Why so much hype around mastercoin?

[dillpicklechips]

http://www.christopherspenn.com/2010/12/metcalfes-law-and-social-media-size-does-matter/

Your missing my point. The clone doesn't need a following to be useful. It may have just one purpose: a single company selling stocks to select people all on their own website. Unlike BTC which IS useful because of its popularity MSC can be useful with a very small audience. The new MSC can be worthless but they will still perform the function needed. That's why I'm skeptical a huge price for MSC can be sustained. It's not necessary.

[klee]

http://www.christopherspenn.com/2010/12/metcalfes-law-and-social-media-size-does-matter/

Your missing my point. The clone doesn't need a following to be useful. It may have just one purpose: a single company selling stocks to select people all on their own website. Unlike BTC which IS useful because of its popularity MSC can be useful with a very small audience. The new MSC can be worthless but they will still perform the function needed. That's why I'm skeptical a huge price for MSC can be sustained. It's not necessary.

All alt coins (more or less) perform the functions of BTC - in many aspects A LOT better.
Anoncoin is better in anonymity, LTC faster etc.

Check their value compared to BTC.

EDIT: The company you are referring to will opt to MSC because of the first mover advantage - network effect, bigger user/customer base!

[dillpicklechips]

http://www.christopherspenn.com/2010/12/metcalfes-law-and-social-media-size-does-matter/

Your missing my point. The clone doesn't need a following to be useful. It may have just one purpose: a single company selling stocks to select people all on their own website. Unlike BTC which IS useful because of its popularity MSC can be useful with a very small audience. The new MSC can be worthless but they will still perform the function needed. That's why I'm skeptical a huge price for MSC can be sustained. It's not necessary.

All alt coins (more or less) perform the functions of BTC - in many aspects A LOT better.
Anoncoin is better in anonymity, LTC faster etc.

Check their value compared to BTC.

EDIT: The company you are referring to will opt to MSC because of the first mover advantage - network effect, bigger user/customer base!

But those are trying to be currency. Popularity is important. If you want to track bitcoins in a blockchain then MSC can do that. But so can any other copy. Value is not important and if the company offers the shares directly from their site why would they care how popular a competitor is?

[klee]

http://www.christopherspenn.com/2010/12/metcalfes-law-and-social-media-size-does-matter/

Your missing my point. The clone doesn't need a following to be useful. It may have just one purpose: a single company selling stocks to select people all on their own website. Unlike BTC which IS useful because of its popularity MSC can be useful with a very small audience. The new MSC can be worthless but they will still perform the function needed. That's why I'm skeptical a huge price for MSC can be sustained. It's not necessary.

All alt coins (more or less) perform the functions of BTC - in many aspects A LOT better.
Anoncoin is better in anonymity, LTC faster etc.

Check their value compared to BTC.

EDIT: The company you are referring to will opt to MSC because of the first mover advantage - network effect, bigger user/customer base!

But those are trying to be currency. Popularity is important. If you want to track bitcoins in a blockchain then MSC can do that. But so can any other copy. Value is not important and if the company offers the shares directly from their site why would they care how popular a competitor is?

Bitcoin is a currency AND a payment system!

[klee]

And MSC is a currency + many more things.

[dillpicklechips]

Bitcoin is a currency AND a payment system!

The payment system (and tracking system) part is the part I think people will copy. If they do, the currency part of MSC will be threatened.

[FTWbitcoinFTW]

(I don't fully understand them so I'm posting this)

Are they even similar? What are the advantages/disadvantages of each?  

2 days after !

I believe that is all assuming Mastercoin does something that colored coins can not. I'm not convinced that is the case.

2 weeks ago you didn't even know what colored coin are so please, try to understand a topic before to be so negative

[StarenseN]

In any case, even if MSC (as a currency, if it's your point) is threatened, that's not a problem for me. Bitcoin will gain so much traction and mind blowing/genius features with all the futures projects even if copy-cat (GG then).

This is why I crowdfunded the Mastercoin Project, this is a win:win situation and a kind of hedging on bitcoins held.

[klee]

Bitcoin is a currency AND a payment system!

The payment system (and tracking system) part is the part I think people will copy. If they do, the currency part of MSC will be threatened.

Ripple is a far superior payment system than Bitcoin.
Again, look at it's price!

Look, I have to sleep and English not my 1st language so I can't post like I want to.

But you have a digital technology here - the question is if Bitcoin is the new Myspace or the new Facebook.
The same applies to MSC too and probably to all digital networks.

There can be only one (real big).

