Bitmark

[coinsolidation]

not being a software developer, i cant really help out in those ares, but will work with what i can to get things going.   thanks for the creation of this service ...

real world application; am in the process of developing a community trading site with another project team, will look at integration of getmarked once it is ready to go.

We are the developers and community who assist you in your ventures, and you are part of that.

Already we have worked together to find a novel solution to running your miners long term, and far more besides.

If you are developing a community trading site, let us know the details and any potential issues you may see, such as managing reputation and community members, or integrating securely with currency software, and we will do what we can to assist you, while developing generic solutions which can be applied to other projects with similar requirements.

[johndec2]

Bitmark's Value
A currency with no initial price tag, and which earns value over time? No exchange? What is it's value?

Perhaps I'm putting my miners hat on, but is the title of the post actually addressed by the rest of the post?  As you know I'm fully supportive of all your endeavours here but until there is an actual value placed on BTM, then it is hard to evaluate the whether the other projects like getmarked will be viable.  People, social media, websites, etc, will only adopt getmarked if it carries a tangible benefit. It's all well and good to build all these systems but at the end of the day, if giving or earning Marks has no intrinsic value, people won't bother.

The coin needs to dip it's toe in the exchange market sooner or later to establish a foothold.  After all, if you can't buy or sell BTM then it really does have no value.  My best suggestion is to continue to expand the nethash mining the coin. The IPM project is a good way of doing that.  Exchanges keep a track of these sort of things but a low profile coin like BTM can get lost in the blizzard of "Look at ME" new releases.  A smart exchange like Bittrex will pick up a promising coin (although sometimes they need a nudge).  

[tdokta]

real world application; am in the process of developing a community trading site with another project team, will look at integration of getmarked once it is ready to go.

If you are developing a community trading site, let us know the details and any potential issues you may see, such as managing reputation and community members, or integrating securely with currency software, and we will do what we can to assist you, while developing generic solutions which can be applied to other projects with similar requirements.

almost at the stage for beta testing ... will let you know when we are ready for further introduction of payment systems.

[Este Nuno]

Bitmark's Value
A currency with no initial price tag, and which earns value over time? No exchange? What is it's value?

Perhaps I'm putting my miners hat on, but is the title of the post actually addressed by the rest of the post?  As you know I'm fully supportive of all your endeavours here but until there is an actual value placed on BTM, then it is hard to evaluate the whether the other projects like getmarked will be viable.  People, social media, websites, etc, will only adopt getmarked if it carries a tangible benefit. It's all well and good to build all these systems but at the end of the day, if giving or earning Marks has no intrinsic value, people won't bother.

The coin needs to dip it's toe in the exchange market sooner or later to establish a foothold.  After all, if you can't buy or sell BTM then it really does have no value.  My best suggestion is to continue to expand the nethash mining the coin. The IPM project is a good way of doing that.  Exchanges keep a track of these sort of things but a low profile coin like BTM can get lost in the blizzard of "Look at ME" new releases.  A smart exchange like Bittrex will pick up a promising coin (although sometimes they need a nudge).  

Well, even though we haven't pushed to list BTM on any exchanges prematurely and no one other than tdokta has offered to sell his BTM(for a very legitimate reason I might add) there is still a minimum implied value which is represented by the cost of production. Which is probably somewhere around 0.00015 BTC at the moment. That is a very rough estimate and someone else can give you a better number but for the most part anyone offering to sell BTM would only want to sell at a markup to that price. If someone were to come on here and offer x amount of BTM for 0.0001 BTC I'd imagine people would be lining up to purchase it at the discounted price. In reality if the real ask price for people who need BTC now for other reasons is probably around 0.0002. The only reason someone wouldn't buy at that price is the fact that it's currently cheaper to produce your own via mining. But if there was some reason that a person preferred not to mine it's almost certainly a great price that will show a return.

edit: the network is expanding rapidly and the difficulty is rising with it as I can see so my numbers are old and wrong. But the general point still stands. Someone else who's currently in the mining game can probably give you some accurate numbers.

