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

[stslimited]

stslimited's questions might have just killed mastercoin. i can't believe nobody asked them before

I've been trying to get the answers to these questions for weeks, after trying to understand Mastercoin for over a month


I've had an order in the Mastercoin Buyer/Seller spreadsheet since November

[Herp]

great, since this is in line with my current understand and to avoid walking in even bigger circles, so lets continue with my original example

I want to buy 100 shares of ASICMiner at 5 btc/each , this is 500 btc in this example

I want to participate in a decentralized stock market where this company is denominated in bitcoin, listed in its bitcoin price, and trading in bitcoin

How many mastercoins will I need to participate in that 3rd layer application and facilitate the transaction?

How many mastercoin will the seller need to participate in that 3rd layer application and facilitate the transaction?

How many mastercoin will the issuer ASICMiner or ASICMiner-decentralized-Pass-Through need to have listed the security?

did I miss anyone that may need a balance of mastercoin? a market participant? a transaction fee? anything?

someone should be able to produce a finite number or equation for how much mastercoin that I or any of those market participants, or anyone ever, will need

You would need a Bitcoin pegged Mastercoin based virtual currency for that, which you could buy using Mastercoins. Let's call this pegged currency MasterBitCoins (pegged 1:1 to Bitcoin). You'd be required to buy these MasterBitCoins, pegged to the value of Bitcoin, in order to trade AsicMiner stock. This would mean in other words: convert fiat/crypto to MSC and then convert MSC to the desired amount of MasterBitCoins.

How many Mastercoins you would need depends on the value of Mastercoin at that given moment. In a year from now 1 MSC might buy 2 Bitcoins, who knows. Should MSC trade at 2BTC per 1MSC, you would need 250 MSC to buy 500 MasterBitCoins in order to buy 100 AsicMiner shares.

Not really sure about the other questions. Still trying to get more info myself.

Risk factor: A less convoluted protocol will come into existence obliterating the demand for Mastercoin

an alternate technology enables issuing securities, contracts, etc on decentralized exchanges without the need for any additional currencies.

Having additional currencies is not a drawback. Might be in the case of pegged BTC currency, as you need some extra conversions and you may find it easier to trade on an existing Bitcoin stock exchange. However, this isn't the case if we're talking gold backed currency or USD pegged currency to buy Twitter shares.

[FrictionlessCoin]

Help me understand something here.

Why does the exchanges for MSC say "Test MSC"?   Are these people just trading test coins here?  Is this like being on the Test Net and their are no real coins exchanged?

[proinside]

Well, MSC is an interesting idea. However, I feel very strange about this as such.

There is the question about how exactly MSC makes my coins harder to steal when using the bitcoin protocol as a layer for itself. If it would be possible in a few years to actually "create" bitcoins by finding collisions in the sha256 bitcoin uses, will MSC still be stable?

With the initial funding and distribution of MSC, the devs "valued" their own MSC at a given MSC/BTC ratio. Why do you exactly get 100/BTC?  Is it good to value your own currency without looking at the market first?

devMSC is a thing that actually bothers me. It's not like you did a fundraising for your work at first and then you actually create yourself new MSC beyond already being funded... That sounds not fair to me. You should have gone with only the fundraising and not simply implement a coin generation like that. -> You increased your value of MSC by 1/10 for your dev crew only. Meaning you archived a margin of fundraising by 10% already for you guys simply with those devMSC.

Another thing that bothers me is that there is no exchange already. According to your Exodus add you received around 5000 btc on that one. That would be 5million dollar funded by you without having a working exchange.

This should not mean that MSC is a bad thing. I kinda like the idea behind it, but there are still things you need to think about. Why stick with MSC if you simply could roll with BTC because MSC is not that much of a difference right now. Simply just another alt coin. Ye its nice it uses the bitcoin protocol and stuff, however it is far to insecure for me to actually believe it will skyrocket anytime soon.

I also would predict that it actually shrinks to around 0.005 - 0.09 BTC. The main reason for this is that MSC can't do anything without being backed by BTC.

My biggest problem currently is that the devs actually look greedy and simply are hiding the fact that this was a quick nice idea to get some bucks in their pockets. Why else create 10% more coins just for the devs after fundraising the whole thing...

[Herp]

@proinside

There is a decentralized MSC exchange in Alpha stage at the moment, which will go live soon.

Master dev coins are meant is incentive for those who are interested in building mastercoin apps and sevices. Will be given as bounties to help develop the infrastructure. These Dev mastercoins don't belong to the founders.

[FrictionlessCoin]

well, my frustration stems from the fact that this doesn't seem to be a thing that anyone can answer. I assume SOMEONE can, but nobody on the mastercoin subreddit or in the general bitcointalk forum can.

it seems as if the currency aspect of the technology is limiting the flow of objective information, with the speculative nature of the currency unit hampering technical discussion

but, as someone that has considered buying mastercoin, I want to be able to do my own objective analysis of mastercoin's future demand, and so far this requires me to understand how many mastercoin people will actually need to do anything

Bingo. I'm guessing 90% of the people here don't understand or don't know how mastercoin will actually work. I have yet to receive a response from someone knowledgeable:

What can 1MSC do that .1 MSC cannot? What does an MSC (the kind selling at .17 BTC) actually DO? Is it SHARES in the mastercoin protocol corporation?Are MSC going to be used to launch 3rd layer applications? And if so, how many will be needed for each particular application?

