[DVC]DevCoin - Official Thread - Moderated

[ThinkI]

I have updated the Syntax page of DevTome with the syntax for including a section of a different page into your current page, see:
http://www.devtome.com/doku.php?id=wiki:syntax#including_part_of_another_page

Hopefully this will help in situations were data has to be repeated in different documents.

ThinkI

[weisoq]

I woke up with an idea but its just in thought stage.

Its about "dumping" DEVC on the market and the effect that has on value.

Im not a money market expert but from what I understand, DVC needs to maintain a certain value if it is going to be an effective way to pay developers/creators. Its a given that writers on devtome are going to cash out their DVC..peeps gotta eat, but what if we could somehoe slow the impact on the market?

So, my idea is a fund for developers/creators to be able to exchange their DVC for cash and purchase DVC for cash.

DVC purchased can be held and released to the market in a controlled way over the month (when prices are up?) and cash purchased with DVC could be used to purchase more DVC, creating a fund to pay for the costs of running the fund and (as it grew enough) to fund bounties for future works.

This would require an initial pool of DVC and cash (investors?) and I dont know how to make that profitable for them yet, but Im still thinking The fact that this could stabilise the price of DVC might be enough? not sure.

I am pretty sure Ive found the software to make this work but I don't have the knowledge to get this whole thing right and I dont even know if this is something the community wants or would support...its just an idea...still thinking, but input would be gratefully received.

I don't think the issue is dumping. A fixed number of dvc per round go out, so whether person A or B gets them - and whether they hold/sell - is irrelevant. The issue is distribution, where there may be a big skew towards a lot of dvc going to a few. Transaction choices are then determined (by them and everybody else) on the basis that a great deal of short/medium term price and volatilty risk is in a few hands.

A different option would be to incorporate a more even distribution where no particular skill/work is favoured. That won't necessarily prevent dumps and spikes, but transaction choices differ because (collusion-aside) there is a lesser skew.

However, that doesn't address non-earners who might just buy one week and sell the next, miners, price chasing etc.

Your idea is basically for a bank. I'm not sure of the practical workings for that, if only for the fact that if I know the DVC pool is a perpetual buyer at price X, what happens when I'm happy to sell at X-1 (i.e. the pool would need potentially unlimited funds).

[sidhujag]

..
Yes right now demand outstrips supply regardless of devtome because of volume in exchanges but it would be better if there were more writers providing quality content.. one way to ensure quality content is what markm said about writing what had been requested by someone else. This way they get paid for writing stuff someone wants to read and is willing to pay small fee for. This will drive reading traffic and this ad revenue. The end goal is for devtome to not only sustain itself financially but give back by providing profits from ads and buy dvc at market with that profit.

We did have a Stories and Questions thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=252709.0

A lot of people liked the idea, but I was the only person who ever bought a story When we're using the new forum, we'll try it again.

Cool yea I think if people payed others to write then you would have dual marketing one side thr writers would want to market devtome instead of keeping it a secret like what happened to the poster above with reddit and the other side where we want to market devtome to drive ad revenue. The writers will be paid more if they find a buyer and the buyer is happy with content.

[weisoq]

As I didn't saw this post from weisoq and I wasn't going to involve him if he wasn't writing about this here I have one more thing to say to the accusation.
On of my first guide was a  guide on Dr.Mundo. This character can fill different roles so the gameplay will be totally different but his native "skills" will remain the same. I was on my way to write the second guide on the same character but I was annoyed that I will have to copy/paste an entire paragraph. So I asked weisoq if some Tag or some code existed to cut off  a paragraph from the word count script! Weisoq answered that it didnt existed yet. He said that I will have to put some links from the original page. I wasn't satisfied with this solution as I want any guide to be a "stand alone" and so to gather the whole information on the same page. So in the end i didn't wrote the second guide at all as it will not be as "reader friendly" as I want. Maybe I will do it later with the actual solution. But i will be happy to copy paste my skill description and cut it off the count if this solution is able some day.
Weisoq also helped me a lot when I started here he gave me some guidelines to improve my quality so he may testify that I take many time to do the things right and I' m not here to abuse the project.