[coinsolidation]

Bitmark's Value
A currency with no initial price tag, and which earns value over time? No exchange? What is it's value?

Perhaps I'm putting my miners hat on, but is the title of the post actually addressed by the rest of the post?  As you know I'm fully supportive of all your endeavours here but until there is an actual value placed on BTM, then it is hard to evaluate the whether the other projects like getmarked will be viable.  People, social media, websites, etc, will only adopt getmarked if it carries a tangible benefit. It's all well and good to build all these systems but at the end of the day, if giving or earning Marks has no intrinsic value, people won't bother.

The coin needs to dip it's toe in the exchange market sooner or later to establish a foothold.  After all, if you can't buy or sell BTM then it really does have no value.  My best suggestion is to continue to expand the nethash mining the coin. The IPM project is a good way of doing that.  Exchanges keep a track of these sort of things but a low profile coin like BTM can get lost in the blizzard of "Look at ME" new releases.  A smart exchange like Bittrex will pick up a promising coin (although sometimes they need a nudge).  

We have three things at play, value, production cost, and price-tag.

• Price-tag and production cost are correlated strongly, we already know the production costs at any given time.
• Network difficulty determines the production cost and price tag.
• Difficulty is a measure of demand.
• Value (usefulness, adoption, value proposition) create the demand.

By focusing on value the rest handles itself, we are creating limited value already measurable to real people, this project is impacting their lives. This is raising demand, difficulty is rising, production costs are rising, and the price-tag will reflect that whenever it is shown.

The problem with exchanges for altcoins is that they create an artificial demand, where market movements based on speculative self interest or manipulation appear to be the measurement of demand, and therefore the value.

I understand your points and can empathise, that miners have costs, I am sure we can find ways to address this, with or without exchanges.

You say "if you can't buy or sell BTM then it really does have no value", this is where we disagree. We can see many valueless coins which people buy and sell.

Consider just buying or selling goods and receiving or giving BTM as the unit of payment... that is the goal is it not?

Exchanges are a bi-product required to swap from one currency of value to another, in order to spend that currency. Exchanges in this scene are games where the ones with the best marketing campaigns or the most pre-arranged win out.

We do face an issue which I think surfaces between the posts of this thread.

On the 13th July 2015 when we are one year old, there will be 10,000,000 BTM in existence, which must be distributed reasonably fairly. Maybe it is better to describe it as 10,000,000,000 Marks and then we can frame things more clearly.

This can only be achieved by balancing supply and demand, within the context of getmarked this correlates to producing a reasonable figure which new adopting software would be armed with or require. The users of each software or community will distribute the marks within themselves. Collectively the communities will increase demand and value.

There is an optimal figure to find based on some average adoption projections.

Let us say that:
1. the users of each adoption will require 5x more marks in the first year than they first acquire upon adoption.
2. each adoption leads to 2 more within 4 months.
3. we will start with 4 adoptions in the first 2 months.
4. the network reach of each user will be 2 deep, with 40% shared contact and 45% distribution to those contacts within a year.
5. The average number of users for each adoption at adoption time is 800.
6. 40% of the bitmarks will be retained by investors or traders, with much lower distribution than average users, and amounts measured in BTM rather than Marks.

These are example figures, but already we can extrapolate some example findings.

6,000,000,000 Marks available for Marking.
4+8+16, 28 adoptions.
800+(1600*0.6*0.45=432)+(2464*0.6*0.45), 1465 users per adoption.
28*1465, 41020 getmarked users after one year.
6,000,000,000/41020, 146252 Marks per user after one year.
146252/6, 24375 Initial Marks required by each user per adoption to use all 60,000,000,000 Marks available for Marking.

By these example figures we would need to launch 4 getmarked adoptions armed with 19,500 BTM each in the next two months, to distribute most of the marks mined over the first year to 41k users.