I asked precisely the same question several days back.  The answer is that there's no difference between 1 MSC and .1 MSC in terms of functionality.

That is why the iXcoin "Smart Currency" implementation ties a user defined coin back to an actual IXC amount.   So say you create 1,000,000 shares of a corporation. If each share consumes 1/1,000 of an IXC, then you need to purchase 1,000 IXC to release your shares through the IXC network.  Mastercoin does not have this behavior,  iXcoin and colored coins do have this behavior.

[proinside]

There is a decentralized MSC exchange in Alpha stage at the moment, which will go live soon.

If there is a MSC exchange currently I have to apologize. However, afaik there are only being test msc traded currently. Is there already a release date when there will be real MSC being traded?

Master dev coins are meant is incentive for those who are interested in building mastercoin apps and sevices. Will be given as bounties to help develop the infrastructure. These Dev mastercoins don't belong to the founders.

The intension being, that the Mastercoin Foundation will handle this distribution process temporarily until its operation can be transferred to the Master Protocol community via the Distributed Bounty system and the Proof of Stake consensus mechanism.

This quote is taken from the official github spec. (https://github.com/mastercoin-MSC/spec). This is handled currently by the master coin foundation. So they hold all dev coins currently. Nobody knows when the master coin foundation actually "trusts" their Master Protocol Distributed Bounty System. Maybe in a year after release? Would be a good estiminate if you ask me, but would mean the master coin foundation holds 1-0.5^1 devMSC until then easily. Meaning they have created an additional 5% instead of 10% margin for them. (formula taken from their github spec), deciding who to actually give those devMSC to. This is something I learned the hard way. Yet waiting for a 3k+ Nxt Bounty which won't be payed in the long run I believe.

[Herp]

There is a decentralized MSC exchange in Alpha stage at the moment, which will go live soon.

If there is a MSC exchange currently I have to apologize. However, afaik there are only being test msc traded currently. Is there already a release date when there will be real MSC being traded?

I believe there was an ETA of 2 months given back in November, so launch date is drawing near.

In the meantime, people can use the https://masterxchange.com centralized exchange to buy and sell Mastercoins (MSC). Works quite well. They have also increased the bounty to $10k for the first existing exchange that accepts Mastercoin.

[Patel]

They have also increased the bounty to $10k for the first existing exchange that accepts Mastercoin.

that bounty should have gone to masterxchange then

[Herp]

They have also increased the bounty to $10k for the first existing exchange that accepts Mastercoin.

that bounty should have gone to masterxchange then

No, because these are the terms of the bounty https://trello.com/c/jE5MdzpW/60-10000-first-existing-exchange-that-supports-mastercoin

First exchange that supports Mastercoin.

Conditions:

The exchange should currently support at least BTC, LTC, PPC

[TraderTimm]

Disastercoin is dead in the water.

http://boombustblog.com/blog/item/9188-the-future-of-money-is-here-boombust-zero-trust-digital-currency-contracts

Made by a guy who understands financial markets as well, and has been on CNBC as a subject expert on various matters.

Have fun with the 5,000 BTC you collected.

[stereotype]

Disastercoin is dead in the water.

http://boombustblog.com/blog/item/9188-the-future-of-money-is-here-boombust-zero-trust-digital-currency-contracts

Made by a guy who understands financial markets as well, and has been on CNBC as a subject expert on various matters.

Have fun with the 5,000 BTC you collected.

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=400290.0;all

[zathras]

Hey guys,

Having just finished up with our weekly dev sync con-call, I'm now pleased to publicly announce that I will be joining the project full-time!

The foundation has been working tremendously hard to attract quality talent to drastically speed up development and I can't express enough how excited I am to have the opportunity to dedicate significantly more time to Mastercoin.  We have a great team working on the project and with a significant number of new hires coming on board too and getting involved the next few months should be an exciting time!

I will be ceasing my current role and transitioning to working full time on development on 24 Feb.

Thanks to the community for all your support to date
Zathras

[dacoinminster]

Hey guys,

Having just finished up with our weekly dev sync con-call, I'm now pleased to publicly announce that I will be joining the project full-time!

The foundation has been working tremendously hard to attract quality talent to drastically speed up development and I can't express enough how excited I am to have the opportunity to dedicate significantly more time to Mastercoin.  We have a great team working on the project and with a significant number of new hires coming on board too and getting involved the next few months should be an exciting time!

I will be ceasing my current role and transitioning to working full time on development on 24 Feb.

Thanks to the community for all your support to date
Zathras

I'm so happy I . . .

 . . . I think I just wet myself.

[udecker]

I'm now pleased to publicly announce that I will be joining the project full-time!

This is extraordinarily good news!  Congrats, Zathras!