Yes although I think it's good to discuss these things, I probably got it wrong here. The thought was that if you were the writer highlighted, I would simply state the facts and clear the air. If it was another writer, plagiarism would have resurfaced and been noted. That plan backfired so I apologise for your public airing.

ThinkI: cheers I didn't know about that

[Unthinkingbit]

..
I was on my way to write the second guide on the same character but I was annoyed that I will have to copy/paste an entire paragraph. So I asked weisoq if some Tag or some code existed to cut off  a paragraph from the word count script! Weisoq answered that it didnt existed yet. He said that I will have to put some links from the original page. I wasn't satisfied with this solution as I want any guide to be a "stand alone" and so to gather the whole information on the same page. So in the end i didn't wrote the second guide at all as it will not be as "reader friendly" as I want. Maybe I will do it later with the actual solution. But i will be happy to copy paste my skill description and cut it off the count if this solution is able some day.
..

I wasn't planning on upgrading the devtome code to not count identical paragraphs. Since this is getting controversial, I'll think about how to implement it, but I'm not sure how to do it and it's a low priority for me. In the meantime copying some sentences, and the occasional paragraph, across your own devtome pages is ok. There is no benefit to word spinning your own paragraphs.

I have updated the Syntax page of DevTome with the syntax for including a section of a different page into your current page, see:
http://www.devtome.com/doku.php?id=wiki:syntax#including_part_of_another_page

Hopefully this will help in situations were data has to be repeated in different documents.

ThinkI

That's interesting. Is there a way to copy the paragraph without the heading?

[smeagol]

I am using the latest sourceforge wallet version, and the tx does not show up on the blockchain.

My balance is right except for the transaction which took away 10 mil.

Any suggestions?

Any other solutions?  My tx is still in limbo

Should I revert back to the older client?

[Bittzy78]

..
Yes right now demand outstrips supply regardless of devtome because of volume in exchanges but it would be better if there were more writers providing quality content.. one way to ensure quality content is what markm said about writing what had been requested by someone else. This way they get paid for writing stuff someone wants to read and is willing to pay small fee for. This will drive reading traffic and this ad revenue. The end goal is for devtome to not only sustain itself financially but give back by providing profits from ads and buy dvc at market with that profit.

We did have a Stories and Questions thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=252709.0

A lot of people liked the idea, but I was the only person who ever bought a story When we're using the new forum, we'll try it again.

It might even work if there was a section where people could explain their skill sets and what they charge in Devcoins for work done. People who are looking for content writers could browse what writers are offering and contact them for more details. Someone could act as a Devcoin escrow service to insure that both parties are satisfied with the transactions.

This would probably be very appealing to blog owners etc...

Looking forward to the new forum



Bittzy78

~~ Ninja edit ~~

[melodiem]

I woke up with an idea but its just in thought stage.

Your idea is basically for a bank. I'm not sure of the practical workings for that, if only for the fact that if I know the DVC pool is a perpetual buyer at price X, what happens when I'm happy to sell at X-1 (i.e. the pool would need potentially unlimited funds).

Im not sure its a bank, since its not offering to hold funds for anyone (apart from investors) It would be closer to a money exchange if there is a FIAT equivalent but your comment made me think..it has co-operative elements as well.

Its boggling my brain a bit so I'm off to have a little think and try to get this down on paper. Sorry I dont have a clearer view yet but in my head first thing this morning it all just worked.. if I could just find that "Eureka" again Id be right lol

[dalamar96]

I woke up with an idea but its just in thought stage.

Your idea is basically for a bank. I'm not sure of the practical workings for that, if only for the fact that if I know the DVC pool is a perpetual buyer at price X, what happens when I'm happy to sell at X-1 (i.e. the pool would need potentially unlimited funds).

Im not sure its a bank, since its not offering to hold funds for anyone (apart from investors) It would be closer to a money exchange if there is a FIAT equivalent but your comment made me think..it has co-operative elements as well.

Its boggling my brain a bit so I'm off to have a little think and try to get this down on paper. Sorry I dont have a clearer view yet but in my head first thing this morning it all just worked.. if I could just find that "Eureka" again Id be right lol

Kinda more reminds me of the Federal Reserve to control inflation and what not...

