Mine those transaction fees kids!

Nice.  I think what I like most about this whole mail service deal is the freelance nature of it.

"Yah have a job?"

"No."

"Yah want one?"

"Yes."

"Gotta car?"

"Yes."

"Well ... there's good money to be made driving from Denver to Cheyenne and back 3 times a day."

The downside is, what happens when some freelance driver who is about to retire from the gig decides to pilfer all the packages.  Perhaps some kind of escrow system could be put in place where in order to drive, one needs to deposit a large amount of Bitcoin into the system.  They can make good money ... but only if they put up $100,000 into the pot...

Wait ... I know.  The driver himself is the insurer.  So suppose the sum total of his delivery for the ride is insured for $100,000.  One can assume that the total contents of the packages will be worth less than $100,000.  So the only driver who can deliver is one who can put that sum, you can almost call it a bond, into escrow.  If the driver fails to deliver or he steals the packages or something, the insured get their money.  If he does deliver, he gets the delivery fee + his $100,000 bond back.  And now he's going to find that when he steals the packages, he loses money.  If everyone insures their stuff for 10% more than the actual value, theft would be non-existent.

Perhaps it could be the sender who determines that, with each hub setting their own fees.  The sender can pay x for 3 hops with 100% delivery ratings, or y for 2 hops with 99% delivery ratings.  Something like that.

Perhaps I'm not making myself clear.  In any event ... good luck.  I hope you don't run into any more delays, as these devices are essential to the Bitcoin world.

No.  Not confused at all.  Let's take an extreme example.  Suppose one orders a 3 BTC Trezor when BTC are $33.33.  They essentially paid $100.  They can do nothing but sit and wait until the product is delivered.  Delivered instantly, assuming your rates are the market rates, the buyer could turn around a sell it again for about 3 BTC.

Now suppose that they wait so long that 3 BTC at the time of delivery is $30,000.  Can the buyer turn around and sell the unit for either 3 BTC or $30,000?  Doubtful on both fronts.  Or are you saying that you'll sell a metal Trezor for no less than 3 BTC for all time, regardless of was MtGox, Bitstamp, and Coinbase have to say about it?

Up to a point in time, the buyer assumes that risk that the BTC value with go up, and the seller assumes the risk that the BTC value will go down.  The point in time is the promised delivery date.  Now that it looks like we're going beyond that date, the tables turn, and the risk bearer ought to be the one who missed the deadline.  In this case, it is the Trezor folks.

Why would someone who spent 3 BTC at $100 per want to have their product now, at a point when 1 BTC is $200?  They're trying to preserve value.  They wish to resell it as a strategy to minimize losses on this product that was promised.  If they can resell for 1.5 BTC, they'll break even.  As it appears now, they're losing money nearly every day, assuming you'll later adjust your prices in the future to line up with USD value.

1 - What good would it do?  Even if a drug dog sniffed drugs in a package, they know neither where it came from, nor where it is going.  Perhaps AMS could have an internal policy whereby if a package is found to contain something illicit (even if it is the police who found it) the package is destroyed, so that the police wouldn't be able to track it to its ultimate location.  I suppose the short answer is, the risk is there whether one uses AMS or not.

2 - This one is more interesting.  Remember the limited information on the QR code.  The only thing the sending hub knows is whether or not their postage fee has been paid, the end hub city, and the recipient address.  The only goal when onion routing the package is to merely conceal the fact that the receiving hub is the owner of the recipient address.  You never know when you're at the last box because unless you can sign a message with your own address ... it may be the last box.  Opening it would be just like opening someone else's mail.  Why go through all that when you can just do your leg of the journey.  The cheating hub wouldn't benefit anyway as all the postage is already paid out by the original sender.  Best to just scan, throw in pile, and drive a couple hours to the next hub.