[prophetx]

Here's the latest dev update:

Master Protocol & #Mastercoin: Development Update 2 http://ow.ly/srmwa

Developer Communications Mediums

Key Development Statistics

CTO Opening and Search

Security Auditor Opening and Search

QA and Testing of Wallets

Research & Development Updates

[stslimited]

great, since this is in line with my current understand and to avoid walking in even bigger circles, so lets continue with my original example

I want to buy 100 shares of ASICMiner at 5 btc/each , this is 500 btc in this example

I want to participate in a decentralized stock market where this company is denominated in bitcoin, listed in its bitcoin price, and trading in bitcoin

How many mastercoins will I need to participate in that 3rd layer application and facilitate the transaction?

How many mastercoin will the seller need to participate in that 3rd layer application and facilitate the transaction?

How many mastercoin will the issuer ASICMiner or ASICMiner-decentralized-Pass-Through need to have listed the security?

did I miss anyone that may need a balance of mastercoin? a market participant? a transaction fee? anything?

someone should be able to produce a finite number or equation for how much mastercoin that I or any of those market participants, or anyone ever, will need

You would need a Bitcoin pegged Mastercoin based virtual currency for that, which you could buy using Mastercoins. Let's call this pegged currency MasterBitCoins (pegged 1:1 to Bitcoin). You'd be required to buy these MasterBitCoins, pegged to the value of Bitcoin, in order to trade AsicMiner stock. This would mean in other words: convert fiat/crypto to MSC and then convert MSC to the desired amount of MasterBitCoins.

How many Mastercoins you would need depends on the value of Mastercoin at that given moment. In a year from now 1 MSC might buy 2 Bitcoins, who knows. Should MSC trade at 2BTC per 1MSC, you would need 250 MSC to buy 500 MasterBitCoins in order to buy 100 AsicMiner shares.

Not really sure about the other questions. Still trying to get more info myself.

Risk factor: A less convoluted protocol will come into existence obliterating the demand for Mastercoin

an alternate technology enables issuing securities, contracts, etc on decentralized exchanges without the need for any additional currencies.

Having additional currencies is not a drawback. Might be in the case of pegged BTC currency, as you need some extra conversions and you may find it easier to trade on an existing Bitcoin stock exchange. However, this isn't the case if we're talking gold backed currency or USD pegged currency to buy Twitter shares.

It is a drawback, it introduces additional layers of LIQUIDITY that simply won't be there

You need base currency liquidity (just assume bitcoin), you need mastercoin liquidity, then you'll need your Masterbitcoin liquidity, then you need liquidity in the ASICMiner stock

god forbid you were trying to trade options on that stock!

[Herp]

It is a drawback, it introduces additional layers of LIQUIDITY that simply won't be there

You need base currency liquidity (just assume bitcoin), you need mastercoin liquidity, then you'll need your Masterbitcoin liquidity, then you need liquidity in the ASICMiner stock

god forbid you were trying to trade options on that stock!

Not sure if we can accurately assess at this point the demand for such services. How strong will demand be for a decentralized stock exchange? Will it be strong enough to gather enough liquidity? I don't see why not. People don't like very much the current offerings and they might flock en masse to mastercoin exchanges.

[TKeenan]

I'm now pleased to publicly announce that I will be joining the project full-time!

Thanks to the community for all your support to date
Zathras

I'm so happy I . . .
 . . . I think I just wet myself.

Jeezus Christ Man!  That's fucking creepy.  But I am pretty happy about this too.  Obviously the project is much better off with Zath going full speed and fully committed. 

I am going to send three Thai ladies to his house to do his laundry, clean the house, and any other 'chores' he might need taken care of. 

[FrictionlessCoin]

interesting, so how many Mastercoin would the issuer need to issue a new security with X number of shares at Y price? is there a formula? any predictable measure?

The smallest amount of MSC would be sufficient.

I think the problem with MSC is that software developers are too embroiled with layering protocol layers but forgetting that economics is just as important.

Bitcoin is a protocol for ensuring that there are no double spends, plain and simple.  Sure you can embed messaging and maybe facebook likes or what ever you can think of,  but what is the point if it does not tie back to the currency?

I might as well go back to HTTP, at least its instantaneous and not like 1 message every 10 minutes!

Anyway,  with iXcoin's implementation,  if you want 1 million shares, then you create maybe 10,000 IXC to hold them.   The price of each of that shares is defined by the company that it represents,  all that IXC does is ensure you can trade these shares in distributed exchanges.    Is there a price relationship between the user issued shares and IXC,  yes there is,  the user issued shares price doesn't go below 1/10,000 of an IXC.  In short, they should be worth more than the paper that its printed on!

Why use iXcoin versus Bitcoin?   Well it's like printing stock certificates on paper versys printing on gold.   

Why iXcoin instead of any other alt coin?   iXcoin is secured by almost 6 peta hash per second (Bitcoin is at 12 peta has per second).   So you are pretty much assured that exchanges of your user defined coin is extremely secure.

Why haven't I heard of iXcoin?   The user defined currencies are in the works right now and plan on releasing it with the 0.8.7 version of the client.   Previous work was to update the old version to be on par with Bitcoin at 0.8.6.