Making a BTC pitch to a billionaire

[Mageant]

Maybe E could fund a "Bitcoin Foundation" which would advertise/advocate Bitcoin and provide legal help for people regarding Bitcoins.
Sort of like the EFF.

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[stochastic]

would it be a good idea to try & get a Billionaire interested in Bitcoins at this stage?

I would much appreciate feedback on this & if you think that it would be then how would you suggest I approach this person, who I shall call E, I can pretty much be sure that E will read a brief proposal & maybe links to a more in-depth one, here's some background on E

E is someone I admire greatly, creative, fun, open minded, very very generous with an active philanthropic foundation that supports many varied worthy causes & projects - such as medical research, female empowerment, the arts, animal charities, ecological products & issues, *** to the tune of $*** /year & also has contributed to projects in the arts/women in my local area related of a good friend of mine who I persuaded to contact E's foundation & ask for help with funding what she was doing (my friend's husband was very grateful to me, as in "do you know how much you've just saved me per year?" - it was in the 5 figures)

E lives & works in the US & a couple of countries in the EU mostly & plenty of work too - not just a philanthropist

I am a long time neighbor of E & while not knowing E personally (I have though met & been to one of E's functions) I am good friends with at least one of E's buddies (though they don't hang out together nowadays, though are close - E came to his 50th BD party etc) whose house/s E bought at a good price so he could buy an amazing deal/property nearby & who's son (E's godchild) works full time now for E at an ecological production unit that E started under 5 years ago with an initial investment of some $15M - I organized with my friend's son a private group tour of the facilities & it's impeccable, everyone was very impressed with it

I have also witnessed, by chance, anonymous incredible generosity from this person that probably no one else who even knows E actually knows anything about at all

If E does choose to support something new then generally prefers to do that as a lump sum in to some project rather than as an ongoing commitment, though has contributed regularly to my friend's bi-annual arts/women projects

I obviously have no idea if E will have the slightest interest in Bitcoin or if interested what E may choose to do, E lead quite a rebellious bohemian life when younger so I'm thinking it may appeal & as a very high net worth individual may see personal advantages to it, E uses cash a lot - the donations to my friend's project are in cash (at least the first one was, I haven't asked how subsequent ones were given), on the other hand E may be quite indifferent to it, E may find it of interest that instead of being approached for funding here for once someone may be offering an opportunity to make money whist hopefully doing something that may be of long term benefit to Bitcoin

I shall ask my friend if I can use his name when sending my proposal, I'm sure that it would be fine - in fact even if I didn't ask him it wouldn't be any big deal for him - but as his son now works for E it is only right that I run it by him first

So, feedback, brief initial proposal ideas, deeper linked info, proposals of what E could contribute to Bitcoins if liking the concept wished to see it grow & support it & how E might benefit in various ways by doing so or at least not be out of pocket - or that the good done was worth the expenditure which would be E's main motivation I'm sure

I shall probably take my time with this as I'd like to get it right, it's a one shot deal I imagine, though I can be quite impulsive & just say screw it - let's do it & send it off when I feel that it's hot enough to be worth a crack at & to continue tweaking & faffing around may mean a lost op

this is a dynamic post in that I shall edit it to fill in the bits where I've just left ***s atm & need to look up or check - plus adding to it anything else that comes to mind re this later & correct typos & stuff as I haven't read it back tho even, as other stuff to get in to ~ partying etc.  

posting this early stages idea (though I've had it for a while) here in Speculation, if & when it's ready to propose to E then I shall start a post on it in the main Bitcoin forum unless peeps think that it would be better off just continuing here with this initial one

You want billionaire E to support a cyrptocurrency that is in direct competition to the fiat currency that makes this billionaire a billionaire with its inflation practices that keeps securities such as stocks moving up.

The only way you can get the billionaire to buy some bitcoins is to scare them into thinking that it is only a matter of time before hyperinflation impacts USD and EUR and bitcoins would be a good hedge.  You have to get them off of gold.  If they are a billionaire then they have the ability to buy large sums of gold close to spot market price.  Maybe use the history of gold and silver confiscation to keep E away from precious metals.

[Otoh]

exactly & exactly why I made this thread, for input on that & not to troll the Nigerian prince OMG someone may be about to drop $1M on this penny stock BS as ineededausername seemed to think

& also why I hope to move this forward in rl too, initial feedback is disappointing but if I feel it may be worthwhile I do it without any np

I'm sorry if that was not your intent... but you posted a thread about a billionaire + bitcoin in speculation, so it's easy to read it that way.

apology accepted, I posted in the Speculation thread as it's mostly where I hang out & didn't want to make a big deal of this by posting it on the main Bitcoin forum where I expect it would attract even more pathetic fucktard comments like adamstgBit's

[Otoh]

Forget investors and billionaires.

Someone speak to Mexican and Colombian cartels please.

