FAQ
Results from first week:
As you can see, we didn't do a great job answering all of your questions the first time around. So I went back answered all unanswered questions I could find. Here are the answers.
seems like a scam?
May seem like that, but each of the founders of Swarm (Joel Dietz, Jef Cavens, Ben Ingram) have founded more than one company in the past, with at least one significant success for each founder. Among other things we enjoy building things so simply hanging out in a beach house with blow and hookers would get boring. We also have a pretty robust auditing system that we are developing for all of our expenditures with a publicly released report from our monthly advisor's meeting. The first of these should be out by July 1st so everyone can see how we will be conducting business.
There is not much of concrete information as to what your "investment" will get you.
We know and apologize. We had something like this written up but our lawyers threw a red flag and then we ended up with a garbled document that we hated. We re-wrote and reviewed a new manifesto that expresses exactly what it is that we plan to build and why.
You raised 500BTCin a day and 2 days later you want to raise 4000BTC? Am I drunk, is this a real post?
Haha, well, we actually would be happy to raise even more than that. Depends on what the market thinks our project is worth. As I see it we are the first serious cryptoequity project and one of the very few Bitcoin related projects that has the possiblity of reaching out past the cryptocommunity into the mainstream. So there is a lot of reason to support us, even in the sense that press exposure for Swarm will naturally allow the price of Bitcoin to increase.
What will be possible revenue of Swarm and interest on the swarmcoins?
To be honest, we don't know. This is one of the aspect that I wish we had more clarity on, but because so much depends on the legal issues around what we can and can't do, it's basically impossible to come up with any projections as to future return. To a rather significant degree the primary value of Swarm is the network not the token.
What happens if we don't reach the 1,000BTC minimum in the first round? Will you return investors coins?
I guess we already reached this, but in any case we were always planning to make things work no matter what. Having more money helps us iterate faster and spend more money on things like marketing and getting other things off the ground.
Also, do you have an official forum in the works? I need somewhere to go in order to ask questions, get involved with the community etc.
"In the works," yes, but it is not super high priority at the moment. Our SWARM skype channel is the most active fluid point of engagement.
Ok so my Counterwallet now has some GOLDTICKET - can someone please explain to me what this is? Google, Facebook & Twitter bring up no info on it.
One of the core values of Swarm is creating a network that helps support innovative projects, especially those based on Blockchain technology. One of the ways we do that is by allowing early access to certain types of projects and coins to Swarm holders. GOLDTICKET is associated with this and more details will be coming soon.
Can anyone answer my questions please? Is there anywhere else I can go to ask questions? I see no official forum.
We have a chatroom which is generally staffed during daytime hours European time. We are pretty good are responding to email sent to
help@swarmcorp.com. And our skype channel has a bunch of usually pretty helpful people in it. Bitcointalk we are making a better effort to get to, but responses will still probably not come out more than twice a day so if your request is time sensitive we suggest one of these other channels.
yes,like a big scam. don't know why so many BTC are invested. Where is the blockchain address??
I think people have invested because it is an innovative idea and a good team. Sometimes that is all you need, since ideas in an early stage venture evolve over time.
Can I get my BTC back?
You can trade SWARMPRE on the Counterparty decentralized exchange.
And you can't just post the link to this? (Skype chat)
I don't think you can, I believe you have to send a contact request on Skype and asked to be added. My skype id is "jdietz04."
I think you should label your hours. Right now the site says "24/7" support which is something a) you don't really need to provide and b) obviously can't provide. But having it up there only will make people think you're failing to communicate. Also I am sure plenty of people don't realize you are on central european time- something you should clarify as well.
Good point, we did take off the "24/7" part which is was pretty dumb of us to have there since I'm not sure which team members were volunteering to not sleep. In general we respond most reliably to email.
When did phase 1 funding begin?
Our private presale started May 28th. Open Phase 1 started June 17th at 12:00:01am Berlin time (GMT + 1).
Why did DistributedBUZZ imply the head office would be open today? Late last night he said "the headoffice in Berlin is closed as its the middle of the night".
I have no idea. I don't think we briefed them adequately on related details.
Wish there were better communication. Would like regular email updates targeted to swarmcoin holders.
Good idea. At the moment we are trying to establish some reliable way of communicating important news to swarmcoin holders.
So... I guess you are paying 10 people 60k a year salaries? for a startup?
This may seem a lot, but it's actually on the low side for a startup in Silicon Valley, a place with a rather high cost of living.
what? you have less than 10 people? now thats interesting, how much are you expecting as a salary?
I'm expecting a reasonable amount so that I can eat, sleep, and go to the gym without having to worry about money. I don't really expect to do much else over the next year, but in my last startup there were periods where I couldn't afford a gym membership or good housing and that greatly reduced my productivity.
Are you expecting to secure salaries for multiple years? Oh wouldn't that be nice!
