Even devoting my time and effort to writing about issues I deem important—I so fiercely guard my integrity and independence that I even dislike putting out a tip address like yours, even though there’s nothing wrong with that; I may want to reconsider such extremes.
I question whether I should even say anything beyond having a public bitcoin address can be used as a means to verify identify if a forum account ever gets hacked...You really speculate that I am begging or could be understood (misinterpreted) to be begging? right.
Jay, please stop misinterpreting my words to the opposite of what I said—even as you quote me! (Highlighting has been added to internal quote above.)
There's no misinterpretation. I responded, and my response speaks for itself..
What I said, very obviously, is that I admittedly go too far. I am so paranoid of coming off like a beggar that I shoot myself in the foot. I have been reconsidering that. Seriously. WTF am I doing to myself?
I don't know. Each of us chooses how to interact in the world, and sometimes we might feel that there is a need to change some of our own self-imposed limitations - and other times we might feel that we need to place limitations.
I had an interaction with a relative of mine the other day, and I was telling that relative about several interactions that I had with someone that I had perceived as a beggar and even someone who I considered to NOT be respectful of boundaries. I said that the beggar had asked me for x, y z, a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h and j, and I gave a and e, but I regretted giving anything because that beggar had done several things to create such a bad situation, and I did not feel that it was my responsibility to be paying attention to so many asks of such person. I said that the continuous begging was wearing me out, and I was largely just ignoring the asks (the latest of which had been sent to me by text messages from the beggar), and I was about ready to explode at some point.. The beggar had been engaging in conduct that I felt was forcing me into a position to be mean to the beggar, and I had actually already exploded one time previously, and I said that I feel that the beggar should not be asking me for so many thing.
My relative was considering contacting the beggar and giving some things that I refused to acknowledge, and I told the relative to do whatever.. I am not doing anything. So it is quite true that reasonable people come to differing conclusions in regards to how to treat situations, and I do not claim to have all the answers or even to know about some of the ways that I might need to change some of my ways of interacting.. or even how I might consider certain characteristics that I consider to be important.
I damn well know that there is a world of difference between honour and masochistic self-abnegation. But I self-conscious about it when I fear being perceived as needy; if nobody knew my financial circumstance right now, then I would already have a tip address. I have put out tip addresses before, which I deleted when I leaked info that I thought may give the perception of my being needy.
Sure there are differences between what might trigger boundaries on the interwebs versus boundaries in person, and I had made some interactions with folks in regards to various virtual assistant work, and it is not always easy to figure out which duties might be farmed out and show much trust to give with some personal information. I know that some virtual assistance relationships have had meeting in person components, but surely there are some that only involve phone calls and video interactions and do not go as far as having actual physical meetings/interviews.
One time, I had an in-person personal assistant working on attempting to set up parameters for finding and hiring a virtual assistant (and getting that assistant remotely), but I could not get my in-person assistant to do certain things.. so it was like a BIG waste of time to go through that process - even though I have some of the notes related to some of the efforts that we were making in going through the process.
As you probably know, a Core developer on staff moderating the technical forum (formerly knightdk) has had a tip address in his signature for years. I respect him highly. theymos has a tip address in his signature. Do you suppose that I am accusing them of begging? If not, then why do you suppose that I “speculate” that you are begging?
back atcha.
I asked you a question (or raised some issues), and you answered and clarified. There seems to be hardly any reason to take any of my reading or even my attempt to frame the matter as if it is personal, which seems to be your default route... and even if there were some reasonable ways to take it personally, why get worked up about it and escalate?.. You do what you want.. and sure maybe the taking matters personally will start to subside, but I have my doubts..and maybe when you take matters personal then it triggers folks to make personal digg statements, too?
By the way, there have been a few times in which I had taken some statements on the interwebs personally, and surely sometimes such statements are personal.. but still reacting to such statements in emotional ways is not usually a good approach (I am not talking about how it looks, but I am talking about actually losing composure).. and I would be careful to interpret a few cuss words here and there as if the person has lost composure..
I know that there are some members who really have personal issues with me, and sometimes they will harbor those resentments for a long time, even for years, and then come out with a bunch of anger posts... hahahaha it is kind of funny how some folks can hate certain peeps on the interwebs so much.
Re funding for Core development:
The major substance of your post proposes what, in substance, would be an endowment. It is a good idea. However, it would require much more sophistication (and accordingly, higher administrative overhead). I had been thinking more simply: Raise money, spend it. I will think about this further. I do not foresee immediate action on it, anyway. Besides any other questions, jumping into such a project in a bear market with no advance planning is not a very good approach; I’m not the one saying so.
Yeah, we might have been talking past each other a wee bit, and I have spent some time grappling with some of my own considerations about how to set up such a fund, and I was thinking about starting a thread on the topic - or alternatively to post in
my already existing thread.. but it might well be a topic that would be better suited for its own thread.
