That is correct. And we still have an enormous amount of work to do. I want one million people to take this class

For a grant, it would be for the production of peer reviewed research thus none whatsoever. For an X-Prize, I fund a trust that has triggers to give the money to someone who "wins". These would be based upon BTCLuke's criterion amongst other factors. I probably wouldn't be the only party involved in this investment.



Yes, and those affairs are private as are yours.

That it's a terrible idea But making Bitcoin more valuable for everyone is a good business strategy and one I suppose people here would get behind regardless of how much they dislike me.

The formula I'm using is based upon my current holdings in bitcoin. If I was to divulge it, then I'd be instantly telling everyone the approximate size of my holdings in bitcoin as soon as I make an investment and state my expected return.

If I invest in someone's project, then it will be in the form of a grant without any equity or return expectation. My returns come directly from the appreciation of bitcoin. Sorry mate.   

Lol, there really isn't one because I'm basing my ROI on the impact a P2P exchange would have on the price and stability of bitcoin. It wouldn't be possible to measure this outside of saying it has a significant impact.

Let's change the question to asking what factors would it take for the value of bitcoin in USD to increase an order of magnitude? First, I believe bringing several millions of people into the ecosystem would be a significant factor. Second, large business adoption would also contribute to this increase. Finally, stable exchanges that are beyond the scope of regulation and capable of scaling to any amount of transactions.

I firmly believe that if these three factors are properly implemented Bitcoin's value will be over 1,000 USD per coin. I have fairly sizeable holdings in BTC thus I have an incentive to see them through. Hence I launched the Bitcoin Education Project to bring millions into the ecosystem. I've been discussing with many people in the community how to bring large corporations into the Bitcoin ecosystem. And the last piece is the P2P exchange. I'll guess each have an equal part and thus are worth 1/3 of the order of magnitude price increase.   

For a venture of this nature, I'd like an ROI around 200-300 percent of capital at risk over a 24 month period.

I think we share in that frustration, which is why I launched the Bitcoin Education Project. Do you happen to know the leadership of the local exchange?

Well perhaps we can help each other. Are you the founder of this website?

I want a button I can click just like the bitcoin-qt client that allows me to connect with a swarm of peers and do stuff with them without any outside entity save an objective protocol telling me how to do it. Such a button would effectively ensure bitcoin is forever immortal.

The nobel prize is an outdated metric to partition the academic world into a hierarchy over betters. It serves no purpose nor benefit to the Bitcoin ecosystem. Instead market adoption and remove to central banks will be the final metric of success and validation for Bitcoin. Besides, they gave the peace prize to someone who strapped bombs on kids to kill israelis. The award is forever compromised in my opinion.


I like the idea of a Satoshi prize that awards some jackpot of money to someone for doing something the community needs. Like developing a P2P exchange or bringing a certain amount of people into the ecosystem. It could be community funded and have a list of objective criterion.

It is incredibly difficult to determine VAR in something related Bitcoin and it is entirely possible to design a P2P exchange without any profit to a central hub. I may assess my ROI based upon the effect having an exchange like the one BTCLuke described would have on the value of my current bitcoin holdings. For example, this exchange would functionally remove most of the liquidity issues resulting in actors like Amazon and Paypal likely entering the market. Such an increase in demand could drive the price per BTC up at least an order of magnitude.

As the initial investment is measured based upon its effect on the price of bitcoin, my investment would be proportional to my holdings of btc.

To answer your question, I would view an investment of this nature as a gamble. I would be entirely ok with losing everything for a chance at seeing this work. Thus I may consider an X-Prize style investment with a set of criterion and the first person to satisfy them would receive the prize. 

And how will I pay my taxes? Bitcoin will not achieve its goals without a P2P exchange due to the central points of failure being regulated and controlled by the fiat barons. We need a decentralized way to move into and out of bitcoin at any time and any place without oversight. This ensures Bitcoin will be adopted by players like Amazon and Facebook and ends the reign of central banks.

Yes

I'd be happy to discuss investments over email or in a PM. Investment would be proportional to return and likely around low 6 figures for the angel phase.


Probably not because the course is community built and forever free. I will continue to solicit feedback, contributions, marketing support and donations for the Bitcoin Education Project until it has reached its goal of educating one million new people on Bitcoin. I can't accomplish that alone and it is in everyone's best interest to bring well-informed people into the ecosystem.

Luke I read your post and I have a few comments.

First, Mary is the agent of escrow between Bob and Tim. How would one prevent Mary from simply stealing both of their funds? Second, should distance be the only factor in determining who gets to be the agent of escrow? All networks require some form of maintenance, perhaps you could adopt a more robust metric combining network distance with contribution to the network's health? Third, how do we verify Tim's holdings in fiat? Even if we could do so, then how does one avoid double spending without a global fiat ledger? Finally, wire transfers are not instantaneous for example and thus the party who acquires Bitcoins would have access to the money far faster than the fiat party.

One could resolve the fiat/Bitcoin access lag by implementing a system that sends coins to a new address with the private key encrypted by some method (say AES). Split the key in two parts with one going to both Tim and Bob and keep the other part in the global transaction ledger until the fiat transfer has cleared. Once it clears the other half of the key gets sent to Tim. Thus Tim cannot access his funds until Bob can. Should Tim's wire transfer fail, Bob gets the other half of the key to access his original Bitcoin.    

I agree that IOUs are no sufficient because they have to be exchanged at some point and such points violate criterion number 1. Overall, this post is significant and exactly what I wanted to generate in my original thread.  

Thanks for your kind words.

Why not use bittorrent sync for the database? http://labs.bittorrent.com/experiments/sync.html

Lol, the purpose of the thread was to ask about the community's interest in P2P exchanges. It definitely has worked. That said, fucking nice thread Luke. Seriously its exactly what I was looking for.

This honestly doesn't make any sense at all. Why would anyone try to discredit ripple? This community isn't filled with low info retards. They would just be wasting an enormous amount of money.

The Twins have a long way to go before they are legitimate players. There is a storm coming in bitcoin land and it's going to be fairly harsh for wannabes.