Bobby Lee is back, with Ballet (and new products!)

[bobbyclee]

Have you considered making them out of precious metals instead of titanium? Bitcoin block definitely deserve to be made of silver or gold .

Personally, I think the price is a bit steep. I personally wouldn't pay a 1 BTC premium on a titanium collectible, regardless of its loaded value (especially since we're pretty close to the halving).

they're always people (rightly) suggesting for Gold/Silver as base material.  I do like gold/silver, but for practicality purposes, we can't go with gold/silver due to the various import/export rules surrounding precious metals. So it's a no-go.  Sorry.

the premium is less than 8% (when you factor in the extra BTC in transaction fees for each block, as the total will be over 12.5 BTC).
our market research suggests that 8% is very reasonable for this kind of unique product.

And for collector's value, the fewer sold, the better!  

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[iBitcoinHongKong8]

https://wiki.coin.community/BTCC_Mint_-_Bitcoin_Block,_12.5_Bitcoin

YES! Please tell me it will be something along these lines! Virgin BTC mixed into a Ballet item of sorts. Huge fan of Ballet BTW. I used Ballet to learn how to peel and then split forks and it was literally magical. It handled everything within seconds. I peeled a pre-forked Satori chip just to learn and understand the process of peeling/splitting and understanding the process since I had never peeled anything before so I tested it and it went flawlessly! So I'm a huge Ballet fan here for a multitude of reasons mostly allowing for more mass adoption as that's what BTC needs most right now and making it easy to peel if one ever needed to break glass incase of emergency, etc.... I'd love to see some aspect of the 2 combined but definitely with virgin BTC funded to the project/item. Just my 6.25 bits . Hope that's the case. Either way all the best and good luck with whatever it is you're planning!


iBHK8

BTW, great to hear your positive stories about Ballet wallet and the mobile app.  We indeed did put in a lot of thought and refinements into the app, to fully support this community.

In specific, our mobile app has great support for ALL kinds of paper wallets and physical bitcoins (and supports physical litecoins also).
Please give it a try.  (you will need a physical Ballet REAL wallet to use the app to import from paper wallets, and it'll split out all the pre-fork coins for you.)

Please give us feedback; and let us know if any of you run into problems using Ballet Crypto app with your physical coins.

We support all physical coins as long as that crypto is supported by the regular REAL Bitcoin wallets.
The full list is here:
https://www.balletcrypto.com/en/coins

The Ballet app and the cards themselves are incredible. Like I mentioned I originally bought it just to have it then it was your brother Coblee who recommended I use Ballet for my purposes of wanting to try understanding how to peel/split and all the rest and it went perfectly. Once I scanned the Satori the app instantly notified me I had BTC, BCH, BTD, BTG etc....available and it handled it all for me. I haven't tried any other coins as this was just an experiment to learn how to peel a collectible etc. But so far the mobile app and the Ballet itself is 5 stars! If I ever have any other coins to try I'll definitely use the Ballet wallet. And I speak very highly of it when someone asks now that I've had some time with it and realized just how easy it made everything work etc...Good luck the rest of the way as the teaser pics look good.

1) It will be interesting to see the interest level on the 12.5 blocks since those have been done albeit a bit different(BTCC vs Ballet) same but different.
2) I have a feeling the 6.25BTC blocks will be far more popular but that's just going off it being cheaper/more affordable and it will be something entirely unique etc....

Either way I'm glad you plan to offer some more cool collectibles! Good luck with it all!

iBHK8

[teeGUMES]

The scratch off spot concerns me immensely on these. With a 1BTC premium this thing needs to stay MINT to ever hope to retain any sort of value in the secondary market. An accidental scratch or rub ruins this in such an easy way due to having a scratch n sniff on the block.

[Hellot]

Nice job, Bobby!  Please consider doing a smaller denomination given the high cost of these.  One of the really nice things about your pocker chips(besides the high quality) was that they came in small denominations which made them very accessible.

[Otoh]

Very nice, congratulations bobby & team!


