MasterCoin: New Protocol Layer Starting From “The Exodus Address”

[jeroenn13]

this thing is fog.

What do you mean. Read the FAQ in my signature.

[hmmmstrange]

this thing is fog.

What do you mean. Read the FAQ in my signature.

Had to look up fog in the urban dictionary. Still not positive what he means but I don't think it's "Fuckable Old Guys".

[go1111111]

I just started paying attention to mastercoin because Peter Todd, someone who seems to have some serious skills, got involved. I don't know a lot about J.R. or David Johnston, but it looks like they both try really hard to look important in ways that make me question their judgment and would make me worry about being involved in any project where they have leadership roles.

Example #1: J.R. titled his whitepaper "The Second Bitcoin Whitepaper", as if trying to put himself on a similar level to Satoshi.

Example #2: David's github account is "DavidJohnstonCEO", which is kind of like the people who put "PhD" in their email signatures, but about 5x worse (especially on a site like github).

Have J.R. or David ever explained these actions publicly?


 

[crazy_rabbit]

I just started paying attention to mastercoin because Peter Todd, someone who seems to have some serious skills, got involved. I don't know a lot about J.R. or David Johnston, but it looks like they both try really hard to look important in ways that make me question their judgment and would make me worry about being involved in any project where they have leadership roles.

Example #1: J.R. titled his whitepaper "The Second Bitcoin Whitepaper", as if trying to put himself on a similar level to Satoshi.

Example #2: David's github account is "DavidJohnstonCEO", which is kind of like the people who put "PhD" in their email signatures, but about 5x worse (especially on a site like github).

Have J.R. or David ever explained these actions publicly?

Example 1: There was a time when Satoshi was not yet revered as a god. Back in the day he was just another programmer talking some cool ideas. Although Bitcoin was his idea, the current implementation is not just his work. A bit like the bible, Jesus too was once a regular guy the disciples hung out with. But other guys, like peter, did a great deal of work before the religion would be able to take off.

So, it's not unreasonable for him to have put himself 'on the same level of Satoshi', he's just talking in the same way the developers and Satoshi used to talk.

Example 2: I know very few PhD's that DONT put "PhD" in their title every time they use it. Sorry, but if you put that much money and that much of your life into something so ridiculously hard and exhausting, you've earned the right to put "PhD" in your text messages for all I care. I'm still impressed.

[killerstorm]

Example #2: David's github account is "DavidJohnstonCEO", which is kind of like the people who put "PhD" in their email signatures, but about 5x worse (especially on a site like github).

"David Johnston" isn't an unique name, I guess he added "CEO" just to disambiguate. It's informative.

As for "The Second Bitcoin Whitepaper", it is as cheesy as it sounds... I don't know what kind of an explanation you're looking for.

FYI J.R. also created this: https://sites.google.com/site/2ndbtcwpaper/using-memes-to-explain-bitcoin#!

And this: http://lifeboat.com/blog/2013/04/bitcoins-dystopian-future#!

[go1111111]

Example 1: There was a time when Satoshi was not yet revered as a god. Back in the day he was just another programmer talking some cool ideas. Although Bitcoin was his idea, the current implementation is not just his work.[...snip...]

So, it's not unreasonable for him to have put himself 'on the same level of Satoshi', he's just talking in the same way the developers and Satoshi used to talk.

J.R. published his paper in January of 2012, well after lots of people realized the huge significance of Satoshi's work. The original paper already had a somewhat legendary status at that time.

Even if J.R.'s paper is as brilliant as he apparently thinks it is, a normal person in his shoes would publish it with a less tacky title and let people realize its worth on their own.

Example 2: I know very few PhD's that DONT put "PhD" in their title every time they use it. Sorry, but if you put that much money and that much of your life into something so ridiculously hard and exhausting, you've earned the right to put "PhD" in your text messages for all I care. I'm still impressed.

It sounds like you know some very try-hard PhDs. In general it's considered socially awkward to do that.

"David Johnston" isn't an unique name, I guess he added "CEO" just to disambiguate. It's informative.

There are so many other ways to disambiguate though. How many other people feel the need to insert 'CEO' in their github handle? You know github is a developer community and devs are famously skeptical of titles and primarily care about what you've actually created right? What if he had put "VIP" in his handle to disambiguate? Totally normal?

