Hi All,

I just wanted to thank those of you that contributed to BTRIC's launch fundraiser.  We did not reach our full 2018 budget objective but we are not going anywhere and will continue to work to build support for our organization and its value to the community.

We are not a traditional ICO/ITO and it has been difficult to explain that "donations" result in later "rewards", but we cannot present ourselves as an investment offering because we are not.  The businesses we launch, however, will be, and we are looking forward to building great businesses and doing other great things that benefit the industry as a whole.

BFD Token distributions will be made today or tomorrow.  We will also be in contact with each donor to determine if they want their name/business/URL featured on our founding donor page.

I hope those of you that are celebrating Easter today enjoy it, and for everyone to have a great day.

Best regards,
Ben

I strongly support this new methodology for computing various elements of rank.

I believe that an objective evaluation of the essence of a person, their character, is best performed through the review of a combination of factors such as those that you identified.  While a valid case could be made that the current Merit system is essentially a human-moderated form of judging and assessing overall "worth" of an individual to a community, such as through the relevance and quality of their posts (which on a forum is arguably the most important criterion), the separate computations make quick evaluation of a person and/or persona easy and convenient.

• Do not like impolite people? No problem, skip low politeness users.
• Value pretty pictures? Imagination is your metric.

I especially appreciate the graphical representation based on infinite iterations of Conway's Game of Life using the 10 MSBits of the rank elements.  Personally, I would have thought the highest byte would be sufficient but I am not an expert in the area of forum rank dynamics.

I think you've managed to balance the various factors and implement a robust ranking system.  I propose that this system is permitted to demonstrate its resilience and that perhaps adjustments should not be considered for some period of time to ensure that any "adoption issues" do not impact decisions to make adjustments seem necessary when in fact they are just artifacts from switching to this more resilient system.  Perhaps the issue should next be visited one year from now, on April 1, 2019.

In any event, great job theymos.  There will be little to object to or complain about now.

Best regards,
Ben

I agree.  It is difficult for some to imagine, but when you remove profit elements from an organization, the costs can be much less to operate.  My organizations entire budget for 2018 is $500,000, and that includes several staff members, all the overhead and infrastructure, and full implementation and launch of four separate businesses out of our incubator.  Some of the ICO/ITOs I've seen are spending money rather irresponsibly.

$75k to operate an orphanage for a year is amazing!  It's so amazing how much further money can go in some places in the world.  That is a really worthy cause and I hope to be able to support your organization in the future BTCforJoe!

Best regards,
Ben

Hi Pq3eq,

Be careful telling people about how much you have to invest or contribute.  In some ways, you're painting a target on your back and this can be dangerous.

I think it's great that you want to contribute to a worthy cause.  There are many great projects that can really make an impact in the world.  Consider looking at multiple projects, instead of just selecting a single one.

Some things that you could think about:

• What project(s) are doing things that you believe in?
• What project(s) are in need of more financial support?
• What project(s) either have great potential to improve the world OR have shown their ability to improve the world already?
  

If you invest or contribute to a project that you believe in its mission and purposes, you'll feel better about doing so.

Through your support of one or more projects in this way, you can be part of the change you seek, making the world better.

Best regards,
Ben

These are some interesting ideas in the social media space.  I believe that Twitter/Facebook/YouTube are doing themselves in with their extensive profiling and tracking.  That is playing out in the media right now.  Not sure where it will lead, potentially to some legal restrictions here in the U.S.  However, their business models are based on being able to highly target their ads, so any privacy restrictions will eat into their model.

I believe that decentralized social media is the answer, though there are some technical challenges that need to be met.  Please note, this does not mean that everything goes on a blockchain.  Though there is potential for some special-purpose blockchains in the mix.  My organization is working with some large content producers (YouTube people) and we've launched a project in our incubator program called Disperse.Network.  We want to get it to market sooner rather than later, so the decentralization will be incrementally implemented over time.  MVP will be less decentralized but will be launched later this year.  Decentralization isn't as crucial while a platform is undergoing constant evolution.  There's some great projects that provide a really good starting point to build upon.  The Disperse.Network platform is going to be more integrated than say the silo services Facebook/Twitter/YouTube/Instagram/Periscope.  The tighter integration between the various social media genres (microblogging, social network, video clips, images, livestreaming) will offer new ways to engage with the platforms.  It's an interesting project.

