Your post is based on the claim that companies can be hacked, and arguably, will all eventually be hacked. This is a perfectly reasonable claim.

However, it doesn't include the important consideration that individuals can also be hacked, and arguably, will all eventually be hacked (or more simply, lose their own assets).

The important question to ask is not whether it's possible that a company will ever be hacked.

The important question to ask is: Is it more likely that assets are safer with this company, or with myself.

You're absolutely right about needing honest answers - but as I said, we don't aim to invalidate good market research. Some things really do need answering with specific methods, and we don't expect to offer a silver bullet solution to companies.


You don't feel that facilitating investment in companies is undertaking exactly what you are describing? We do expect people to consider parting with their money, and therefore very critically assessing companies. It doesn't mean every user will approach discussions this way, but it will ensure that there's not simply an echo chamber.


No need to try and convince me further that market research is still of value, I agree. I believe it's mutually compatible with what we are doing.


Token holders must not be confused with people who actually have a stake in a company - those with a stake in a company will certainly want it to succeed, which I'm sure many people can figure out (just as you so clearly point out) means not simply agreeing with everything.

You have some great points, and I assure you we are carefully considering exactly what you bring up. It's something we will have to adapt to as we move on. I don't think you have found a major flaw in our concept, though. Truthful answers are great, and companies need them, but they are not the only thing of value to be had from a relationship between business and public.

Well, it's absolutely true that you shouldn't invest in something you don't understand, but it's also important to consider that not every ICO is intended for everyone to invest in! Arguably the more honest ones are actually not targeting everyone, but rather focusing on those who do understand what they're getting involved with.

Likewise, the end users of a product may not need to understand the fundamentals of how that product actually functions. So there can be some contrast between materials which explain what a product is, and materials which explain what a product is for the purpose of getting investments.

Take some of the most successful ICOs for instance: Filecoin, Ethereum, etc. They don't strain themselves to make everything super-simple so everyone can understand. Check out their whitepaper for example. They do also provide a very simple and effective explanation of what their product is for the general public, though. These are two very different sets of material for different purposes.

Hi jlp, I'm one of the Crowdholding team. Thanks for voicing your concerns, I'll see what I can do to address each of the points you made.


Our beta app is https://crowdholding.com. We ran an alpha since October 2016, and beta has been going since March 2017. We've been trying a lot of cool stuff with it, but it's absolutely open to further change and improvement. We are working on making it a smooth PWA (progressive web app), but it's more desktop friendly at the moment.


I don't believe this is a good comparison. The idea of the website is that absolutely anyone in the world can join the community - it's not a walled garden for YUPIE token holders. It's as we describe it - an open innovation platform.


Well, we certainly aim to encompass end users and customers in the community! Personally I have a lot of respect for market research, and I don't think our app is going to suddenly render it useless, but I do believe we also have great value in what we are undertaking.


You're right, some questions aren't necessarily appropriate, and probably wouldn't yield valuable results. A more appropriate question might be "Here's a couple of designs we're planning to use for the packaging of our new 'Japanese Seaweed Snacks'. Do you like 'A' or 'B'? Why?" Of course, this is a really basic survey question, and surveys are nothing new. However, the nature of putting the question to people has a lot of space for improvement.

Also consider that the value is not always in the result, but in the discussion itself. Probably one of my favourite examples of businesses connecting with a crowd is the 'Do us a flavour' campaigns (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lay%27s#Do_Us_a_Flavour_contests). Crowdholding is all about this connection between businesses and the public, which I have good reason to believe has enormous space for improvement.

Being able to actually discuss topics with a company can not only be a good chance to impact change for the better, but it can actually be fun too. Again, this absolutely has more potential for some types of business over others. Consider the gaming industry for example, there's plenty of places to discuss games online, but we feel we can facilitate that exchange in a much more meaningful way for both parties.


You're absolutely right - we don't use the tokens to enforce contracts. We use separate contracts! During our beta we have been experimenting with the concept of 'crowdshares'. Basically this would involve a contract between the startup and the company committing a share of revenue, with specified parameters. The tokens are there to function as a currency, which simply put, is a great use of a token. For now we want explanations as simple as possible, because just like the traditional system of shares and currencies, it can get enormously complicated! If you think including this discussion in our core materials is needed though, we're really happy for the feedback. Personally I'd like to keep it to other documentation, FAQs, etc. Ultimately we need to improve on this, but we're still a fairly small team and are desperately trying to prioritise.


A crucial point to note is that we are not suggesting profit sharing, but revenue sharing. And how long you wait before Crowdholding's startups start rewarding you is a really good question. Currently we are setting a threshold for a company to pass a certain annual revenue before any is shared to the public. However, we are absolutely open to changing this model if we have good reason to. The idea of a fixed sum bounty can be a much simpler alternative, for example.

Also, consider that while you can invest in companies using YUPIES, we don't believe this is suitable for everyone, or even most people. The typical case for most users will simply be as an active community member, meaning you would have the potential to receive YUPIES, which (if you want to cash out) can be exchanged for other cryptocurrencies, or used in the Crowdholding economy - investing in companies, or purchasing products directly.


There's definitely a lot of challenges here, but also enormous opportunity. If it was easy then someone probably would have done it ages ago! We don't want to ride off jargon - but you're absolutely right that our language can be improved. If there's any specific ways we phrase things which stand out, I'd honestly appreciate feedback on them.

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Hope this clears some points up! 

Cheers,

Henry

Personally I have found Mycelium to be good in the past, though I think they have taken a hit to their reputation recently.

Paper wallet is the way to go for me.

There's no shortage of speculation about who created bitcoin, but to my knowledge no one has produced any argument which actually holds up.

We may never know, but does it really matter? This seems to be a matter of fame alone.

Well, a lot are eth based because it's proven to be an incredibly reliable and convenient foundation for tokens. There are great alternatives (competition and diversity is good) like waves, which are seeing significant popularity.

Crypto is going to stumble a lot going forward, but I don't imagine it will ever lose significance, as long as we have a society so dependant on computing. Some tokens will succeed and some fail, but overall, success seems inevitable.