Bitmark

[Este Nuno]

This is a really spendy coin.  Hope there's some serious backers..

What do you mean by spendy?

[minethemall]

This is a really spendy coin.  Hope there's some serious backers..

What do you mean by spendy?

hehe

[batesresearch]

We are aiming to donate 2000BTM to the bitmark foundation
Any orders paid in BTM will be donated in full to the foundation
Visit CryptoCloudHosting.org and order your hosting now

We are currently at 8%

[melvster]

Since this coin has reached it's Q1 first quarter today, I thought I'd give a mini update from a developer perspective.  It's just my own personal view, and does not necessarily reflect view of others or the community.

I've been on this project for just over a month and first of all it's been a lot of fun.  First of all thanks to everyone that has taken part, particularly coinsolidation, who I am amazed has not collapsed of exhaustion yet!  The team is great to work with and everyone has their thing, it's a very enjoyable vibe.  The project area has grown from about 10 people to over 80 in the last month, with some people looking in and some more regular.  There seems to be quite a lot going on in the pipe line, and it's also seems to be operating in the way of a DAC (decentralized autonomous corporation).  So it can be full of surprises sometimes, and everyone can choose their own level of participation.  

Development seems to me to be going quite well.  There's lots of things being worked on and a regular stream of releases coming out, small and big, on the topic of marking.  I would say it's more on the smallish side right now, than the big, but that can change easily.  Markpfennig has a big release in trello that can be tracked, so that is something we're all looking forward to.  Poloniex did an excellent rollout of marking in the space of a few days.  Kudos.

We now have prototypes of marking on a number of platforms:

- slack
- irc
- twitter
- poloniex
- cli / shell
- web
- bitcointalk (yes you can mark here - shhh)
- browser based client side certificates (including android)

These range mainly from proof of concept to full production quality as in poloniex.

What I see as being in the pipeline is:

- email
- github
- android client
- soundcloud
- vimeo
- youtube
- much more!

And quite a bit more.  At the same time maturing the existing work, scaling it, making it robust, security etc.  It seems to get a little better each day, so hopefully that will continue.

Relationships seem to be going pretty well and we actually seem to be working well with lots of other teams.  From my experience that's a rare pleasure in free software, so I think that's a positive.

Our web integration I think is getting really quite strong and we are well placed to be one of the leading coins in the world of REST / Linked Data / Web 3.0 / Semantic Web (all those terms mean similar things) which some people believe is the next logical step for the web -- at least that's what we are betting on.

As with any new technology the transaction levels and users start slow, so the challenge is to increase that, over the next quarter.

I dont normally talk about price, but I think I will give what I see as guidance, take is as you will.  The coin is up almost 1000% in just over a month since I've been involved, which is a pretty decent rise.  Last I checked it was around 110k satoshis.  It's been as high as 250k.  I think a lot of the trading of this project is on *potential* and that's a pretty hard thing to judge, especially if you are not close to the technology at hand.  From a neutral standpoint I thought that when we hit 250k the price was probably ahead of the development at the time and I thought 200k was fair.  Since then imho dev has gone quite well, and I'd say fair would be around 250k sat. now.  So it's a good time to buy or mine cheap coins, imho.  A lot depends on the next 3 quarters, particularly the next quarter.  Watch the metrics primarily of implementations and users, growing tx numbers (mainly off block) and I'd say to a lesser extent mining / trading.  I'd look to consolidate the 250k level then take stock of where we are again.  Well I said more about price than I intended!

I've spoken to quite a few people (technical and non technical) about marking, from artists to geeks.  Most seem to really like the concept.  I keep hearing lots of creative ideas that are inspiring in the same way that bitcoin inspired me in the early days.  For example I really like the mark to tshirt designs that have been discussed.  Hopefully marking is an idea worth spreading and can attract creative people to get involved.  Anyone can help out and make this project what you want it to be.  

Just my 2 marks, hope it helps, looking forward to working with you all!

In fairness to the community I thought I'd give an update on this, as 6 months of the project has passed.  Again it's my own take does not reflect views of anyone else.

The last 3 months have been a disaster.  Core development has dropped about 90%-99% from its peak.  Other metrics have followed such as daily active users (from c. 100 to about 1 -- me!), mining, (from about 100-200Ghz to 0.5 Ghz), price (from 250k peak to 4k trough).  The link I think is largely causal.  The supporting team have gone from highly optimistic to highly confused.  On at least a dozen occasions the core code effort was ready to go from closed source to open on that day.  Month after month this didnt not happen, with those involved in the project wondering why.

One bright moment in the cycle was the release of 0.9.3 which seems to have corrected some previous issues without introducing new ones.