As Bitcoins is the currency of The Silk Road where those further down the narco food chain hang out & as they are constantly innovating to stay ahead of the curve re bizness & survival then I'm sure that it's on their radar screens, I bet it would cause some jaw dropping losses of coins as Carlos after a line too many accidentally wipes the wallet dat for equivalent of a shipment or 2, the logistical hurdle for them is probably how to move the coins in & out of cash as exchanges tend to want to KYC for such large sums, but then there is the convenience factor as opposed to say moving & storing room fulls of fiat to take in to account on the plus side for them, those lawless Ruskies are at the world number 3 spot for BTC interest I note



a typical room full of fiat



https://imgur.com/a/VENE3vf

a typical pen drive full of the same amount of coins

[Otoh]

In my opinion it would be best to influence all of those people between you and him to use Bitcoins. People like your friend, his godson, other people who regularly interact with him.

Go for the most likely users, maybe e-mail them a few Bitcoins to spend as a birthday gift.

this makes sense, but E is very hands offs I believe in running things so I doubt that my my friend's son has much if hardly any contact, he's fairly young & isn't the boss of it but I shall ask him & also tell him about Bitcoins, as for my friend I shall do the same but again they move in such different worlds that there is little contact between them - in the past they used to hang out & my best friend really used to know E well, unfortunately they had a terminal falling out so that road is closed, I've been trying to get him (my best friend) interested in coins as I think that the peeps he does business with, international art dealers, would be able to really benefit from it but his reaction to a virtual crypto currency is "& then poof! it's gone" - I told him it's 'the art of money' (Satoshi being the maestro artist who created it) which he liked, unfortunately that was just before the Linode hax so yep he wasn't wrong about how it can just go poof if you're not totally careful in handling it & tech savvy & it even happens to those that are & repeatedly too, though of course anything that isn't sufficiently well secured & looked after can be subject to theft or loss through carelessness so Bitcoin isn't alone in that regard

[cunicula]

Suggest that he set up a benevolent mining monopoly which controls the majority of hashing power, but excludes all other miners. Point out the profitability of this venture as the ability to earn 100% of newly generated bitcoin with just 51% of available hashing power.

I doubt this billionaire would want to become a millionaire for the sake of bitcoin.  51% would require the largest datacenter in the world.

10 terahash is 10 million USD or about 1% of the billionare's net worth. He won't actually need 10 Terahash because many miners will exit once one agent fires up so many rigs. Once he has 51% and is able to prohibit competition, all other miners will exit mining because private mining will no longer generate bitcoin. As a result, he will be able to mine all of the world's bitcion using just a few hundred gigahash. The other 9.5 terahash can be kept offline as a threat to any potential competition. Using just a few hundred gigahash  worth of electricity expenditure per month, he will take in a revenue of 216,000 bitcoin per month or about 1 million USD per month. In about one year he will have recovered his initial investment. Certainly, if he is aware of safer investments which also have a 100% per annum expected return then he should pursue them. However it is extremely difficult to find opportunities this good.

[Otoh]

Suggest that he set up a benevolent mining monopoly which controls the majority of hashing power, but excludes all other miners. Point out the profitability of this venture as the ability to earn 100% of newly generated bitcoin with just 51% of available hashing power.

I doubt this billionaire would want to become a millionaire for the sake of bitcoin.  51% would require the largest datacenter in the world.

10 terahash is 10 million USD or about 1% of the billionare's net worth. He won't actually need 10 Terahash because many miners will exit once one agent fires up so many rigs. Once he has 51% and is able to prohibit competition, all other miners will exit mining because private mining will no longer generate bitcoin. As a result, he will be able to mine all of the world's bitcion using just a few hundred gigahash. The other 9.5 terahash can be kept offline as a threat to any potential competition. Using just a few hundred gigahash  worth of electricity expenditure per month, he will take in a revenue of 216,000 bitcoin per month or about 1 million USD per month. In about one year he will have recovered his initial investment. Certainly, if he is aware of safer investments which also have a 100% per annum expected return then he should pursue them. However it is extremely difficult to find opportunities this good.

hmmm, perhaps I won't after all make this pitch  , many thanks to all those who gave constructive feedback, I shall add some more replies later - I was also just thinking that the BTC  100 charity effort may be a way to go, offer to add Bitcoin charity support via E's foundation to some of E's favorite & sometimes niche charitable ventures if they were to accept them & that would be bound to get E's interest in what Bitcoin was

[cunicula]

No, please make the pitch. If he is a reasonable guy, then a mining monopoly under his control will be a good thing.

[hazek]

If I knew a billionaire I'd ask him to fund an independent evaluation of Bitcoin. Hire a prominent IT firm to take it completely apart, evaluate it's properties, it's soundness but avoid any economic evaluation, just the functionality. And then have them give it their stamp of approval.

Bitcoin doesn't need big money investment. It needs small money to feel comfortable using it.

