Flexcoin is LIVE to everyone!

[Ridi]

How much extra time do you thing the confirmations take?

[1714059970]

1714059970

[1714059970]

1714059970

[1714059970]

1714059970

[bitlotto]

How much extra time do you thing the confirmations take?

Approx 10 minutes on average for each confirmation. The first one will be the most variable but once it's in the blockchain it counts up as the blocks come in.

[Ridi]

2.5 hrs isn't a long time for a confirmed digital financial transaction.  If you can afford to send an army, you should send the army.

[nhodges]

Question, why has the terminology changed from "interest" to "discount" on the banking interface?

[Wolenber]

Question, why has the terminology changed from "interest" to "discount" on the banking interface?

I think (but I'm certainly not the man running Flexcoin, so I can't know for sure) that this simply covers transaction fees, not actually adding to your account. That is, the "discount" will be used to pay fees instead of your credit.

[KBundy]

Greetings all,

I propose that instead of charging the fees that you do(.01 or .5%) and then give back the fees to the people, just charge a lesser fee in the first place.  The way I understand it, you are keeping 30% of the fees, and returning 70% to the customer.  How about instead, you charge 30% of the fee you want to charge in the first place, eliminating this extra step, and making it a more fair price for the service, and get more people to join.  Just a suggestion, but it is rather logical.

-KBundy

[BitcoinBug]

Greetings all,

I propose that instead of charging the fees that you do(.01 or .5%) and then give back the fees to the people, just charge a lesser fee in the first place.  The way I understand it, you are keeping 30% of the fees, and returning 70% to the customer.  How about instead, you charge 30% of the fee you want to charge in the first place, eliminating this extra step, and making it a more fair price for the service, and get more people to join.  Just a suggestion, but it is rather logical.

-KBundy

I think he wants to attract "big money", because big money will earn most interest. I wouldn't do it though, because I doubt interest can cover the risk.

[harm]

Some Questions from my side - first seven "quick questions", and then the most crucial important question at the end:

1.) Will there be an Android App to link to QR scanner, such that I can pay with flexcoins to an outside BTC-Address (like "bitcoin wallet" Android App)?

2.) I do not like that the account is closed after 2 weeks of zero balance. In that case, my flexcoin name would be gone and I would have to open a new account with another name. Very bad idea I would say. Is there at least a protection mechanism, such that I am not allowed to move my balance below 0.00001 Flexcoins or so?

3.) I do not like that 18 month of inactivity leads to closure of the account and loss of all flexcoins. This looks dubious. 18 month can quickly happen, for example if somebody goes to a journey around the world or Himalaya, or a severe disease. And when he comes back, all Flexcoins are gone. I think this period should be extended to 5 years minimum. Could you imagine to extend this period?

4.) Minimum payment of 0.5% or 0.01 BTCs appears a lot. 0.01 BTC = 0.10 USD is already in the order of magnitude of credit card fees, and 0.5% is 50 cent on 100 EUR, which is a lot, too.

5.) Who guarantees me that the terms and conditions do not change against my favour, once I have deposited some BTC funds into the Flexcoin bank? For example increase of fees or shortening of the idle times before the account is closed, etc.?

6.) Are you planning to issue flexcoin credits in the future?

7.) Are you planning to provide interest payments on flexcoin accounts in the future?


8.) You are calling yourself a "bank". Does this mean you are running a fractional reserve system? The informed reader knows that the main characteristic of a "bank" is that it uses a fractional banking system. This means, every bank possesses less cash than the sum of the money of all its bank accounts. This means, if every customer of a bank tried to withdraw the whole cash at the same time (a so called "bank run"), the bank could not cash it out - it could only cash out about 2 to 10% of it. (It sounds crazy, but it is no secret, you can read about this everywhere on the internet, even at the web sites of the central banks.) How about the "flexcoin bank"? Are you going to establish a fractional reserve system of Bitcoins with your bank, too? Technically, this would be no problem, because it is highly unlikely that every customer would withdraw his BTC funds from the flexcoin bank at the same time, so some "overbooking" would be possible. This is exactly how the fractional reserve banking system started to develop in banking history of our world. But of course, such banking system would not be desireable, because it means inflating the currency, it would not be limited to 21 Million any more, because there would be more flexcoins then Bitcoins in circulation.
   So my question is: If the total number of Bitcoins paid into your bank is, say, 1 Million BTCs, will there be exactly 1 Million Flexcoins in existence, or will there be more then 1 Million Flexcoins? I think a big criticism of the current financial currency system is the fractional reserve property, because it can create big problems and eventually does so, sooner or later. So for me it would be absolutely crucial that your bank does NOT implement a fractional banking system, and this would be an absolute Pre-condition before I would use your service, and I guess this is the case for many other informed users, too. So if flexcoin implements a fractional reserve system, Flexcoins are not better than EUROs or USDs in the long term, with all the "diseases" associated to them on the long term.

