The only argument I can make for having a higher supply is for psychological effect. Like with Dogecoin because there are so many everyone who has them feels rich. People look at Bitcoin and they think Oh My God it's too expensive!

So you want enough of a supply so people even in third world countries can afford to have a chance. Long term it does make sense only if you think people wouldn't buy coins in fractions. I do think people could be convinced to buy coins in fractions though so I favor selling the coins in the Satoshi denomination.

Another thing which could be done. We have Netcoin as the highest unit but if there were fewer and not many people have them then you would use the highest unit for large transfers between businesses and for daily transactions people would use the smaller proportions.

Now this is important to note, depending on the blockchain technology and whether or not you can handle a lot of transactions should decide whether you go with a smaller or larger cap or even no cap.

If there is no cap then you still must limit inflation, as that is what is bad. If the cap is low or high it does not matter if inflation is 50%. If inflation is low, and the cap is low of course that is better. If inflation is zero and the cap is low like Mastercoin, Counterparty, of course that is best of all but then it's not much of a currency for transaction purposes and more of a stock.

What psychology do we want? To attract investors the cap and low inflation rate is good. To make people spend money having a higher cap is better because people are more likely to tip in a currency where they feel like a billionaire. The profit investors would make is the same no matter what the cap is, just so long as the inflation rate is low.

Fear of accusations shouldn't determine what we do though. In my opinion if there is inflation it must be for some specific purpose other than to avoid bad publicity.

If the argument you're making is that less people would want to use it as a currency if it's deflationary, this is a valid argument. I think different people will be attracted to deflationary currencies and that deflationary currencies may actually have many positive benefits.

One positive benefit that I postulate is a reduction in crime. A lot of crime is out of desperation or out of competition. Violence over turf happens among drug dealers often because in inflationary currencies the idea of saving doesn't make sense. You're punished for saving in an inflationary currency and I postulate that this encourages the thug capitalist mentality where short term profits rule.

If you want to promote long term thinking, long term investment, saving, and reduce violent crime I believe one way of approaching the problem is to offer a deflationary currency to allow people to think not just about day to day profit but the next year, the next decade, and not to spend all their money down so fast.

I use the street criminal as the individual in this metaphor because in American society the street criminal is the purest capitalist. Inflationary currencies encourage crime because why would anyone want to make and spend money slowly, or save money, when they can spend it as soon as they earn it and never save a penny? As a result of not saving this keeps the street criminal as an individual in a state of always being on a tread mill, or always struggling to stay afloat, and as a result it promotes a kind of ruthless competitiveness.

Let's take it out of the street level, how about it's stock investors? If you have a stock which dilutes over time then it requires that people keep buying it. The faster the rate of dilution the more people will have to find money to keep investing to maintain their position. This is like trying to keep up with the Joneses.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keeping_up_with_the_Joneses and in my opinion is a problem which would not exist if people were encouraged to think about long term investments.

Protoshares has it's problems because it over relies on prediction markets. The developer seems to believe that prediction markets will solve all of societies ills. But a lot of changes have been made to the design since the time when Cunicula called it a ponzi scheme. I don't think it's a ponzi scheme at this time, but if people wanted to make a case for it being a ponzi scheme or pyramid scheme the truth is you could make the same case against Bitcoin.

1. Bitcoin itself is not decentralized. It's actually controlled by a mining cartel. This mining cartel controls the hashing power of the network. For this mining cartel because they make the chips we use to mine with, if Bitcoin will to inflate forever they would not mind because they are closer to the generation of new coins and stand to benefit from inflation. It is this same attitude in my opinion which leads people to believe inflation for the dollar is helpful, it helps only the people who are close to the creation of new dollars because the initial distribution goes to those people.

As a result of the centralization of both Bitcoin and the fiat currencies as well we could say they are both pyramid schemes which benefit (certain people) most the people who control the production capability behind the currency generation of the network. At this point Bitshares is looking like it will be more decentralized than Bitcoin just as Bitcoin is more decentralized than the USD, because they switched away from mining and moved into a transaction based proof of stake which allows for them to both minimize inflation while increasing decentralization. I will say this has not been proven in practice so it's entirely theoretical, we have to wait and see.

2. We have to in my opinion measure or quantify the level of decentralization and as a principle agree that greater levels of decentralization is better. This should apply to Bitshares, Bitcoin, Netcoin, we want to have some way that generation of new coins or shares is decentralized. Netcoin is in a position where it can easily be more decentralized than Bitcoin provided that it's hard enough to mine, but if it cannot resist centralization around it's mining then whatever that inflation rate is, whether it be 1% or 4%, it will ultimately be a tax on anyone who saves in Netcoin. So if that 1% tax or 4% tax to miners goes to securing the network or paying miners I would say that sort of inflation has a purpose but if mining becomes centralized then that 1% to 4% tax goes to the same few people who basically will use their influence to maintain high inflation rates forever because they now have a coin faucet which pays them at the expense of everyone else in the network.

3. I believe deflation has more social benefits than inflation. I haven't seen anyone make a cause for the social benefits of inflation. Inflation is always promoted as if it's some kind of necessary evil. It's usually spun up by economists that if the currency does not inflate then people will hoard (save) too much money and the economy will grind to a halt. This hoarding in my opinion only happens if a currency is too centralized. If it's decentralized in the initial distribution then since no one is going to become a trillionaire there is no massive wealth disparity argument. Instead you could end up with lots of millionaires who saved for years, but the social impact of that isn't the same as the social impact of a few people becoming trillionaires. So it seems to me that over centralization is what makes inflation or deflation bad. If anyone can mine and earn a reasonable amount of coins or shares then there is no real complaint with deflation.

