One line from that article that really resonated with me was the part where they talked about how merchants are happy to accept Bitcoin because it cuts down on their costs but that customers are not too excited about paying in Bitcoin. Here's the direct quote that expresses a huge reason why I don't pay for much with Bitcoin:

Furthermore, the commission for purchasing Bitcoin (or the spread, in the context of speculation) ranges from five to ten percent – even more than what merchants pay for their credit card support. Why would consumers ever agree to take on this expense if merchants are only too happy to bear such transaction costs today?

Paying for something in Bitcoin makes sense if you happen to have Bitcoin sitting around. But it doesn't make sense to trade fiat for Bitcoin just to pay for something with Bitcoin that you could just as easily pay for with fiat--and he's absolutely right about the credit card costs not being the customer's problem, at least not in a way the customer can easily see. The only reason someone might trade fiat into Bitcoin to pay for something with Bitcoin is if that "something" cannot be bought with fiat. When you think about "somethings" that can't be bought with fiat, the first thing that comes to mind are illegal "somethings." Perhaps that is why such a disproportionate amount of Bitcoin commerce is of the illegal variety. But that would change if it actually saved the customers money to pay with Bitcoin (without it being a complicated process). Since DNotes is a much more stable currency than Bitcoin, it's more realistic to expect that at some point down the road customers may even prefer to pay in DNotes.

Although I certainly have not read every single mainstream media story about Bitcoin, based on the ones I have read, I get the impression the MSM really doesn't understand Bitcoin. I suspect it's because the writers haven't dug into it deeply enough, or even tried it out much. I've at times read some media coverage about Bitcoin, and compared it to my own experience with Bitcoin and was left scratching my head and wondering: "Are they even talking about the same Bitcoin I know about?"

I've also noticed that even with "inside" media that specifically covers Bitcoin-related news, there's a lot of really relevant Bitcoin news that's just plain lacking, while some of what those outlets get excited about are real yawners. Case in point: About three weeks ago, Poloniex added margin trading to its platform, and with it the ability for users to lend out their funds to the margin traders at very decent interest rates. In the fiat world, only brokerages lend out funds to margin traders and they get all the interest. With peer to peer lending and the ability to loan out amounts as small as 0.001 BTC (which I should mention can be collected from faucets within a week's time), people with very few funds (aka poor people) now have access to profitable financial opportunities that until very recently were only available to well established financial institutions (aka people who are already rich). Surprisingly, I have not seen one news story about this development anywhere.

OK, I see what you're saying. I didn't notice previous long absences because, well, I wasn't around either, except I always dealt with PMs related to my admin duties.

I'm not sure that there's much of anything to decide. Devcoins are fairly easy to earn; there's nothing lost to continue to earn them like that. But, to heavily invest a lot of time or resources into them may not be such a good choice right now.

I see that Devcoin has a unique proposition--to reward open source development--and in the beginning went about it in a very ingenious way (and the whole receiver lines thing is really ingenious). But it suffers from being among the first. There's a lot about it that's clunky and hard to work with, and there's way too much supply that's constantly growing at a rate of 180,000,000 a month with very little to absorb it. Like with a lot of coins, supply has outpaced fruitful development of any kind of meaningful economy that could create demand. Lots of alts suffer from this issue but it's especially a big deal with Devcoin because of the constant and infinite increase in supply by 180M each and every months. It's possible Devcoin could make a comeback. But I suspect it won't, simply because since Devcoin began technology has developed to the point where there are lots of better ways to accomplish Devcoin's mission, but Devcoin's already hard coded. It's the pioneer problem. They say, you know how you can tell the pioneers? They're the ones with all the arrows sticking into their back. Devcoin was a pioneer, and a darned good one too. And it will continue to help people out, especially writers. But... I think it has been and will continue to be, outcompeted by better newer altcoins. It doesn't help when the original developer burns out and the new dev may not have quite the same vision or drive. That's another issue lots of altcoins have... being too dependent on one person with no clear way to cross train or pass the torch. That dev invariably burns out and disappears (gradually at first), and then the coin's value plummets and nothing further happens, even when a new dev supposedly steps up. UTB stuck it out for a very long time, but I suppose he's had enough. He did delegate a lot of stuff, but it seems not quite enough. Having one person responsible for too much isn't sustainable in the long term.

