Great set of questions TimMarsh. Some answers will overlap.

DNotes 2.0 will be an entirely new coin, and completely separate entity from the technology perspective. Just how DNotes and Bitcoin are two separate coins today. The swap process will consist of sending us your old coins, relinquishing them entirely to us, and we will send you new coins from the new DNotes 2.0 blockchain.

1) You could add DNotes 2.0 to a DNotes 2.0 wallet prior to converting your old coins, and once we send you the DNotes 2.0 coins as part of the conversion process it will add to your existing balance.

2) It will always be a 1 for 1 swap, no matter the value of either DNotes or DNotes 2.0.

3) Yes technically DNotes will run forever, if no one mines it for 10 years, then someone decides to mine it again, it will pick right up where it left off.

4) No extra coins will be mined. There will be a snapshot of the DNotes Blockchain, at a specific point (to be specified later), and all coins from that snapshot can be converted to DNotes 2.0. That snapshot will determine the initial amount of DNotes 2.0 that need to create for distribution. This will be coordinated with the exchanges to ensure DNotes will be shut down and coins can be moved off of the exchanges prior to the snapshot (there are multiple options here depending on exchange response but we don't anticipate many obstacles).

5) New chain.

6) Yep, absolutely.

7) All DNotes that were swapped into DNotes 2.0 will be in the possession of the DNotes team. We are not anticipating that anyone would pick up and run with old DNotes when they could just create their own version, if they did want to start with our user base, and thinking off the top of my head, I might suggest they attempt a fork from a point prior to our snapshot.

Keep the questions coming! They are very helpful.

The really interesting thing I find about this "8-12" billion that has been created out of the genie bottle, is that the moving price from demand and supply dictates that number, but of course to get a market cap at that number, it doesn't mean that 8-12 billion dollars ever went into the network at any time. For example, if somebody put a million dollars into a low value asset, with a very tiny sell wall, it could settle at 100x its current price if demand suddenly shot up as a result, and the market cap could be, say a billion dollars, with only a a little more than a million in investment having gone into the entire network.

As a general thing, Bitcoin Cash appears here to stay in the short term, but it will require a dedicated development team to make anything of it when compared to Bitcoin. That said, ~700 dollar starting price isn't a bad place to begin, and it already has a massive user base. It's no wonder crypto like clams and stellar used the "free coins for all Bitcoin holders" to get a massive community of owners to support its marketing and growth.

I certainly hope the lawmakers do not overshoot in their crackdown on the industry. At the end of the day it will depend on what their primary motivation for the crackdown is. If it is consumer protection, then there won't be much more required than Know Your Customer (KYC) type laws - which of course if passed in New Zealand, should provide a legal basis for banks to be required to begin offering financial services to companies that trade in Bitcoin, and that would allow us to finally participate easier on this side of the world. If the motivation is beyond consumer safety, and instead in incumbent interests, then regulations are very likely overstep that mark, which could be very damaging for the industry.

I've been having some chatter with various people in regards to advising government working groups within New Zealand on cryptocurrency, blockchain, and regulation. Hopefully the basis for action will be primarily to help protect consumers from fraud, as opposed to a fixation on tax and crime issues - which will likely result in very different outcomes in the ease for further for crypto adoption.

Looks like Coinbase is going to provide access for customers to Bitcoin Cash.

In the case of bitcoin cash, we made clear to our customers that we did not feel we could safely support it on the day it was launched. For customers who wanted immediate access to their bitcoin cash, we advised them to withdraw their bitcoin from the Coinbase platform. However, there are several points we want to make clear for our customers:
Both bitcoin and bitcoin cash remain safely stored on Coinbase.
Customers with balances of bitcoin at the time of the fork now have an equal quantity of bitcoin cash stored by Coinbase.
We operate by the general principle that our customers should benefit to the greatest extent possible from hard forks or other unexpected events.
Over the last several days, we’ve examined all of the relevant issues and have decided to work on adding support for bitcoin cash for Coinbase customers. We made this decision based on factors such as the security of the network, customer demand, trading volumes, and regulatory considerations.
We are planning to have support for bitcoin cash by January 1, 2018, assuming no additional risks emerge during that time.


https://blog.coinbase.com/update-on-bitcoin-cash-8a67a7e8dbdf

Within the article below is a link to one of the best mainstream media discussions on bitcoin I have ever come across (they still a few things to learn ). It starts around the 41 minute mark of this video on The Street:

https://vid.thestreet.com/p/105/sp/0/playManifest/protocol/https/entryId/0_v3sys6ip/format/url/flavorParamId/35/video.mp4


Bitcoin Is Going Mainstream

The response to the Bitcoin Fork (discussed here) has been overwhelming - people like free money!