My new fair value is 10k satoshi, reflecting a less engaged founder, but also other systems such as changetip poised to go viral in 2015.  The market share of bitmark, even if it is decentralized decreases by the hour, and it's valuation is based right now mainly on the potential market.  i'd recommend test driving the changetip facebook app which shows what is possible in this space, and also see that they very much have the idea of upvotes in mind.  Tipping / marking is something I'd love to see go viral on the web, let's hope decentralized and open source solutions get some market share from the fast moving centralized versions that have traditionally dominated web markets.

One other concern is the speculation aspect of the coin.  Markp announced yesterday that bitmark had 'gone low'.  There is a consortium of members looking to buy a large number of BTM, presumably cheaply.  The promise is that a large number will be donated to the foundation and used for bounties -- call me a sceptic on this one.  Fund have gone missing 3 times from the foundation, but thankfully have been replaced, allbeit at a lower valuation.  Loans and donations have not been made good wrt the promised deliverables -- we should try and avoid going down this path again.  So this strange new strategy I think is going to be counter productive.  I only hope that it can be actioned as quickly as possible so that the focus can get back to an open source project.

Apparently there's 22 people that want to work on bitmark / marking and an update is coming soon.  IMHO, The focus needs to be brought back to open source, transparency, code and growing users.  I hope in Q3 this project can get back to what it was doing in Q1, and less of what happened in Q2.  2015 could be the year of marking / tipping (I dont see a huge difference other than context). 

[leathan]

Edit: I did not know ct is open source sorry for my ignorance.

that said

changetip

Why don't you go work with ct and help tipping with money go viral? or is that what you are doing here.. marking is NOT tipping... and if you cant understand the difference go to china, walk around and talk to them about MARKING and about TIPPING. Talk to them about MONEY and about MARKS and see if they notice a difference.

That's 1/3 of the world.. maybe there really is an INCOMPATIBLE difference between the two?

You need to understand the mere mention of that word is VERY OFFENSIVE to some peoples in the east, and often SPECIFICALLY those you THINK you are "helping" by "tipping".

[Hulk Hobo]

Sigh....

I don't even care they are closed source.. I don't even care they are greedy..

Melvin...

changetip

Why don't you go work with them and help tipping with money go viral? or is that what you are doing here.. marking is NOT tipping... and if you cant understand the difference go to china, walk around and talk to them about MARKING and about TIPPING. Talk to them about MONEY and about MARKS and see if they notice a difference.

That's 1/3 of the world.. maybe there really is an INCOMPATIBLE difference between the two?

You need to understand the mere mention of that word is VERY OFFENSIVE to some peoples in the east, and often SPECIFICALLY those you THINK you are "helping" by "tipping".

Apart from melvin being a bit of a CT fanboy and his valuation, I agree with everything else. If that excel sign up sheet was presented a few months ago I would have been the first person signing up to help, but now I simply don't trust the project. I know this is supposed to be decentralized etc., but you need to make sure the project is on solid ground before you let it take off on its own and thats simply not the case yet. I know you say price doesnt matter, but it does ... A lot of people were super excited and put a lot of time and money into BTM (via speculative investment, mining at a loss etc., development, reaching out to platforms that might utilize marking) and all they have to show for it is silence and a strategy pivot that favours larger investors and centralization ... That's not right. Anyways, Im still here, but Im taking a step back and approaching this project much more cautiously, if and/or when we have proof that things are still moving forward i'll get more involved. Anyways, good luck moving forward, and hopefully BTM gets back on track sooner than later.

Edit: oh and I can't say I agree that tipping is more or less equivalent to marking ...

[Gunther]

So, you are actually saying that a more realistic price would be 10k? Damn, I really expected this to pump again, after all this fud and negativity.

[johndec2]

So, you are actually saying that a more realistic price would be 10k? Damn, I really expected this to pump again, after all this fud and negativity.

Gunther, I feel your pain.  I promised earlier to support the coin with all I have until the end of the month (100mh/s now down to 75mh/s due to a dead g-black, I don't imagine GAW will support any warranty claim, oh well)...  As a large bagholder with a friend who holds a similar stake, around 40K BTM between us, I really don't know what to do.

Do I/we sell up, cut our losses and crash the coin to 1 satoshi?  Look at the Bittrex buy book. 40K BTM would do that.  Or do I hope that Mark and friends pull their fingers out and come good on some of their visions/promises/timelines,call it what you will.  Devs, time to step up to the plate or by this time next month, BTM will be a memory...

***  Of course to move coins to an exchange you need a moving blockchain.  Which currently isn't happening. It appears there are 3 people mining BTM (myself included).  ***  Imagine the crash and burn when this round finally finishes and all the multis and whales try to dump the coins they mined 3 months ago.  If that doesn't kill the coin, nothing will..

