I agree.  If you want to consider it a benefit, by giving sMerit to deserving posters, you are doing your part to encourage quality posts.  If everyone uses the sMerit system properly, the good posters will rise up and the poor quality posts will diminish, which saves everyone time and makes for a better board.

Gotcha. I don't really know a lot about theymos except that he's the boss around here, lol.  When I was growing up I was the only kid that knew anything much about computers, especially BBS's and our primitive FidoNet (precursor to the Internet), so I always find it great when people in your generation are so much more advanced.

I do see people looking to have tokens made on a somewhat regular basis on here, often in the Project Management forum (even though it's the wrong board for that), so keep your eyes out over there.

Have a good one!

Hey Josie,

That's great you're scripting tokens at such a young age!

Keep it up, all of you in your club, cryptocurrency is a huge part of decentralization that will make our world a much more transparent and fair place.

Best of luck!

Ben

Are all of the services that offered Visa or Mastercard branded payment cards linked to crypto now out of commission?

I think the federal credit union and/or OCC limited purpose national bank charter routes are the best way to accomplish this in the short/medium term.  Takes longer than a master agreement with an issuer, but gives much more certainty that you'll be able to keep your business model.  If done properly, it can be done as a service for multiple projects, which is why I prefer the credit union model.  Everyone's an owner, there are some very interesting things you can do in that model.

Best regards,
Ben

Yes, part of the project is to determine the safest way to distribute the funds ensuring that it is not diverted by an unauthorized person at the charity.  In the case of Amazon Smile, they send checks paid to the charity (unless you have registered with them, in which case they do an ACH credit).  We have a few good ideas that we will run by advisors at the appropriate time in the project development, there may be some other approaches that have been done in other similar projects that are worth taking a look at.  The views of the attorneys have considerable weight in that aspect, obviously.  Charities have traditionally been early adopters of other payments technology (some of the first credit card via phone transactions, for example, were to support charitable contributions), so exposing them directly to cryptocurrency meets one of the project's stated objectives (increase adoption).

Something you might want to look at is BitGive Foundation's GiveTrack application.  It provides greater transparency into projects than traditional ways of contributing funds.  I think their project is a really great approach.  Here's the URL for that: https://www.givetrack.org/

Best regards,
Ben

I think those are great additions, I especially like bech32 addressing though I recognize it will take a long time before their use is commonplace.  The BIP-0173 that describes bech32 is really a great example of a standard that takes into account the real-world considerations of an addressing scheme (QR scannability, mixed case, etc.).  I hope bech32 is more widely implemented ASAP, including on other cryptocurrencies, especially ones based on BTC addressing.  Having a human-readable prefix that clearly differentiates between various crypto assets is a great boost to usability as Bitcoin adoption grows to less technically savvy people.

Replace by fee is a great attribute to have enabled by default in Core.  I've never had to use that, but I think it may have more utility in a world where mining effort is flipped between competing currencies based on which one delivers the best ROI at a given moment.  Which is selfish, in my view, but I do understand that from a business perspective.

Bitcoin Core's approach to incremental improvements in the reference client and underlying protocol is in my view the best approach to take.  When dealing with significant sums of money, every change should be subject to careful deliberation.  Bitcoin, as the first and largest cryptocurrency, also has an added responsibility to avoid missteps that could inflict larger harm on the overall crypto asset community.  That is a consideration I keep closely in mind because I know that legacy finance would have a field day with any issue.  Given that, frankly I am very surprised to see them all bandied around the Enterprise Ethereum Alliance.  I don't know what to make of that organization.  I have concerns about Ethereum's stability and clearly demonstrated violations of immutability.  I suppose these can be overcome if enough effort were put into improving these things, though immutability concerns will remain.  Then again, some of these large legacy financial institutions probably like the idea of being able to rewind the clock.

I don't.

Best regards,
Ben

Peer to peer?  Sorry if I'm missing something, but that doesn't supply enough information to me in order to be able to meaningfully respond.  Peer to peer could mean many things.

Are you talking about a website that allows peer to peer buy/sells of cryptocurrency?  A decentralized exchange?  BitTorrent?