Now consider instead that we target four communities with different software, and add getmarked support to the software they use, open source.

This could increase the number of adoptions by 4 or 5 times easily, reducing the number of BTM required per adoption by the same measure, to say 4000 BTM per adoption.

It would also suggest that the number of users would be higher, Mark distribution further, and Marks per user much lower.

My instinct is to suggest that 150,000 users over multiple services with an average of 6,000 Marks, or 6 BTM each, is achievable within a year.

Make up your own projections and see what you come to, the average of all we suggest will be closest to the truth, and give us some idea of how many BTM to provide the first four adoptions with.

The good news is that only 5 million Bitmarks are mined in the first year, so you can half all of these figures.

If the average user only has 6,000 Marks, cannot get any more, often uses and receives them. The do you think the average 'Marking' will be 1 Mark or more like 0.05 Marks?

[tdokta]

Bitmark's Value
A currency with no initial price tag, and which earns value over time? No exchange? What is it's value?

Perhaps I'm putting my miners hat on, but is the title of the post actually addressed by the rest of the post?  As you know I'm fully supportive of all your endeavours here but until there is an actual value placed on BTM, then it is hard to evaluate the whether the other projects like getmarked will be viable.  People, social media, websites, etc, will only adopt getmarked if it carries a tangible benefit. It's all well and good to build all these systems but at the end of the day, if giving or earning Marks has no intrinsic value, people won't bother.

The coin needs to dip it's toe in the exchange market sooner or later to establish a foothold.  After all, if you can't buy or sell BTM then it really does have no value.  My best suggestion is to continue to expand the nethash mining the coin. The IPM project is a good way of doing that.  Exchanges keep a track of these sort of things but a low profile coin like BTM can get lost in the blizzard of "Look at ME" new releases.  A smart exchange like Bittrex will pick up a promising coin (although sometimes they need a nudge).  

Well, even though we haven't pushed to list BTM on any exchanges prematurely and no one other than tdokta has offered to sell his BTM(for a very legitimate reason I might add) there is still a minimum implied value which is represented by the cost of production. Which is probably somewhere around 0.00015 BTC at the moment. That is a very rough estimate and someone else can give you a better number but for the most part anyone offering to sell BTM would only want to sell at a markup to that price. If someone were to come on here and offer x amount of BTM for 0.0001 BTC I'd imagine people would be lining up to purchase it at the discounted price. In reality if the real ask price for people who need BTC now for other reasons is probably around 0.0002. The only reason someone wouldn't buy at that price is the fact that it's currently cheaper to produce your own via mining. But if there was some reason that a person preferred not to mine it's almost certainly a great price that will show a return.

also, another message on the sale thread asking 10k more than the starting mark that i have listed. would rather hold, but need to sell a few to cover some production costs at this point.

sale thread: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=709400.0

[johndec2]

Coinsolidation. Multi quoting is a real pain and hard for people to follow so I won't do it but perhaps a few bullet points:

- Production costs are not a known variable at any one time.  I have ASICS that I have to ROI. My electricity cost is different to yours, etc. One can go off hash rentals as a base price I suppose but as a miner I need to look at ROI.  Should I mine BTM or LTC or DOGE or whatever to pay the bills.  At the moment, I have faith in you and what you are trying to achieve but I'm taking a gamble that eventually BTM will be several times more profitable than mining other coins as is just about everyone else mining the coin. Never forget that. Eventually everyone has to pay the bills and without a medium of exchange to pay the bills, miners will go elsewhere.

- ATM, difficulty is not a measure of demand but a measure of speculation.  There is no demand, not a single BTM has been bought or sold.  People are gambling on there being a future demand.

- Exchanges don't create artificial demand unless they happen to be big bag holders (insider trading).  I do agree that the intrinsic value of a coin and it's price rarely are the same but that is the nature of all free markets.

- The rest of your post regarding getmarked all makes sense but without a published tradeable value it is all supposition.