For those people who kept their wallets at exchanges that would support it, you woke up with your 'old' Bitcoin and got some shiny new digital Bitcoin Cash.

The appeal of Bitcoin Cash is that it is meant to be able to handle transactions much more quickly - which is important as transaction volumes rise exponentially.  The one view, which I am admittedly only getting up to speed on, is that Bitcoin Cash will be easier to transact with.

While I am not sure about that - what I am sure about is interest in Bitcoin and Crypto Currencies has skyrocketed.  The fact that Bitcoin, as I'm writing this, remains around $2,700 and the new Bitcoin Cash is rising (some have an expected valuation of 1 Bitcoin Cash = 0.5 Bitcoin or $1,300) creating even more free money that you had when you woke up.

It is clear that Crypto Currencies aren't going away any time soon (much to the chagrin of some very famous investors who have been calling it a bubble or fake for years - just one example here).  I think this latest burst of interest really started with the stories that Fidelity was allowing employees to use Bitcoin in their cafeteria (here)

It is also becoming a gaping hole in big Wall Street research.  The one big area of potential growth, the one areas where customers really need some help to understand if Cyber Currencies are right for them, or how they fit into their portfolio, is being under-served.

My goal is to help fill that void.  I have followed and occasionally been involved in Bitcoin. It first hit my radar screen in a meaningful way during the Cyprus Banking Crisis - when use of Bitcoin soared.

I have reservations about the currencies.  Who is using them, how they are being used, what government intervention is possible, valuations, etc., but at the same time not only do these 'currencies' have their devoted followers, but the interest seems to be spreading like wildfire - globally and with millennials in particular.

I have been told by some longtime believers that this article (link) is the best place to start learning if you haven't already begun to do so.  I discuss it (here) with a group of panelists starting at the 41 minute mark.

For those who missed the huge run up (and I missed most of it), it might not be the ideal time to load up, but I think understanding this better can be a crucial part of your investing returns over time (even if it is just identifying companies like NVIDIA who benefit from the growth of cyber currencies).

Peter Tchir - https://www.forbes.com/sites/petertchir/2017/08/02/bitcoin-is-going-mainstream/2/#2eebc0f642dc

Wow, I'll be humming Dire Straits, "Money for nothing and your bits for free" all day now. To me US$8 billion is a mind blowing amount of money to pop out of the genie bottle. I remember asking my father as a child, why couldn't the government just print as much money as it wanted instead of charging taxes? He told me that money represented value, and value represented things of worth that were created through doing work. He went on to explain that if the amount of work done and the value of what that work created remained the same, but the amount of dollars representing it increased, then all of those dollars would reduce in value so that their total still equalled the total value of the work.

I still believe what most of my father told me, but this idea is showing a few cracks. A month from now, I'll pull up the chart showing the price of bitcoin over the last couple of months and see if anyone can point to the bump caused by the creation of bitcoin cash. My guess is that it won't stand out at all.

And here's the really curious thing. From what I can make sense of, if bitcoin cash had not decided to increase the block size, but only chosen to reject segwit2x, then it would still be the same old bitcoin it has always been. And bitcoin, heading towards a significant and possibly less secure structural change, would really be the new version. And because increasing the block size as required is with in scope of the original design, bitcoin cash is more similar to the original bitcoin, than bitcoin is.

So it would seem that if value knew how to apply itself logically, the hard fork should have handed the ~$2,700 price over to bitcoin cash, while the new code coming for bitcoin should cause its value to swing around as the market watches the compromise between security and functionality to play out.

So again we have a great example of the difference between speculative and intrinsic value. Financial scholars will be analysing this laboratory-quality experiment for decades. Their data permanently recorded in a pair of diverging, but immutable ledgers. And I know intrinsic value should be more dependable than speculative value, but tonight, there will be people who've traded bitcoin cash for bitcoin for fiat currency, and will be dining out on it before it vaporised like leprechaun gold. And at the end of the day, a satisfied stomach is real value.