I was initially considering setting up the thread with a hypothesis of having a fund that would be initially seeded with 100 BTC, so the ideas would relate to my ideas about how much can be used from the funds on a regular basis to support the administration of the funds and also the sending out of funds to target projects. Of course there might be some flexibility in the amount of funds that would be in the seed round and if the fund might be able to able to receive additional funds from private sources or .. but the original assumption is that the fund is established by a private donor or a closed group that already grants full plenary authority to the fund administrator whether hypothetically that administrator would be me or whether it could (or should) be contracted out.
My initial thoughts about any extra funds that would be accepted would involve NDAs and even legal disclaimers and granting full discretion to the fund administrator regarding the distribution of donations, so of course, when we get into those kinds of possible receipt of outside funds, it is probably better to establish a track record and a set of clear distribution standards, criteria (and practices) first, as we already referred to some of these ideas. I have been thinking about variations of this for more than 2 years, so it is not like I have really gotten into the nitty gritty details of working towards carrying it out.
Some of your guesses about numbers are pretty good, though I don’t want to say more about that right now.
Well, let me change the numbers a wee bit, and if a fund were to have 100 BTC as it's initially starting out principle, so how much it can spend per month may well depend on the valuation of the 100 BTC, and I had surely been considering using the 200-week moving average as the valuation of the funds, which surely is problematic currently because BTC's spot price is currently under the 200-week moving average.
yet it is possible that the fund could withdraw into cash a year in advance, and/or even have withdrawal parameters on a quarterly basis that are measured in terms of how far above or below the spot price is from the 200-week moving average. It is possible that if the BTC price is below the 200-week moving average then the fund is not allowed to cash out any BTC into dollars during that time.
Of course, it is quite possible and even likely that some of the contracts would stipulate that if payments are in BTC (and some (and maybe all) would be required to be in BTC), then there might be ways to still pay out in BTC when the spot price is under the 200-week moving average with an understanding that the valuation of how much is paid is based on the 200-week moving average, and the fund is not allowed to pay based on dollar valuations that are lower than the 200-week moving average. Accordingly the recipient gets the same amount of BTC as if the BTC price were at the 200-week moving average, but it results in a lower dollar value based on spot price because the fund is not allowed to go below the 200-week moving average when calculating how much to pay to target recipients (fund administrators and any administrative assistants, too).
I will think this over; I may reply further if/when it makes sense to write a long post on this particular topic. Whether to bounce around more ideas in a public discussion, or beyond that.
Fair enough.
Something else that’s been on my mind:
I like what e.g. MIT-DCI does with Wladimir. Per-project grants are good and necessary; paying someone’s full-time salary gets a different type of long-term result.
I observe that, to the best of my knowledge, there is a lack of sufficient opportunities for strongly anonymous/pseudonymous developers.
Satoshi himself would be unable to obtain the position that Wladimir has with MIT-DCI. But a part of Bitcoin’s resilience is the active contribution of parties who
cannot be identified IRL—to be blunt, those who can merrily ignore any frivolous lawsuits from Craig Wright, who are immune to public harassment, etc., etc.
This is not merely a theoretical concern—not cypherpunk “paranoia”!I think that the fund can be comfortable with the developer, so there might be some uncertainties regarding how comfortable the fund might feel about funding developers who fit that definition. I thought that square had one developer who was ONLY a pseudonym.. and surely it helps if precedent is set or some kind of comfortable contract language (or lack of contract) that might be comfortable for the fund... and maybe the fund might not be comfortable having all of its developer funds to be distributed in that kind of way, and might even impose a restriction on itself in terms of funding 50% of all developer funds to be able to be used within such category... probably some legal consultation would be beneficial depending how the fund is set up and in which state or country it has a license or whatever set up it might have. and there might be some se t ups(arrangements) that fall into special categories in terms of the funding that the fund chooses to distribute within its budget)
Given that I am strongly pseudonymous, and I never intend to be otherwise, it is interesting to me that there is probably a niche with unmet needs for funding developers who refuse to be doxed for any reason whatsoever. “By their PGP-signed commits shall ye know them.”
For sure there are reasons to have those kinds of set ups and even to figure out ways to fund those kinds of set ups, and surely some of the discussions of the details of how to set them up might be less valuable to carryout in a public thread or even through private messages but instead through more secure communication channels that hopefully are sufficiently comfortable (and secure) for everyone including funding sources and funded persons/pseudonyms... surely not easy.. and surely some of the relationships are made at conferences or private introductions and surely some pseudonyms don't want to be met, but they still need to be comfortable enough for the funding sources to feel it is a good ideas to fund in such an arrangement.
Poll
