MasterCoin Buyer/Seller Thread

[HammerFist]

well this sooner or later would happen. Those >5K MSC holder dragons will be wakening one by one if they see the price is going up madly. Still I believe dacoin's possible offer is caused by his integrity to push back the things to sanity again!

Holy crap, exactly how many have more than 5000 each?

[malevolent]

Holy crap, exactly how many have more than 5000 each?

Anyone who sent >50 BTC to https://blockchain.info/address/1EXoDusjGwvnjZUyKkxZ4UHEf77z6A5S4P?sort=1 before the end of August now has >5000 MSC.
(the exchange rate was 100 MSC : 1 BTC)

[HammerFist]

Holy crap, exactly how many have more than 5000 each?

Anyone who sent >50 BTC to https://blockchain.info/address/1EXoDusjGwvnjZUyKkxZ4UHEf77z6A5S4P?sort=1 before the end of August now has >5000 MSC.
(the exchange rate was 100 MSC : 1 BTC)

You are brilliant.  Did you major in mathematics?  I know the rate.  I understand multiplication.  How many sent more than 50 BTC? 

Someone needs to work up a top 25 or something.

[malevolent]

You are brilliant.  Did you major in mathematics?  I know the rate.  I understand multiplication.  How many sent more than 50 BTC? 
Someone needs to work up a top 25 or something.

You are welcome to contribute.

[Pouncer]

While the rest of the world is sleeping, and after learning that the dacoinminster request was indeed a hoax, I've removed the "Request" tab which is no longer in use.

[rbdrbd]

well this sooner or later would happen. Those >5K MSC holder dragons will be wakening one by one if they see the price is going up madly. Still I believe dacoin's possible offer is caused by his integrity to push back the things to sanity again!

Holy crap, exactly how many have more than 5000 each?

You can get some information by exploring transactions for the month of August to excel format from blockchain.info (after showing confirmed only and received only), then sorting highest by lowest...but that just shows individual transactions...not total wallet balances. I'd be interested in seeing the latter.

However, going off of this raw transaction data... I'd guess somewhere between 14 and 18 folks have wallets with >5000 mastercoin (or at least this was the case at the closing of the window to contribute to the exodus address).

A more in depth wealth analysis would be great!! Things I'd love to see:
* Distribution of wealth (e.g. how skewed is it towards whales)
* Wallet balances of top 25 holders

[rbdrbd]

sanity ? lmao selling coins of some unclear protocol that is at odds with the BTC devs ...yes BUY BUY BUY!!   LOL

Well you say the same thing as me, but with opposition mark Disclaimer: I sold 90% of my coins
But if dacoinminster's neutrality and passiveness do not kill his own project, I believe the real price (WHEN AND IF ALL THE FEATURES ARE IMPLEMENTED) is about to land and stay around the 1 BTC horizon.
Some kids are excited and spamming these threads reasoning about why it will be 20-30 BTC per MSC by two or three years, I invite them to do a simple multiplication (~600K MSC*30 BTC). God bless btt community!

Have someone from Forbes, Huff Post, etc. pick up a story on Mastercoin, and see how long it takes it to get to the 1-2 BTC point. That's all that will be necessary.

I think once a basic distributed exchange is in place and being used (as per the current bounty) that could end up happening. The way it rides on top of the bitcoin blockchain is very interesting and I would think worth writing about, once you have something you can share with it in the article (i.e. working distributed exchange, etc)

[Luckybit]

sanity ? lmao selling coins of some unclear protocol that is at odds with the BTC devs ...yes BUY BUY BUY!!   LOL

Well you say the same thing as me, but with opposition mark Disclaimer: I sold 90% of my coins
But if dacoinminster's neutrality and passiveness do not kill his own project, I believe the real price (WHEN AND IF ALL THE FEATURES ARE IMPLEMENTED) is about to land and stay around the 1 BTC horizon.
Some kids are excited and spamming these threads reasoning about why it will be 20-30 BTC per MSC by two or three years, I invite them to do a simple multiplication (~600K MSC*30 BTC). God bless btt community!

Have someone from Forbes, Huff Post, etc. pick up a story on Mastercoin, and see how long it takes it to get to the 1-2 BTC point. That's all that will be necessary.

I think once a basic distributed exchange is in place and being used (as per the current bounty) that could end up happening. The way it rides on top of the bitcoin blockchain is very interesting and I would think worth writing about, once you have something you can share with it in the article (i.e. working distributed exchange, etc)

I'm the one who said Mastercoin could someday be worth 20-30BTC each.

