We are happy to answer any questions regarding this
Hey! Exciting stuff. Glad there is a group of people trying to take FTC to the next level.
Glad you like it. I also very much appreciate your scepticism - there are so many scams in crypto it's good to be very cautious in general.
The medium article is poorly written. Basically every sentence could use some form of copy-editing/rewriting. An example: "A detailed roadmap will follow in due course, though we can reveal for now that key focus areas are libbitcoin and wallets in addition to developing Feathercoin Core further." could be written as, "The FDF is excited to pave the way for more open-source Feathercoin development. We are ecstatic to announce that a multipurpose Feathercoin library in the style of libbitcoin is currently being developed. We are also in advanced discussions for the development roadmap, which can be found: [ here is where you would link the feathercoin forum post discussing the roadmap ]."
Every single sentence could use this sort of sprucing up. Notice that not a single media outlet picked up the story of the FDF? That's because it wasn't written excitingly. It is actually pretty good news, but the market responded by dropping 1000 satoshi. I'd say 1/10 on execution. Why wasn't a marketing team consulted on this?
While we are very excited about the very existence of the foundation, its purpose is not to be a marketing machine for Feathercoin. The focus on libbitcoin and wallets results from our perception that these areas deserve our attention and we also reached out to the wider community in the Feathercoin forum and invited everyone to suggest other areas we should focus on:
https://forum.feathercoin.com/topic/9620/ann-feathercoin-development-foundation-rise-of-the-phoenix/5Keep in mind that Feathercoin is and will remain an open source project, there is no central planning authority: every developer and contributor works on what is important to him/her. Having said this, the FDF is not developing a ‘multipurpose Feathercoin library in the style of libbitcoin’ but working with the developer of libbitcoin on that very same library to allow the same binary that runs Bitcoin to also run Feathercoin. These upstream changes will create value that go beyond Feathercoin alone and we’re thrilled to be a part of this!
While you are correct, that our story didn’t make it to either Coindesk or Cointelegraph, the story did get picked up by two Swiss media outlets, both well known in the country:
https://www.finews.com/news/english-news/31127-rainer-marc-frey-crypto-feathercoin-zug-peter-bushnellhttps://www.swissinfo.ch/eng/sharing-foundation_feathercoin-out-to-prove-it-s-no-lightweight/43993544The website: feathercoin.foundation awesome. I am all for links that accurately describe what the website will be. However, the awesomeness ends there. Once you are actually on the site, there are just tons of questions. The site's mission statement? "Our mission is to foster the development and acceptance of Feathercoin." Well fuck. That's nice. How? What are you going to do differently than what has already been done?
That's the whole website... Some names are listed and you didn't even bother getting pictures of the team members. How long did you say you've been working on this? Months?
I agree, the mission statement: “to foster the development and acceptance” of Feathercoin is quite nice and leaves room for imagination. One of the first things we did (that hasn’t been done before) is referenced in this blog post:
https://medium.com/@Feathercoin/electrum-wallet-for-feathercoin-goes-into-public-beta-255c308e1c9dYes, we could have spent more time making a fancy website - by the end of the day it all comes down to priorities, and our priorities are neither self promotion nor price pumping. Rest assured, though, that all board members of the Feathercoin Development Foundation are good looking.
I did *very* little digging and figured out that you registered an address with cryptovalleylabs.com to get the company registration address @ Gotthardstrasse 26, 6300 Zug, Switzerland. It costs 190 Swiss franc / month. I'd love to know how you are going to use this co-working space to your advantage. Is it a networking opportunity? A cover so you can have an address?
Yes that's right, we are located physically at the Crypto Valley Labs and Gotthardstrasse 26 is the legal domicile of the foundation. You can come by anytime, most of us are usually there between 08:00 and 18:00. If you need a proof, here a picture of me with a friend who is visiting CV Labs:
https://imgur.com/u7oyk0GIt's a great location to meet people from the crypto space and other companies feel the same. Shapeshift, to cite just one example, also has an office here, next to ours actually. I live 5 minutes walking distance from the CV Labs labs so it was kind an obvious choice. Last not least, the Bitcoin Association Switzerland (where I’m the president) is a partner organisation of CV Labs.
does feathercoin.foundation have a relationship with lakeside.partners ? The coincidence just seems too good there. But none of the people listed on that website lakeside.partners, MATHIAS RUCH, MARCO BUMBACHER, or RALF GLABISCHNIG are listed on the feathercoin.foundation website.
While I know all three of them (not a surprise given the above), none of the people you cite are involved in the Feathercoin Development Foundation albeit we all enjoy having a beer together every now and then (drop by if you’re ever in the area, they’re great people!)