So HunterBunter is now in charge?

So you're assuming that because we haven't heard from UTB in a week that he's no longer controlling the project? Or is there something else going on? That strikes me as similar to the assumption that was made that because I (and some others) wasn't checking this thread regularly and I missed an announcement about filling out a form with our admin duties, that I had disappeared and wasn't attending to my duties any longer.

I probably am missing key information, but not hearing from someone in a week doesn't in and of itself strike me as a huge issue. If that week drags into several weeks or months, then yes, it's a concern.

But I get the feeling there are other things going on, and that's probably what I'm missing.

There's a tough balance to be struck between security and convenience. When it comes to cryptocoins, the most secure option is for everyone to have their own PC wallets (or Trezor) protected by an unbreakable private key and behind a superb firewall. I heard of one person who kept a wallet like that and only took down the firewall once a week to check his balance. Even better, each individual wallet holder would take the time and effort to learn how to make a paper wallet and keep funds in cold storage. He or she would know how to encrypt flash drives and keep the wallets there so no one could ever touch them. He'd also know to keep those duplicated and stored in multiple locations that only he knows about. And it goes on...

The reality is that very few people are going to take these measures because while secure, they are inconvenient. When it comes to everyday use, we'd rather go with "good enough" in terms of security in favor of ease of use and convenience. DNotes' goal is for mass adoption of its currency, mainly, to be adopted by people who do not have any experience with Bitcoin to date. These people will use DNotes if they see a benefit to it, but they are not going to take the time to figure out PC wallets, paper wallets, encrypted wallets, or anything like that. Those things are entry barriers. Even without dealing with a private key, I personally gave up on my PC Bitcoin wallet months ago because it takes so darned long to update the block chain--it's too much of a burden on me (not to mention my patience) as well as my computer's resources. The reason I can keep going with Bitcoin is thanks to online wallets like Coinbase and trade exchange built in wallets. Yes, I'm trusting a third party to keep my funds safe, but it's easier than dealing with the entire block chain.

The DNotes team understands this and has come up with a system which is very good from a security perspective, but also very easy and convenient to use. This lowers the adoption barrier as anyone with some Internet experience can find their way around a DNotes Vault account. There's a much smaller pool of people who are willing to deal with all the hassle of downloading and encrypting QT wallets and also keeping up with their updates.

It does make sense for any cryptocoin at this point to cater to both types of adopters. However, if you can't please everyone, the reality is your larger pool of potential users comes from the folks who want convenience and ease of use and are fine with "good enough" in terms of security. It's that larger pool that DNotes is after.

I got a message from him May 27 asking me to upload round 47 receiver files to my website. What exactly do you mean by "his absence" and being unsure what we can do without him?

Oh, I get that, and it's disappointing. You're correct about this not being something to ignore. You're also correct about not really being able to access the files and clean things up.

What do you recommend as a next step?

It sounds like you were making some reasonable assumptions. Based on your post I would say that I think some things with how the script is handled, including but not limited to the human factor, got out of whack. I'm guessing that with the DVC price being depressed for so long, doing all the work to keep things neat and clean on the coding end maybe wasn't quite as high a priority as it should have been. Maybe some short cuts were taken, some corners cut to save time. I'm not directly accusing anyone, just presenting a likely scenario. I don't get the impression that there was any malice or desire to cheat anyone involved. I do think any time saved over the past few months will be lost several times over in cleaning things up. I hope that cleanup does get done.