That is 18,000,000 Bitcoins if you're doing 600,000*30. This number is irrelevant though because you don't have to buy Mastercoins with Bitcoins so it's not really known how much it could be worth. A Mastercoin could go for way more than that too.

Honestly I don't know how much Mastercoin will ultimately be worth, but I expect 1-2 BTC per Mastercoin at some point. 20-30 BTC per Mastercoin depends on too many factors which no one can predict and is years away from happening if it happens at all. Kind of like how Bitcoin will probably go to $1000 but $100,000 we just don't know.

I would say don't buy Mastercoin under the certainty that the protocol will work. It's an experiment, it's high risk, and if it fails then the Mastercoins could be worth 0. If it succeeds then the sky is the limit.

The price of Mastercoins should reflect the progress of the protocol and not just blind speculation. People are buying now because they expect it to reach 1 BTC but that isn't going to happen instantly, and even if a decentralized exchange were here if that did happen the exchange would need enough volume. The buy/sell orders reflected on this site are a poor indication of the kind of volume the exchange would have.

[alp]

sanity ? lmao selling coins of some unclear protocol that is at odds with the BTC devs ...yes BUY BUY BUY!!   LOL

Well you say the same thing as me, but with opposition mark Disclaimer: I sold 90% of my coins
But if dacoinminster's neutrality and passiveness do not kill his own project, I believe the real price (WHEN AND IF ALL THE FEATURES ARE IMPLEMENTED) is about to land and stay around the 1 BTC horizon.
Some kids are excited and spamming these threads reasoning about why it will be 20-30 BTC per MSC by two or three years, I invite them to do a simple multiplication (~600K MSC*30 BTC). God bless btt community!

Have someone from Forbes, Huff Post, etc. pick up a story on Mastercoin, and see how long it takes it to get to the 1-2 BTC point. That's all that will be necessary.

I think once a basic distributed exchange is in place and being used (as per the current bounty) that could end up happening. The way it rides on top of the bitcoin blockchain is very interesting and I would think worth writing about, once you have something you can share with it in the article (i.e. working distributed exchange, etc)

I'm the one who said Mastercoin could someday be worth 20-30BTC each.

That is 18,000,000 Bitcoins if you're doing 600,000*30. This number is irrelevant though because you don't have to buy Mastercoins with Bitcoins so it's not really known how much it could be worth. A Mastercoin could go for way more than that too.

Honestly I don't know how much Mastercoin will ultimately be worth, but I expect 1-2 BTC per Mastercoin at some point. 20-30 BTC per Mastercoin depends on too many factors which no one can predict and is years away from happening if it happens at all. Kind of like how Bitcoin will probably go to $1000 but $100,000 we just don't know.

I would say don't buy Mastercoin under the certainty that the protocol will work. It's an experiment, it's high risk, and if it fails then the Mastercoins could be worth 0. If it succeeds then the sky is the limit.

If it succeeds, the value goes to 0 as well, since it can be copied, and someone creates their system using Mastercoin2.  The best hope is the project never gets enough traction to prove failure or success, and random speculators keep trading value, and you get out before it's too late.

[Luckybit]

sanity ? lmao selling coins of some unclear protocol that is at odds with the BTC devs ...yes BUY BUY BUY!!   LOL

Well you say the same thing as me, but with opposition mark Disclaimer: I sold 90% of my coins
But if dacoinminster's neutrality and passiveness do not kill his own project, I believe the real price (WHEN AND IF ALL THE FEATURES ARE IMPLEMENTED) is about to land and stay around the 1 BTC horizon.
Some kids are excited and spamming these threads reasoning about why it will be 20-30 BTC per MSC by two or three years, I invite them to do a simple multiplication (~600K MSC*30 BTC). God bless btt community!

Have someone from Forbes, Huff Post, etc. pick up a story on Mastercoin, and see how long it takes it to get to the 1-2 BTC point. That's all that will be necessary.

I think once a basic distributed exchange is in place and being used (as per the current bounty) that could end up happening. The way it rides on top of the bitcoin blockchain is very interesting and I would think worth writing about, once you have something you can share with it in the article (i.e. working distributed exchange, etc)

I'm the one who said Mastercoin could someday be worth 20-30BTC each.