It's actually pretty standard practice to raise enough money to meet expenses for 18 months such that you can afford to build your product as you think it should be and work through a couple of related ideas in case the first one is not successful. I think this is a pretty good general model.
Do you understand the concept of bootstrapping?
There are two general philosophies when it comes to startups. One is to get profitable as quickly as possible, then grow your profit as quickly as possible. The other is to get as much traction as quickly as possible, then try to become profitable. Many of the greatest startup successes like Paypal and Twitter were in this second category, almost all of them required some significant degree of capital infusion. We are probably going to be halfway between the two, with very rapid growth as our highest priority.
Will we be able to invest with XCP ?
Yeah, we've had a lot of demand for this so one of the things we've worked on the past week is setting up another vending machine that accepts XCP. Stay tuned.
I sent it from Blockchain.info how do I get my SWARM coins? I'll import the private keys now. Will I see my SWARM coins anytime?
So many transactions that were not sent from Counterwallet were automatically flagged and swarmcoins were not distributed because we were afraid that people would send from exchanges that they did not have the private key too (something that has happened a few times already). If you were one of these people make sure you send us an email at
help@swarmcorp.com and we can manually issue your swarmcoins.
So Swarm is raising 21,500 BTC to develop a platform that allows the creation of new coins?
Our budget for our cryptoequity platform is >4,000. The main reason we'd go beyond that is to actually be able to support other projects (like other extensions to the Counterparty ecosystem, etc.).
I think you guys need to do a better job in explaining your business idea to the crowd of your crowdfunding campaign (i.e. me) what this whole thing is about.
As I mentioned in a previous comment we had something written up that was more comprehensive but we ran into some legal red tape which prevented us from getting it out on schedule. We've gone back and released what we wanted to release originally.
The 8% figure is only applicable if they raise 21500 Bitcoins realistically it's going to be a much higher %age depending on how much they raise.
Actually it's the opposite. If we don't hit our targets our percentages will be less.
Oh and there is also an 8% premine i.e. founders will own 8 million coins, while average BTC investor will own 4,250-5,250.
Not quite right, founders only have 4%, the other 4% are for bounties/representatives.
Will Swarm take only BTC, or BTC and XCP for its fundraising system?
Both. It's a bit logistically complex to take multiple currencies and avoid a "Maidsafe" scenario so this has taken us a bit of time to coordinate.
While I'm excited to see the new fund coming, what exactly they offering in exchange for these 17K BTC?
You could say that at the moment we are a superpowered crypto-kickstarter that is shifting gradually to providing cryptoequity as the legal framework for this is established. It's a bit difficult to define exactly what features will be delivered at what point, but you can see above for a rough timeline.
Kickstart provides only gift or early access of products mostly because of legal issues. How swarm overcome this problem? Is crowd funding with equity given out legal now in US?
No, equity crowdfunding is illegal in the US. Because cryptoequity is completely programmable and can contain different types of rights that are different from equity, we believe it is something that needs special legal attention. One major part of our campaign will be to clarify the legal space around these issues, which is complex and often undefined.
how do i get bitcoins ?
Most universal way is through local bitcoins since there are people pretty much everywhere who will sell for cash. Beyond that depends on the country. Coinbase is a good option if you are in the U.S.
What percent of a new coin's offering will go to swarmcoin holders?
Minimum 1%, although we are working through a bunch of different type of coin offerings.
Am I able to just email btc from my coinbase account? I dont understand revealing my private keys
As of right now Coinbase does not support counterparty assets, so you need to send the BTC to your Counterwallet first.
"Revealing your private keys" means that you can import assets into a counterwallet that are elsewhere but we do not recommend doing this.
Hi, quick question. After sending BTC from counterwallet to swarmcoin address. Is there some kind of confirmation that my investment has been received?
You can check out Blockchain.info for your address and look up the transaction to show that it went through.
I received an error message after I participated in the fund raiser,and my account shows 0 BTC. Am I required to have a BTC balance to receive swarmcoin?
Probably a temporary connection error in Counterwallet. You don't have to have a BTC wallet balance to receive Swarm but you do need a small amount in order to send any assets that you have.
Tutorial says there's a .5 millibit fee. Do I have to have my investment (1 BTC) plus .5 millibits in my Counterwallet or just the 1 BTC I'm planning to invest?
You need to have a bit more than whatever you are planning to exchange for swarmcoins.
hi, in counterwallet, should I buy swarm or swarmpre?
Right now the only thing you can get is SWARMPRE. Swarm will be distributed at the end of the fundraiser.
Hi Swarm, how do you what % of fees received go to the coin holders as opposed to costs/employees etc? how do you KNOW what %...... Is it written in the code?
Our plan is to always split 50%/50% between Swarm the organization and Swarmcoin holders. This is not written in the code, but we hope to help build platforms that are totally trustless where it could be written in the code.