[ThinkI]

I have updated the Syntax page of DevTome with the syntax for including a section of a different page into your current page, see:
http://www.devtome.com/doku.php?id=wiki:syntax#including_part_of_another_page

Hopefully this will help in situations were data has to be repeated in different documents.

ThinkI

That's interesting. Is there a way to copy the paragraph without the heading?

Yes, however, you have to put the paragraph in a separate page and include it in both places.

So if I had a page called paragraph1 containing the information I want to repeat,
then if I put:
{{:paragraph1}}
in my document it would include the content of the page paragraph1 at that point

ThinkI

[Athanasios Motok]

I woke up with an idea but its just in thought stage.

Its about "dumping" DEVC on the market and the effect that has on value.

Im not a money market expert but from what I understand, DVC needs to maintain a certain value if it is going to be an effective way to pay developers/creators. Its a given that writers on devtome are going to cash out their DVC..peeps gotta eat, but what if we could somehoe slow the impact on the market?

So, my idea is a fund for developers/creators to be able to exchange their DVC for cash and purchase DVC for cash.

DVC purchased can be held and released to the market in a controlled way over the month (when prices are up?) and cash purchased with DVC could be used to purchase more DVC, creating a fund to pay for the costs of running the fund and (as it grew enough) to fund bounties for future works.

This would require an initial pool of DVC and cash (investors?) and I dont know how to make that profitable for them yet, but Im still thinking The fact that this could stabilise the price of DVC might be enough? not sure.

I am pretty sure Ive found the software to make this work but I don't have the knowledge to get this whole thing right and I dont even know if this is something the community wants or would support...its just an idea...still thinking, but input would be gratefully received.

I think this is a interesting idea, your right that the people earning devcoin are going to cash out at some point. How would the cash conversion work? Would I send in coins and have cash shipped to my home? How much is needed and could this qualify as a bounty? Also would you be keeping transaction fees?
Great idea,
-AM

[Athanasios Motok]

Your idea is basically for a bank. I'm not sure of the practical workings for that, if only for the fact that if I know the DVC pool is a perpetual buyer at price X, what happens when I'm happy to sell at X-1 (i.e. the pool would need potentially unlimited funds).

Add on to above post:
How will you get the funding, or is it all going to be from people investing?
-AM

[melodiem]

I woke up with an idea but its just in thought stage.

Your idea is basically for a bank. I'm not sure of the practical workings for that, if only for the fact that if I know the DVC pool is a perpetual buyer at price X, what happens when I'm happy to sell at X-1 (i.e. the pool would need potentially unlimited funds).

Im not sure its a bank, since its not offering to hold funds for anyone (apart from investors) It would be closer to a money exchange if there is a FIAT equivalent but your comment made me think..it has co-operative elements as well.

Its boggling my brain a bit so I'm off to have a little think and try to get this down on paper. Sorry I dont have a clearer view yet but in my head first thing this morning it all just worked.. if I could just find that "Eureka" again Id be right lol

Kinda more reminds me of the Federal Reserve to control inflation and what not...

Maybe it is, I am still not sure, but the federal reserve has different motivations (inflation) the motivation behind this is circulation coins and accepting people obviously NEED to sell their DVC when they get paid out, (or else they would hold them to make more money wouldn't they?)without flooding the market every month.. At the end of the day this is affecting price overall and the people cashing out are not getting the best they could either.

In a FIAT world my gold coin is worth a gold coin...in a Devcoin world its scary how much my one coin can change in value overnight. As someone who is now working from home, I can tell you this is not really a great way to get paid for work... (yet?)

so ...in this idea, if user A buys DVC to spend on phone cards or mobile phones or websites (any other products available for DVC yet?) and user B sells his DVC for cash, then user A ends up circulating the coins user B cashed in..and the phone-card/mobile phone or website seller has somewhere to cash in those same coins, so they can circulate again, without having to play the "money market" but actually supporting the market by not playing it......kind of ...sorry that's such a simplistic idea, but Im struggling to explain an unformed idea