[Este Nuno]

Coinsolidation. Multi quoting is a real pain and hard for people to follow so I won't do it but perhaps a few bullet points:

- Production costs are not a known variable at any one time.  I have ASICS that I have to ROI. My electricity cost is different to yours, etc. One can go off hash rentals as a base price I suppose but as a miner I need to look at ROI.  Should I mine BTM or LTC or DOGE or whatever to pay the bills.  At the moment, I have faith in you and what you are trying to achieve but I'm taking a gamble that eventually BTM will be several times more profitable than mining other coins as is just about everyone else mining the coin. Never forget that. Eventually everyone has to pay the bills and without a medium of exchange to pay the bills, miners will go elsewhere.

- ATM, difficulty is not a measure of demand but a measure of speculation.  There is no demand, not a single BTM has been bought or sold.  People are gambling on there being a future demand.

- Exchanges don't create artificial demand unless they happen to be big bag holders (insider trading).  I do agree that the intrinsic value of a coin and it's price rarely are the same but that is the nature of all free markets.

- The rest of your post regarding getmarked all makes sense but without a published tradeable value it is all supposition.

You could just hold an auction for any coins that you need to sell and let the market decide. Someone was wanting to buy BTM in IRC last night. There are people willing to buy.

Maybe I'm missing something, but in regards to your first point, aren't production costs trivially calculable based on whatever the current network variables are and your own electricity costs? I know I've seen Mark/coinsolidation make many calculations of the current production cost of BTM based upon the average rig rental rate of 0.001 MH/day.

[johndec2]

Hi Este.  Maybe I've not been totally clear. I'm not so much talking about my own situation but playing the "Devils Advocate" for the average miner.  I'm comfortable mining and holding at the moment.  In my opinion the current sell offer by tdotka @ 20,000 sat is fair considering that BTM is still speculative.  I've done the math and my production cost (or more to the point, what I could earn mining another coin) is less than that at the moment but in a few weeks that may be a bargain price.  I'm just trying to encourage some trade to establish a benchmark that people can work with.

In fact I'm so keen to establish a starting price I'll sell up to 5000 BTM at 20,000 sat each.  1 BTC buys the lot. I'm probably taking a long term loss doing that but someone needs to be the crash test dummy


EDIT: Withdrawn at Coinsolidations request.

[pabloangello]

Hi Este.  Maybe I've not been totally clear. I'm not so much talking about my own situation but playing the "Devils Advocate" for the average miner.  I'm comfortable mining and holding at the moment.  In my opinion the current sell offer by tdotka @ 20,000 sat is fair considering that BTM is still speculative.  I've done the math and my production cost (or more to the point, what I could earn mining another coin) is less than that at the moment but in a few weeks that may be a bargain price.  I'm just trying to encourage some trade to establish a benchmark that people can work with.

In fact I'm so keen to establish a starting price I'll sell up to 5000 BTM at 20,000 sat each.  1 BTC buys the lot. I'm probably taking a long term loss doing that but someone needs to be the crash test dummy

Diff went up high, tdotkas offer can be too low soon. : )

[coinsolidation]

In fact I'm so keen to establish a starting price I'll sell up to 5000 BTM at 20,000 sat each.  1 BTC buys the lot. I'm probably taking a long term loss doing that but someone needs to be the crash test dummy

If you could hold them for me for two weeks, I will gladly commit to buying the lot.

Regarding miners, we have already solved the situation for some miners, the IPM Pool requires a lot of hashrate, the deal is that we will pay you a fixed rate to hash for 24 hours, which covers all of your rig costs for 36 hours, so long as you take that profit in BTM by mining for yourself for the extra 8 hours. That way miners support the network, have all their bills paid, and get to take out BTM as a reward.

Already 180MH/s has been committed, others are welcome to join.

[ethought]

Similar idea to getmarked, for the sake of interest:

https://www.startjoin.com/idcoin

[coinsolidation]

Similar idea to getmarked, for the sake of interest:

https://www.startjoin.com/idcoin

Thank you for sharing this.