That is 18,000,000 Bitcoins if you're doing 600,000*30. This number is irrelevant though because you don't have to buy Mastercoins with Bitcoins so it's not really known how much it could be worth. A Mastercoin could go for way more than that too.

Honestly I don't know how much Mastercoin will ultimately be worth, but I expect 1-2 BTC per Mastercoin at some point. 20-30 BTC per Mastercoin depends on too many factors which no one can predict and is years away from happening if it happens at all. Kind of like how Bitcoin will probably go to $1000 but $100,000 we just don't know.

I would say don't buy Mastercoin under the certainty that the protocol will work. It's an experiment, it's high risk, and if it fails then the Mastercoins could be worth 0. If it succeeds then the sky is the limit.

If it succeeds, the value goes to 0 as well, since it can be copied, and someone creates their system using Mastercoin2.  The best hope is the project never gets enough traction to prove failure or success, and random speculators keep trading value, and you get out before it's too late.

If that happened then you can't say it succeeds. The truth is the value cannot go to zero and it be a success. If anyone copies it, I expect the value of the copy to be even higher than Mastercoin or at least higher than Bitcoin. The real question is why would anyone need or use the copy?

If we already have Mastercoin there is no incentive to buy another Mastercoin2 and start over. There is no incentive to build another Mastercoin if we can do everything we need to do with this protocol.

It may be a case where you have competitor products and they all are going for 2-3 BTC each and that could be what keeps Mastercoin from reaching 20-30 BTC each but so what? Just making a clone doesn't mean people will download your clone.

If I want to issue a currency or make a bet what incentive do I have to use Mastercoin2 if it offers no increased functionality and no economic incentive for me to switch?

[alp]

sanity ? lmao selling coins of some unclear protocol that is at odds with the BTC devs ...yes BUY BUY BUY!!   LOL

Well you say the same thing as me, but with opposition mark Disclaimer: I sold 90% of my coins
But if dacoinminster's neutrality and passiveness do not kill his own project, I believe the real price (WHEN AND IF ALL THE FEATURES ARE IMPLEMENTED) is about to land and stay around the 1 BTC horizon.
Some kids are excited and spamming these threads reasoning about why it will be 20-30 BTC per MSC by two or three years, I invite them to do a simple multiplication (~600K MSC*30 BTC). God bless btt community!

Have someone from Forbes, Huff Post, etc. pick up a story on Mastercoin, and see how long it takes it to get to the 1-2 BTC point. That's all that will be necessary.

I think once a basic distributed exchange is in place and being used (as per the current bounty) that could end up happening. The way it rides on top of the bitcoin blockchain is very interesting and I would think worth writing about, once you have something you can share with it in the article (i.e. working distributed exchange, etc)

I'm the one who said Mastercoin could someday be worth 20-30BTC each.

That is 18,000,000 Bitcoins if you're doing 600,000*30. This number is irrelevant though because you don't have to buy Mastercoins with Bitcoins so it's not really known how much it could be worth. A Mastercoin could go for way more than that too.

Honestly I don't know how much Mastercoin will ultimately be worth, but I expect 1-2 BTC per Mastercoin at some point. 20-30 BTC per Mastercoin depends on too many factors which no one can predict and is years away from happening if it happens at all. Kind of like how Bitcoin will probably go to $1000 but $100,000 we just don't know.

I would say don't buy Mastercoin under the certainty that the protocol will work. It's an experiment, it's high risk, and if it fails then the Mastercoins could be worth 0. If it succeeds then the sky is the limit.

If it succeeds, the value goes to 0 as well, since it can be copied, and someone creates their system using Mastercoin2.  The best hope is the project never gets enough traction to prove failure or success, and random speculators keep trading value, and you get out before it's too late.

If that happened then you can't say it succeeds. The truth is the value cannot go to zero and it be a success. If anyone copies it, I expect the value of the copy to be even higher than Mastercoin or at least higher than Bitcoin. The real question is why would anyone need or use the copy?

If we already have Mastercoin there is no incentive to buy another Mastercoin2 and start over. There is no incentive to build another Mastercoin if we can do everything we need to do with this protocol.

It may be a case where you have competitor products and they all are going for 2-3 BTC each and that could be what keeps Mastercoin from reaching 20-30 BTC each but so what? Just making a clone doesn't mean people will download your clone.

If I want to issue a currency or make a bet what incentive do I have to use Mastercoin2 if it offers no increased functionality and no economic incentive for me to switch?