It would also make DVC based commerce simpler if there was an exchange like this, purchasing DVC should be as easy as cashing them in for it to work. Ideally, if this fund could offer (on average) the median buy price from the exchanges, and list DVC at a higher sell price on the same exchanges, it could have a stabilising effect on the market (depending on volume from what I understand from an earlier post regarding sell and buy sides? please correct me if this is wrong) and potentially bring a return for investors as well as building a fund to support developers/creators that don't really fit the "devcoin developer" model. (for example I would love to see indigenous artists in really remote areas supported by DVC and beyond the reach of red tape BS....but that's a personal dream

And Im no closer to writing this up because I keep coming back to re-read what I already wrote and what you guys have said lol

[melodiem]

I have updated the Syntax page of DevTome with the syntax for including a section of a different page into your current page, see:
http://www.devtome.com/doku.php?id=wiki:syntax#including_part_of_another_page

Hopefully this will help in situations were data has to be repeated in different documents.

ThinkI

That's interesting. Is there a way to copy the paragraph without the heading?

Yes, however, you have to put the paragraph in a separate page and include it in both places.

So if I had a page called paragraph1 containing the information I want to repeat,
then if I put:
{{:paragraph1}}
in my document it would include the content of the page paragraph1 at that point

ThinkI

So you can create a page with the info you need to include (repeat) in each article and just include that page in each successive page? This is very cool!

[markm]

Maybe when Devtome gets shares itself directly then uses Open Transactions or Cyclos or whatever to divvy up its wealth among its team members the "problem" will not be so acute, because people who actually want fiat could maybe just get paid in fiat instead of DeVCoins.

The "bank" or whatever could have an inventory so it knows the average price per dollar in DeVCoins and the average price per X number of DeVCoins in dollars that are in its inventory, so what the exchange rate happens to be on any particular occassion would be less directly relevant since it already bought the dollars it has in its inventory and knows how many DeVCoins they actually cost on average.

Basically if people don't want DeVCoins and so determinedly don't want them that they will just throw them at buyers instead of stating a price they want for them and waiting for a buyer who is willing to pay that price, then why give them DeVCoins at all? We would drive down exchange rates less by just giving them dollars instead without the exchanges being involved, and since the profitability and market cap sites and so on do nto take over the counter sales of coins into account their deperate throwing away cheap of coins need not have an effect on the "official" exchange rate such sites show.

If we know ahead of time how many DeVCoins people want to throw away cheap we can be ready for them, with a private little exchange in effect, oh well mister author, we know you prefer fiat so we picked some up for you already, no need to throw away devcoins cheap, we sold them at a good price so you are getting more fiat this way than if you just threw it at the buyers...

-MarkM-

[markm]

I had also already an idea for how authors could maybe even out their incomes.

Basically figure out how many dollars or bitcoins or whatever you need your writing to be worth, also known as how many dollars you need each share to be worth.

Then place your sell order at the price that, based on how many devcoins this round's shares turned out to be, makes that many devcoins work out to that same amount of bitoins or dollars or whatever that you demand for your shares.

So on a round where one share turns out to be twice as many devcoins as you expected you can afford to sell them at half your usually demanded price, whereas on a round where a share is only half as many devcoins as you usually expect you can list them for sale at twice the price you normally charge for them.

Over time this should result in a scattering of sell orders that have not yet been accepted by buyers, if exchange rates have not in general been climbing, but also the periodic peaks in exchange rate should nonetheless eat them up eventually.

The net result over time should be that you tend to make about the same amount of bitcoin or fiat or icecream or whatever per round. Except maybe on the rounds where you could afford to throw them away below market price because you got so many that round, but cannot actually throw them away that cheap because exchanges always give you the best price available so even if you try to throw them qway fr below market price you will still get market price for them.

On the other hand though, for buyers dirt cheap coins are great!

So as a buyer I kind of have to think like huh what is wrong with devcoins being extremely low exchange rate? Those times are the best times to buy! I wish they would go back down to 30 Satoshis each or less right now so I can stock up again ready to make a fortune when they go back up near or beyond 200 Satoshis...

Why am I even complaining that people drive the exchange rate down? Its not as if I do so much writing that I have more than enough devcoins already to sell up near or above 200 Satoshis, for me the way I manage to have lots of devcoins to place as highball sell offers is by having people throw their coins at my lowball buy offers.

Thinking like that it is easy to start thinking huh what is wrong with low exchange rates, aren't low exchange rates awesome, aren't they the very thing that makes high exchange rates so goshdarn lucrative?