As for "The Second Bitcoin Whitepaper", it is as cheesy as it sounds... I don't know what kind of an explanation you're looking for.

Just some acknowledgement from these people showing that they're somewhat self-aware, like "Yeah, I know it was pretty douchey of me, but I was just really excited about the concept when I released that paper. I'm kind of embarrassed about that now."

[marcelus]

Just some acknowledgement from these people showing that they're somewhat self-aware, like "Yeah, I know it was pretty douchey of me, but I was just really excited about the concept when I released that paper. I'm kind of embarrassed about that now."

Do you really give that much of a shit about the title of the paper?

[NewLiberty]

Just some acknowledgement from these people showing that they're somewhat self-aware, like "Yeah, I know it was pretty douchey of me, but I was just really excited about the concept when I released that paper. I'm kind of embarrassed about that now."

Do you really give that much of a shit about the title of the paper?

His HYPE-meter went off, and he was kind enough to share that information.

[dance4x]

I have a question about Mastercoin and why the Mastercoin protocol layer is needed. Couldn't the features that Mastercoin wants to build be created directly on top of Bitcoin without Mastercoin? I know the Mastercoin exodus address was created to give an incentive for these features to be created in the first place, but doesn't that incentive already exist with people who own bitcoins? In other words, don't holders of bitcoins benefit from supporting projects such as Open Transactions and Colored Coins? I am interested in many of the features that will be built on top of Mastercoin, but I am wondering if people would prefer those features to be built directly on top of Bitcoin. For example, with the decentralized exchange, won't users prefer to trade bitcoins directly for a stock or currency in the Colored Coins wallet rather than exchanging bitcoins for mastercoins and then into the stock or currency? It seems that the middle Mastercoin layer adds a bit of extra volatility with the Mastercoin currency that is not needed. When it comes to people with dollars or other fiat currencies who want to trade on one of these decentralized exchanges, wouldn't they be more likely to trade from bitcoins into the new currencies and stocks rather than mastercoins? People will want to use a less volatile currency, such as bitcoin, to do their trading, and it is likely that Bitcoin will have more liquidity, and therefore, less price volatility.

Edit: After doing more reading it seems that users interacting with the Mastercoin decentralized exchange may not need to own Mastercoins. They will be able to load their bitcoins into the client and then trade them directly for other user-made currencies. Is this how it works?

[crazy_rabbit]

Is there a free Mastercoin Logo that can be reused with no license? I'm looking to make some Mastercoin Stickers and was looking for a suitable graphics file to print.

[go1111111]

Do you really give that much of a shit about the title of the paper?

I am curious what kind of people are in charge of mastercoin, because it's the most important thing that will determine mastercoin's eventual success or failure (assuming the idea has some technical merit). It's relevant for people thinking about obtaining mastercoins.

[subSTRATA]

So I decided to check this new hot protocol over faucet. I entered all data properly and to my surprise got 0.0000546
BTC on my Bitcoin address but 0.00125 MSC to Mastercoin address. Now I'm totally confused about the whole deal here.

1. Why amounts for BTC and MSC differ?
2. When it comes to how much BTC and MSC one receives over faucet, is ratio constant or random?
3. What happens with my 0.0000546 BTC if I spend my 0.00125 MSC or I do it the other way around? In other words,
are those 0.0000546 BTC now bound to 0.00125 MSC or not?

http://mastercoin-explorer.com/transactions/5c707b42cebe78283eb2d4c61e4dd7d4a241f35690b265e862844b58ef489bbe

[Patel]

So I decided to check this new hot protocol over faucet. I entered all data properly and to my surprise got 0.0000546
BTC on my Bitcoin address but 0.00125 MSC to Mastercoin address. Now I'm totally confused about the whole deal here.

1. Why amounts for BTC and MSC differ?
2. When it comes to how much BTC and MSC one receives over faucet, is ratio constant or random?
3. What happens with my 0.0000546 BTC if I spend my 0.00125 MSC or I do it the other way around? In other words,
are those 0.0000546 BTC now bound to 0.00125 MSC or not?

http://mastercoin-explorer.com/transactions/5c707b42cebe78283eb2d4c61e4dd7d4a241f35690b265e862844b58ef489bbe

they are not bound, you can spend all the btc on the address, and the msc will still be on the address

[FrictionlessCoin]

So I decided to check this new hot protocol over faucet. I entered all data properly and to my surprise got 0.0000546
BTC on my Bitcoin address but 0.00125 MSC to Mastercoin address. Now I'm totally confused about the whole deal here.

