ANN: 100mBTC (0.1 BTC) physical coins + 5 free coins naming competition

[odolvlobo]

Bah! "Clever" names end up being silly.

I suggest using normal ordinary words. Consider gold and silver coins -- you have "maple leaf", "buffalo", "eagle", "panda", "lunar", "kangaroo", etc.

Since your coin has a map of the world on the obverse, use "world". Besides, it is just a trademark on a hologram. It doen't have to be the name of the coin.

On the other hand, if you want to give it a name, do what some software companies do:  name each denomination after a kind of tree, or mineral, or breed of dog (Apple already uses cats), or something.

[Melbustus]

I will probably do formal preorders later, once I have a firm shipping date,  but to get a feel for the volume and amount of (dis)trust I have among forum members here, I would also appreciate if you posted a non binding "preorder" below indicating how many coins, if any, you would be willing to buy. Doing so will entitle you to a small discount once these coins  go for sale provided you actually do place the order.

I'd probably order between 10 and 50 if the premium to face is very low, and if I like the final designs and name. This also assumes that after I dig through your post history, etc, I don't uncover any trustworthiness red flags. I also echo Mike's concerns regarding private key safety. 100mBTC coins can add up, and it would be awful for bitcoin in general if a bunch of physical coins end up getting cleaned out down the road, be it from malice or negligence. Mike has earned the trust he has in the community by publishing his real-world details, crypto-signed communications, and producing a number of tools that indicate his technical ability and attention to detail and security.

[P4man]

- One detail that may not seem important at first sight for some people: the date 2013
That is the christian date, and it looks like the "in god we trust" from US dollars. Other cultures, countries and religions have a completely different date (muslims 1434, jews 5773, myself since I was born...) This is a world currency, and also the date is not very important.  
So it would be much nicer that in case of using a date, use the number 4 or 5, I'm not sure, but since the genesis block was created, or since bitcoin started, for example. This way you don't offend anyone, otherwise yours will be a coin "for christians only".

- The human silouhettes in your coin make it seem bad quality, they look like some old fashioned 90's website, or some shitty vector graphic design. Clothes are western style (very specific suits, skirts, dresses) I don't see muslim or indian clothes or naked like african or jungle people.
I'd rather use simple silouhette drawings like in signals or even better, naked people. Clothes indicate a specific fashion, culture and date.
You could use the same images, just alternate 3 same images with a masculine figure and 3 femenine, (put long hair to women preferably, and big boobs if possible) Some ideas of something more likely of what I mean:

You make two valid points.
Regarding the year, it would be cool to introduce a new year counting, instead of AD, we used AS "Anno Satoshi" but no one would understand it and a coin is not the place to invent, let alone explain a new dating system. Unixtime might be more neutral, but it would hardly look good ('1366873851") and having a precision down to a second makes no sense.  AFAIK, all other bitcoin tools, including the official client, blockchain.info etc all use the "christian" year, so Im not sure this is a big deal, but perhaps I should just drop it all together.

The point about the silhouettes is quite valid. Although I dont like the idea of naked people (that seems more appropriate when you refer to people in a medical/biological sense, rather than a business sense) and they shouldnt be too cartoonish either. Ill see what I can do to make them more generic though. Thanks for bringing it up.

[P4man]

I'd probably order between 10 and 50 if the premium to face is very low, and if I like the final designs and name. This also assumes that after I dig through your post history, etc, I don't uncover any trustworthiness red flags. I also echo Mike's concerns regarding private key safety. 100mBTC coins can add up, and it would be awful for bitcoin in general if a bunch of physical coins end up getting cleaned out down the road, be it from malice or negligence. Mike has earned the trust he has in the community by publishing his real-world details, crypto-signed communications, and producing a number of tools that indicate his technical ability and attention to detail and security.

Im painfully aware of those issues, and I do agree that a malicious (or incompetent) supplier of physical coins would be terrible for bitcoin. Its also a reason I want to do this; someone besides Mike is going to sell such products sooner or later and at least I trust myself more than I trust someone I dont know . No matter what I do, I can not make you trust me, but thats ok. I prefer taking the risk of not selling enough coins to pay back my investment over seeing someone else pull another pirate like scam with physical coins.