EDIT: Just thought of something. Why aren't the devs and fanbois on slack mining this coin?  Either with their miners or rented hash? Surely that would be the first thing they would do to support the coin, unless??  No I don't wish to be part of the slack group. What's the point? Obviously nothing happening there...  Fuck, I'd like my donation back, think it was ~ 0.25 BTC back when the project was exciting and BTC was worth something.  Oh well, it was a donation - should have given it to the Salvation Army or such like Live and learn but the clock is ticking........

[Este Nuno]

Seems everyone has their own different interpretation of what's going on from what Mark has said.

 a strategy pivot that favours larger investors and centralization ... That's not right.

Not sure how you see any sort of move towards centralisation. I had been saying since Mark was sick that we should try to get everything that the project needs out and on paper so we can begin to break it down in to manageable steps and tasks. Getting more people who want to be involved working on things will help decentralise the work load. We saw how things ground to a halt and how quiet it was when Mark was sick. I'd rather have a technical description of what it's going to take to make marking a reality out there and not just in Mark's head, so that people can work together to make it a reality.

Imagine the crash and burn when this round finally finishes and all the multis and whales try to dump the coins they mined 3 months ago.  If that doesn't kill the coin, nothing will..

Well half of the coins from the last low difficulty phase are already mature so I doubt another 7k BTM maturing is going to have too much of an effect on the market. If it was a single person and they sold it all off immediately or something then maybe.

[Este Nuno]

EDIT: Just thought of something. Why aren't the devs and fanbois on slack mining this coin?  Either with their miners or rented hash? Surely that would be the first thing they would do to support the coin, unless??  No I don't wish to be part of the slack group. What's the point? Obviously nothing happening there...  Fuck, I'd like my donation back, think it was ~ 0.25 BTC back when the project was exciting and BTC was worth something.  Oh well, it was a donation - should have given it to the Salvation Army or such like Live and learn but the clock is ticking........

People aren't renting miners because there's no point in renting miners. A lot of people don't see the network as a problem right now, as reduced supply is a good thing while things are still getting going.

I think the network will be fixed through a market based solution rather than through renting a bunch of hash. Renting hash is a temporary solution, but a healthy market with people buying marks is a long term one.

[Gunther]

Mark is right though, what's the point of continuing with BTM while we can tip people on FB/Twitter and such?

Marking = tipping, whether you like it or not.

[leathan]

A marking isnt a tip just because a tip can be a marking to you. Try having your marks pop up on the chinese filters. It wont happen because that 33% of the planet thinks so much as the word tip is an insult. you see there is a HUGE DIFFERENCE between a tip and a marking.

To everyone who lost money. really? 6 months?... i think thats a VERY lose definition of the term investor.

Really I'd rather no one lose money but guys snap back to bitcoin 8 months after the paper.... what was the price again?

Just relax look at the graph tuns and tuns and tuns of trades that represent people fighting over a price only to realise woa... hey.. wait.... we actually give it value ourselves.

[leathan]

You can literally hand them 20$+ tip and they will spit at you and walk away.

Now if you explain to them that you are paying them those 20$ they will smile and say come again.

Obviously I thought this was crazy and every time i go to china i try and tip everyone... so far only the taxy drivers accept because theyve managed to learn in our culter a tip is just a way of saying you really liked something. Or maybe they hate that you really liking something means they need to accept your money.

But the point is that both btc AND tips are incompatible with a web salable marking system

[Este Nuno]

Mark is right though, what's the point of continuing with BTM while we can tip people on FB/Twitter and such?

Marking = tipping, whether you like it or not.

You mean Melvin, not Mark right?

Personally I don't see marking as tipping at all. At least I don't plan to integrate marking in to my platform as a form of tipping.

[pseudonymdude]

EDIT: Just thought of something. Why aren't the devs and fanbois on slack mining this coin?  Either with their miners or rented hash? Surely that would be the first thing they would do to support the coin, unless??  No I don't wish to be part of the slack group. What's the point? Obviously nothing happening there...  Fuck, I'd like my donation back, think it was ~ 0.25 BTC back when the project was exciting and BTC was worth something.  Oh well, it was a donation - should have given it to the Salvation Army or such like Live and learn but the clock is ticking........

People aren't renting miners because there's no point in renting miners. A lot of people don't see the network as a problem right now, as reduced supply is a good thing while things are still getting going.

I think the network will be fixed through a market based solution rather than through renting a bunch of hash. Renting hash is a temporary solution, but a healthy market with people buying marks is a long term one.

I somewhat disagree with this because use encourages development and can cause excitement.  A stuck chain limits use.

I haven't been following this coin much.  Did the devs update with a fix for difficulty retargeting when we do cross 468xx?