If it is not MSC, then maybe it will be something similar - but you HAVE to have 1 as the big guy.

The first mover has a big advantage.

[dillpicklechips]

(I don't fully understand them so I'm posting this)

Are they even similar? What are the advantages/disadvantages of each?  

2 days after !

I believe that is all assuming Mastercoin does something that colored coins can not. I'm not convinced that is the case.

2 weeks ago you didn't even know what colored coin are so please, try to understand a topic before to be so negative

LOL. I'm always learning. I'm not too worried about what eventually wins but people saying that MSC is going to blow up in price is somewhat concerning. A lot of MSC people are making fantastic claims and it seems to boil down to "we have funding and we are first". Colored coins offers some technical advantages so I think it is fair to be restrained in the promises of wealth.

[Luckybit]

Why do you perceive mastercoin as great idea?

The internet is a brilliant invention.  But standing alone, it is actually a rather boring object.  The internet is actually a mere protocol (ruleset) - called TCP-IP.  It doesn't actually have much function at all.  

On 'top of' TCI-IP is email (smtp); webpages(http); and file transfer (ftp) - among others.  This is where the real functionality that makes the Internet so useful lies.  These are three 'higher level protocols' which give exciting new function to the internet (TCP-IP).  

Bitcoin and more precisely the blockchain and its administration - give rise to a nice digital currency.  But that is not where the excitement lies.  The real excitement comes in all the great functionality which can be supported with the blockchain.  All this functionality will be embodied in Mastercoin - a higher level protocol which operates in conjunction with bitcoin .  Just as http (webpages) operates on top of TCP-IP (internet), Mastercoin is a protocol which operates on top of the bitcoin protocol.  However, Mastercoin will bring all the high level functionality.  Bitcoin is just a boring old currency.  

If I were you, I'd buy tons of Mastercoin right now.  Please do not delay as this will cost you an insane amount of money in the long run.

btw - its not 'hype'; it is genuine excitement which is fully warranted. 

Brilliant response.

[Luckybit]

If I were you, I'd buy tons of Mastercoin right now.  Please do not delay as this will cost you an insane amount of money in the long run.

btw - its not 'hype'; it is genuine excitement which is fully warranted.  

Have you read any of my threads on coloreded coins vs mastercoins or mastercoin 2? The 'hype' is actually 'hype'. Expect copy cats. Mastercoin is a protocol that's easily duplicated. Bitcoin is not easily duplicated because of the miners.

Yes please read the thread. You'll learn a lot about Mastercoin and ColoredCoin.

Unlike DillPickleChips, I believe with over a 180 trillion dollar market cap for derivatives in the US alone there is plenty of room for both Mastercoin and ColoredCoin.

My reason for preferring Mastercoin is that it does not depend on Bitcoin being stable and isn't backed by Bitcoin, you don't have to worry about Bitcoin or even know what Bitcoin is. Mastercoin is high level enough and can be built in such a way that you don't have to directly interact with Bitcoin to play with it. Perhaps ColoredCoin will reach that state too but ColoredCoin has a lot less development funding, a lot less momentum, and my opinion is you should hedge your bets on this. Get some Mastercoins while they are "a steal" cheap and if you see a clone which is even better than buy the cloneCoin and you'll probably profit from them both as the market is big enough for many players.

Bitcoin has around a 2.5 billion dollar market cap. So to put this into perspective we are talking about a market cap in the trillions of dollars for Mastercoin, the clone, Bitshares and ColoredCoin. 100 Mastercoins could easily be worth over a million dollars and right now it's at a price of around 10 Bitcoins so that is a very cheap gamble. It has a similar amount of risk to buying Bitcoins at the current price and if you think it will go up to $1000 then perhaps buying it at $200 isn't much of a risk.

The good news is if you do buy Bitcoins and Mastercoins only you'll probably watch the price of both go up because they are in synergy, in symbiosis. Mastercoin is what will help drive the price of Bitcoin into the $100,000 range so that 10 Bitcoins is a million dollars. So when I say 100 Mastercoins is a million dollars I'm assuming the price of Mastercoins will stay exactly as it is right now forever at 0.1 BTC.

But if you want my true opinion, I believe it will be at least 3-4 BTC per Mastercoin even if there were half a dozen clones, Bitshares, etc. The reason is you have to consider the amount of marketshare Mastercoin will have when compared to the clones, to Bitshares, and to ColoredCoin. Even if it has a very small amount of market share in a 100+ trillion dollar market cap it's a ridiculous amount of money so I advise you to take out your spread sheet and do the math for yourself and if you decide to take the risk only risk what you can afford to lose.