Thanks. Now I know I can dump on C-Cex. I thought this coin was interesting and had potential but a silent dev team and only 19 pages on the main thread are not too reassuring, especially when I'm familiar with coins that are actually solid and going places.

Edit: Um, what exchange did you say you got your 100Kth coin from? I can't find CETI listed on C-Cex. What exchange still lists it? I want to unload mine. Thanks.

Did you mean Cryptopia? I'm going to try to sell there, though the highest buy order is for 8 satoshis. Bummer that I didn't get on this earlier. I put in a sell at 100 sat. Someone from the dev team, please give me some good reasons to keep it.

Isn't Unthinkingbit still in charge?

I haven't been tracking my payments too well to notice if I've been missing any, other than the last round, because my earnings were zero and that's hard to miss. It looks like they got put back into round 47, though.

The part that bugs me, though, is that when I got taken off earnings for my jobs (because I failed to reply to the forum post a month ago), I never got a PM about it. I did get other admin related PMs, though, like please upload the latest receiver file. So I kept doing my duties not realizing that because I didn't reply to a forum post I was about to be able to keep the job but not the pay LOL. In the future, when there's an important change or decision affecting an admin, it's a good courtesy to message us specifically so we are alerted. If you want to add regular forum participation as part of the job description, then that's fine, but since that's not a requirement currently (and was not when we signed on) we should all get PM'd about this change and given a chance to decide to make sure we check in as often as needed to meet the new criteria or quit. I also believe that regardless of what goes on in the other forums, the major information and updates should continue to be posted to this BCT thread. That's how it works with other coins. There are only so many forums one can actively participate in and still remain sane It's basically BCT and one or two others. So major information and updates need to be posted here.

Where would you dump? What exchange?

I suppose I was thinking of the time I'd put into the game as the "wager." A true faucet is where you know that you will be able to claim some kind of earning and you know up front what the parameters are. My concern is about putting in lots of time into the game and never winning a prize, meaning essentially never being able to get any Bitcoin out of it. In the top post I see that each round will be won by 300 people, with the top ten in each tier winning the most. Three hundred prize winners seems like a lot now, but what happens if the game gets popular enough to attract 50,000 active players? What are the odds then of being in the top 300, or in the top thirty?

Of all the games I know about (and I am not familiar with the Robofaucet), my favorite one is Farm Satoshi (except for the fact that you NEED referrals to advance). There seems to be a good balance between expenses and gains, you can calculate ahead of time exactly how much profit you'll make for each animal you raise, and it's very easy to cash out--you have two options, Xapo or Faucetbox. There's no conversion needed because satoshis are the in-game currency, but you can cash out any time. You also have plenty of incentive to reinvest in the game. It appears that the higher you level up the greater the earnings potential.

When version 2.0 comes out, as long as earnings opportunities are clearly spelled out people like me can decide whether or not it's worth our time. I just wouldn't call it a faucet game anymore if the only serious "earnings" come from prizes. In that case it would be a game with a cash purse, kind of like those poker tournaments.

On a different note, if mining upgrades such as workers or buildings are going to be temporary (and that does make sense) then I think they should all be the same price no matter how many you buy... i.e., a worker would always be hired for 1,000 gold, not the way you have it now where the first worker is 600, the second worker is 1800... and the fifth worker is 9,600.

I'm not much of a gamer--for me my top priority is predictable Bitcoin earnings. A fun gaming experience definitely makes it more fun, but is still secondary to the predictable earnings priority. I'm enjoying the game now, but if the new version destroys the predictable earnings component, then I will very likely lose interest no matter how good the gaming side of it may be. I realize, though, that not everyone has the same priorities, and it may be that you're gearing version 2.0 to a different audience with priorities that are more about the gaming experience and not so much about the earnings.