How would anyone even recognise high rates as high if there were not low rates to compare and contrast them to?

Please throw away your devcoins cheap, my buy offers only extend up to 50 Satoshis right now, I need to sell more to get more bitcoins before I can raise my buy offers higher so throw coins until you erode away all the prices above 50 so I can buy some coins darn it!

Or buy buy buy to up over 110 or so so my sell offers will get acted upon so I will have more bitcoins with which to increase the height of my pile of buy offers!

-MarkM-

[sidhujag]

I am using the latest sourceforge wallet version, and the tx does not show up on the blockchain.

My balance is right except for the transaction which took away 10 mil.

Any suggestions?

Any other solutions?  My tx is still in limbo

Should I revert back to the older client?

Do rescan didnt work? Can you try to redownload the blockchain? Delete your data folder but copy your wallet.dat file before you do! Then ensure your data directory only has the wallet.dat and maybe the conf file before restarting the qt.. it will start first block again let it finish..

But I presume since the tx didnt show up on blockchain that it got rejected... howver your balance should be right after the blockchain download for sure.. then try the tx again the same parameters.

[Hunterbunter]

Basically if people don't want DeVCoins and so determinedly don't want them that they will just throw them at buyers instead of stating a price they want for them and waiting for a buyer who is willing to pay that price, then why give them DeVCoins at all? We would drive down exchange rates less by just giving them dollars instead without the exchanges being involved, and since the profitability and market cap sites and so on do nto take over the counter sales of coins into account their deperate throwing away cheap of coins need not have an effect on the "official" exchange rate such sites show.

If we know ahead of time how many DeVCoins people want to throw away cheap we can be ready for them, with a private little exchange in effect, oh well mister author, we know you prefer fiat so we picked some up for you already, no need to throw away devcoins cheap, we sold them at a good price so you are getting more fiat this way than if you just threw it at the buyers...

Did someone say price fix?

I think for it to work best, it should be left to individual investors (eg credit unions) to do this kind of thing, rather than an institutionalized devcoin project particpant.

Basically figure out how many dollars or bitcoins or whatever you need your writing to be worth, also known as how many dollars you need each share to be worth.

Then place your sell order at the price that, based on how many devcoins this round's shares turned out to be, makes that many devcoins work out to that same amount of bitoins or dollars or whatever that you demand for your shares.

Basically it sounds like we need a writers futures market - not for usd per devcoin, but USD per devcoin per share. Or even an options market considering we can know exactly how many shares the writer has for sale at any one time.

Eg options market: middle of the month a writer has 20 shares, and opens up 20 contracts to sell the share at say 150,000 devcoins, when the round finalizes (this can be checked, for the most part). Anyone who thinks the shares will be worth more than that (ie the final tally will be less than 1200 total shares), can buy it and basically buy the final value of shares for the set price. If the tally ends up being 1000 shares, the person who bought the option walks away with 30,000 devcoins profit. If the tally ends up being a lot more than 1200 shares, the speculator only gets 120,000 devcoins for the 150,000 he paid. There would have to be some way to get the share payment from the writer to the speculator automatically, like maybe putting up the full amount as collateral. I don't know how easy it would be to game this system. This doesn't really help with the devcoin per $ problem, but that could be handled in a similar way, really.

Why am I even complaining that people drive the exchange rate down? Its not as if I do so much writing that I have more than enough devcoins already to sell up near or above 200 Satoshis, for me the way I manage to have lots of devcoins to place as highball sell offers is by having people throw their coins at my lowball buy offers.

Thinking like that it is easy to start thinking huh what is wrong with low exchange rates, aren't low exchange rates awesome, aren't they the very thing that makes high exchange rates so goshdarn lucrative?

How would anyone even recognise high rates as high if there were not low rates to compare and contrast them to?

You're actually profiting from volatility, not low prices. You'd have the same result if the price was measured in bitcoins and not satoshis.

If enough people used the shotgun bot (or any other volatility trading strategy), the price would mostly only move towards the long term trend. The downside is that volatility trading sucks with a long term trend, but while there is volatility, nothing beats it. The fact that volatility trading works pretty well with devcoins is part of why I said devcoins are actually quite stable in price. Albeit a low price.