"Yes, these Blocks will contain virgin BTC straight from the coinbase reward (zero hops), and includes all transaction fees in the block. This means that besides this being a truly limited series, each and every block will be unique, and have it's own block height, and unique block reward BTC amount. The blocks will be funded directly by our mining pool partner, to be announced later. (If there are additional mining pools who want to join us and cooperate, please send me private message or email.)

However, in terms of sales, you pay for the Block and the BTC separately. Once you pay, we will send you the empty block (in late April), and then once you confirm receiving it, the mining pool will mine the virgin BTC to your block, as a separate transaction. You WILL need to pre-pay a deposit, and extra BTC will be refunded to you after the mining is done."

I'm maybe missing something here, but how can the empty blocks be sent out before the actual blocks (& rewards) are mined as these need printing/engraving onto the said blocks?

[Otoh]

I guess that the blocks have been already mined, they are then sent to the addie on the physical block after it has been delivered, rather than being mined directly to the addie on the physical block, I'm not very up on the mining side of things TBH

[K-Paxian]

it is cool and nice but i like it more with the hologram in the btcc...it looks more shiny and beautifulf imo   buut not bad at all

[BalletCrypto]

I guess that the blocks have been already mined, they are then sent to the addie on the physical block after it has been delivered, rather than being mined directly to the addie on the physical block, I'm not very up on the mining side of things TBH

The coins will be mined directly to the address on the physical block.

[SatoshJr]

Congrats to Bobby and Team! These are very beautiful.

It would be amazing to see coins and chips with lower denominations with freshly mined BTC, as many of us cannot afford whole blocks.
I hope you can make these in the near future. I think you would have many customers here.

[bobbyclee]

Interesting but unoriginal

Why blocks?  why not a different shape?

How about stainless steel?  

the square dimensions of the blocks are to emulate the idea of a physical "bitcoin block" containing the block reward.

More importantly, this is a continuation of my Bitcoin Blocks at my last company, BTCC.
As you all should know, I created and launched  this Bitcoin Block physical bitcoin concept in 2016 at BTCC (it was actually conceived of in 2015).

I have since sold that company, and the new owners closed down the BTCC Mint business as they no longer wanted to continue with it.

Now that I'm with Ballet, I'm relaunching this product, and Ballet's Bitcoin Block is a continuation of the product offered by us at BTCC Mint.
We've purposely kept the design the same (including the material, the size / weight, and even the packaging will be similar).

Yes, I'm copying myself from 4 years ago.

For those reasons above, we purposely didn't use stainless steel, but happy to look into that for future new products.

thanks,
Bobby

[bobbyclee]

I have to disagree there.

1. It's not that unique, since BTCC already did similar blocks.
2. I'm not sure if using a percentage of a higher loaded value is a good way to determine the premium. I doubt I can sell a self-designed paper wallet, loaded with 100 BTC, for an 8 BTC premium.
3. Understandable decision regarding the precious metals but I'd personally expect something more exclusive than titanium for something worth over $80k.

1) You're right about BTCC having already done that. See my post above, as that was me at BTCC launching BTCC Mint products. I was the creator and coin maker, so to me, the Bitcoin Block concept is indeed unique, though I've brought it over from my past company to now.

2) Thanks for your input.

3) It's a continuation of BTCC Mint's Bitcoin Block. So some collectors want a continuation, and collect blocks from different periods in Bitcoin's history.

thanks,
Bobby

[bobbyclee]

The scratch off spot concerns me immensely on these. With a 1BTC premium this thing needs to stay MINT to ever hope to retain any sort of value in the secondary market. An accidental scratch or rub ruins this in such an easy way due to having a scratch n sniff on the block.

Yes, you have a good point here.

We made an explicit decision to go with Ballet's new 2FKG technology, so that we break down the private key to manufacture them in 2 difference facilities (the encrypted private key under the top sticker, and the BIP38 passphrase under the scratch off). We think this is an overall improvement to the old method from BTCC Mint, which was a 1-factor private key, all done by me locally.