Thanks mrbum805, that's a great video. I'd been aware of the ID2020 project since helping out on a related article. But the collaboration that is supporting the indentity.foundation project is incredible. I am sure this really is a game changer for how people interact on the internet.

I really like how they are building in a really broad foundation that intends to accommodate all possible use cases. This includes giving both businesses and objects the ability to maintain identities as well. My mind is buzzing with potential ways to apply it. Then on top of this, they are also providing an attestation layer. This enables people with no recognised identity to build one from grass roots web of trust actions.

Attestation will also enable universities to attach qualifications to your identity, businesses to attest that you worked there in the capacity you say you did, and friends to attest that you really did catch a fish that big.

And apart from everything else, I think this is a troll killer. I will set up my Twitter account to block anyone without an identity that has been verified by what ever level I choose. If I want, I could scan through comments on Youtube, but only see the ones by people who have been recommended by a trusted web. I believe there is a place for anonymity, and some situations demand it for a healthy society. But I also would like to see peoples' online reputations count for something regardless of which website they are on at the time.

The hardest part about looking into the substance and value behind an ICO is digging deeper than the founder's LinkedIn profile full of circular references. If instead we could lookup the supplied identity of those behind the project, we'd soon sort the fakes from the real ones. And people like Alan Yong, who've spent a lifetime many decades, proving their capabilities, won't get buried under a pile of ICO founder's fake histories.  

Hi Badamba, we are shooting for September 2017 for the release of DNotes 2.0. Below is a quote from Alan to help shed some light on our position.

Good call on the DNotes @Cryptomickey, and thank you for all the other DNotes tweets!  

Glad you're home safe TeeGee. Coming from Australia, I'm no stranger to the long-haul flights and know how frustrating it can get when they are extended. I hope your batteries lasted the distance.

I understand where Chase is coming from. Even if this is just a warning shot across the bow, as Alan indicated, it is still a blow to freedom of choice. There will be some innovators out there who only want to focus on delivering a product, and won't bother if they have to jump through bureaucratic hurdles to raise funds. But I think these will be the minority of players in the ICO game.

I've worked implementing and auditing ISO9001 quality standards for a while. This was once seen as a handbrake on a business which needed compliance to gain market share. Then, especially after the standard changed its focus on processes in 2000, it became a valuable tool. At this stage, implementing ISO9001 improved the functionality of a business and made it more profitable.

I image that SEC compliance might also lead to more successful outcomes for genuine ICOs. When having to list and verify staff qualifications, they might discover unprovable claims and avoid a bad hire. When creating a financial plan, they might gain insights into important things that need to be done. And for each other requirement of a prospectus, they might build a stronger and more capable organisation. So in this way SEC compliance could be a good thing.

But I'm also concerned about the thin edge of the wedge. The fact that cryprocurrencies are not controlled by any government and their value is not manipulated to suit the needs of a single country, is one of their attractions. As regulations are introduced to control the industry, the spectre of governmental control over cryptocurrencies is raised. These are likely to include things like tax-registered citizens must declare wallets within a certain number of days and before they are used for trading. Or for national security reasons, miners within their country must vote in a particular way on a hard fork option. 

My hope is that some level of compliance will help the good operators to be discovered by investors while making it harder for bad operators to fraudulently profit from the ignorance of others. Do people have a right to be able to invest safely without doing their own homework? I wouldn't call it a right. But people do have the right to organise themselves in a manner that enables them to prosecute people who deliberately steal from them. The ease of international transfer of value enabled by cryptocurrency means that there will always be some country that you can offer an unrestricted ICO from. Maybe the ones conforming to regulations in their host countries will do better because of this. 

Thank you all for the wishes of safe travels. After multiple delays on flights, missing connecting flights as a result, and then having to take a less direct route home leading to an additional flight, I have made it home (40 hours total travel time, which should have been only 30)  Chicago > LA > Sydney > Auckland > Wellington.