In any event, I believe you're on the right track with how you're looking at the evolution of social media.  It's going to take time, but the current platforms are sewing the seeds of their destruction.  Best of luck with it!

Best regards,
Ben

This is by no means an all-inclusive list either.  I'm really not a fan of these fork-coins that really change nothing but seemingly "create value from nothing" by forking the blockchain.  Oh, and don't forget the premine.  The only value they created is for themselves through immediate dumping.

It will be nice when we get past these obvious scams because legitimately done, ICO/ITOs can be great ways to launch or grow a business.  Altcoins also have their place, but as long as the scam:legit ratio remains so high, the bar is quite high in terms of the sophistication needed to avoid fraud.  (Though I have to be honest, some of these scams that people have gotten away with were pretty blatant.)

Best regards,
Ben

I'm not sure you're even on this thread anymore, but I wanted to also suggest an alternative which is to charter a federal credit union.  The good thing about credit unions is that they're owned by members (every account holder).  By having accountholders as members, it opens some interesting possibilities with respect to business account holders that need services such as fiat/crypto conversion.  It's a project my organization is going to pursue, starting with conducting a survey across the crypto community to determine if there is sufficient interest in people/businesses using an FCU if it existed.  This is the first step that NCUA typically looks for in charter applications, a favorable survey of the prospective field of membership.

Best regards,
Ben

I wanted to provide an update on this, was reminded today on reading a tweet about Hal on Twitter: https://twitter.com/ArminVanBitcoin/status/978988642923409408

I never heard back from the Bitcoin Foundation's email about the fund/address, so I'm going to reach out to the Board members directly. I also posted on the Twitter thread I linked above.  Hopefully, it will jog someone's memory.  I did just check the address and the coins appear to still be there.

Also did not hear back from the ALS foundation but as I understand it now, they were not direct recipients of BTC and probably didn't have the key, it's likely that someone at the Bitcoin Foundation converted to fiat and sent them the donation in that form.

I will keep you all posted if I learn anything more.  The link to a message from Hal in the tweet above is very powerful.  Read it if you are able, helps to keep things in perspective.

Best,
Ben

I agree from a pragmatic perspective, the technology is not enough to enable decentralization to take place on a mass scale.  I wish it were, but there are practical, real-world considerations that come into play.  There's politics and there are regulators.  It'd be great to say "well we can do it anyway no matter what they say", and strictly speaking, this is true.  But it then becomes essentially "black market activity", which will not enable massive adoption.  One of the best facets of the cryptocurrency "movement" is an escape from the control of traditional legacy finance, and it will be hard to do that without some industry-wide cooperative efforts.

I don't know financial regulation in every country though I am learning more than I expected.  But one good thing in the United States is that we can use the framework put in place by the large financial interests against them and in furtherance of our own values.  In the U.S., the financial services industry is one of the first (we have several others now) that were permitted to self-regulate.  Self-regulatory organizations (SROs) are organizations that have been delegated authority by the SEC, etc. to create and enforce their own rules.  A few months ago you'd see threads from me on here, Twitter, and Reddit talking about the need to promote best practices, voluntary standards to help demonstrate to regulators that some type of self-policing over the large frauds was getting organized.  However, the Gemini twins wrote a blog a few weeks back calling for the creation of an SRO for the virtual currency industry, see: https://gemini.com/blog/a-proposal-for-a-self-regulatory-organization-for-the-u-s-virtual-currency-industry/.

So while a few months ago I was talking about standards that would be best-practices to offer to help raise the quality bar and reduce fraud, now I believe that some SROs should be created.  The SEC has indicated support for this approach.  That blog proposes the creation of one organization called the Virtual Currency Association (I think).  I believe that there should be more than one SRO.  I know that when one SRO becomes dominant in the field they end up causing consolidation and ever-increasing standards that limit the pool just as you were saying.  It would be like if there was only Visa, no Mastercard.  Visa would be able to charge more, change rules, etc., at will because they'd have no alternative organization to keep them in check.  I've seen this with the merger that created FINRA, which is the big SRO that regulates legacy securities markets.  Multiple SROs can cooperate in many ways, but it is still best to have alternatives to keep from monopolistic behavior.