Smokey, you "simple farmers" have my utmost respect

Regarding the light speed feature of digital currency, one thing I actually like about DNotes is that it's moving forward at a good pace, but not frantic. It's noticeably slower than light speed, actually. This means that even a frazzled mom with kids at home and a part time job can keep up

I've been in the Bitcoin community for over two years and I still don't use my Bitcoin to buy ordinary things. The main reason is that I'm still in trying to grow my Bitcoin stash mode. If I could go back in time knowing everything I know now and not make a lot of the mistakes I made it's possible I'd be sitting on a pretty nice stash of Bitcoin at the moment. Then I'd have a solid pool to use for spending money. It's not for lack of trying to grow my stash. But a few of the methods I tried turned out to be scams, hacked, or plain unsustainable. In all cases, the result was losing rather than growing Bitcoins. This means that today when I do get Bitcoin, I'm keeping it as Bitcoin and either using it to buy a different coin, or trying to earn some interest on it. My hope is that some day I will have a nice abundant stash of Bitcoin and be able to spend it. For now, though, I'm not going to spend it on ordinary stuff because it's easier to spend fiat. I'm certainly not going to convert my fiat into Bitcoin just so I can buy something with Bitcoin instead of fiat. Anytime you have to make an exchange, that introduces cost and risk.

I now understand better one aspect of the DNotes strategy, which is to spend the first couple years focusing on encouraging and helping people to obtain DNotes, and then save them for some time a few years down the road. Since DNotes are cheap these days it's easy to buy them and that's not counting what the DNotes team gives away for free. A couple years down the road, if the DNotes I bought today have appreciated substantially in value, and I'm sitting on a nice stash of them, then when retailers start accepting DNotes, then I will be a lot more inclined to spend mine. I don't know for sure, but I believe the majority of the people who are regularly spending Bitcoin at retail stores are those who either heavily mined or bought back when Bitcoin was worth less than a dollar, and now get to spend it at over 200 times its initial value. That's what I'm hoping will happen to my DNotes stash. Buy them at two or three cents today; spend them at two or three dollars in a few years.

Given that, I think the best strategy for DNotes is to try to turn as many people as possible into early adopters, encourage them to acquire DNotes while the price is low, then save them, and during that time, work very hard to build value and more value into it. If successful, in a few years you'll have all kinds of people buying and selling with it.

It helps also to do what is possible to minimize the scam sites using DNotes. Those and the outright illegal ones.

Speaking at NASDAQ events doesn't hurt either...

Hey, DNotes people, You guys should really do all that.

Oh, never mind. You've been doing this since day one

I was actually thinking it would be cool to make the game modular. So maybe it starts out as a farming game, but over time devs could add other scenarios, such as owning your own restaurant or running a pet shop, and the game player, as a single character, can play whichever scenario he wants, or switch from one to the other. I provided more details about what's in my brain about it in this article called The perfect quest based learning game and there's been some further discussion over at CryptoMoms.

Yes, making it profitable for the developers would be very important

I would recommend trying out Farm Satoshi as a very basic and simple starting point. At this time, as far as I know, it's the most sophisticated online game where you can earn Bitcoin. It can definitely be improved but it's actually pretty good. At the very least it's the most fun faucet ever.

I could help with this. PM me with details.

Could this include very large employers such as Wal-Mart? I know people who work there who might be interested.

It's strangely addicting... Having to "actively mine" every five minutes is a little too intense. I'd prefer that some aspect of it was automated--maybe there's some other way to motivate people to keep coming back to the site to see the ads?

Also, I was reading the top post, where you were saying how the new version won't allow for direct conversion of game gold into BTC, but instead will pool funds for prizes. I would prefer you kept the direct conversion feature. It's the ability to earn actual Bitcoin which is a huge draw to me in games like this one. If I can directly convert my game earnings into Bitcoin, it's earning. If I have to win a prize in order to get Bitcoin out of the game, it's gambling. High odds of winning don't change that.

Please keep it as a Bitcoin earning game.

I discovered and started playing this game this morning. It's kind of fun. Posting here mainly so I can follow the thread.