The SEC regulatory decision is hardly surprising. The justification of so many ICOs is that they are 'crowdfunding efforts' - but that is rubbish, because nobody invests 50+ BTC of their personal wealth into a project just because they want to see it come to fruition - they do so with the expectation of a potential gain. This makes every ICO marketed, sold, and purchased as though they are an asset, yet they have zero intrinsic tie to any real equity and have zero direct mechanism by which project success leads to an appreciation in token value. They are scams that people play roulette on. That said, a lot of innovation occurs in the space as a result of these investments (which could easily just be applied to current tokens, but developers want to get rich, so they create new platforms and tokens for that reason alone). The space has been a wild west for a long time, but that is not necessarily a bad thing. If it is indeed the case that some ICOs are scams by the above definition, but some also have the option for success (like ethereum), then why is it not up to the consumer to work out where they should invest? If you invest in a project with anonymous developers, and no official business entity behind it... well that's kind of your decision to do so, and it is obvious that verifiable developers that meet basic reporting standards are more secure investments. Now the participants in the industry not only can't choose how they risk their money, but also lose their freedom.

This is the first major nail in the coffin of USA-based blockchain innovation. There will be opportunities for some of the more serious investor grade blockchain projects like DNotes to prosper in this environment (which makes this ruling good for DNotes as a project), but all the other projects - many of whom will be serious innovators - will just move their operations to Singapore / Australasia / Europe and allow all the benefits to be enjoyed there.

Chase's post about the growing use of blockchain got me thinking about the future of business structures. Recently on a television show, I saw a restaurant that was going broke, filled with broken equipment, while owned and run by a man that seemed oblivious to his financial collapse as he drove his expensive car to his mansion of a house. If he'd just turned over a fraction of his income back into the business, he'd have been doing fine.

I've also watched as CEO and top-five executive pay rates have risen over the last thirty years. In America, the ratio between CEO and staff salaries for the top 500 public listed companies is around 70:1. This is partly possible because the public owners are not in a capacity to make decisions about how much remuneration is required to hang onto the talent that will give them the best returns on their investment. But it is also largely due to the fact that at this level, CEOs are able to exert an unreasonable level of influence over the people deciding or agreeing to their remuneration package.

At the other end of the scale, I've watched unions demanding higher pay rates and going on strike to force the issue while the company was a major player in a quickly contracting industry that was also suffering from massive price hikes in their required resources. This company predictably collapsed and went into receivership. If the staff and their unions hand been able to understand, or been trusting enough to believe, the full scope of the financial situation, they would still have jobs today.

Then I just heard this morning about a video game startup where the lack of central leadership or consensus resulted in the project not having a cohesive style or direction.

The possibilities opened up by blockchain technology that can process instructions is incredible. Distributed Autonomous Organisations enable the creation of entities that can operate in an environment of trust and equality. It means that individuals can benefit from the advantages of scale and community without loosing autonomy or becoming just another employee. But they also mean that it is possible to create entities that have everything a company needs but direction.

Some types of organisations can work really well without leadership or direction. A group of service providers can get a lot of benefit from an association, but gain little advantage and expose themselves to a lot of risk, if they are directed by a single leader. This is because their products vary considerably, and there is no single market to focus on.

But when the product that an organisation has to produce needs to be well planned, cohesive, and fit a well targeted and wide user base, the level of coordination required, the clarity of vision needed, requires a leader. I think that ultimately we will see the most successful organisations are those that use blockchain technology to profit share with all employees, establish consensus for suitable decisions, and publicly track all actions. But these organisations will also recognise the value of great leadership, and will pay what it is worth for it, but not the excessive amounts that many current business leaders choose to pay themselves.

I am very interested to see how DNotes2.0 develops and delivers on these ideals. And where DNotes Global Inc see the line between guiding a successful solution, and letting the owners of DNotes choose directions.

Sorry to say he is on the plane back home as we speak.

I just hope that the poor people with loans were on fixed interest rates. US$40 posted in for doing some online work overseas, an exchange in the back of bar, and then go pay the loan off.

I can't begin to imagine how this is all being managed on a practical level. If you're running any sort of import or export business, it would be a real nightmare. Businesses often have long invoice payment periods, like 30 days at end of month. So you import a box of widgets from Brazil for 1,000 bolivar, wait a month, then sell the box to Argentina for 2,000 bolivar, then pay your invoice. And with official exchange rates so completely out of touch, it makes everything much worse, while encouraging a huge currency black market.