Why would you need to use the copy?  The alt-coins would be cheaper to acquire to use for the same effect.

You don't build Mastercoin2, you simply fork Mastercoin1 and there you go.  There is no advantage from network effect, everything can be cloned, and you have useless tokens.

[dacoinminster]

Why would you need to use the copy?  The alt-coins would be cheaper to acquire to use for the same effect.

You don't build Mastercoin2, you simply fork Mastercoin1 and there you go.  There is no advantage from network effect, everything can be cloned, and you have useless tokens.

Yeah! Just like what happened to bitcoin!

Oh wait . . .

[ninjaboon]

Pouncer, maybe it's best to remove dacoinminster's offer until confirmed ?
It effects the prices only by being there!

Who cares?  If it really effects the prices this is good for us.  People who buy on misinformation cause price fluctuations upon which you can get on the other side.  This is a profit opportunity.  The goal is not price increase at all costs, but rather buying/selling on information which the others didn't process correctly.    Free markets baby!!!

free markets + caveat emptor

[puck2]

OK... I'm trying to buy Mastercoins via this thread. This is the first time I'm doing this, so I want to make sure I'm doing it right.

I have a Mastercoin address created using Bitcoin-QT, to which I've received 0.2 MSC already.

I have a message from the seller which shows a Mastercoin address, a Signed Message, and a Signature (which is a long string of text and numbers).

There is then a bitcoin address for payment.

How do I proceed? How do I confirm the ownership of the Mastercoins? What do I do with a signed message. How do I sign a message back to the seller? Do I need an offline MSC wallet? Does such a thing exist?

If there is a FAQ, please point me there, otherwise, thanks for the help here. 

[Faraday]

OK... I'm trying to buy Mastercoins via this thread. This is the first time I'm doing this, so I want to make sure I'm doing it right.

I have a Mastercoin address created using Bitcoin-QT, to which I've received 0.2 MSC already.

I have a message from the seller which shows a Mastercoin address, a Signed Message, and a Signature (which is a long string of text and numbers).

There is then a bitcoin address for payment.

How do I proceed? How do I confirm the ownership of the Mastercoins? What do I do with a signed message. How do I sign a message back to the seller? Do I need an offline MSC wallet? Does such a thing exist?

If there is a FAQ, please point me there, otherwise, thanks for the help here. 

Hi puck2, the signed message is just to show that I actually own the address with the mastercoins. You can check it by entering the message and signature here: http://brainwallet.org/#verify

For us to continue from here you can either send me the bitcoins and I send you the mastercoins, or we can use escrow which is where you send a trusted third party the bitcoins, I sent you the mastercoins, then they send the bitcoins on to me.

You don't need an offline MSC wallet to receive mastercoins, just a normal bitcoin address which you have the private keys for.

[Luckybit]

sanity ? lmao selling coins of some unclear protocol that is at odds with the BTC devs ...yes BUY BUY BUY!!   LOL

Well you say the same thing as me, but with opposition mark Disclaimer: I sold 90% of my coins
But if dacoinminster's neutrality and passiveness do not kill his own project, I believe the real price (WHEN AND IF ALL THE FEATURES ARE IMPLEMENTED) is about to land and stay around the 1 BTC horizon.
Some kids are excited and spamming these threads reasoning about why it will be 20-30 BTC per MSC by two or three years, I invite them to do a simple multiplication (~600K MSC*30 BTC). God bless btt community!

Have someone from Forbes, Huff Post, etc. pick up a story on Mastercoin, and see how long it takes it to get to the 1-2 BTC point. That's all that will be necessary.

I think once a basic distributed exchange is in place and being used (as per the current bounty) that could end up happening. The way it rides on top of the bitcoin blockchain is very interesting and I would think worth writing about, once you have something you can share with it in the article (i.e. working distributed exchange, etc)

I'm the one who said Mastercoin could someday be worth 20-30BTC each.

That is 18,000,000 Bitcoins if you're doing 600,000*30. This number is irrelevant though because you don't have to buy Mastercoins with Bitcoins so it's not really known how much it could be worth. A Mastercoin could go for way more than that too.

Honestly I don't know how much Mastercoin will ultimately be worth, but I expect 1-2 BTC per Mastercoin at some point. 20-30 BTC per Mastercoin depends on too many factors which no one can predict and is years away from happening if it happens at all. Kind of like how Bitcoin will probably go to $1000 but $100,000 we just don't know.