Best regards,
Ben

I don't know who he is, but I can state pretty confidently that he has a great understanding of not only cryptography but also a lot of the other aspects of the entire cryptocurrency ecosystem.  He's absolutely someone that is quite intelligent and a "big picture" thinker, which is really refreshing to see on here.  Not saying there aren't others, but there is certainly a lot of crap posts lately, which I think and hope the merit system is going to fix.  I've read this forum on and off for years since the first time I ever played with Bitcoin back in early 2012 and I've learned so much from the good, quality discussions on here.  This is really a very unique place on the Internet, I should have joined long ago but I never got past the "just playing around" with Bitcoin phase until last year.  Like many, I thought it would be banned.  Incredibly exciting to know that not only will it not be banned, but it will in fact destroy so much of the corrupt rot that I thought would ban it.

I was having a conversation the other night with him, really got me thinking about some things, and I haven't had a chance to write back to him yet because I don't want to have to rush a reply.

In any event, I'm glad he's here.  His posts are of great quality.  If he has so many merits, it's because he's earned them!

Best regards,
Ben

I agree with you, I looked at them a few months back where someone had posted a referral link on Twitter.  Once they start changing the terms, that's a huge red flag.  Of course, I would say that lifetime contracts in general are likely to be at least concerning, a business model that sells too many lifetime arrangements would need to essentially exist as a Ponzi in order to keep cash flowing to the right places.

Just my view, they might be a great company but I didn't choose to use them for much the same reasons that you express concern above.

Best regards,
Ben

Hello,

So sending merits to another account you control is not allowed?  I just read the post by theymos announcing the Merit, https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=2818350.0 and I do not see that it is not allowed.  Maybe I am missing something?

In that case, I must admit that I have sent 2 merits from this account BenOnceAgain to my organization's account BTRIC's announcement post for our launch.

I really apologize for this, I read that post and didn't see that it wasn't allowed.

If you want to remove merits from me or from BTRIC or something, I completely understand.  I will absolutely never do it again, I had no idea that it wasn't allowed.

Ben

Hi All,

Not sure why this slipped my mind last night when I posted here but I thought I'd make sure you were all aware of this current program that ends on March 10.

Now, through March 10, the Pineapple Fund is matching contributions (up to a certain amount) made to two charities, Erowid https://erowid.org/splash.php and MAPS https://store.maps.org/np/clients/maps/donation.jsp?campaign=103.

So for every dollar you contribute (and I believe both accept Bitcoin and possibly other cryptos, I know MAPS takes Litecoin at least), the Pineapple Fund will match that contribution.  It's a great way to make your contribution go further.

Here's the Pineapple Fund's website, they have a bunch of great charities listed there as well: https://pineapplefund.org.

I hope you all have a great day!

Best regards,
Ben

Not investment advice, just my general observations.

Bitcoin prices go up and down, can be very volatile.  It's very hard to time tops and bottoms of any market.  However, I will say, in Bitcoin, that I've noticed a few things: first, Bitcoin price seems to often be very news driven, especially with "bad news" pulling the price down.  This is true for any asset but I've noticed the effects seem to be exaggerated with cryptocurrency.  Which brings me to my second observation, Bitcoin is still very illiquid, compared to other assets, so prices will tend to be more volatile.  If I had the time, I'd try to trade that volatility, because it looks like it can be quite lucrative if you get in the groove.

Consider buying some at various price points, set an order for a few staggered entry points below market.  For example, if you were to buy in 20k at $8000, maybe another 20k at $7000, something like that.  If the price starts going up and these no longer seem realistic, you can always change unfilled orders.  The way I look at it, it's better to set a spread of prices and get something than to set all of your buying at, say $7000, and the price reaches $7050 and you got nothing because it happened while you were sleeping or otherwise occupied.

If you're hodling and you feel like the price has reached a peak, it's always good to get out and buy back in at a lower point.  One way this is often accomplished in cryptocurrency is with stablecoins, especially Tether, for example $USDT.  I do not know for sure, but I've seen enough allegations about the financial transparency of Tether that I'd be cautious.  The concern is that if there is ever a large crash it could be hard to get your dollars out of Tether.  This may be unfounded, but if you search around, you will see information about this coin from people that know far more about it than I do.  Make sure to research any coin that you would use to trade out of Bitcoin as a stablecoin.  I would think a rock solid, fully transparent proxy for an underlying fiat currency would be very easy to establish and maintain.  So the concerns others have raised about Tether would cause me to do a lot of research before I felt safe with it.  But that's me, do your own research!