1. Why amounts for BTC and MSC differ?
2. When it comes to how much BTC and MSC one receives over faucet, is ratio constant or random?
3. What happens with my 0.0000546 BTC if I spend my 0.00125 MSC or I do it the other way around? In other words,
are those 0.0000546 BTC now bound to 0.00125 MSC or not?

http://mastercoin-explorer.com/transactions/5c707b42cebe78283eb2d4c61e4dd7d4a241f35690b265e862844b58ef489bbe

they are not bound, you can spend all the btc on the address, and the msc will still be on the address

The entire mastercoin protocol is bordering on insanity.  There is no correlation as to amount of BTC sent and the MSC that is sent.  It is completely arbitrary.   In short, there is no real security that the MSC that is received is even the MSC that is available to send.

What this means is the value of 1 MSC is the same as 100 MSC or 1,000 MSC!   So you do the math?  If 1 MSC = 100 MSC = 1,000 MSC  then clearly the underlying unit is zero.

[crazy_rabbit]

Example 1: There was a time when Satoshi was not yet revered as a god. Back in the day he was just another programmer talking some cool ideas. Although Bitcoin was his idea, the current implementation is not just his work.[...snip...]

So, it's not unreasonable for him to have put himself 'on the same level of Satoshi', he's just talking in the same way the developers and Satoshi used to talk.

J.R. published his paper in January of 2012, well after lots of people realised the huge significance of Satoshi's work. The original paper already had a somewhat legendary status at that time.

I disagree. In January 2012 the number of people who believed in Bitcoin or Satoshi's vision was still very small. Even so- Satoshi isn't a god. We don't even know if he was one person, and there are plenty of theories he was sponsored by an Intelligence agency. I don't know why you are trying to turn Satoshi into some all-knowing crypto god. Cryptocurrency wasn't even Satoshi's original idea as people have been talking about some way to do it for some time.

Even if J.R.'s paper is as brilliant as he apparently thinks it is, a normal person in his shoes would publish it with a less tacky title and let people realize its worth on their own.

Supposedly J.R.'s paper was going to be called, "An extraordinary work of breathtaking cryptographic genius" but being the humble guy he his, he opted for something simpler. ;-)

Example 2: I know very few PhD's that DONT put "PhD" in their title every time they use it. Sorry, but if you put that much money and that much of your life into something so ridiculously hard and exhausting, you've earned the right to put "PhD" in your text messages for all I care. I'm still impressed.

It sounds like you know some very try-hard PhDs. In general it's considered socially awkward to do that.

By people without PhD's I suppose. It's socially awkward to call yourself "Her Majesty the Queen" but I doubt many people get personal letters from Buckingham Palace signed "liz".

"David Johnston" isn't an unique name, I guess he added "CEO" just to disambiguate. It's informative.

There are so many other ways to disambiguate though. How many other people feel the need to insert 'CEO' in their github handle? You know github is a developer community and devs are famously skeptical of titles and primarily care about what you've actually created right? What if he had put "VIP" in his handle to disambiguate? Totally normal?

As for "The Second Bitcoin Whitepaper", it is as cheesy as it sounds... I don't know what kind of an explanation you're looking for.

Just some acknowledgement from these people showing that they're somewhat self-aware, like "Yeah, I know it was pretty douchey of me, but I was just really excited about the concept when I released that paper. I'm kind of embarrassed about that now."

J.R. Raised nearly $5 million dollars for mastercoin. Having never raised a million dollars myself, I could care less if he called himself "J to the MasterMoney R".

I don't understand why you need them to deliberately be some sort of humble characters? If they were humble people, they wouldn't wake up in the morning thinking they could fundamentally restructure the global financial system. Fortune favours the bold, (and most likely arrogant). I think most of us are okay with that.