4. Proof of Work seems to be the main problem behind all of this. We need a better Proof of Work which rewards work which is actually valuable to society, or we will have to move away from Proof of Work in the current form. I don't think Bitshares has completely solved it with going to Proof of Stake and I don't think Proof of Work as it is now is very good either. Proof of Work right now generates an effort with minimal to no social utility, all of that computing power essentially goes to waste, we have to make Proof of Work both economically and socially useful. We have to also make sure it's as decentralized as possible and by decentralized I mean resistant on the social network level as well so that it resists the formation of mining or other kinds of cartels to try to control the hashing power.

Some of my ideas on how we might be able to do it, the idea of the mining lottery is a good metaphor and perhaps is a direction if we keep mining. This would make mining a bit less predictable for the miner in a good way because it would decentralize the power dynamics in such a way that any random person could hit the jackpot while mining. It would also create some disassociation between hashing power and the reward by adding an element of uncertainty.

It should also be that we can create some disassociation between how much money a person spends and how much power the person gets. Money alone should not be the deciding factor in Proof of X. I think in the case of Bitshares money is the deciding factor but that is because they are treating it as a decentralized autonomous corporation so it has to be focused around profit. I think you can easily create a DAC which focuses on profit but do the crowd funding donation in such a way that money isn't the only way to mine or send value. For example perhaps you can donate computing power, money, or anything to the network to earn credits/shares.

I don't have the solution I'm just presenting some directions to explore and trying to encourage a high level debate on strategy.

Whatever name you come up with, please run it through a focus group. Please ask random people what you think of the name on the streets, at the cafe, or at the shops. Do some research. Do they like it? This is very important.

I believe (correct me if I'm wrong) that the ultimate goal would be to get critical adoption of this coin and that means that this is not going to be a coin for just the technologically literate, but also the general lay people. And that must be represented and their feedback must be addressed over the name.

Whatever name is present is critical to the success of the project and the subsequent marketing of it.

Don't be like Peercoin (originally PPCoin), which realized its ways until considerable adoption.

you are right, currently people will take more confirmation for quicker coins, resulting in overall similar time.

I am thinking when the next step comes, and when people will to accept after 2-3 confirmations. Given a high network hashrate, security shouldn't be too high of an issue, and with faster coins, the initial confirmation will come sooner. that's what I am thinking about.

do you think I am considering too few parameters?

he can use same BTC ADD in many threads.

Really need skycoin dev to check this.

True?

Just as a preamble, I've been a long time lurker, even though this is my first post. I started mining last April and followed your guides and I've been following MC2 since around that time. I always look at your posts within threads with a high level of respect, because I know you know what you're talking about. I have been looking forward to this project coming to fruition for a long time.

That said, I just wanted to caution you, tacotime, about what your coin is turning into. Consider what this will look like to people who have never heard of MC2 and know nothing about it, and the first things your competition will grab onto to put your coin down.

1. Premine?

2. Backed by corporation?

3. Closed source?

We have already seen examples of all of these and they don't turn out well. I would like to suggest you fully develop your coin and relevant services/pools/miners/etc before launch, so that you can have a successful OPEN SOURCE launch without fear of competition. So that all your shit is lined up and ready to go. It would be a real shame to put all this time and work in, to quit your studies, just to have your coin fall flat on its face before the community even gives it a fair chance.

Surely other people are thinking this?

What are your thoughts?

If not, I hope it's something that can become mainstream and the general public can understand well.

http://invictus.io/keyhotee.php ?

Me too,ah well, all the best

I offered to help fund this project but Taco Time is far too important to reply to PM's. Good luck guys.

Hey Tacotime as always you have my support. One thing I think is lacking is transparency in the pre-launch process, and then when coins are launched having a solid, robust tooling and infrastructure in place. Maxcoin is a perfect example of where they had the former but the latter was pretty horrid. Not sure if this is purposeful (it seems like it might be), but we really need to fix these launches. I'm almost thinking of having a phased launch:

1) pre-launch announcement
2) launch stage0 - people can start mining up to X % over 2 weeks then coins stop being distributed for Z%, this rewards but also tests the system initially
3) launch stage1 - restart people can mine another Y% over 1 year then coins stop shortly to fix bugs in the system
4) launch stage2 - long-term launch, mining continues for 5 years ... etc.

This might build some fairness in the system.

The project is looking very interesting indeed.

Jumping from graduate school to such an unknown and uncertain endeavor, dangerous and exciting no doubt. I wish you all the luck in the world.

While I do understand the risk associated with forking, I do believe quite strongly that source availability is paramount. While I have no doubt in the good faith of the developers and any security auditing company involved, it would add a layer of uncertainty that could lead to unpleasant situations.
The code does not necessarily have to be FOSS, meaning that the licence with which you decide to release the code could perhaps be clear on its stance regarding derivative work, but the full source code associated with the entire system should be available to the whole community.

In light of all the problems that the Bitcoin exchanges are having atm; MTGOX (self explanatory), Crypsty (withdrawal issues, login issues, account security), I feel the the archilles heel of Bitcoin are the exchanges.

How does your proposed digital exchange work and how is it an improvement over what we have for Bitcoin?