★★ DigiByte ★★ [DGB] to take on Bitcoin in the coming years!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here is the interview in full:

DigiByte is making a name for itself, at a very rapid pace. Alongside NobleCoin, it remains the first contender of 2014. We here at Follow the Coin are huge fans of DGB, so we were glad when we were given the opportunity to speak to BitcoinTate about the new cryptocurrency.

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BRENDON LINDSEY: You list your development team on the official DGB site. Can you give us a little info about what it is you all do?

BITCOINTATE: BitcoinTate- Professional Web Developer who works from home & has been conducting most of the day to day DigiByte operations since launch.

The Finchster – Expert Programmer, & Independent Programming Consultant. Brilliant guy.

EDOG – Attorney at Law, hopefully keeps us out of trouble.

Giggler – Professional IT & Network Support, Alt-Coin enthusiast.

SifuGT – Sr. Project/Training Manager with over twenty years experience in a world renowned organization. He is our quality assurance guy.

What made you decide it was time to start your own coin?

All the meme, joke, and scam coins were getting old. We wanted to create something with real value & potential that could be traded for goods and services. When the November price run up occurred, we decided it was time to get the project in gear. We wanted to give people a coin that was fair, had a great name, and had been well thought out.

How happy are you with how the launch went? Did it go as you planned? Better? Worse? How did the pre-announcement affect the launch?

Launch was very stressful, but overall it went relatively smoothly and we are pleased. We had a slight delay getting the source uploaded to GitHub and we had one pool attacking another, but we got through it okay.

Pre-announcing a coin is a double-edged sword. If you do announce ahead of time, it gives people plenty of time to rip your coin apart (which is noted in the first couple thread pages, which we refuse to delete as it is a part of history). If you do not announce a coin at least 2-3 days ahead of time, you are accused of an instamine and not being fair. More importantly, the coin is much more vulnerable to attack. We delivered at the exact minute promised, download server of course was slammed, but it held up.

Recently, all new launches have gone through a post-honeymoon phase where, a week after launch, things quiet down with the developers, and early miners start jumping ship for the “Next Big Thing”. What plans do you have to keep interest for new adapters going?

We plan to keep the community involved and excited about DigiByte.

We have an Android wallet almost completed, thanks to some awesome community assistance. This has allowed us to bump up our launch time frame for new features like the Android wallet with a QR Code Reader. This will help more people use the coin and encourage adoption by several new merchants. We believe making DigiByte easy to use and accessible on a smart phone are huge steps toward mainstream adoption of DigiByte.

We plan to use the DigiMan to teach the average consumer how to download a wallet, send & receive transactions, and much more. We want to use him to relate to the average person on the street in a simple & easy to understand manner.

We have also gotten a lot of interest from merchants. Just three days after launch, you can now use DigiByte to buy web design & development services in Europe and the United States, electronic cigarettes in Australia, rent a hotel room in Portugal, buy clothing in the United Kingdom, and potentially even buy alligator meat from Florida.

One thing I keep seeing everywhere on your site and in your forum topics is that this is a “professional” cryptocurrency. What, in your opinion, is the difference between a currency that’s professional, and one that isn’t?

First of all, the name. Do you picture your grandmother walking into a store one day and purchasing something with her BBQcoin or HoboNickels? We don’t. Second of all, an unprofessional currency is one that has been launched sloppily, lacks any descriptive information of the coin, and does not have an engaged development team.

Finally, the worst thing is when you download a new wallet and they didn’t even bother changing the text in the wallet from the previous coin. We spent almost two weeks getting the code right in order to compile it the first time. Then we recompiled it several more times after making changes. We even re-hashed the genesis block twice to make some improvements over the first.

We wanted to make a coin that would actually be used by merchants. There is huge support for alt’s right now from the “real world.” People are starving to support the next big thing with real world professional potential. We feel we hit the market at the right time.

I know you planned the launch out well ahead of time. How far ahead has the development team planned in terms of new features, merchant adoption, exchanges, etc.? Is there a roadmap in place, or is it more of a reactionary plan based on what happens from here on out?

There is a long-term plan. We see the potential for DigiByte to be a billion dollar coin in a year or so. We have laid out our goals and steps that must be achieved to get there.

Some of them include establishing a foundation, getting DigiByte tied directly to the USD, and getting as many merchants as possible to use DigiByte. We do, however, listen to the users and are flexible to changes that must occur. It definitely is not an exact science.

One thing that surprised us was that people actually started complaining that we were giving away too many coins. We realized they had a valid point, and that in order to build value in the coin we needed to stop. So now bounties are given for development of the coin only. We feel we have been very generous and are down now to almost a .25% premine.

Your site mentions the DigiByte Foundation is coming soon. What is the goal for the Foundation?

First, it is to legally protect the coin & developers. Second, it is to ensure a bright, long-term future for DigiByte. We are looking to the Bitcoin Foundation as an example of how to do this but this entire process is not well known as many of the governing laws are vague or have not yet been written. Setting up a foundation for a cryptocurrency is like riding through the wild, wild, west on a three legged pony.

If users want to get involved with helping the DigiByte project or Foundation, how can they do so? Who should they get in touch with? And is there any particular set of skills you’re currently hunting for?

Message the DigiByte account on BitcoinTalk. We have had over fifty people contribute to the coin already in a variety of ways. There are some very bright, talented community members that have started supporting DigiByte. The initial community has been fantastic and we would like to thank each and everyone one of them for their support! We are open to even more ideas and invite more people to join the team with any skill they feel they can contribute with. Our goal is to make Digibyte a coin that people can get behind and make their own.

When we spoke with the Worldcoin founders, they mentioned that even their grandparents were buying into WDC as an investment. How many of your grandmas currently own DGB?

One of them received her first Bitcoins last April and is now receiving her first DigiBytes. She is a great test subject. She says she could see herself spending DigiBytes as she understands what a megabyte & a gigabyte is. She gets the logic of storing money as DigiBytes. The idea has really clicked with ordinary folks that we have pitched the idea too.

Lastly, is there anything you want to say to users who might be on the fence about setting their miners to a DGB pool to try to sway them?

We are in this for the long haul. We believe Bitcoin would be perfect if three things were changed. The number of coins, speed of transactions and that Scrypt algorithm was included instead of 256.

We wanted to design a currency that would ideally be traded at $1-$10 and would allow a user to walk into Starbucks and purchase some coffee with their smart phone in a few seconds. DigiByte will allow for that to happen. The ratio of Bitcoins to DigiBytes is 1 to 1000. Very easy to calculate.

The average person does not really understand or like buying small ticket items with Bitcoins. Sending .001 BTC to a cashier for some groceries is a bit confusing to the average joe on the street. Spending 20 DigiBytes is much more easily understood. In the end, no one likes looking in their wallet and seeing they own only 0.001 BTC. 1,000 DGB is much more appealing. You store data in kilobytes & megabytes, why not buy goods and services with DigiBytes?

We’d like to thank BitcoinTate for taking the time to talk with us about DigiByte. If you’re interested in DigiByte, you can learn more by visiting the official DigiByte website, or by keeping up with the official DigiByte topic on BitcoinTalk.