I would say don't buy Mastercoin under the certainty that the protocol will work. It's an experiment, it's high risk, and if it fails then the Mastercoins could be worth 0. If it succeeds then the sky is the limit.

If it succeeds, the value goes to 0 as well, since it can be copied, and someone creates their system using Mastercoin2.  The best hope is the project never gets enough traction to prove failure or success, and random speculators keep trading value, and you get out before it's too late.

If that happened then you can't say it succeeds. The truth is the value cannot go to zero and it be a success. If anyone copies it, I expect the value of the copy to be even higher than Mastercoin or at least higher than Bitcoin. The real question is why would anyone need or use the copy?

If we already have Mastercoin there is no incentive to buy another Mastercoin2 and start over. There is no incentive to build another Mastercoin if we can do everything we need to do with this protocol.

It may be a case where you have competitor products and they all are going for 2-3 BTC each and that could be what keeps Mastercoin from reaching 20-30 BTC each but so what? Just making a clone doesn't mean people will download your clone.

If I want to issue a currency or make a bet what incentive do I have to use Mastercoin2 if it offers no increased functionality and no economic incentive for me to switch?

Why would you need to use the copy?  The alt-coins would be cheaper to acquire to use for the same effect.

You don't build Mastercoin2, you simply fork Mastercoin1 and there you go.  There is no advantage from network effect, everything can be cloned, and you have useless tokens.

Read the specification:
https://e33ec872-a-62cb3a1a-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/2ndbtcwpaper/MasterCoin%20Specification%201.1.pdf

Obviously you don't understand how Mastercoin works. Silver is cheaper than gold but we still use gold. Why?
No one would prefer silver over gold, but it's so much cheaper so why wouldn't they?

Mastercoin acts as a unit of measurement. The Mastercoin protocol is a formula which functions as a value unit for the user currencies. It's value is not dependent upon it's scarcity because it's not like gold. It's actually more important than gold.

Mastercoin if it works
Once I have a working Mastercoin, I can create any currency I'll ever need and issue it. So why would I need an alt currency to do exactly what I can already do? "Cheaper" and "Expensive" assume Mastercoin is a unit of account when it's actually a unit of measurement, while the user generated currencies are the units of account. Bitcoin is a unit of account and functions as a currency, but you can easily create Bitcoins from Mastercoins so why would I care about the Bitcoin price if I have Mastercoins? I can also use Mastercoins to create currencies with far higher prices than Bitcoins so how exactly would Bitcoin somehow be more expensive than a working Mastercoin?
 
Let me give you an example here, let's say I'm an airline company JetBlue and I decide to create Jet Blue credits using the Mastercoin protocol. Those credits represent the goods and services offered by Jet Blue. So now Jet Blue credits are issued on the Mastercoin protocol backed by Mastercoins purchased by JetBlue which act as a unit of measurement of the goods and services JetBlue has to offer. Mastercoin is not money, and it's not credit, it's a unit of measurement which allows for the creation of money and credit. Money is a unit of account to give you a cost of goods and services, so Bitcoin is money.

Yes you can build a clone of Mastercoin and call it Mastercoin2 but if it has all the exact same features and I can do all the exact same things then it wouldn't even be worth my time to download it. And if you say "you'll download it because it's cheaper", you're missing the point. Mastercoin is useful because of what we can do with it and that is where it gets it's value from. If Jet Blue is offering credits backed by the goods and services of the Jet Blue company, those goods and services are going to be worth a lot to a lot of people. It will not make any sense for those people to go to some fake Mastercoin which isn't issuing JetBlue credits. Jet Blue isn't going to need to go to Mastercoin2 to issue their credits after they issue it over Mastercoin because they'd have to pay twice for the same functionality.

Mastercoin is not a stock. It's not a currency. The purpose of Mastercoin is to act as a unit of measurement, for instance in an escrow. It becomes valuable because people will be using it to do all kinds of trades. A clone isn't going to stop me from using it because I already have Mastercoins. It isn't going to stop the majority of people who have Mastercoins from using it because once you have Mastercoins at any price you have already purchased a stake and if it works you'll be able to use the protocol and it's functionality. Ideally you want to get them for cheap and most of us are at this point in time the earliest of early adopters.