In any case, this design and architecture is what we have with the new 2020 Bitcoin Block.

thanks,
Bobby

[bobbyclee]

We are preparing the product info pages, and will have the ordering process up soon (in about 24-48 hours).


Also, is there interest here to auction off the first few of the lower serial numbers?

How many should we auction off? How many people are interested?

[Otoh]

I guess that the blocks have been already mined, they are then sent to the addie on the physical block after it has been delivered, rather than being mined directly to the addie on the physical block, I'm not very up on the mining side of things TBH

The coins will be mined directly to the address on the physical block.

This is what I can't get my head around, you are sending out empty (non-funded) physical blocks but they have the actual block number mined with rewards printed or engraved on them, how can this be if these are then mined directly to the physical blocks later, i don't get it?

[bobbyclee]

I guess that the blocks have been already mined, they are then sent to the addie on the physical block after it has been delivered, rather than being mined directly to the addie on the physical block, I'm not very up on the mining side of things TBH

The coins will be mined directly to the address on the physical block.

This is what I can't get my head around, you are sending out empty (non-funded) physical blocks but they have the actual block number mined with rewards printed or engraved on them, how can this be if these are then mined directly to the physical blocks later, i don't get it?

Hi Otoh,

Very good point.  I'm glad you discovered this issue, which I previously didn't get to address:

We are sending out empty blocks, however, the block height and reward amount on the block will be done this way:
 
It'll be custom made high-end raised-lettering stickers, to be applied and affixed onto the blocks by the customer after the block is mined. (We will send these out to customers in a follow on delivery, after the block is mined.)

Even though this is do-it-yourself (DIY) step, it's good quality and easy to do.  We've already tested this process and the results are very good.

Details will be provided later, after we launch the product. Thanks for allowing me to bring up this important point.

thanks,
Bobby

[Otoh]

Should of course have been mentioned from the start, certainly doesn't appeal to me, but keeping an open mind for now.

[Otoh]

So these are not designed to be bearer instruments like BTCC or Casascius coins/blocks, just some stick on raised letter strips to show what's meant to be their actual block mined and rewards value, which don't sound at all tamper proof to me 

[bobbyclee]

So these are not designed to be bearer instruments like BTCC or Casascius coins/blocks, just some stick on raised letter strips to show what's meant to be their actual block mined and rewards value, which don't sound at all tamper proof to me 

I'm not sure I understand.... the 2020 Bitcoin Blocks are indeed bearer instruments (once funded by the mining pool).

The only difference is that we are selling and shipping it empty, and then later, it'll be loaded by the mining pool.

Yes, as for the full look and feel, to see the final block height and amounts, there will indeed be a DIY step.
These details and everything else will indeed be properly explained once we launch the product.

We talk about tamper-evident, and not tamper-proof. (or are you referring to some other aspect of something being tamper proof?)

The only true tamper evident component of the block is the sticker covering the encrypted private key, and the BIP38 passphrase underneath the scratch-off part.
The raised lettering showing the block height and block reward BTC amount is a display nicety, as in the end, it's all about what the balance shows for that address on the actual blockchain.

I'm only giving you a preview here, and sorry for not clearing on all of the details during this "tease" phase. (Hope the forum members here appreciates the early access information here.)

thanks,
Bobby

[Otoh]

"The raised lettering showing the block height and block reward BTC amount is a display nicety, as in the end, it's all about what the balance shows for that address on the actual blockchain."

But short of pealing them how does anyone know that particular physical 'block' is what it purports to be in the easily spoofed (I assume) DIY stick on block number and rewards ID part of the physical block?

Um, more like early access to the lack of the most critical information here if you ask me

[Otoh]

The product picture you posted doesn't show a DIY stick on block number/reward strip (or at least nothing like I'd expect to be able to achieve on a first attempt), so it's misleading & for a > $82k product this really doesn't look too promising to me at all  

https://ip.bitcointalk.org/?u=https%3A%2F%2Fi.imgur.com%2FPcaauAV.jpg&t=611&c=16tgUNuNjggX6g