What's the quickest way to buy some bitcoin using a credit card #? I looked at the exchanges, but they didn't seem trustworthy and wanted SSNs
I'm not sure. I think Expresscoin will do this for you in the U.S. I believe Coinbase does as well, but only after you've verified a few things.
Counterwallet will not open my wallet. Please help
There was a brief period when Counterwallet.co was under a bunch of stress from our launch but I don't think there have been any errors since then.
Can i send BTC directly to Swarm address rather than creating a new wallet with counterwallet?
You could but that would be a bad idea because right now we have a flagging system that doesn't automatically send back swarmcoins unless it comes from Counterwallet. But if you did you could contact us and that would probably fix it.
Do I have to buy BTC first? From you or from a BTC marketplace?
Unfortunately yes, but that's something we hoping to make change sooner rather than later.
so once I buy swarm coins ... I'll own them and won't be able to exchange them back to BTC?
The platform we are using, Counterparty, includes a decentralized exchange so you can trade them for things later on. A lot of people are doing this right now.
are they exchangeable?
Yes, you can trade them for any other asset on the decentralized exchange.
What is Swarm and why does it matter that it accepts XCP?
Swarm is a cryptoequity platform. XCP is a not particularly liquid cryptocurrency, so if we take it means that we are investing heavily in the future of Counterparty as a platform as well as allowing people to diversify their illiquid assets.
Swarm is a scam or a greedy mismanaged pile of crap.They are also throwing around the counterparty name implying we all support and endorse it.Apparently, according to them, they received 500 BTC from this thread and our community directly in the form of a pre-sale. I have trouble believing we would all be so stupid.
I think we mismanaged our initial Bitcointalk thread (well actually, we outsourced it due to a last minute team member drop out) but so far we've been doing okay when it comes to execution. Keep in mind that right now we are a fairly small team who are trying to build the platform and handle all the support at the same time.
I may have missed it in the posts but does swarm benefit XCP other than bringing it some attention via this fundraiser? Please don’t misunderstand me; I like the idea, will be buying in myself and believe it will enhance the overall ecosystem. But will XCP be used within the swarm framework at all? Or just BTC? In order for XCP liquidity to improve, the projects built on top of counterparty should encourage the use of XCP.
Good and tricky point. We are currently using the dividend feature of Counterparty which does not currently require XCP, but I actually think that it should. I also want to see XCP used as the primary trading currency internally, so that things are traded in terms of XCP/SWARM rather than BTC/SWARM, since right now there is no automatic payment for BTC transactions. Also since we are now substantial XCP holders we have a strong interest in increasing XCP liquidity and will be pushing for this rigorously.
while selling swarm for xcp. I don't have xcp. means?
Sadly there aren't a lot of great ways to get XCP right now except via the Decentralized Exchange. That's one of the things we are looking to change in the near future.
Is Swarm currently an asset listed in Counterwallet? What is the official name? XEdit: Or will it only be available on June 17? I see a few assets for sale now with the Swarm name.
SWARMPRE is what is being offered right now. 100,000,000 units of SWARM were issued and locked prior to our crowdsale. They will be distributed to all SWARMPRE holders.
I'd like to invest in Swarm. Can I do that from the online wallet?
Yes you can. Just send to the address on our website from Counterwallet.
Is there a thread other than this one where the details of Swarm are being discussed? (Things like...percentage of newly-issued coins that would ultimately trickle back to SWARMCOIN holders...when we can expect to see an alpha client). I can't find such a thread. Their website itself is light on details. Thanks.
Hopefully this thread provides answers to your questions.
Am I able to get less than 1 BTC worth of swarm?
Yes. The current exchange rate is a bit tricky to figure out at the moment, but anything abouve one three thousanth of a Bitcoin should get you at least some swarmcoins.
how come I can't wallet?
Not sure. Try to login to Counterwallet.co
If 12GZL7shupvmHapCmhw81GDa5GmaTqaZdk is your only address for the project croudfunding - the calculation of 25% is wrong, since you got only 742 out of 5400, which is 16.5%
Wasn't the only address.
what is the process for getting SwarmCoins?
Send BTC to Counterwallet. Send BTC from Counterwallet to the address on the main page.
OK. Coinbase buys the BT, which Counterwallet holds it, and then pass it to SWARM for SCoins?
Yep, that's the right idea.
My wallet isn't showing anything. Should I see something?
If you just sent BTC it might take a few minutes for it to get there. Bitcoin is fast compared to a bank transfer, but it's not exactly instant. Swarmcoins are made to be extra secure so it takes a bit of time to get them back (usually about an hour).
Hi, is anyone available to talk about Swarm?
Depends on the day and the hour, but we are usually hanging out in the
hipchat or on Skype. See the engage section up the top for other ways to get ahold of us.
Any more info on this project?
Our manifesto is a good place to start.