The only way a Bitcoin will be worth the same as a Mastercoin would be if the Bitcoin developers themselves found a way to put all the functionality of Mastercoin into Bitcoin but if they did that it would cripple Bitcoin as a currency because the majority of people would be hoarding Bitcoins to use as escrow or to use in exotic derivative schemes which would affect the people who want to use Bitcoins to do micropayments or small purchases. Mastercoin frees Bitcoin users and developers from having to make that particular choice, at least not for the same reasons.

The Max_Block_Size issue may still cause problems of scalability. Micropayments may still ultimately be a problem if off-chain transactions aren't utilized.

Anyway to end this debate the only change to the specification JR would have to make to promote "brand loyalty" would be to allow the escrow to generate interest for the issuer and it's game over. If the issuer has an incentive to actually put their Mastercoins to use then whoever has Mastercoin owners will be virtually guaranteed to use them. The only way the price could crash down would be if the people who have them don't understand the protocol enough to know how to use them,  or if there is no incentive to get people to use them, or if there is another better technology (possibly Bitshares?) which allows for the same properties.

Colored Coin is a technology but it's design in my opinion is ugly and unnecessarily complicated. Maybe it will work but I don't see how it can work without the value going somewhere. If someone is issuing credit or currencies then it's got to be backed by something somewhere and represented somewhere. If it's backed by Mastercoins then you'd say it's represented by Mastercoins which act as the unit of measurement. If I wanted to issue a currency or credits through Colored Coin then perhaps it's possible but I don't know what their specification is or how they intend to do it. I'll believe it when I see a prototype.

[puck2]

OK, for the record, I have sent 10 bitcoins to Faraday in exchange for 100 mastercoins. (0.1 BTC / MSC)

Hi puck2, the signed message is just to show that I actually own the address with the mastercoins. You can check it by entering the message and signature here: http://brainwallet.org/#verify

For us to continue from here you can either send me the bitcoins and I send you the mastercoins, or we can use escrow which is where you send a trusted third party the bitcoins, I sent you the mastercoins, then they send the bitcoins on to me.

You don't need an offline MSC wallet to receive mastercoins, just a normal bitcoin address which you have the private keys for.

[Faraday]

OK, for the record, I have sent 10 bitcoins to Faraday in exchange for 100 mastercoins. (0.1 BTC / MSC)

Thanks, Mastercoins have been sent. (Will PM you with transaction details)

[ASICSRUS]

sanity ? lmao selling coins of some unclear protocol that is at odds with the BTC devs ...yes BUY BUY BUY!!   LOL

Well you say the same thing as me, but with opposition mark Disclaimer: I sold 90% of my coins
But if dacoinminster's neutrality and passiveness do not kill his own project, I believe the real price (WHEN AND IF ALL THE FEATURES ARE IMPLEMENTED) is about to land and stay around the 1 BTC horizon.
Some kids are excited and spamming these threads reasoning about why it will be 20-30 BTC per MSC by two or three years, I invite them to do a simple multiplication (~600K MSC*30 BTC). God bless btt community!

Have someone from Forbes, Huff Post, etc. pick up a story on Mastercoin, and see how long it takes it to get to the 1-2 BTC point. That's all that will be necessary.

I think once a basic distributed exchange is in place and being used (as per the current bounty) that could end up happening. The way it rides on top of the bitcoin blockchain is very interesting and I would think worth writing about, once you have something you can share with it in the article (i.e. working distributed exchange, etc)

I'm the one who said Mastercoin could someday be worth 20-30BTC each.

That is 18,000,000 Bitcoins if you're doing 600,000*30. This number is irrelevant though because you don't have to buy Mastercoins with Bitcoins so it's not really known how much it could be worth. A Mastercoin could go for way more than that too.

Honestly I don't know how much Mastercoin will ultimately be worth, but I expect 1-2 BTC per Mastercoin at some point. 20-30 BTC per Mastercoin depends on too many factors which no one can predict and is years away from happening if it happens at all. Kind of like how Bitcoin will probably go to $1000 but $100,000 we just don't know.

I would say don't buy Mastercoin under the certainty that the protocol will work. It's an experiment, it's high risk, and if it fails then the Mastercoins could be worth 0. If it succeeds then the sky is the limit.

If it succeeds, the value goes to 0 as well, since it can be copied, and someone creates their system using Mastercoin2.  The best hope is the project never gets enough traction to prove failure or success, and random speculators keep trading value, and you get out before it's too late.