Anyway, my opinion probably isn't worth much because I don't trade Bitcoin, but those are my observations.  Good luck, I hope you meet and exceed your goal!

Best regards,
Ben

If you are financially able to support a charitable cause, by all means you should do it.

There are many charities that are very worthy causes.  I've worked with non-profits and charities for the past 12 years, so I can give you a few pointers.  There's really no bad way to support something you believe in, but from experience here's my suggestions:

Some people like giving to charities that are large and well-known.  Some of these are very well-deserving.  If you're in the United States, or looking to support a U.S. based charity, you can see ratings of all the large charities on this website, Charity Navigator: https://www.charitynavigator.org/

One thing that many people find important when considering charitable giving is the amount of your contribution that goes towards the cause.  For example, if you donate $100 to feeding the poor, how much of your money actually goes to those in need and how much of the money is used by the charity to cover their costs of overhead and operations.  There's no perfect way to figure out what is the optimal number.  Ideally, all of your money would go toward feeding the poor directly, but in reality, the charities need to pay for staff, office space, electricity, and other costs, so it's likely that some percentage of the funds they bring in goes towards these costs.  Usually, a good benchmark is under 20% overhead / 80% toward the direct "program services".  Some charities can do much better than this ratio, it really depends on what their charitable purpose is and how large of an operation they are.  Larger operations often can save costs overall because they can essentially "buy in bulk", so sometimes they can do a ratio of 90% / 10% or even better.

If you're looking to support a charity that's local to you, this website lists all charities in the U.S., large and small: https://www.guidestar.org/Home.aspx Sometimes supporting a charity that is closer to you is preferred by people, I can understand that. GuideStar lists all U.S. qualified charities.  They'll be listed on their site as a "public charity" as opposed to a "private foundation".  Private foundations are generally large funds that are set up by philanthropists (an example is the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) for purposes of giving money to charitable purposes.  They generally do not raise money from the general public.

One thing to make sure of is that you're legitimately donating to a charity.  Just like anywhere else, there are scams that set up fake websites and fake fundraising campaigns.  Make sure that you don't fall victim to one of these scams.

Another thing to be careful about is crowdfunding websites, like GoFundMe.  Though there are legitimate charitable causes on there, there are also many fakes, so make sure you're dealing with a real charity before you donate.

In the United States, if you donate to charity, you can claim a tax deduction for the amount of your donation, subject to certain limits.  I'm not an accountant so you should consult one if you plan on making large donations.  One special thing to note as it relates to cryptocurrency: Donations of cryptocurrency can, if donated in the right way, significantly lower capital gains taxes, which can reduce your income tax liability substantially.  There are crypto-savvy accountants that can help you with that, it is similar to if you donate stock.  Essentially, donating an asset to charity allows you to claim a deduction for the full market value of the asset.  If you first converted it to dollars and then donated those dollars, you would be subject to capital gains taxes on any gain on the value of the crypto/stock/etc., so you can see how, if you are able to work with a charity to donate in crypto, you can significantly reduce your taxes by offsetting capital gains with charitable contributions.  Again, talk to a tax professional, I am not one, etc.

Another way you can support charities is by donating things that you no longer need, such as an old computer, or old clothing or other things that are still useful but that you don't have a use for any longer.  If possible, try to give something that is at least functional.  Some charities will accept things that aren't functional, like a broken computer, but if it's the case, try to make sure they're able to accomodate that.  Some charities really are small and unable to store and/or have repaired something that they can't use.  Also, some are so small that they literally have nowhere to put donated goods, so in those cases, money is probably best.

Outside of the United States, most countries do have a government registry of charities, so it is always a good idea to make sure the organization you're supporting is listed.  I do not know all of the rules on every country, but many countries allow you to claim some tax benefit for supporting a cause.  A good place to look for such a list would be on the government websites for your country.

In any event, supporting something that you care about is a great thing to do!  One last thing to always keep in mind: charities also often need volunteers to give their time to help them accomplish their mission.  If you have time to spare, consider volunteering!