To move beyond speculation, I have personally tested the decentralized Mastercoin exchange prototype and it was a smooth sail. The fact that it's only early November and the prototype is working indicates to me that a nice polished client can be available sometime in December. Mastercoin as far as I know is the first of the decentralized exchanges to be successfully tested but I hear rumors that ColoredCoin had something working in 2012.

References
Size of global derivatives market How can the derivatives market be worth more than the world's total financial assets?
http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/explainer/2008/10/596_trillion.html

How can the derivatives market be larger than the entire world's financial wealth?

Because the same assets might be involved in several different derivatives. A derivative is a financial instrument whose value depends on something else—a share of stock, an interest rate, a foreign currency, or a barrel of oil, for example. One kind of derivative might be a contract that allows you to buy oil at a given price six months from now. But since we don't yet know how the price of oil will change, the value of that contract can be very hard to estimate.

The Global Derivatives Market
http://www.math.nyu.edu/faculty/avellane/global_derivatives_market.pdf

[Meizirkki]

What hype? 

[romerun]

because ppl who cashed-in are promoting it so that their investment won't be under water. I bought some, just in case, and let the good times roll.

[Luckybit]

because ppl who cashed-in are promoting it so that their investment won't be under water. I bought some, just in case, and let the good times roll.

I think you completely misunderstand the point.  Mastercoin isn't just a pump and dump scheme. It's about what it will enable. If you don't find value in a completely decentralized derivatives market, betting, stocks, futures, where any community can issue its own currency, then nothing I can say will convince you.

But if you do find value in these things then the protocol is immensely valuable because of what you'll be able to do which you couldn't do prior to it. There will be plenty of money to be made when you're free to invest or trade in what will seem like a virtually unlimited prediction market. The value will be there but the real question will be what will the people do with it?

0.1 BTC is really nothing compared to what the Mastercoin protocol may be worth.

[djohnston]

________________________________________
As a matter of fact, David Johnston (Bit Angels) is actively encouraging people to do exactly this.

The model he is proposing is that every new startup use the Mastercoin model as a type of crowd funding. In that scenario, every new service would sell a limited quantity of colored coins to fund development, then would only accept those colored coins as payment for their service instead of generic Bitcoins.
________________________________________

Justus,

Thanks for the scout out : )

Though to be clear on a few points let me offer these thoughts.

1. Yes I am encouraging people to consider the model of monetizing their new services through a coin based approach. Your description is fairly accurate "new services would sell a limited quantity of coins to fund development, then would only accept those coins as payment for their service instead of generic Bitcoins".

2. I do not necessarily think "every new startup" is a fit for this type of monetization strategy. I'd say those with broad enough appeal and a service that has the potential to be a platform for many other services are good first candidates.

3. I'm not advocating that new services try and compete with Mastercoin as copy cats, but rather that they can issue these coins on top of the Mastercoin platform (as this is one of the features in the protocol).

Full disclosure: I own Mastercoins. Though I'm also a big fan of BitShares, Open Transactions, Colored Coins and other projects seeking to bring these new functions about in a decentralized way. In the end, competition is a positive force that will bring about the best for everyone and the market will ultimately decide which use cases are most compelling for these different technologies.

As for you Justus, I'm looking forward to the technology you are cooking up : ) Lets talk soon.

-DJohnston

[Luckybit]

And all that funding can easily be used by the copy cat.

OK - then you should start now.  You be the copy cat.  You easily use that funding.  Start now.  

Wait.  Not so easy is it?  Why don't you just go make MastercoinCopy?  It's not so easy - is it?  If it were easy, you'd be doing it now.  The total market value of Mastercoin at today's price ((.09BTC/MSC)*600K*(220$/BTC)) is $12Million.  If you could copy MSC to make MSC2 - you'd have 12 million!!.  Better start today!

There's no rush. It would be better to wait for MSC to mature and develop more. Then when a company wants to do an IPO integrate a web interface into their website and use their own copied MSC. They can then use all of MSC features and have a fully functional and secure IPO with very little cost. Or I guess they could spend more BTC on getting original MSC and do the exact same thing.

And struggle all your life to beat the No1, like LTC tries to do with BTC.

Good luck with that..

What's to beat? They get the functionality they need for free. They don't have to be more valuable than MSC. They just need to use coins to transfer assets. They don't care if their version of MSC is valuable or not.

Dream on..

They don't NEED to have a following. The MSC protocol can be used by anyone. My point is that they can use their own copy and it will function exactly the same. IF MSC is expensive, then why not? Especially if all they need to use it for is an IPO?