[Patel]

The entire mastercoin protocol is bordering on insanity.  There is no correlation as to amount of BTC sent and the MSC that is sent.  It is completely arbitrary.   In short, there is no real security that the MSC that is received is even the MSC that is available to send.

What this means is the value of 1 MSC is the same as 100 MSC or 1,000 MSC!   So you do the math?  If 1 MSC = 100 MSC = 1,000 MSC  then clearly the underlying unit is zero.

I dont understand, how can 1 msc also be 100msc? Wouldn't this put the exchanges and trading in jeopardy of people sending MSC that they don't really have?

[crazy_rabbit]

I think the reason why most people here do not like colored coin is simple. They cannot invest on it. Colored coin is just like a traditional open source project, where people earn reputation but no money.

That said, it make sense to say that msc may have better chance to succeed because the developers have more incentives. Colored coin has been developed for a long period and the slow progress Could be explained by its volunteer nature.

Nonetheless, in a project like master coin, there's another problem. If the wealth is not distributed fairly, the progress may be even slower than colored coin. Human's nature makes us hate working hard to make others to be super rich. We may feel better if no one gets rich at all.

Well said.

I hope that Mastercoin gets a really amazing website with a very cool video and all the other stuff like p2p exchanges, assets etc... soon... with all the money at their disposal, I am a bit impressed with the slow progress so far.

Even with a ton of money, I think people are being a little unrealistic about how long it takes to develop something.

[FrictionlessCoin]

The entire mastercoin protocol is bordering on insanity.  There is no correlation as to amount of BTC sent and the MSC that is sent.  It is completely arbitrary.   In short, there is no real security that the MSC that is received is even the MSC that is available to send.

What this means is the value of 1 MSC is the same as 100 MSC or 1,000 MSC!   So you do the math?  If 1 MSC = 100 MSC = 1,000 MSC  then clearly the underlying unit is zero.

I dont understand, how can 1 msc also be 100msc? Wouldn't this put the exchanges and trading in jeopardy of people sending MSC that they don't really have?

Let me explain a bit here.  The functionality that you get with 1 msc is the same you get with 100 msc.  In short, if I had a user defined currency,  I can use 1 msc to transfer any amount or I can use 100 msc to do the same. 

There is no conservation of coin in the entire specification.  It is messed up royally!

[Super T]

The entire mastercoin protocol is bordering on insanity.  There is no correlation as to amount of BTC sent and the MSC that is sent.  It is completely arbitrary.   In short, there is no real security that the MSC that is received is even the MSC that is available to send.

What this means is the value of 1 MSC is the same as 100 MSC or 1,000 MSC!   So you do the math?  If 1 MSC = 100 MSC = 1,000 MSC  then clearly the underlying unit is zero.

I dont understand, how can 1 msc also be 100msc? Wouldn't this put the exchanges and trading in jeopardy of people sending MSC that they don't really have?

Let me explain a bit here.  The functionality that you get with 1 msc is the same you get with 100 msc.  In short, if I had a user defined currency,  I can use 1 msc to transfer any amount or I can use 100 msc to do the same. 

There is no conservation of coin in the entire specification.  It is messed up royally!

Dude - you need to read more about how Mastercoin works. Please stop polluting this thread.

[FrictionlessCoin]

The entire mastercoin protocol is bordering on insanity.  There is no correlation as to amount of BTC sent and the MSC that is sent.  It is completely arbitrary.   In short, there is no real security that the MSC that is received is even the MSC that is available to send.

What this means is the value of 1 MSC is the same as 100 MSC or 1,000 MSC!   So you do the math?  If 1 MSC = 100 MSC = 1,000 MSC  then clearly the underlying unit is zero.

I dont understand, how can 1 msc also be 100msc? Wouldn't this put the exchanges and trading in jeopardy of people sending MSC that they don't really have?

Let me explain a bit here.  The functionality that you get with 1 msc is the same you get with 100 msc.  In short, if I had a user defined currency,  I can use 1 msc to transfer any amount or I can use 100 msc to do the same. 

There is no conservation of coin in the entire specification.  It is messed up royally!

Dude - you need to read more about how Mastercoin works. Please stop polluting this thread.

Dude, my concerns are legitimate and unfortunately aren't addressed.   I have read about how Mastercoin works, unfortunately I've come to the conclusion that it doesn't work.