8.b) If your anwser to quesiton "8.)" is "No, we are NOT going to implement a fractional banking system, there will always be a 1:1 mapping of flexcoins in circulation and Bitcoins deposited in the flexcoin bank", then my question is: How will you prove this to the world? There is a possibility to prove it, as described in the following - will you implement it?
   Description: For example, you can assign each user a secrete ID or secret nick name (and the user can change this, if he wants), i.e. a nick name that only this user knows himself. And then, you publish on your website (open to be read by everybody) every day (or every hour or so) an up-to-date-list of secret nick names and associated deposited funds. The sum of these funds then amounts to the total number of flexcoins in circulation at this point in time. And everybody can check this. Since the nick names (or IDs) are secret, the list is anonymous, and nobody has to disclose his funds. To anonymize it even further, it is possible that a user defines several secrete nicknames and distributes his funds over these nicknames as he wishes. Then all these nick names will be listed in the pubic list, such that it would be even harder to track it. And the user could change these nick names at any time. Note that these nicknames are not to be confused with the flexcoin addresses like "coffeeshop"!!
   Now, the second part relates to the bitcoins. The Flexicoin bank also would have to publish all Bitcoin addresses (public addresses like "1Msio5Diu3t8jdfg..."), and the associated fund of this address at the time of publishing. This way, every internet user could see for himself (by comparison with data from "blockexplorer") if the amount of funds contained by these BTC-addresses is the same as the sum of all flexcoins, or lower than that. Of course, the flexcoin bank could also list "wrong" Bitcoin addresses in this list, i.e. Bitcoin addresses that they do not actually own. However, this would be dangerous, because if the true owner of this Bitcoin address realizes this, the whole thing would become public and everybody would know that flexcoin uses a fake list to hide the fact that it is actually running a fractional reserve system. In this case, the trust into flexcoin would vanish instantly.

Note that this mechanism I just described is the same as the mechanism that the gold platform BullionVault is using to prove that the gold that their customers have bought is really existing physically in the vaults. What is the gold in that case is the Bitcoins in our case. And what is the list of funds in the BullionVault case is the list of flexcoins in our case here.

9.) If you are NOT implementing a fractional reserve system, my advise to you would be that you should not call yourself a "bank". Because many people associate the fractional reserve system with a bank (which is correct, because actually this is the crucial thing that "banking" is all about). And this is quite the OPPOSITE OF WHAT THE BITCOIN SYSTEM NEEDS.

9.b) If you do implement a fractional reserve system (i.e. number of Flexcoins > number of Bitcoins deposited in your Flexcoin bank), I have no more to say, other than: "Without me!", and I think it will not be successful, because the Bitcoin users are better informed than the average people in our world, and Bitcoins is exactly the OPPOSITE of the idea of fractional banking.

I do totally agree with your points! Not doing fractional reserve banking very important. I like the deflationary bitcoin system, keep it that way, please!
The bitcoin system is a decentralised system - and that, beside the deflationary aspect, is the most important point why there has been put so much value into this.

Bitcoins are at an early stage therefore you can't expect flexcoin to be accepted very soon. Finally Flexcoins are good for micropaiment, but as long as only few shops accept bitcoins it is less likely that flexcoins will succeed quicker. Well, maybe flexcoins speed up the acceptance progress and it is realy worth trying it! But don't market you service as a bank, as in a decentralised system we don't need banks! Stick to the advantages of quick (micro)paiment and address shortening and make paying bitcoins more easily.
And closing a blanc account after two weeks is realy early. We had to put money on there while not knowing whether this system is ever going to be used! Flexcoins do need more time I think...

[smoothie]

I'm sorry but any centralized organization is contradictory to the purposes of decentralization of bitcoin.

Get smart! Hold on to and secure your own bitcoins and STOP relying on ANY service that says "hey we'll store/hold your bitcoins for you".