Because the clone will quickly become more expensive than BTC and be just a cheaper MSC. MSC2 will never be cheap because escrows are never supposed to be cheaper than the currencies they back. Gold isn't going to be cheaper than bank notes they back. What is so difficult to understand here?

When I say the price of MSC will settle around 3-4 BTC a piece it's under the assumption that there will be stiff competition which can include clones. If I assumed there would be no competition at all then it would settle at around 20-30 BTC a piece in my opinion. There is Bitshares, ColoredCoin and Hops all which can offer competition.

But if you make a clone and the clone were half the price of MSC then it would take twice as many clone coins to back a user currency as it would take Mastercoins but nothing else would change. The only thing that would change is the proportions. Instead of having to back Bitcoin 300% with 100 MSC, now it will take 200 clone coins.

It's impossible to back Bitcoin with blanks. It's impossible to back any currency with a blank, the math simply doesn't support it. So whatever ultimately is in the escrow must have more value (people say around *3 more value) than whatever is being issued or else there is no way to redeem. If you're backing some user currency with a completely worthless clone no one is going to trust that. If the clone is just half the price of MSC then you'll have to use twice as many to reach the same value which solves absolutely nothing. The cheaper it is the more you'll have to use to back the same stuff, so please take out your spreadsheets and do the math.

The main reason Mastercoin will be important which David Johnston alluded to is the fact that startups who want to offer a new service to the community will be able to benefit by issuing their own coin. Initially their coin will have to be backed by something with value while they build their capacity to redeem their coins. What I'm saying is that Mastercoin being valuable will be as essential as having a gold standard. If the startup doesn't perform so well then people can get their Mastercoins back and take value back from the escrow in response to their currency going down in value. If everything goes well then you'll be able to redeem with them by giving them their currency back in exchange for the service they offer.

So let's say for instance it's a VPN service and it's promising to protect your privacy and IP address. At the IPO anyone can buy some of their newly minted VPN credit coins with Mastercoins. Those Mastercoins are held in escrow while they build the VPN. When the VPN is built then you'll pay them in VPN credit coins, or you can trade those coins with anyone else who wants VPN service, or sell them for Bitcoins if the price goes up or down, or redeem them for Mastercoins. This gives the user a lot of flexibility which does not exist anywhere but in the Mastercoin protocol.

Here is something else, Colored Coin can be implemented on top of the Mastercoin protocol. So if ColoredCoin were truly superior then nothing stops the Mastercoin protocol from innovating with some Colored approach, but in any case the escrow is crucial to issuing new currencies. No one is going to trust a new currency which isn't backed by anything at all but the promises of the issuer to offer some goods or services at some future date. That just wont work out too well as we don't want to have to trust the issuer. If it's backed by Mastercoins held in escrow it solves our trust problem somewhat, we still have to believe the issuer will offer VPN service and that the VPN service will work but it's a different kind of risk you'll be taking.

[prophetx]

following...

[TKeenan]

[very long text]

Boy, oh boy, Luckybit - you've sure got one happy keyboard.

[dacoinminster]

I started the MasterCoin project, and I'm the biggest investor. I invested every last BTC I had in MasterCoin. Since then, I haven't sold one single MasterCoin. Not one. I know I'll have to eventually, but that will be very painful for me.

I remember a few months ago before I started this project, my dad was urging me to sell some of my BTC. I asked him: "If you had a bunch of houses, would you sell some of them for $100 each just because the world didn't yet understand the value of houses? Obviously not. Neither will I sell my BTC for $100 each."

Since 2011, I haven't sold a single bitcoin, except out of necessity to pay my expenses in acquiring MORE bitcoins. I was waiting, knowing that someday somebody would come unlock bitcoin's revolutionary power by building new features on top. I knew it would happen, and I wanted to invest in it. Finally, I got tired of waiting for somebody else to do it.

Now, after years of waiting, it's finally happening. I can watch it getting built right before my very eyes. Perhaps it will all fall apart or be quickly replaced by a clone, but I don't think so. MasterCoin is fighting for mindshare right now, and we're getting it. That's the real hurdle a competitor will have to clear - not a technical hurdle or a financial one, but a psychological one. The hurdle of an established, passionate, invested user base and team of developers.

In the meantime, while we build these houses, all the world can see is the blueprints and the muddy foundations which are just now poking out of an empty field. But I see the finished product that is coming, with families living inside and cars parked out front. With that image in my mind, I simply can't sell any of them for the price of an empty field. Not until I absolutely have to.