[markm]

It is too bad that MPOE is not free open source, as options do sound like just what we need.

I ran around enquiring about the possibility of generic options code a long log time ago, I wanted something where you basically tell it here are the two items of a pair, I want to enable options on that pair.

No luck though.

I also tried working through a bunch of concepts using "long coins" and "short coins" but the big probem with een the best of those ideas was that people are nowadays spiled by options that give you massive leverage so the idea of having to lock up collateral equal to the maximum amount you could lose was a major turn-off for people.

But realistically, look at Lex Cryptographia even, you do need surety bonds aka collateral of some kind if you are not going to depend on the ability to send in the marines or the sheriff or whatever.

MPOE's method of doing options is a kind of zero sum system in which MPOE itself cannot possibly lose, and all potential loses are secured/covered by third party investors who in effect loan capital to the system or to the option writers or something.

It seems a shame to have to re-write the wheel from scratch over and over and over again which is why I tend to prefer to just get it over with by doing free open source in the first place. There should be code for all those kinds of things off the shelf as free open source so that any currency can easily equip itself with such important tools of finance.

-MarkM-

[weisoq]

Maybe it is, I am still not sure, but the federal reserve has different motivations (inflation) the motivation behind this is circulation coins and accepting people obviously NEED to sell their DVC when they get paid out, (or else they would hold them to make more money wouldn't they?)without flooding the market every month.. At the end of the day this is affecting price overall and the people cashing out are not getting the best they could either.

In a FIAT world my gold coin is worth a gold coin...in a Devcoin world its scary how much my one coin can change in value overnight. As someone who is now working from home, I can tell you this is not really a great way to get paid for work... (yet?)

so ...in this idea, if user A buys DVC to spend on phone cards or mobile phones or websites (any other products available for DVC yet?) and user B sells his DVC for cash, then user A ends up circulating the coins user B cashed in..and the phone-card/mobile phone or website seller has somewhere to cash in those same coins, so they can circulate again, without having to play the "money market" but actually supporting the market by not playing it......kind of ...sorry that's such a simplistic idea, but Im struggling to explain an unformed idea

It would also make DVC based commerce simpler if there was an exchange like this, purchasing DVC should be as easy as cashing them in for it to work. Ideally, if this fund could offer (on average) the median buy price from the exchanges, and list DVC at a higher sell price on the same exchanges, it could have a stabilising effect on the market (depending on volume from what I understand from an earlier post regarding sell and buy sides? please correct me if this is wrong) and potentially bring a return for investors as well as building a fund to support developers/creators that don't really fit the "devcoin developer" model. (for example I would love to see indigenous artists in really remote areas supported by DVC and beyond the reach of red tape BS....but that's a personal dream

And Im no closer to writing this up because I keep coming back to re-read what I already wrote and what you guys have said lol

1) Banks don't really hold funds, that's a general misunderstanding. When you deposit cash it's a liability of the bank because you've loaned them money. The reason it feels like they're holding funds is generally due to state deposit insurance. Banks don't need deposits on the whole, that's a myth. When they make a loan that's an asset of the bank and a new offsetting deposit is created on the liability side automatically - i.e. loans create deposits, banks create money.

This is a whole other topic. But I make the point because the analogy of a bank translates to the idea that a dvc fund could and would have to control the money supply in supporting the market by not playing it, if it's guaranteeing return or exchange at a certain 'price'.

2) That's perhaps a bit technical but this leads to... to avoid that it would need to purchase and hold dvc reserves equal to deposits on a rolling basis - then it's just an intermediary. That could be a lot of reserves and it would also mean it can't control prices. So if what you're referring to basically a dvc/fiat exchange then I agree that's a good idea. The issue here is that it can't work in isolation. If the fund's dvc/$ price differs in any way to the implied dvc -> btc -> $ or dvc -> ltc -> $ price etc, then the differential will be relentlessly eroded by trades until equivalent, or it's free money.

A dvc/fiat exchange, bank or investment fund might be a good idea. But they need to be subject to simple market forces and risk of loss like everything else. I'm not getting how a fund could be managed without reference to the market pricing you said was being avoided, except in just being a new market?