 

[tanerlorn]

I have a pertinent question. Who the f are you and why should we send you bitcoins? Are ppl really gonna be stupid enough to fall for the mybtc thing all over again?

Seriously the entire point of bitcoin is 100% control over your own money.

[the founder]

So this is just an e-wallet, then?

This "just an e-wallet" pays you each month.... take it as you wish.

[the founder]

Question, why has the terminology changed from "interest" to "discount" on the banking interface?

Accountant had a discussion with the IRS.  If we used the word "interest" we would have to 1099 everyone if they make over $10 USD in payments,  "commission" and we had to 1099 everyone over $600 ,  use the word "discount" and no reporting is required.

It fits the bill regardless, because it IS a discount on your transaction fees,  as the part we collect (after paying the miner) is split 70% back to the account holders and 30% to us and it fixes the reporting and accounting problems.

[the founder]

Some Questions from my side - first seven "quick questions", and then the most crucial important question at the end:


--------------------
For the record nearly all these are answered on flexcoin,  under the FAQ drop down box.   So I suggest reading that first before posting, but I will of course answer this here.  I am going to answer this below each question
---------------------

1.) Will there be an Android App to link to QR scanner, such that I can pay with flexcoins to an outside BTC-Address (like "bitcoin wallet" Android App)?

-------------------
The site has been tested in all mobile devices (android and IOS)  It works really well via mobile, in fact it appears to the the primary way people access the account,  all IOS individuals can bookmark the https://bank.flexcoin.com site and it will even render a Flexcoin Icon on your iPhone or iPad desktop).  Android users will have to bookmark and then move the bookmark, as direct linking isn't allowed on android, but it is simple to do the bookmark and move to make it a web app.  Transfering from a clumsy QR scanner or just type in flexcoin id coffeshop?  I'll take coffeeshop as it's quicker.
-----------------------------------

2.) I do not like that the account is closed after 2 weeks of zero balance. In that case, my flexcoin name would be gone and I would have to open a new account with another name. Very bad idea I would say. Is there at least a protection mechanism, such that I am not allowed to move my balance below 0.00001 Flexcoins or so?

-----------------------
This was done on purpose to stop cybersquatting....   Our fear is that someone registers 100,000 flexcoin id's  ... puts nothing in them and we find them on ebay selling ID's rather than putting them to work for people that are actually trying to develop a bitcoin business.
-------------------------------------

3.) I do not like that 18 month of inactivity leads to closure of the account and loss of all flexcoins. This looks dubious. 18 month can quickly happen, for example if somebody goes to a journey around the world or Himalaya, or a severe disease. And when he comes back, all Flexcoins are gone. I think this period should be extended to 5 years minimum. Could you imagine to extend this period?

-----------------
Again this is so people don't put in .000001 bitcoin into 1000 accounts,  and then cybersquat and sell the usernames on ebay.   It's not 2 weeks in this case because we felt that people would want to use this as a valid savings account, If they can't move .0000001 BTC from one free flexcoin id to another (a free transfers) every 1.5 years then the account most likely is abandoned.   

-----------------------

4.) Minimum payment of 0.5% or 0.01 BTCs appears a lot. 0.01 BTC = 0.10 USD is already in the order of magnitude of credit card fees, and 0.5% is 50 cent on 100 EUR, which is a lot, too.

----------------
It's free from flexcoin to flexcoin account.  It's free from bitcoin to flexcoin,  the fee only applies from flexcoin to bitcoin...and that fee includes both the MINER fees, our fees and THE BITCOINS that you get back every month.  How else do you expect us to pay for the servers, and the past 1/2 year building the bank?  Everyone wanted us to provide a revenue model and we did.  
--------------------

5.) Who guarantees me that the terms and conditions do not change against my favour, once I have deposited some BTC funds into the Flexcoin bank? For example increase of fees or shortening of the idle times before the account is closed, etc.?

--------------------
Any changes to the TOS are posted, and your notified of the changes, they do not take affect immediately,  they take affect a week after they are posted.  That gives you plenty of time to get out if you think that we're posting something terrible...  

-------------------

6.) Are you planning to issue flexcoin credits in the future?

------------------
no
-----------------

7.) Are you planning to provide interest payments on flexcoin accounts in the future?