I agree that compliance with the regulatory requirements should be made easy, inclusive, and inexpensive.  I want innovation to keep moving the field forward, and over-regulation is one quick way to kill that.  So I believe that SROs offer an answer to those challenges: controlling costs, allowing flexibility and innovation, and also enhance the stature of the industry before lawmakers, regulators, and even through education to the broader public.

So I have been seriously considering taking my plans and work for the "BTRIC Institute" part of my organization and applying those ideas towards creation of an SRO that would get established to meet all the legal requirements for recognition by the SEC and establish a framework that can be used to keep more draconian regulations in check.  You must be able to reduce fraud but you do not need to make any potential token have to go through a whole SEC-1 process and create prospectus documents and all the garbage that traditional Initial Public Offerings require.  The ICO as a new asset class loses much of its appeal and utility if it becomes as complicated as taking a company public.  If you're going to spend that much money to raise capital, why not just list on NASDAQ or NYSE?  So I believe a relaxed framework can be developed that focuses on key areas where fraud can be identified, clear technical issues reviewed (security audits, exchange businesses have procedures in place to limit losses if they're hacked, etc.).

The other side of the coin (no pun intended), is that virtual currencies I really believe are currencies and need the legal and regulatory backing as a currency.  There are key differences between a currency like Bitcoin, a utility token, a security token, and unconventional cryptoassets like cryptokitties and other collectibles.  Also, blockchain insurance and other crypto assets all need slightly different frameworks, but easy to comply with regulations.  It is just like stocks, bonds, money, and contracts are all written on paper but are all different things.  I believe an SRO can help build the case for the differentiation.  The IRS should not always consider every crypto asset as a security asset, applying capital gains tax to each transaction, which they now do.  That's ridiculous.  An SRO that establishes a process to determine what type of cryptoasset different coins/tokens/kitties/etc. are will be in a good position to work with regulators to bring their rules in line with the realities.

I believe it's something that needs careful consideration in the immediate time-scale.  SROs should get up and running in time to engage in the G20 process that's producing draft regulatory frameworks.

Best regards,
Ben

While I understand how extrapolating causes projections such as this, I have to say I believe that this level of energy consumption to mine Bitcoin is very unlikely to actually occur.

I can think of a number of reasons that would slow the amount of energy used to mine Bitcoin.  For example, if Bitcoin were consuming that much energy, the cost of energy would increase because the supply would become limited for all other purposes.  At some point, mining then becomes unprofitable, so effort would decrease, increasing the supply of electricity, etc.  Supply and demand dynamics.  Also, mining effort is likely to diversify further into other cryptocurrencies.  ASIC's cause many (and certainly nearly all serious Bitcoin miners) from having an easy ability to mine another currency at scale, as they are not able to be repurposed to other algos, unlike GPU mining.

Other factors come into play, such as the next halving of the block reward as well as difficulty decreases if mining effort causes the average time between blocks to lengthen past the target.

I just don't see any way possible that by 2020 all of the world's energy (as is used today) will be devoted to Bitcoin.  We don't grow electrical generation capacity fast enough to keep up.  So something will give.  I don't see the electrical generation side giving unless Bitcoin miners are going to start building power plants.  I mean large, industrial-scale power plants.  (For all I know they already have done this somewhere.)

I guess we shall see.  Certainly, energy consumption of mining is a concern to the extent that it provides a negative talking point about cryptocurrency.  It is also a legitimate concern with respect to the use of energy.  However, Proof of Work is a useful concept to slow the rate of coin emission.  I see coins that implement "proof of useful work", distributed computing work units, as a worthy way to mitigate this problem to some extent.  However, at this point at least, I would never recommend that this is implemented in Bitcoin.  The type of distributed computing work units are too diverse and more work should be done in this area (other technical and practical problems to confront and resolve) before it would ever be something I'd advocate for in a currency as important as Bitcoin.  This is an area that interests me and that I hope to spend some R&D effort on.