3 - It would depend only on general volume.  Remember, we're not only counting the packages going from San Antonio to Austin, but also from San Antonio to everywhere else that uses Austin as an intermediate hub between San Antonio and itself.  It all starts be become very economical very quickly if there's enough volume to justify 2 or 3 times a day runs.  How many of your Waco customers would pay $4 for same/next day shipping, if only they travel to AMS Waco to pick up their package?

4 - I could envision some system of record keeping, but I haven't really thought too much about that.  It seems like a trivial add-on once the general project is up and running.

Sure, but for pretty good anonymity, you don't even need 1 layer... you just send out the package.  And it would be expensive if no one participated, but it could become cheap if entrepreneurs opened their own nodes out of their storefronts or something.

But can you instruct FedEx to remail your package without a trace?

I would venture to say no.  Keeping tabs on senders is a costly endeavor that even the post office doesn't take on, as you can see with all the public and unmonitored mailboxes all over the place.

You want to send package anonymously to anonymous person.  You create an encrypted shipping label, fund a bitcoin address and drop off at the facility in your city.  Through the network it goes until it reaches a destination city, wherein the anonymous recipient signs a bitcoin address and is able to pick up the package.  For more information, please see the following link ...

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=311976.0

I covered that.


It's an easy read.

Let's call the venture AMS.  Suppose S wishes to send a package to R.  S could use the standard mail system or one of the large package carriers, like FedEx, but such methods are not anonymous, costly, and slow.  They are costly and slow because it is assumed that the carrier will be delivering to a home or business, not to a hub.  They are not anonymous because names are attached to S and R.  The names could be false, but using false names throws a wrench into the normal operations of these businesses.

The reason these services are not anonymous, cheap, and fast is because they operate using an old model, requiring enormous manpower and infrastructure.  If we were building the system from the ground up today, using the technology of today as the starting point, it would look radically different.

For many people, going somewhere in their city to pick up or drop off a package poses no challenge.  With this, we eliminate the last-mile problem of package delivery, but if customers require home/business pick up or drop off, private couriers would be able to handle that load.  So the real idea is simply this, a nameless system for delivering packages between cities.  Let's suppose we did this in only Texas, where there are several major cities.  The model can cover any geographic area, though.  Simply put, one need only have deliveries between cities several times per day before you end up with a system radically faster than the post office.

S wants to send a package to R.  S doesn't want to know who R is and R doesn't want to know who S is.  Neither party wishes to know where the other party is.  S lives in San Antonio, but R doesn't know this.  R lives in Waco, but S doesn't know this.  Neither party wishes to know.  Both have accounts with AMS and they create an encrypted shipping label QR code on the AMS website.  The QR code contains limited information.  Translated it will show only R's bitcoin address, postage amount required to deliver, AMS's bitcoin address to be funded, and the name of the AMS office where the package is destined.  The only one who can decrypt the label is AMS.  When they do, it reads..

Receiver = 16DJXXZBX7JZQWwnYoqt6Xe9VjUDRRvHpK
Postage = .025 BTC to 1AvttuYUd6Xtv3Vt8B96UbT9xDns7Yzzt1
Waco

The only information revealed to both parties in this process is the postage amount and bitcoin address to which it must be sent.  One or the other or both may fund it.  When funded, S merely drives to the package to the San Antonio office and hands it off.  Behind the scenes, the QR code is read and decrypted.  AMS now may verify with the blockchain that the postage is paid and the end point is Waco.  There is a major city between San Antonio and Waco, Austin.  AMS San Antonio has a list of all other AMS hubs and it knows that all packages going to Waco must first go through Austin.  From the AMS office in San Antonio, there are only perhaps 5 places their packages may go.  From those places, there are also only limited numbers of immediate destinations.  Is this network reminding you of anything?  Routing would be as simple as placing the package on the correct conveyor belt and letting it reach the end where it is stacked onto a cart.