Okay. Now, on to my main thing. The super short blurb about how Hyperion Capital AG is now an investor in the FDF. "Three of those board members — namely Lucas Betschart, Oliver Wolfensberger and Peter Bushnell — have been the driving force behind the setup of the Feathercoin Development Foundation and were fortunate enough to find a financial supporter in Hyperion Capital AG (represented through Stephan Masek) who shares the values and vision of the foundation. Hyperion Capital AG is an investment vehicle of a number of successful entrepreneurs, including Swiss businessman and investor Rainer-Marc Frey."
Wow. This is woefully insufficient. It actually kind of makes me sick to my stomach. You've been working on this for months? Who is Hyperion Capital AG? Who is Stephan Masek? who is Rainer-Marc Frey? How much money did they invest? What are the values of the foundation? What is the vision of the foundation? What are the values and vision of the investors?
With the articles I mentioned above, you have probably read up by now on who Rainer-Marc Frey is and figured out that Stephan Masek is on the board of the foundation as a representative of Hyperion Capital AG. Stephan Masek is also the CEO of Horizon21, but you probably want to read this for yourself:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rainer-Marc_Frey#Horizon21The part where it says that ‘they share the values and vision of the foundation’ is a reference to the Hyperion Capital AG investors believing in cryptocurrencies and digital assets as the future and something worthy of support. Of course, the paths then differ as the investment firm wants to accomplish good returns for their shareholders whereas the foundation’s purpose is to (you guessed it) “foster the development and acceptance of Feathercoin”. I don’t know how much money Hyperion Capital AG has invested in anything, but I do know that they made a sizable donation to the foundation that should get us going for some time and that they have no way of claiming back - it’s a donation after all.
If you feel that we haven’t done enough in those few months, I’m not sure exactly what you want to say with that. It’s not that we’ve wasted your time and money, and in fact not even the foundation’s money. We did, however, do a few things that will only come to light over the next days and week (the first piece of news today’s announcement about Electrum-FTC). Also, and perhaps that’s a bit of a cultural thing, the Swiss like to underpromise and overdeliver, hype ain’t our thing. We’re a boring bunch in this respect.
why is Hyperion Capital AG also registered to a co-working space? type in their address to a search engine: "Poststrasse 4 8808 Pfaeffikon SZ Switzerland." the first 8 hits are all different companies, none of them Hyperion.
Hyperion Capital AG’s legal domicile is indeed Poststrasse 8 8808 Pfäffikon, an office building with several floors. I never counted but eight companies sounds about right for a building that size (the link above takes its data from the official commercial registry from where the company is incorporated).
While I am extremely critical, it's only because I'd love to get on this team and contribute where I can see it is desperately needed.
That's great to hear and we are looking for more people in the community to actively contribute! If you have suggestions, you can put them online of course (we mostly hang out in the feathercoin forum) or send an old fashioned email to
info@feathercoin.foundation where we can discuss ways to work together. In any case, it’s great that you care about “our” coin, and we very much hope you’ll hang around!
Thank you for your in-depth response. I feel like you didn't dodge any of my relevant points, thank you so much! Also, thanks for pointing out my huge blunder on Hyperion Capital.
https://www.hyperioncapital.com/ actually seems like what it says it is. Although, I do notice that you are the Head of Technology at HCAG, making the relationship between the FDF and HCAG even muddier. Actually, if you pay attention to the names. Peter is the only one that is not both on the board of Hyperion and Feathercoin.
> I don’t know how much money Hyperion Capital AG has invested in anything, but I do know that they made a sizable donation to the foundation that should get us going for some time and that they have no way of claiming back - it’s a donation after all.
This is a red flag! Why haven't donation numbers been disclosed? Why hasn't a reason been given? Why has the donation been called an investment up until this point? This is a double red flag since you're the Head of Tech at Hyperion Capital!!! It sort of looks like you giving money to yourself. It's fine, there are all sorts of reasons to do it, but I genuinely think you are making it look SHADY, and there are plenty of ways to make it transparent.
> the mission statement: “to foster the development and acceptance” of Feathercoin is quite nice and leaves room for imagination.
Well we'll just have to agree to disagree here, because this mission statement is not enough.
> Yes, we could have spent more time making a fancy website - by the end of the day it all comes down to priorities, and our priorities are neither self promotion nor price pumping. Rest assured, though, that all board members of the Feathercoin Development Foundation are good looking.
You're funny! Seriously though, the website is already out of date. You haven't updated the front page with the Electrum wallet news.
> the FDF is not developing a ‘multipurpose Feathercoin library in the style of libbitcoin’ but working with the developer of libbitcoin on that very same library to allow the same binary that runs Bitcoin to also run Feathercoin.
You should *seriously* reconsider hiring someone to edit your blog posts. Why are you correcting my correction instead of just being clear the first time? While you may not think of your posts as press releases, they are.
> to foster the acceptance of Feathercoin
is to present it in a positive light. While you may not realize it, this is the first legit effort to get FTC going, and what it has needed for a long time. But if you don't spend a little extra time on polish, all of your work will go unrecognized and may eventually be for nothing.