If that happened then you can't say it succeeds. The truth is the value cannot go to zero and it be a success. If anyone copies it, I expect the value of the copy to be even higher than Mastercoin or at least higher than Bitcoin. The real question is why would anyone need or use the copy?

If we already have Mastercoin there is no incentive to buy another Mastercoin2 and start over. There is no incentive to build another Mastercoin if we can do everything we need to do with this protocol.

It may be a case where you have competitor products and they all are going for 2-3 BTC each and that could be what keeps Mastercoin from reaching 20-30 BTC each but so what? Just making a clone doesn't mean people will download your clone.

If I want to issue a currency or make a bet what incentive do I have to use Mastercoin2 if it offers no increased functionality and no economic incentive for me to switch?

Why would you need to use the copy?  The alt-coins would be cheaper to acquire to use for the same effect.

You don't build Mastercoin2, you simply fork Mastercoin1 and there you go.  There is no advantage from network effect, everything can be cloned, and you have useless tokens.

Read the specification:
https://e33ec872-a-62cb3a1a-s-sites.googlegroups.com/site/2ndbtcwpaper/MasterCoin%20Specification%201.1.pdf

Obviously you don't understand how Mastercoin works. Silver is cheaper than gold but we still use gold. Why?
No one would prefer silver over gold, but it's so much cheaper so why wouldn't they?

Mastercoin acts as a unit of measurement. The Mastercoin protocol is a formula which functions as a value unit for the user currencies. It's value is not dependent upon it's scarcity because it's not like gold. It's actually more important than gold.

Mastercoin if it works
Once I have a working Mastercoin, I can create any currency I'll ever need and issue it. So why would I need an alt currency to do exactly what I can already do? "Cheaper" and "Expensive" assume Mastercoin is a unit of account when it's actually a unit of measurement, while the user generated currencies are the units of account. Bitcoin is a unit of account and functions as a currency, but you can easily create Bitcoins from Mastercoins so why would I care about the Bitcoin price if I have Mastercoins? I can also use Mastercoins to create currencies with far higher prices than Bitcoins so how exactly would Bitcoin somehow be more expensive than a working Mastercoin?
 
Let me give you an example here, let's say I'm an airline company JetBlue and I decide to create Jet Blue credits using the Mastercoin protocol. Those credits represent the goods and services offered by Jet Blue. So now Jet Blue credits are issued on the Mastercoin protocol backed by Mastercoins purchased by JetBlue which act as a unit of measurement of the goods and services JetBlue has to offer. Mastercoin is not money, and it's not credit, it's a unit of measurement which allows for the creation of money and credit. Money is a unit of account to give you a cost of goods and services, so Bitcoin is money.

Yes you can build a clone of Mastercoin and call it Mastercoin2 but if it has all the exact same features and I can do all the exact same things then it wouldn't even be worth my time to download it. And if you say "you'll download it because it's cheaper", you're missing the point. Mastercoin is useful because of what we can do with it and that is where it gets it's value from. If Jet Blue is offering credits backed by the goods and services of the Jet Blue company, those goods and services are going to be worth a lot to a lot of people. It will not make any sense for those people to go to some fake Mastercoin which isn't issuing JetBlue credits. Jet Blue isn't going to need to go to Mastercoin2 to issue their credits after they issue it over Mastercoin because they'd have to pay twice for the same functionality.

Mastercoin is not a stock. It's not a currency. The purpose of Mastercoin is to act as a unit of measurement, for instance in an escrow. It becomes valuable because people will be using it to do all kinds of trades. A clone isn't going to stop me from using it because I already have Mastercoins. It isn't going to stop the majority of people who have Mastercoins from using it because once you have Mastercoins at any price you have already purchased a stake and if it works you'll be able to use the protocol and it's functionality. Ideally you want to get them for cheap and most of us are at this point in time the earliest of early adopters.

The only way a Bitcoin will be worth the same as a Mastercoin would be if the Bitcoin developers themselves found a way to put all the functionality of Mastercoin into Bitcoin but if they did that it would cripple Bitcoin as a currency because the majority of people would be hoarding Bitcoins to use as escrow or to use in exotic derivative schemes which would affect the people who want to use Bitcoins to do micropayments or small purchases. Mastercoin frees Bitcoin users and developers from having to make that particular choice, at least not for the same reasons.

The Max_Block_Size issue may still cause problems of scalability. Micropayments may still ultimately be a problem if off-chain transactions aren't utilized.