[Este Nuno]

EDIT: Just thought of something. Why aren't the devs and fanbois on slack mining this coin?  Either with their miners or rented hash? Surely that would be the first thing they would do to support the coin, unless??  No I don't wish to be part of the slack group. What's the point? Obviously nothing happening there...  Fuck, I'd like my donation back, think it was ~ 0.25 BTC back when the project was exciting and BTC was worth something.  Oh well, it was a donation - should have given it to the Salvation Army or such like Live and learn but the clock is ticking........

People aren't renting miners because there's no point in renting miners. A lot of people don't see the network as a problem right now, as reduced supply is a good thing while things are still getting going.

I think the network will be fixed through a market based solution rather than through renting a bunch of hash. Renting hash is a temporary solution, but a healthy market with people buying marks is a long term one.

I somewhat disagree with this because use encourages development and can cause excitement.  A stuck chain limits use.

I haven't been following this coin much.  Did the devs update with a fix for difficulty retargeting when we do cross 468xx?

Thing is with Bitmark all our intended significant usage is meant to happen off-chain anyway. So in the very short term it's not really going to matter. Getting people mining it is as simple as putting up a sufficient amount of BTC at whatever price it takes to make it profitable for miners.

No change in the algorithm yet, as we've yet to really go through a period of demand to see whether it will perform as intended. But there are people working on a new chain right now testing some potential changes if necessary.

[johndec2]

Getting people mining it is as simple as putting up a sufficient amount of BTC at whatever price it takes to make it profitable for miners.

And who is going to provide this BTC? Or in reverse, at the moment, less than 1 Bitcoin worth of BTM would crash the price on Bittrex to 1 satoshi.  $200 would currently turn BTM into a worthless coin.  I think a few of you slept through Economics lessons at high school..  If it has no value, no one will use it. 

[Este Nuno]

Getting people mining it is as simple as putting up a sufficient amount of BTC at whatever price it takes to make it profitable for miners.

And who is going to provide this BTC? Or in reverse, at the moment, less than 1 Bitcoin worth of BTM would crash the price on Bittrex to 1 satoshi.  $200 would currently turn BTM into a worthless coin.  I think a few of you slept through Economics lessons at high school..  If it has no value, no one will use it.  

Someone dumping on Bittrex wouldn't result in much of a change as the price would readjust to whatever the market felt was a fair value at that time.

Plus hopefully Bittrex will delist it soon and we can have Poloniex again as the central point of trade. Having a thin market with no volume like the one on Bittrex doesn't add much value imo. In the future when there's demand and volume I'm sure Bittrex will have no problem readding BTM if needed.  

[johndec2]

Este, you win, I give up.  If I can't make anyone with power around here understand my point, I'm wasting my time.

If you think it's fine for it to take 2 days to make a simple BTM transaction like depositing or withdrawing coins from an exchange, then it's fine.  If you think it is fine for Bittrex, IMHO the best exchange out there to toss your coin on the scrapheap, then it's fine.  If you think it's fine for the diff to be stuck at 1953 for another 6 months, after all you are not interested in miners or the effort they put in to support the coin, then that's fine.

I did promise to support the coin with my miners until the end of the month, I'm currently about 1/3 of a miserable 200 odd mh/s.  When I go that 6 months may be 9 months.

One last question, you never did tell me where all the BTC for price support would come from.  According to coinwarz, you would need to triple the current value to make mining BTM comparable to mining LTC (at the current diff, which isn't going anywhere in a hurry).  That's a lot of BTC and it's not like you can sell BTM to get it...

[Este Nuno]

Este, you win, I give up.  If I can't make anyone with power around here understand my point, I'm wasting my time.

If you think it's fine for it to take 2 days to make a simple BTM transaction like depositing or withdrawing coins from an exchange, then it's fine.  If you think it is fine for Bittrex, IMHO the best exchange out there to toss your coin on the scrapheap, then it's fine.  If you think it's fine for the diff to be stuck at 1953 for another 6 months, after all you are not interested in miners or the effort they put in to support the coin, then that's fine.

I did promise to support the coin with my miners until the end of the month, I'm currently about 1/3 of a miserable 200 odd mh/s.  When I go that 6 months may be 9 months.

One last question, you never did tell me where all the BTC for price support would come from.  According to coinwarz, you would need to triple the current value to make mining BTM comparable to mining LTC (at the current diff, which isn't going anywhere in a hurry).  That's a lot of BTC and it's not like you can sell BTM to get it...

I don't think it's 'fine'. But I also know that it's less important than getting people working on Bitmark and marking and getting an actual product(s) out there. If there's nothing to use, then whether BTM functions properly at all doesn't make much of a difference. But Mark mentioned in Slack a couple of days ago #general that he's working on coming up with a way to get a wall on the market that will restart BTM mining and getting the Bitmark Foundation funded and actively contributing to making things happen. So I'm confident that he's working to address both of these issues right now at the same time, BTM/mining and marking itself.