Good luck with your crypto trading.  I hope you all make lots of money, so much that you're all able to donate some to good causes that you support!

Best regards,
Ben

I'm very sorry to hear that about your friend in the restaurant.  It's especially crappy that her own sister did that to her.  Loyalty is a defining quality of character, and it seems that her sister lacks loyalty even to her own family.  Unfortunate.

I hope that she has better days, and maybe that her sister realizes that she is being selfish.  There are things that are much more valuable than any amount of Bitcoin.

Best regards,
Ben

By "license", you're referring to presumably an ISO master agreement with a card issuing financial institution?  Not a banking license or charter, correct?  What country is it based in?

Do they know there's a crypto nexus?  I know some of some U.S. based issuers that are looking into offering this product, specifically a Mastercard product.  Visa doesn't seem as down with crypto from what I gather, at least Visa USA.

Good luck with your project, it certainly fills a needed gap while we are still dependent to some degree on legacy financial services.

Best regards,
Ben

From what I understand, and I am not an expert so this is really just what I've picked up, there is no specific law that prohibits U.S. citizens/entities from participating in what are foreign investments (at the time I write this post, if you're reading this 2 years from now I expect things have changed).  I believe many ICO projects are precluding participation by U.S. citizens out of an abundance of caution because they could be "subject to the Securities Act" if they accept funds from U.S. persons and the SEC determines that their ICO was a security.  Of course, that assumes that SEC has some sort of legal jurisdiction over the entity, which to me is questionable.  But in my experience, U.S. based regulators will attempt to assert their authority very widely, often beyond their legal limits, hoping that is not tested or challenged in a court.

One caveat I should make clear about the above paragraph in reference to no specific law precluding U.S. participation is economic sanctions and countering the funding of terrorism laws.  U.S. persons and entities are prohibited by law from certain financial transactions with entities that have been named subject to sanctions pursuant to numerous different economic sanctions laws and executive orders.  Typically, these are specific parties (but in some cases these are widely defined by country) that you are precluded from transacting with, and here's the page where you can see the exclusions: https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/sanctions/Pages/default.aspx

Considering that the SEC has opined on ICOs that have gone badly for the most part, the fact that a given team chooses to preclude U.S. participants could be looked as their pre-emptive attempt to keep the SEC away, should they fail as a business or otherwise defraud investors.  On the other hand, if I was a non-U.S. based project I might also exclude U.S. participants just out of caution, as the hand of the U.S. government can be very long and effective.  They can and do, for example, shut parties and even whole countries out of the SWIFT interbank payments system.  I personally consider this wrong in all but the very gravest of circumstances, but it does occur.

For my organization, which is a non-profit (no shareholders, no equity, etc.) so it's a bit different, I was advised by counsel to not accept funds from any sanctioned party, to return any funds that are contributed by a sanctioned party, and to include terms and conditions that BTRIC reserves the right to reject and/or return any funds from anyone.  (Also advised to let them know if we do receive funds from any of these so they can tell us what to do, lol.)  We also include language that we reserve the right to refuse funds from any group that is a "hate-group" or that is contributed for purposes that are "encumbered" or earmarked by the contributor for something that is counter to our purpose.  This language is required by GuideStar, which is a voluntary standard that we opt-in to regarding financial transparency.  So that part is not legally required, but we have it in our terms.  If you want to take a look at them, they're in our white paper and also on our website I believe.

Two other things come to mind.  If the SEC discovers that a systemic loophole is being exploited, I expect that they'd take steps to close that loophole.  The other thing, if an ICO terms/conditions says that they do not allow U.S. investors and/or you agree to terms that say "You are not a U.S. investor", and then the ICO finds out that you are, a scumbag ICO could say, "well you lied to us, so no coins for you".

I do hope that clarity is brought to the regulatory atmosphere because there are some great projects that deserve to be funded, mixed in with all the "trash".  Even among some of those projects that just aren't mature enough for an ICO, there are many that have potential which are the type of projects my organization wants to work with.  They will come out of our incubator as a world-class, investment-ready business.  But often these projects are missing some components for success, and just throwing money at them doesn't always fix the problem without the type of strategic and business planning that is really needed to make a great business.

Anyway, good luck wherever and however you invest.  I hope you make great picks!