Best regards,
Ben

Edited to add: Currently, the incentives to mine Bitcoin cause a feedback loop where more mining effort is added to the network (energy usage increases), difficulty increases (due to more effort finding blocks faster).  Over the long term, this feedback loop will confront the realities of global energy supply being limited and/or cost of energy being priced out of profitability.  So this is a short-term phenomenon in my view.  If it became necessary, there are ways that software changes could change the economic balance, such as artificial difficulty increases or other changes to how difficulty was calculated, adjustment of the 10 minute/block target, etc.  I don't think anyone involved with Bitcoin wants it to consume all of the planet's energy.  And as I stated before, even if they did want that, I don't think the world would let that happen.

Bitcoin is unique among all cryptocurrency.  Bitcoin is the true revolution, everything else is derivative.  Even Bitcoin has precursors in much of the technology, but Satoshi uniquely put the pieces together and distributed the first versions of Bitcoin and launched the blockchain, mining when Bitcoin was worthless and encouraging others to join and really to experiment, test, build, explore what we now know as a new paradigm.  Satoshi saw what could be and created it.  And when no one else saw his vision, he mined it and continued, because he believed in it.

Then following Satoshi were some of the other cypherpunks, some of which you see as people with low user ids on this forum.  They believed in the power of Bitcoin, and I have to admit that when I first looked at the technology in late 2011/early 2012 I thought it was pretty impressive and a great idea.  However, I didn't realize just how revolutionary it was, probably because of my own experience in seeing how innovative ideas that are dangerous to the status quo are too often stifled.  I believed the power of "the powers that be" would kill Bitcoin were it ever to come close to threatening their businesses.  Banking, after all, is the biggest of the big, the most deeply entrenched of all of the structures of control that have shaped civilization.  You think governments are bad?  Ok, bad example, they are.  But banks are so much worse.  The control wielded by those that control the money is immense, even governments are subservient to those powers.  But the power of the many is greater than the power of the few, and the ability to exchange information of all types (including Bitcoin blocks, but also including tweets, YouTube videos, and this very post) with all people, means that the many will defeat the few.

Bitcoin is a great example of what can emerge when people work toward a shared goal and strongly believe in something.  Bitcoin has value because we value it.  I know that sounds cliche, but I believe that to be the case for anything of value.  If nobody wanted to buy the Hope Diamond, it would be worth nothing.  In May of 2010 was the first known Bitcoin purchase of a real-world item, the infamous Bitcoin pizza (actually the wiki is telling me two pizzas) for 10,000 BTC.  At that time, these pizzas had more value to laszlo than the BTC, or at least he wanted pizza more and felt that 10,000 BTC was a fair trade (based on the price of the pizza, each BTC was worth $0.0041 at that time).  From that point forward, Bitcoin proved that it can be used as a form of money.  As more people got involved in mining it, and more people studied the economic model around Bitcoin (~21M BTC, 50 BTC block reward, halving, etc.), it began to establish value through the same supply and demand dynamics, as well as through the store of value properties that underlie a currency.

No one (at least known to the public) knows how many BTC Satoshi mined, though I do believe some of the estimates are based on sound reasoning.  I hope he is happy with his creation and his great contribution to humanity.  In the years and decades ahead, the creation of Bitcoin and its blockchain will be recognized as a turning point in human history.  I also hope that he has earned enough money from addresses that maybe we don't know about to live comfortably.

I believe that as long as Bitcoin remains true to its purpose and the people involved with it believe in its power, that it will never cease to be relevant.  It will live in monetary history in perpetuity, like gold.  The dedicated people who maintain Bitcoin are really contributing to something far greater, the reshaping of society around principles of decentralization and the removal of power from the few, giving it to the many.  If Bitcoin were to "fail", it could cast doubt on this overarching aim.  But so long as the people that maintain Bitcoin continue to do so with integrity, and that the software and the blockchain and protocols it implements are maintained to keep up with the pace of change, Bitcoin will remain the true gold standard.  I believe that they will.

Best regards,
Ben

There is some evidence that this type of depraved behavior has been going on for a long time.  Not just child abuse but large child trafficking rings, probably controlled by very powerful interests.  Not sure that the governments in all cases are directly involved, but it wouldn't surprise me.  They certainly look the other way.  If you look at global trends, you can see that when a decrease happens in one country / part of the world, there's an increase in another part of the world, so it's likely these trafficking organizations operate on a global scale, shifting their efforts as one or another country has a crackdown.