I imagine the world transition to cryptocurrency will continue it's slow and steady pace for a while yet. But once adoption rates pass a critical mass, there will be a tipping point. This is likely to continue to be a gradual process, but it may also happen very quickly. If the big banks and finance industries predict that all fiat currency will be worthless in less than a decade, they will all get out as fast as they can, because every day's delay costs them money in a market that has no hope of recovery.

If the tipping point goes this way, we'll all be turning to the history of Venezuela and similar events for guidance.

There is no let-up for the poor people of Venezuela. If people here had to go through even a little of what is going on there, everyone would be using digital currency already.





The Meltdown in Venezuela's Currency Is Deepening

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-21/the-meltdown-in-venezuela-s-currency-is-deepening

Confusion can feel a lot like fear, and when someone is trying something new, it is likely to cause them to give up. To avoid this feeling, it is important that the user can manage the whole process from one familiar screen, that they can see where they are up to, and that by using cookies you can return them to where they were if they come back to it another day.

The 'screenshot' I've posted above has a tick box next to the current process. Once the user ticks this, the box on the left will reflect their achievement and progress. Using the three column approach you can deliver a massive amount of information without it feeling overwhelming. They can also see how far they have progressed and explore future steps without losing where they are up to.

I would recommend that the items on the right work as popup overlays on the current window, and all other hyperlinks open in a new tab. This will make it feel stable by not jumping the user through too many websites. I would also recommend short definitions for bold text working as hover-text. The screenshots on the right should be marked-up with step numbers so they never feel confused even when in a foreign website.

I think it would also help if before they began the wizard, the user was told how much it is likely to cost them, broken down into stages. So it includes all the fees from putting $5 in as DNotes, and then getting it put back as fiat currency into their bank account. If typical ranges are required, use that.

A weekend conversation comparing notes on the wastefulness and sense of entitlement of government employees, peaked my curiosity. Surely this group, with the strongest union, cushy pensions, paid time off for their dog's birthday (slight exaggeration), able to retire as early as 55 with a fully indexed defined-benefit pension (paid for by the taxpayer who has to work until they die), must be the worst offender.

Everyone in the conversation had previous experience working for the government, and a recurring theme kept emerging: The total lack of respect government employees have for their employer's time and property, and not by just a few employees, but in some instances  a good portion of them. "Who cares, the government is paying for this" was heard constantly, without a single thought as to who pays for the government. I remember the first time I worked through my lunch hour to meet a deadline, and was treated as if I had committed some unconscionable crime. It's an environment that can bring everyone down to the lowest common denominator after a while. My experience was before social media began ruling the brains of the people, so I assume that perhaps things are even worse now.

I found some interesting facts on a couple of infographics relating to time wasted at work that includes all workers, not just government employees:

• Businesses have a 40% productivity loss from non-work Internet related surfing
• 31.2% of workers feel that it is appropriate to surf non-work related sites everyday
• More than 70% admit to checking their personal emails at work
• Facebook is the most blacklisted website at work
• 34% - 48% of time wasted at work is spent online (web surfing, social media, shopping)
• 33% - 43% of time wasted at work is spent talking/socializing with co-workers
• Time wasted also included conducting personal business, long lunch breaks, personal calls, texting, etc...

Here's the kicker - 60% of workers think surfing the web increases productivity!

And, I was right... The government tops the list with 25% of all employees wasting time at work, although it is likely substantially higher if they think surfing the web on your employer's time & dime isn't wasteful.

https://biz30.timedoctor.com/infograph-wasted-time/     http://www.designinfographics.com/infographics-images/wasting-time-at-work.png

 

Employees can make or break a business. They are so critical to its success, they make up one of the 4 pillars in Alan's book, The Four Pillars of Business Success. Just a reminder that membership to the website is free until December, 2019 - https://fourpillarsofbusinesssuccess.com/.

Hello Zecon, welcome to the forum!

With DNotes 2.0, there will be a new public wallet released with an array of new features and room for further expansion. You can expect this in September.

As to the roadmap, there is an infographic on the first page of this thread that you can view: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=1924858.0

We also have many YouTube videos at our channel - I'll direct you to the promotional video within it for DNotes 2.0: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnkUL0vhpjQ

By doing the right thing at the right time, DNotes will be the trusted digital currency in global commerce.
 DNotes is uniquely .Now,all the adltcoin drop a lot.I believe that the DNotes will goning back!