Best regards,
Ben

[not legal advice. not tax advise. not investment advise. not advise of any kind, etc.]

Hello everyone,

I just posted the following article, "Common-sense standards will speed cryptocurrency adoption", on BTRIC's Medium blog.

https://medium.com/btric/common-sense-standards-will-speed-cryptocurrency-adoption-87d54eef3399

Thank you for reading and have a good one!

Best regards,
Ben

Hello everyone,

I just wanted to make sure you were aware of my Telegram link because we had a typo in our original announcement thread.

The link in the announcement thread will take you to a group chat.  If you want to speak to me directly, the URL is https://t.me/BTRICorg

Thanks and have a good day.

Best regards,
Ben

My view: I am far from an expert on cryptography but I will say this, cryptocurrency depends on rock-solid, secure cryptography.  It is exactly where the trust is placed in an electronic money system. By removing it from governments/banks (who don't deserve it regardless), and instead trusting the software and the network it defines (not individual nodes, per se), you must have an extremely robust cryptographic algorithm and you also must be prepared to change it quickly should it ever prove to have a previously unknown weakness.  As far as I'm concerned that should be common sense.  I don't know precisely what happened with IOTA but I have read a little bit about it and I'm not sure why the currency continues to circulate given what I do know.  I guess too many people had invested into it by that point, which is more a political reason for continuing to exist rather than anything based on technical merit or the capability of the system.  I'm not sure why the IOTA people thought it was a good idea to throw in some untested cryptography, but that seems like a very amateur thing to do.

I agree that when people make a bad investment they deserve to lose their capital provided it wasn't outright fraud and that it is absolutely crucial to do your own research.  I do think that the bar should be lower than having to be a cryptographer, especially as crypto assets are more widely adopted.  Governments will seek to "protect" consumers to the extent they are able to.  I use quotes around the word protect because I disagree with a few things concerning the current direction that regulation of crypto assets seems to be taking.  I believe, in general, that cryptocurrencies should be treated as a currency, not as an investment asset class.  I think eventually that will shake out, but governments have a habit of doing all of the wrong things before finally doing the right one, so it does concern me.

---

I agree that many, most, of ICO/ITO projects just seem to be a money grab.  I think that's reflected in the high rate of failure and fraud.  I believe it has a potential for a  promising future method of raising funds for legitimate projects, but I believe the market should really be discerning about what projects people choose to invest in and that there should be some standard way to evaluate these projects.  Not mandated by some government but instead expected by the market.

---

Thank you for the link to that white paper.  Simplicity looks to be a substantial improvement over Solidity in terms of being able to implement a smart contract that is secure.  I agree that an individual contract is only as secure as the contract code.  But as far as Solidity goes, it has a funny name now that I think of it, because it seems anything but solid.  I really wanted it to be everything I thought it could when I first read about it, but it really "feels" fragile.  Maybe it's because of all the horror stories I've read about it.  But I don't think so.  I don't know how to describe it except to say it just doesn't have the rock-solid stability that one would expect from a scripting language that controls billions of dollars of underlying value.  I could be wrong, but usually when I am using a piece of tech and it doesn't have the right feel to it (that's really the only way I can succinctly describe it), it ends up being a dud.

---

I agree that proprietary code quality is often horrible, especially banking.  My experience with banking code, like many other internal systems, is that it has been adapted and hacked and made to "work" with the digital equivalent of duct tape and bubble gum.  And that's on a good day.  More recently, there are banking systems that have resulted from merger after merger after merger of smaller banks into the large behemoths we have today that are reliant on code that has been in place for at least a decade.  No one dares to touch that code because if they do, they will break 500 things that you'd never expect have some dependency on this swiss-cheese like construct.  Most of my experience in this comes from commercial banking as opposed to investment banking, perhaps it's more cohesive over there?  But I doubt it.  Like any business, banks do not upgrade their systems and proprietary systems are among the worst from a "wtf how is this even working" perspective.  I mean, I am sure there are great coders in the banking business.  But they are the exception, not the rule.