I think the world being more connected through technology and the internet has both good and bad aspects.  Like any tool, the internet can be used for good or evil.  It's used for both.  I do believe that over the long run, that good will overrule evil because that is the nature of humanity.  While we are pretty primitive in many ways, at our core most of us, as individuals, are good people and that aggregation will overcome.  I believe that Bitcoin and blockchain technology, along with other modern technologies, make it easier for this to come about.

It's really the gatekeeper situation that I've talked about before, gatekeepers control the world.  Decentralization removes gatekeepers, allowing the world to control itself.  Each person can be more sovereign, each country can have more control over their own priorities.  Some believe that decentralization will lead to the end of governments, and maybe in some cases that is true.  But I don't think the government, in general, is bad, just that the power has been badly abused.  There are some functions that are best performed by a group of people that agree on a set of priorities.  This is "government".  To the extent that government serves as gatekeepers, that function will be greatly reduced or removed, but some form of order over chaos is, in my view, a positive thing in some specific areas.

The fact that we can discuss this topic, a group of people that don't know each other, meeting in a virtual space on the Internet, shows the power of this technology to help us in discussing problems and even finding solutions to them.  Which hopefully leads to less evil in the world, such as these child trafficking operations.

Best regards,
Ben

I agree with your post in full.  I posted the news entry because I saw that it has been recently posted again, but I remember reading in the past about data of various types being embedded in the blockchain.  I certainly didn't intend on creating any FUD, I just wanted to know from a technical perspective what would be involved in mitigation.

I agree that if there's ever a real need to mitigate against this, that selective pruning probably be the best approach to take.  Frankly, it would be ridiculous to have to do that but I try to look at things from the perspective of devil's advocate in order to have ready answers if questions are ever raised.

I appreciate your analogy and agree that extracting a useful image from the blockchain would require work/code.  Any sufficiently long string of text could be arranged in many ways to create all sorts of "bad" data.

I don't think this is a problem worth worrying about.

Best regards,
Ben

I agree.  I read this article yesterday, granted it's from a website with a primary audience of women in business (which I am not):

Data Shows Women Won’t Invest In Crypto, So Try It Anyway
http://swaay.com/data-shows-women-wont-invest-in-crypto-so-try-it-anyway/

Though this article was written to women, my comments are not specific to women.  People are confused about cryptocurrency.  They don't understand it and the jargon and relative complexity of using it can overwhelm them.  These are the same people that 25 years ago couldn't send email, 20 years ago had trouble navigating the web, and 10 years ago were overwhelmed by smartphones.  They're doing all of those things now with relative ease.

Because cryptocurrency is in that early stage, and it has to some extent the reputation of being used for nefarious purposes (though you and I know that's a distortion), they really need to be educated on cryptocurrency and its positive benefits, on blockchain and its positive benefits, how they are interrelated, and how blockchain has potential in some other applications.  And in my view, the overall benefits from decentralization away from data silos and gatekeepers, starting with the banks, easily the most entrenched of the control structures over society, and going down the line.

First impressions are sometimes hard to overcome, so to the extent that governments paint a bad impression, it can be more difficult to get users to adopt without a "killer app".  We have plenty of killer apps that are getting there as far as a usability and scalability standpoint and that will increase as we continue to promote decentralization in all of the places it makes sense.

I am often asked by non-technical people about crypto, blockchain, and decentralization and I try very hard to avoid overly technical explanations.  Only if I am asked a question that is of a technical nature do I go there.  I don't want to scare anyone away with jargon overload.  There are some good videos that provide very basic overviews of how Bitcoin works and its benefits.  I believe these should be translated into many languages because the movement we are undertaking is global and needs to reach the widest audience possible.

There also need to be videos that are more focused on certain target audiences, such as law and policymakers, children, business owners, etc.  Well written and produced videos have a way of explaining concepts much better than pages of text when you're talking about fundamental knowledge level materials.  A small team of crypto evangelists, a crypto "army", if you will, armed with the right knowledge and educational materials, working around the world can form positive impressions to many people in a very efficient manner.

