has successfully funded?

ShapeShift.io (http://ShapeShift.io) has released our instant exchange app for Android devices! Buy or sell Swarm with bitcoin and 45+ cryptos instantly on any Android device. Exchange anytime, anywhere: https://shapeshift.io/site/tools/shapeshift-mobile (https://shapeshift.io/site/tools/shapeshift-mobile)