Open source is NOT a magic bullet, as you said, it is more the peer-review and intensive testing process that creates quality code.  If I was writing code, especially something that represented money, or votes, or peoples health, I would want it to be widely tested.  Hack it, find the flaws, let's really make sure this code is resilient.  The best open source projects have this.  Too many, however, are missing crucial parts of the team or infrastructure to carry this out, or sometimes even the knowledge and understanding that this is a must for any code to be used in production.  People thinking they can just throw something together and hope for the best, when you're dealing with something like digital money, is highly irresponsible.

I also admire the zealousness of many of the Bitcoin Core team, those that I know of.  They are a big reason, to me, as to why Bitcoin is something I know deserves more trust than any of the altcoins.  Personally, I am a person that is passionate about the projects I take on and when I see that passion emanating from other people about their projects, it resonates with me.  Bitcoin is not perfect and certainly, it has evolved over time and will continue to do so.  But everything I have observed about the people that are part of Core, their writings on the listserv and discussions on GitHub, etc., shows me that they take their responsibility very seriously.  At least to me, that is a very important and crucial distinction between Bitcoin and 99.9% of the altcoins.

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I agree that staying under the radar of regulations is an ideal scenario when that can be done.  However, that is not possible in all circumstances.  Fiat/crypto exchange (besides P2P cash) is very difficult, for example, without a relationship with an entity subject to KYC regs (at least in the US).  And for the foreseeable future, fiat/crypto conversion will be necessary for adoption.  

Regulations rarely do anything useful, I agree with that.  The thing about regulations that I know from a lot of experience with regulators is that it is much better to work with them than to ignore them and/or fight them completely.  Regulators often will defer to industry when they come together with a reasonable and workable solution to whatever the issue at hand is.  When this doesn't happen, the regulators decide on their own how best to handle the situation.  Or even worse, other interests chime in with their view and that becomes the model adopted by the regulators.  Right now crypto is around $450 billion USD in total market capitalization.  That's just a little under the market capitalization of Facebook, one company.  We know this is going to grow, and in my view, market capitalization isn't really a good metric to measure currencies, but it's quick on Google.  However, once crypto assets really start to bite into bank profitability, you better believe that they will be whining to the regulators to tighten the screws.  I believe that businesses in the cryptocurrency field need to be paying close attention and be prepared to work with regulators instead of letting them run the tables.

As far as ICOs go with KYC, I don't blame you for not giving out your information.  It's dangerous.  Losing the money you'd invest is bad enough, but having your identity stolen is just as bad, if not worse in many cases.  If ICOs are ever going to get away from the fraud aura, they need a way to be conducted legally without the extensive KYC information disclosed.  I can go on eBay and buy something right now from a stranger and, yes, they do get my address, but that's only because they're shipping me something.  I think there can be a better way to do KYC in the crypto realm.  The set of circumstances are very different between me going into a bank to open a bank account or opening an investment account online and deciding to invest in an ICO.  I can buy shares of stock without giving them a picture of the front and back of my passport and a selfie holding it up next to my face.  Why should it be any different from that?  I have some ideas to make KYC more safe and secure, ticking them around in my mind at this point.

Anyway, thanks for good things to think about.  I appreciate it.

Best regards,
Ben

Yes, I agree that is a real shame that many groups seem to disappear from the forums after they've been funded.  Some of this might be because of the low quality of posts, and maybe the new merit system will help to curtail them.  Hopefully many will come back because I've always considered this forum to be the source for everything crypto related, for many years before my account registration date.  I just wasn't involved in crypto full-time until recently so was mostly a lurker.

I get how difficult it can be to market a project.  Everyone I've been able to converse about my organization with wants to get involved, but unfortunately it's hard to spread the message about the organization.  I'm trying multiple ways to do so, but the last thing I'd do is to cut off a place such as here with all of the accumulated knowledge as well as the most experienced people in the field.  I will be glad after we have passed the funding period, however, because I'd really like to devote more of my time to actually implementing instead of just marketing.  I guess some of this comes from my pre-crypto experience in the government contracting field, where marketing is completely different than marketing an ICO/ITO organization.  In any event, professional marketing expertise in this field should be worth top dollar and I know that's one of the first hires that BTRIC will be making for our projects that complete the incubator and are launched as separate businesses.  Same as with blockchain developers, ICO/ITO marketers that know their stuff and do a great job are real assets to any team and not easy to find.

Best regards,
Ben