Best regards,
Ben

I agree.  The government only exists to the extent that we allow it.  Much of what we've "allowed" is due to complacency more than anything else.  Complacency has a way of snapping back periodically, and I think we're at the beginning of one of those periods.  Cryptocurrency, and more generally, decentralization, are and will continue to benefit from being the right technology at the right time in history.

Governments know they cannot abolish cryptocurrency.  From both technical and practical perspectives, its impossible.  Governments also know that countries that attempt to regulate crypto assets too rigidly do so at their own peril and to their detriment.  If I wanted to form a business in most other countries, I could do it right now, more or less, without leaving my keyboard.  It is in the governments' best interests to not excessively regulate crypto assets.  Otherwise, regulatory arbitrage will favor the more reasonable governments, and disadvantage the less reasonable ones.

Eventually, it is my hope that governments see cryptocurrency as a solution for their benefit, as well.  They too have been enslaved by large banks for centuries, they too can benefit from the exchange of value, unfettered by intermediary banks.  Governments and banks sometimes seem to have a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship, but from my perspective, it's really more of a codependent relationship.

Best regards,
Ben

Excerpt:

G20 watchdog focuses on rules review, holds fire on cryptocurrencies
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-g20-regulations-carney/g20-watchdog-focuses-on-rules-review-holds-fire-on-cryptocurrencies-idUSKBN1GU0SF

Satoshi is whoever or whatever you want them to be.

Perhaps Satoshi lurks among us in these very forums?  Maybe even posting under a different name?  Perhaps I am Satoshi?  Perhaps you are Satoshi, trying to draw attention away from yourself?

Regardless of who or what Satoshi is, their unique ability to combine several ideas that were out there but not pulled together and create Bitcoin was more than merely innovative, it was revolutionary.

If Satoshi ever reveals themselves to the world, I hope to be able to shake their hand.  If they never do, I'm okay with that too.

The creation of Bitcoin will be marked as a turning point in world history, alongside the printing press, lightbulb, Internet, and automobiles.  Bitcoin marks the creation of a new paradigm.

My personal view is that Satoshi is a person, a single person, probably male.  Probably not part of the intelligence community, or if they are, Bitcoin was probably not something created by/for their use (though it may be being used by them now).  More like a hobby project.  But I haven't spent oodles of time trying to figure out Satoshi's identity.  They chose to go dark for a reason, I respect that.

Thank you, Satoshi, for your great contribution to humanity!

Best regards,
Ben

There are many examples of ERC20 tokens.  If you know what you're doing, I recommend that you use Zeppelin/Truffle.  Here's a link to their GitHub repo: https://github.com/OpenZeppelin/zeppelin-solidity

If you are looking for someone to do it for you, there is a high school senior that is offering to make tokens for $20.  She is President of her cryptocurrency club at her school, and she's raising funds towards that.  Of course, not sure I'd use her token for something vitally important, but I haven't looked at any of her code, so maybe she's spot on.

Here's a link to her thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=3036118.0

Here's a link to my ERC20 (Zeppelin/Truffle-based) handiwork on Etherscan, feel free to copy/paste it.  In addition to standard ERC20 functionality, it also implements revert() to return any ETH accidentally sent to the contract address as well as transferAnyERC20Token() so that the contract owner can manually do the same for accidentally sent tokens.  It's MIT licensed, so all yours: https://etherscan.io/address/0x117a4db782f29598d9627a57be5ed331f6aa446c#code

Good luck with your token!

Best regards,
Ben

My organization accepts many currencies through CoinPayments.net for our ITO.  The most popular would be BTC and ETH of course.  I'd also not forget about LTC.

I also accept BCH because my organization is tax-deductible, so people that want to get rid of their tax liability on the forked coins (i.e. they have capital gain on their full value) could contribute to BTRIC through those.  I'd be open to accepting other coins that have a way for me to convert to BTC.

Some people participating in ICOs may have coins of a particular type that you may not have thought of, so consider making an email available if someone wants to participate using a coin that you didn't anticipate.  A little manual work could be worth it for a sizable investment.

I recommend looking at CoinPayments.net, there are other services though.  If I was limited to just the major coins, I might have used a different service.

Best regards,
Ben

Thank you for merit, actmyname.

I am now looking to pay it forward and will look at some of the people that posted here.

Best regards,
Ben