I have ample respect for Mike and will gladly use his expertise and implement his good ideas, possibly even his tools, and draw from the community at large, but its not an insurmountable challenge to produce the keypairs on an offline airgapped machine and securely format and/or physically destroy the ssd or usb key afterwards, wipe printer memory if applicable etc. I will explain in detail how I go about doing this before I actually produce these coins, but I cant do that now as I am yet to decide whether I will print keys or buy a laser engraver, use QR codes or not. I will be experimenting first once I receive some blank samples. I also have yet to decide on the software, Ive looked at the tools Mike published, I will look in to Armory. Either way I will be completely transparent about how I make these things.

If we are honest, when applying sufficient paranoia,  common sense and proven software, the real issue isnt accidental leaking of private keys, its deliberate theft. Mike is currently trusted for over $8 million worth of bitcoins. Thats a huge amount of money to trust anyone with, and frankly more than I would even want to be trusted with.  Im not sure how to put this without being misunderstood, its not like I distrust Mike, but publishing personal info (which I will too) or crypto signing messages (?) isnt enough to warrant $8M worth of trust. We are all taking a leap of faith here, myself included as I do trust him, at least for the handful of coins of his that I own. By comparison, my first production run will amount to $15K worth of bitcoin at todays value, assuming I would sell out, which is far from certain. Thats not pocket change, but I think you will agree its quite a different level of incentive,  its almost 3 orders of magnitude lower.

Trust is built over time, and while its never absolute, I have to start somewhere.

[fiaskow]

naked like african or jungle people.

What a bad assumption! Who coloured your picture of Africa?

[P4man]

The Vitruvian Man pictured on that coin is not just a naked man, and the context is certainly not business; as Im sure you are aware, its a famous drawing by Da Vinci about anatomy where nakedness obviously makes sense. LIke I said, biology. Other examples you may find will probably relate to the ancient Greeks or Romans, where the context is historic.

Its not that Im offended by nudity (although, some Muslims might be), its just that it doesnt fit here IMO.

[stereotype]

Regarding the year, is there any milelage in counting backwards to when no more Bitcoins will be produced? So this year will be 2140-2013 = 127. Or you could express it as 'T-127' Next year T-126, and so on.

It would add a conversation piece, which has real value, as it happens to be a fundamental truth/fact.

[P4man]

Regarding the year, is there any milelage in counting backwards to when no more Bitcoins will be produced? So this year will be 2140-2013 = 127. Or you could express it as 'T-127' Next year T-126, and so on.

It would add a conversation piece, which has real value, as it happens to be a fundamental truth/fact.

We dont know exactly what year the last bitcoins will be mined. But perhaps we could use the % of coins minted to date.

[stereotype]

Regarding the year, is there any milelage in counting backwards to when no more Bitcoins will be produced? So this year will be 2140-2013 = 127. Or you could express it as 'T-127' Next year T-126, and so on.

It would add a conversation piece, which has real value, as it happens to be a fundamental truth/fact.

We dont know exactly what year the last bitcoins will be mined. But perhaps we could use the % of coins minted to date.

Yes. I was thinking of some kind of symmetry with the number of blocks completed, also.

Without going off-topic, is it fact that successful mining COULD take place before 2140, and fundamentally CANNOT after this date? Is my understanding correct?

[casascius]

The date 2140 is a bad date to reference as it is actually just an emergent property of the number of decimal places in the current implementation (eight), and how long it will take for the reward to get so small as to not be representable without more precision.  If the precision is ever increased, the 2140 date will become irrelevant.  And that also assumes that the date won't drift with difficulty changes (it probably will - example, it already drifted more than a month for the first halving - Nov 2012 instead of Jan 2013).

[stereotype]

No where near as fundamental, as i thought. Cheers Mike.

[VishwaJay]

Be aware that casting metals is difficult work, and carving metals tends to be a bit expensive. Depending on the metal you use, and the size of the coin, the small detail of this coin could very well be lost. I'm wanting to make physical coins myself, and am getting an education by someone who does them for a living. Just be aware that the metal itself doesn't necessarily hold its shape if used, and so the smaller details can wear off or wear down if, say, someone carries this coin in their pocket.

Love the basic idea, otherwise.

As to the name of your coin, I'm unclear... is this a name for the entire line, or is it for this particular denomination of coin?

[P4man]

Be aware that casting metals is difficult work, and carving metals tends to be a bit expensive. Depending on the metal you use, and the size of the coin, the small detail of this coin could very well be lost. I'm wanting to make physical coins myself, and am getting an education by someone who does them for a living. Just be aware that the metal itself doesn't necessarily hold its shape if used, and so the smaller details can wear off or wear down if, say, someone carries this coin in their pocket.