---------
We already are,  it's called a discount payment.
-------


8.) You are calling yourself a "bank". Does this mean you are running a fractional reserve system? The informed reader knows that the main characteristic of a "bank" is that it uses a fractional banking system. This means, every bank possesses less cash than the sum of the money of all its bank accounts. This means, if every customer of a bank tried to withdraw the whole cash at the same time (a so called "bank run"), the bank could not cash it out - it could only cash out about 2 to 10% of it. (It sounds crazy, but it is no secret, you can read about this everywhere on the internet, even at the web sites of the central banks.) How about the "flexcoin bank"? Are you going to establish a fractional reserve system of Bitcoins with your bank, too? Technically, this would be no problem, because it is highly unlikely that every customer would withdraw his BTC funds from the flexcoin bank at the same time, so some "overbooking" would be possible. This is exactly how the fractional reserve banking system started to develop in banking history of our world. But of course, such banking system would not be desireable, because it means inflating the currency, it would not be limited to 21 Million any more, because there would be more flexcoins then Bitcoins in circulation.
   So my question is: If the total number of Bitcoins paid into your bank is, say, 1 Million BTCs, will there be exactly 1 Million Flexcoins in existence, or will there be more then 1 Million Flexcoins? I think a big criticism of the current financial currency system is the fractional reserve property, because it can create big problems and eventually does so, sooner or later. So for me it would be absolutely crucial that your bank does NOT implement a fractional banking system, and this would be an absolute Pre-condition before I would use your service, and I guess this is the case for many other informed users, too. So if flexcoin implements a fractional reserve system, Flexcoins are not better than EUROs or USDs in the long term, with all the "diseases" associated to them on the long term.

---------------------
The answer is NO...  there is no such thing as fractional reserve banking at flexcoin.  period.
--------------------

8.b) If your anwser to quesiton "8.)" is "No, we are NOT going to implement a fractional banking system, there will always be a 1:1 mapping of flexcoins in circulation and Bitcoins deposited in the flexcoin bank", then my question is: How will you prove this to the world? There is a possibility to prove it, as described in the following - will you implement it?
   Description: For example, you can assign each user a secrete ID or secret nick name (and the user can change this, if he wants), i.e. a nick name that only this user knows himself. And then, you publish on your website (open to be read by everybody) every day (or every hour or so) an up-to-date-list of secret nick names and associated deposited funds. The sum of these funds then amounts to the total number of flexcoins in circulation at this point in time. And everybody can check this. Since the nick names (or IDs) are secret, the list is anonymous, and nobody has to disclose his funds. To anonymize it even further, it is possible that a user defines several secrete nicknames and distributes his funds over these nicknames as he wishes. Then all these nick names will be listed in the pubic list, such that it would be even harder to track it. And the user could change these nick names at any time. Note that these nicknames are not to be confused with the flexcoin addresses like "coffeeshop"!!
   Now, the second part relates to the bitcoins. The Flexicoin bank also would have to publish all Bitcoin addresses (public addresses like "1Msio5Diu3t8jdfg..."), and the associated fund of this address at the time of publishing. This way, every internet user could see for himself (by comparison with data from "blockexplorer") if the amount of funds contained by these BTC-addresses is the same as the sum of all flexcoins, or lower than that. Of course, the flexcoin bank could also list "wrong" Bitcoin addresses in this list, i.e. Bitcoin addresses that they do not actually own. However, this would be dangerous, because if the true owner of this Bitcoin address realizes this, the whole thing would become public and everybody would know that flexcoin uses a fake list to hide the fact that it is actually running a fractional reserve system. In this case, the trust into flexcoin would vanish instantly.

Note that this mechanism I just described is the same as the mechanism that the gold platform BullionVault is using to prove that the gold that their customers have bought is really existing physically in the vaults. What is the gold in that case is the Bitcoins in our case. And what is the list of funds in the BullionVault case is the list of flexcoins in our case here.

--------------------
It doesn't work that way currently,  i'll run this by the programmers but I think what you described would mean shutting down flexcoin and building a whole new site.. which would completely break everything we did over the past 1/2 year.
---------------------

9.) If you are NOT implementing a fractional reserve system, my advise to you would be that you should not call yourself a "bank". Because many people associate the fractional reserve system with a bank (which is correct, because actually this is the crucial thing that "banking" is all about). And this is quite the OPPOSITE OF WHAT THE BITCOIN SYSTEM NEEDS.