For the sake of interest, you can also bootstrap the Web of Trust in the opposite direction, which adds a layer of transparency for those who do not want to be anonymous. Simply by signing the url of a document that describes you with your private key(s), and placing the signatures on it. This establishes ownership of both things, the Bitmark Address and the persons URL, thereby establishing identity.

Identity and Reputation are two very important and interesting spaces.

Also on the topic of getmarked, here is an interesting email

In my business when a company meets requirements from standards they get a certification mark.  When consumers by these products companies could use the getmarked system to give away marks.  These marks could then be used to buy goods and services.  This could work with any business that sells goods and with marking budgets these days it would be nothing for a company to give away marks or vouches for marks to their customers.  Again I think beer,  how easy would it be for Bud to give away marks with every case of beer.

We have many avenues to explore.

[testadimerlo]

In fact I'm so keen to establish a starting price I'll sell up to 5000 BTM at 20,000 sat each.  1 BTC buys the lot. I'm probably taking a long term loss doing that but someone needs to be the crash test dummy

If you could hold them for me for two weeks, I will gladly commit to buying the lot.

Regarding miners, we have already solved the situation for some miners, the IPM Pool requires a lot of hashrate, the deal is that we will pay you a fixed rate to hash for 24 hours, which covers all of your rig costs for 36 hours, so long as you take that profit in BTM by mining for yourself for the extra 8 hours. That way miners support the network, have all their bills paid, and get to take out BTM as a reward.

Already 180MH/s has been committed, others are welcome to join.

If there is this kind of solution, I d like to know more. I rented a rig for two days and I m mining. I can t keep this rig for a long time if I don t realize at least the money to cover the costs. But if the solution above really exists, I can keep renting, just let me know how to do. A question: I discovered this community three days ago and yet I m missing to understand how this coin will give us a profit. I agree about to don't go immediatly in the exchanges, but if we don t go there, how exactly investors and miners will have a gain? Selling mark when the infrastructure will be ready?

[coinsolidation]

If there is this kind of solution, I d like to know more. I rented a rig for two days and I m mining. I can t keep this rig for a long time if I don t realize at least the money to cover the costs. But if the solution above really exists, I can keep renting, just let me know how to do. A question: I discovered this community three days ago and yet I m missing to understand how this coin will give us a profit. I agree about to don't go immediatly in the exchanges, but if we don t go there, how exactly investors and miners will have a gain? Selling mark when the infrastructure will be ready?

You are not a miner, you are an investor. Please read https://github.com/project-bitmark/bitmark/wiki/IPM-Pool

[Este Nuno]

In fact I'm so keen to establish a starting price I'll sell up to 5000 BTM at 20,000 sat each.  1 BTC buys the lot. I'm probably taking a long term loss doing that but someone needs to be the crash test dummy

If you could hold them for me for two weeks, I will gladly commit to buying the lot.

Regarding miners, we have already solved the situation for some miners, the IPM Pool requires a lot of hashrate, the deal is that we will pay you a fixed rate to hash for 24 hours, which covers all of your rig costs for 36 hours, so long as you take that profit in BTM by mining for yourself for the extra 8 hours. That way miners support the network, have all their bills paid, and get to take out BTM as a reward.

Already 180MH/s has been committed, others are welcome to join.

If there is this kind of solution, I d like to know more. I rented a rig for two days and I m mining. I can t keep this rig for a long time if I don t realize at least the money to cover the costs. But if the solution above really exists, I can keep renting, just let me know how to do. A question: I discovered this community three days ago and yet I m missing to understand how this coin will give us a profit. I agree about to don't go immediatly in the exchanges, but if we don t go there, how exactly investors and miners will have a gain? Selling mark when the infrastructure will be ready?

I think you may have misunderstood coinsolidation's post. The IPM pool(https://github.com/project-bitmark/bitmark/wiki/IPM-Pool) is making arrangements with people who own physical mining equipment and renting it from them directly. Not people like us who are renting mining rigs online.