They are neither cast nor carved. They are stamped, just like our regular coins. That enables fine detail and yet they are quite resistant. Maybe not quite as sturdy as fiat coins, I believe the metal alloy is slightly softer as the pressure at which they are stamped is probably not as high as the huge machines our mints have, but the samples I have are quite tough, not sure if its any worse than normal coins,  and much more resilient than the hologram anyway, thats always going to be the weak point for someone carrying coins in his pocket.

To give you an idea, this is a scan of an older, abused 25mm sample coin:

Love the basic idea, otherwise.

As to the name of your coin, I'm unclear... is this a name for the entire line, or is it for this particular denomination of coin?

Its a common name for the entire line, assuming there will be one over time. We cant just call it "a 0.1 bitcoin coin",  people need a way to differentiate between coins from various suppliers.

[ISAWHIM]

Minted BTC: (Original denomination), (Your identification/name/coinage-name), (3-letter Country Code), (Year)

The new standard for "physical mints".       (Makes them easier to collect in the future too!)

EG...

100 mBTC
Bit-O-Bitcoin
USA, 2013

As opposed to...

100 mBTC
Bit-O-Bitcoin
FRA, 2013

or, as opposed to...

100 mBTC
Rasha-Denominator
FRA, 2013

As for my "names"....

- Bit-O-Mint (Little freshness in the digital market)
- Bit-O-Bitcoin (Just a little of something bigger)
- Hash-N-Stash (It was hashed, now stash it away)
- Bit-O-Byte (Geeked play on words... You bite into gold goins to test if it is real, in the old days.)
- Scratch-N-Cash (Unlike, scratch and attempt to win... like a lotto ticket... This is a sure-thing)
- Lucky-Coin (Good or bad, it is still luck)
- Spare-Change (Can you spare change? Another play on words... Got change to spare?)
- UNO-Momento (One moment, one momento, the memory, this memory... More word-play...)
- Unvirtualized (Um, out of the virtual world, into the physical world, into your hand.)
- SHA-KING (Shocking... Sha King... )

Ok, all done... If I win, PM me, or send what you wish to donate to my wallet.
131cttnLM9YFVo2Tg51oWqm7Jngj5Q3ySd

I love this kind of thinking...

[ISAWHIM]

P4man you should make a pre-order list.

I probably will, but certainly not before I ordered everything myself and have a firm shipping date. Otherwise Id have to call it "butterfly coin" .

Ouch...

Still... I am ROTFLMAOSHISMS (so hard I s**t my shorts)

Not funny,

I have faith that they will release the butterflies soon... right after they have built the pot for the leprechauns to fill inside their own house at butterfly-labs. 10 for them, one for us... they win! Welcome for the investment, thanks for giving us the scraps! lol.

[scribe]

I like the bitbob suggestion, as it ties in with 'mainstream' tokens. In a similar vein, how about...

- Benny (bit+penny)
- Bounder (bit+pound...er)
- Billies (bit+millis)
- Betas
- oh God these are actually a bit dire. Or druggy.

OK, take 2...

- Blockcoins
- Keycoins

Got to keep it simple...

[Otoh]

Bitbobs is my fav, I liked sacko's design too

How about doing your dashed/dotted lines in the shape of a 7 pointed star, like

[Luckybit]

"Phycoin" rolls off the tongue better than "Physcoin". That just sounds like fizz coin.

And the more i say it out loud, the more i like it.....
 
"Ere Dave, you gotta couple of Phys, mate?" or "Thank you sir, thats 2 Physcoin change. Have a nice day".


Edit: How about 'Crypts' ?

Crypts or cryptcoin.

[stereotype]

"Phycoin" rolls off the tongue better than "Physcoin". That just sounds like fizz coin.

And the more i say it out loud, the more i like it.....
 
"Ere Dave, you gotta couple of Phys, mate?" or "Thank you sir, thats 2 Physcoin change. Have a nice day".


Edit: How about 'Crypts' ?

Crypts or cryptcoin.

Cryptcoin seems to stutter in the mouth, so Crypts for me.

[Mabsark]

"Phycoin" rolls off the tongue better than "Physcoin". That just sounds like fizz coin.

And the more i say it out loud, the more i like it.....
 
"Ere Dave, you gotta couple of Phys, mate?" or "Thank you sir, thats 2 Physcoin change. Have a nice day".


Edit: How about 'Crypts' ?

Crypts or cryptcoin.

Cryptcoin seems to stutter in the mouth, so Crypts for me.

To me, "Crypts" sounds like "crips", which sounds like someone with a speech impediment asking for "crisps".