Anyway to end this debate the only change to the specification JR would have to make to promote "brand loyalty" would be to allow the escrow to generate interest for the issuer and it's game over. If the issuer has an incentive to actually put their Mastercoins to use then whoever has Mastercoin owners will be virtually guaranteed to use them. The only way the price could crash down would be if the people who have them don't understand the protocol enough to know how to use them,  or if there is no incentive to get people to use them, or if there is another better technology (possibly Bitshares?) which allows for the same properties.

Colored Coin is a technology but it's design in my opinion is ugly and unnecessarily complicated. Maybe it will work but I don't see how it can work without the value going somewhere. If someone is issuing credit or currencies then it's got to be backed by something somewhere and represented somewhere. If it's backed by Mastercoins then you'd say it's represented by Mastercoins which act as the unit of measurement. If I wanted to issue a currency or credits through Colored Coin then perhaps it's possible but I don't know what their specification is or how they intend to do it. I'll believe it when I see a prototype.

Florins[-FLO-]sound about the same except not polluting the BTC blockchain!   ez

[buymastercoin]

Why would you need to use the copy?  The alt-coins would be cheaper to acquire to use for the same effect.

You don't build Mastercoin2, you simply fork Mastercoin1 and there you go.  There is no advantage from network effect, everything can be cloned, and you have useless tokens.

Yeah! Just like what happened to bitcoin!

Oh wait . . .

The claim that Mastercoin1 will not become secondary to Mastercoin2, and using bitcoin as an example is really not the best argument. The community revolving Mastercoin1, the first to market exposure, and branding will all play a role in helping Mastercoin1. Unfortunately if bitcoin was premined among satoshi and co, and was hoarded in hopes of speculative riches, litecoin would be the big player today. People underestimate the adoption role distribution methodology serves. This is one of the key reasons Ripple has not received mass adoption by the bitcoin community so far (Not to say Ripple1 and Mastercoin1 won't be successful).

Additionally since the claim here is that Mastercoin is a unit of measurement, there is in fact a huge incentive for competing Mastercoin networks. In the end, the only advantage I see Mastercoin1 having is a speculative advantage which will probably pop along with the first big market crash. Associating a separate value to Mastercoins is a self-hindering feature which is really only there to serve an ROI pathway for the original investors (something which I recognize was needed for the crowdfunding to succeed, capitalizing purely on people's dreams and hopes of getting rich...not their altruistic motives). Yes I understand the claims of why mastercoins "NEED" a value, but it sounds to me more like circular logic and a crippled solution.

Colored Coin is a technology but it's design in my opinion is ugly and unnecessarily complicated. Maybe it will work but I don't see how it can work without the value going somewhere. If someone is issuing credit or currencies then it's got to be backed by something somewhere and represented somewhere. If it's backed by Mastercoins then you'd say it's represented by Mastercoins which act as the unit of measurement. If I wanted to issue a currency or credits through Colored Coin then perhaps it's possible but I don't know what their specification is or how they intend to do it. I'll believe it when I see a prototype.

Colored coin technology is actually superior to Mastercoins in terms of being "backed". You can color whatever amount of bitcoins you would like as a single unit, directly. So for example 15 btc = 1 goldcoin; that goldcoin is in fact 15 bitcoins forever.

Oh the other hand, Mastercoin proposes a controversial feature of escrow backed currencies which my economic sense tells me cannot work. The issuance is not being measured on the value of Mastercoins; in reality it is being measured by the MSC to BTC relationship since BTC is where the trust and redeemability exists today. So if for example you issues gold through mastercoin, potential for loss of trust and catastrophic collapse can occur on 2 levels, both if BTC losses value AND if MSC losses value.

Regardless the only way to truly back an asset in the REAL WORLD is to have that asset on hand, or hedge the position elsewhere (otherwise it's a bucket shop). No magic voodoo self fulfilling prophecy escrow account can change that, and if it could you'll see JR receiving a nobel prize.

So while colored coins is backed directly by bitcoin, Mastercoin issued coins are at much higher risk of speculative attack. That's not to say Mastercoins don't have their own advantages, but when it comes to representing value or a unit of measurement, MSC falls short.

Yes I do help run buymastercoin.com, yes I am realistic about the technology, NO I'm not hyping magic fairy tales of pots of gold at the end of the rainbow. Caveat emptor.