As far as profit goes, you'll likely be able to sell for a profit at any point in the near future. But keep in mind that this is a long term project and the intentions are much greater than simply mining a few coins and flipping them for a profit on an exchange. Of course you're free to do as you wish and no one is going to have a problem if you choose to do that. But personally I would recommend holding and possibly participating in the development of Bitmark in anyway you think you can.

[testadimerlo]

I think you may have misunderstood coinsolidation's post. The IPM pool(https://github.com/project-bitmark/bitmark/wiki/IPM-Pool) is making arrangements with people who own physical mining equipment and renting it from them directly. Not people like us who are renting mining rigs online.

As far as profit goes, you'll likely be able to sell for a profit at any point in the near future. But keep in mind that this is a long term project and the intentions are much greater than simply mining a few coins and flipping them for a profit on an exchange. Of course you're free to do as you wish and no one is going to have a problem if you choose to do that. But personally I would recommend holding and possibly participating in the development of Bitmark in anyway you think you can.

About IPM pool: yeh, I ve misunderstood.

About the rest: yeh, I wanted just to understand if this is an investment or crowdfunding. Absolutely I m not in hurry to sell. Now it's more clear. Thanks

Note: unfortunately I m not tech skilled, but for what I can, I could consider a part time job

[sammy007]

If you guys going to rent a solid hashrate and mine solo, consider this software I successfully used today https://github.com/zone117x/node-stratum-pool

Pretty simple to run a private pool in a 5 minutes.

[coinsolidation]

If you guys going to rent a solid hashrate and mine solo, consider this software I successfully used today https://github.com/zone117x/node-stratum-pool

Thank you for posting this, it is exactly what I needed for the IPM Pool (NOMP), as it allows us to automatically switch syndicate miners over to traditional pools after their time working for the IPM is done.

Does anybody mind if I migrate to using NOMP before launching the IPM Pool? It'll defer the launch of the UI until Monday, we'll keep the pool running with miners all weekend?

Do we need to have the exchange conversation again?

Pro
1. Increased distribution of coin supply
2. Public visibility and transparency
3. No possibility that people can claim we have had a long public pre-mine, or that we are a community of 'whales'
4. Allows miners to continue supporting the network by providing a way for them to cover costs

Con
1. Possibility of excessive speculation and manipulation
2. Risk of attacks on the community and network
3. Increased noise in our conversations, without an adequate method to mitigate it
4. Changes in price tag may adversely affect the project and any earned value

There is a trade off to be made, one decision potentially hurts us now, the other potentially hurts us in the future.

A fair question may be, what can we do to mitigate the risks associated with each choice? Let us also consider, are we in a position to clearly convey what Bitmark is about, and handle the increase in traffic?

We cannot decide what to do, it will result in a battle with casualties, I will not be part of that battle. The decision may not even be ours make.

We can decide on how we can prepare, we should do that now so that we feel more ready.

We have begun to document various service ideas which have been suggested by community members, each of these can be done by any third party and perhaps used within businesses or as the foundation of new businesses which run on bitmark.

There are also ideas for individual people, and solo start ups.

You can find all of the ideas on the Service Ideas wiki page.

To find out more about our unique approach to adoption visit getMarked.org

We are actively seeking funding to enable us to rapidly develop getMarked, getMarked.org, and various integrations of the Marking system in to popular open source software used around the world.

A shortfall of 6.5 BTC is required in total to cover all work and resources. All donations are also partial investments, with 20% of the BTC donated used to mine BTM for the donators.

By donating you are both enabling us to massively increase the adoption and utility of Bitmark through a novel multifaceted project, but also acquiring BTM at a fair price and increasing it's value.

^{getMarked Funding Goal: 1.11 of 8 BTC, with 1.05 BTC pledged - Get (bit)marks and help make them more useful!}

[schnötzel]

News about the icons?