---------------------
Bank technically means storage,  and that's what people are doing, storing and using bitcoins / flexcoins.    We qualify it secondarly by paying regular payments to clients.  No such thing as fractional reserve at flexcoin.
---------------------

9.b) If you do implement a fractional reserve system (i.e. number of Flexcoins > number of Bitcoins deposited in your Flexcoin bank), I have no more to say, other than: "Without me!", and I think it will not be successful, because the Bitcoin users are better informed than the average people in our world, and Bitcoins is exactly the OPPOSITE of the idea of fractional banking.

-----------------
Then it's good that we don't do that.   I hope to see you get a flexcoin id.
-------------------

[defxor]

We do have plans for offsite / offline storage...

First, I think there is way too much negative feedback in this thread. "Don't use it if you don't like it" applies, and any and all serious businesses that help grow the Bitcoin economy are to be cheered. In the decentralized reputation economy trust is something you earn and FlexCoin do seem to want to operate that way. Kudos.

To my question: While you state on the website that you operate under US law, will you have non-US offsite storage? The US readily seize domains with content that is fully legal in their local jurisdictions and I consider it a significant possibility that we will see servers in the US hosting Bitcoin wallets be seized as well at one point in time. Being a non-US resident I have to judge that as a risk.

[the founder]

We do have plans for offsite / offline storage...

First, I think there is way too much negative feedback in this thread. "Don't use it if you don't like it" applies, and any and all serious businesses that help grow the Bitcoin economy are to be cheered. In the decentralized reputation economy trust is something you earn and FlexCoin do seem to want to operate that way. Kudos.

To my question: While you state on the website that you operate under US law, will you have non-US offsite storage? The US readily seize domains with content that is fully legal in their local jurisdictions and I consider it a significant possibility that we will see servers in the US hosting Bitcoin wallets be seized as well at one point in time. Being a non-US resident I have to judge that as a risk.

We thought about this 1000000 times...  We choose to operate in the United States because that's where we live.  If the US government wants to shut down US companies that are hiring US citizens then shame on them.

If they shut down us they most likely will be shutting down CampBX and every other US based bitcoin service.    The likely hood of them shutting us down is so tiny that it's mostly FUD, considering we do not deal in US dollars at all, and have zero plans to.   You know that a criminal entity would not use a service like flexcoin which clearly states it would work with authorities,  they most likely would setup something in TOR and do it that way....  

I am NOT stating what you are saying is FUD..  I'm just stating that in my opinion no one is going to shut us down as we cannot transmit money.. IE: we don't accept US dollars or any national currency.   This topic bugs me the most because I strongly believe we are innovating and shouldn't be punished (as well as every other US based company) for innovation.

[nmat]

I like that you are trying to control the ID grabbing, but maybe you are stretching it a little with the deadlines. Instead of 1.5 years, why not make it 3 or 4 with a minimum amount deposited (such as 0.01 BTC for example). And please add to the FAQ that you will constantly notify the client before closing the account.

[the founder]

And please add to the FAQ that you will constantly notify the client before closing the account.

That's a good idea... 

[flyswatta]

* Closing accounts with zero balance after two weeks. There are many scenarios where an account might need to have a zero balance for longer than that. If such a rule is needed at all, it should be at least two years, not two weeks.
* Closing accounts after 18 months of inactivity. There are many scenarios where an account might need to be inactive for longer than that. If such a rule is needed at all, it should be at least ten years, not 18 months.

YAY! no more cybersquatting.  If want to get 5000 flexcoin id's and sit on them so you can extort flexcoin ids from people, you have to tie up some BTC.  Sounds fair to me, in fact it should be more than .01

18 months is plenty of time.  Maybe they should offer a 'parking service' where you pay a fee for an account to be inactive more than 18 months.  That way you don't just park 5000 BTC in there and collect interest on it and flexcoin never gets any $ from transaction fees.  You should have to pay for that. 

[partyp]

And please add to the FAQ that you will constantly notify the client before closing the account.

That's a good idea... 

+1 here. I'm much more comfortable with the two weeks and the 18 months policy as long as I am notified in advance that my account is about to be deleted if I don't do something.

I could definitely see myself not touching a saving account for over 1.5 years.

Btw, great work flexcoin and thank you for answering everyone's questions here. That is part of the reason I decided to give flexcoin a try. Just please don't pull a 'mybitcoin' on me.

[vengeance]

I keep getting 'your session is either invalid or has expired' when i try register??