Eventually, the package gets to the AMS Waco office and a message is sent to R.  "Your package is ready to pick up.  Your verification code is (the transaction ID for the first deposit into the postage address)."  In order for R to pick up the package, he must prove that he is the owner of 16DJXXZBX7JZQWwnYoqt6Xe9VjUDRRvHpK.  He signs the transaction ID with the private key to 16DJXXZBX7JZQWwnYoqt6Xe9VjUDRRvHpK and after AMS verifies the signature, now AMS knows that this person, whoever he or she is, may receive the package.  AMS hands him his package.

The system works just as well if you do wish to know who the parties are as none of the steps change.  It works exactly the same way.  But now let's go a step further.  S doesn't want even AMS to know that that he is in San Antonio.  Now S may route the package through any number of hubs by simply putting packages in packages and making the receiver on the outermost package AMS itself.  AMS has an internal policy whereby S may give to AMS a package with a label that only AMS my verify.  R is unaware that this is happening.  S puts the package described above into another package with its own shipping label.  This shipping label is a combination of S and AMS's information and S decides to route it through Dallas.  Now the package makes its way to Dallas in the manner described above, only now, it gets opened by AMS Dallas itself, where inside they find yet another package, with its own shipping label.  They throw it on the pile and scan it along with everyone else's packages that are coming from Dallas.  When it arrives in Waco, AMS only knows that it last came from Dallas.  S may pay for as much anonymity as he desires, routing it through multiple hubs before eventually the last package is left for R.

Imagine each truck going from city to city holds about 500 packages and each hop is calculated to be $2 flat rate up to 3 pounds or something.  Going from San Antonio to Waco would have 2 hops so the postage would be $4.  Delivery drivers are essentially independent contractors, going to the AMS office and seeing which run needs to be made.  Drivers get a negotiated percentage of the hop, so a full hop with 500 packages at $2 would be a percentage of $1,000.  And they'd need to come home as well, so they'd get their hop on the way back as well, because there will be packages going San Antonio.  Imagine the speed this would foster, with drivers doing everything in their power to make their runs for the day, bidding down the cost so that it is profitable for them ... but cheap for AMS.  At 25%, the driver could make $500 going from San Antonio to Austin and back again.  The driver might be loading and unloading, but with small boxes, this is trivial.  With enough hops, say 10 hops from LA to NY, a plane covering them all could become profitable.  All S and R know is that they're paying for 10 hops.  Little do they know they will all be covered in one fell swoop with a same day plane.

A pilot would cover 10 hops, so $20 per package and he might have at his disposal enough room for 10,000 packages or more.  Now all these S's going from LA to to R's in NY wind up with possible same day delivery because the pilot sees a profit at $50,000 per flight to NY... and of course another $50,000 on the way back, at 25% of the hop.

Something worth looking into?  I suspect the vast majority of this operation could be franchised out, with entrepreneurs opening up their own hubs, drivers running their own rigs, and private couriers covering the last mile for end S's and R's.

They're complaining because you're late and others are early (relative to you).  There's nothing more or less to it than that.

You could offer an escrow service.  Pay with BTC and if any of your terms are not met, including the delivery date, all BTC are returned to the customer.

Is the 1 BTC available for withdrawal after some betting?  Or is it a fake BTC?

The thing they need to understand, and quickly, is that the goal at this point is to merely lose the least money possible.  Whether they fail to sell at 2btc or 20btc makes little difference.  If they intend to sell them, they need to be sold at the highest possible price, even if that entails a loss.  If they intend to mine with them, then Godspeed.

Is the new client ready?   

This is what I was getting at.  If every phone is different and all the GA's out there are different... then it isn't enough to merely backup the QR codes used to generate site specific tokens.  One must also have the token that GA uses in the first place, no?

Where does one find this?

So as long as I have a backup of the QR code used to generate a working Google Authenticator token... it really doesn't matter what Google does, I can always get some copy of Authenticator from somewhere at some time and I can simply rescan and log in to Bitstamp or Mt. Gox, or whatever...

Is this a correct assessment?