[ColdHardMetal]

If I knew a billionaire I'd ask him to fund an independent evaluation of Bitcoin. Hire a prominent IT firm to take it completely apart, evaluate it's properties, it's soundness but avoid any economic evaluation, just the functionality. And then have them give it their stamp of approval.

Bitcoin doesn't need big money investment. It needs small money to feel comfortable using it.

That and throw some lawyers at it to see what they might have to say.

[Otoh]

Just checked out E's foundation & it's awarded about $40M in total over the last 10 years or so to projects in nearly 70 different countries worldwide, the application process is quite formal, not surprisingly & geared towards non-profit organizations only as the foundation is a non-profit, so it would be best to set one of those up before applying & do it properly with the aims of the BTC NPO clearly stated, the benefits of various projects - just one per application I imagine & best to start with one clear & achievable one, the funding required, the time & geographical frame

So suggestions for the first project, it doesn't have to be the most important for BTC but more perhaps of a hook to get the foundation's initial interest & support, they are willing to make bets on visionary or risky projects which certainly sounds like Bitcoin to me

The bad news, new applications for grants are closed atm, I shall keep an eye out for when a new funding window opens (a bit like pirate@40's FPT&S) - this though gives time to set up an official BTC NPO or maybe the developers already have one, or an unofficial one for any particular project that I/the consensus here believe would appeal - so please state your interest in being part of this & what you'd bring to the table, it would have to be official & all legal & stuff so rl IDs needed etc, E's NPO requires verifiable official paperwork - it also prefers 2 years of certified accounts but will accept newly formed ones too, another question would be which country to form it in & I'd imagine the States but would welcome suggestions & obviously any grants awarded would have to be accounted for rigorously in their spending so references may be required to be exchanged amongst everyone involved to make sure of trust & liability for misuse, a bank account would be needed to receive the funds unless E does what happened to my friend here & just says yep, I like it, pop round & see my peeps - there's an envelope waiting for you

The other way to do this is informally & not directly though the foundation, but I think that the formal approach to show serious intent & professionalism is needed, I do know of one person who was helped via a direct approach though that was more charity than the type of funding BTC projects are looking for

I'm going out now to play & dinner after, so will be afk for a few hours & maybe not fully on my game after, but would welcome any suggestions re this, many thanks

[Mageant]

Check out this thread:

https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=49841.0

Bitcoin is revolutionary because it is decentralized, with no single point of control or failure.

However, over the last six months or so it has become obvious to me that the rest of the world isn't set up to interact with a radically decentralized system like Bitcoin, and I think forming a not-for-profit organization will be a positive step towards Bitcoin's long-term success.

I'm posting this to see if there is a consensus on what a Bitcoin Foundation should be.

To get the conversation started, here are some functions I think a Bitcoin Foundation could perform:

• Interact with the legal system, where a centralized entity is needed: for example, to hold the Bitcoin trademark, own/control the bitcoin.org domain name, etc.
  
• Act as a central library for accurate information about Bitcoin, so journalists and policymakers have an 'official' place to learn about Bitcoin.
  
• Collect donations to fund infrastructure necessary for Bitcoin's growth (organize regular developers' conferences or get-togethers maybe? pay for development of cross-implementation testing tools? pay core developers' salaries? create a certification/testing program for Bitcoin implementations? create a central clearinghouse for information about legal issues surrounding Bitcoin across the world?)
  

Other not-for-profit organizations that could be emulated:

• The Anti-Phishing Working Group (the APWG's chairman, David Jevans http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Jevans, is willing to help make a Bitcoin Foundation happen).
  
• The Tor Project
  
• The Apache Software Foundation
  

Are there others that work well, or are there examples of what NOT to do? Assuming there is rough consensus that a Bitcoin Foundation is a good idea, I would like to get something imperfect up and running quickly, with the expectation that it will evolve over time.

[S3052]

this is a great idea and even better linking it to Gavin's proposed foundation

[notme]

Suggest that he set up a benevolent mining monopoly which controls the majority of hashing power, but excludes all other miners. Point out the profitability of this venture as the ability to earn 100% of newly generated bitcoin with just 51% of available hashing power.

I doubt this billionaire would want to become a millionaire for the sake of bitcoin.  51% would require the largest datacenter in the world.

10 terahash is 10 million USD or about 1% of the billionare's net worth. He won't actually need 10 Terahash because many miners will exit once one agent fires up so many rigs. Once he has 51% and is able to prohibit competition, all other miners will exit mining because private mining will no longer generate bitcoin. As a result, he will be able to mine all of the world's bitcion using just a few hundred gigahash. The other 9.5 terahash can be kept offline as a threat to any potential competition. Using just a few hundred gigahash  worth of electricity expenditure per month, he will take in a revenue of 216,000 bitcoin per month or about 1 million USD per month. In about one year he will have recovered his initial investment. Certainly, if he is aware of safer investments which also have a 100% per annum expected return then he should pursue them. However it is extremely difficult to find opportunities this good.

That's hardware only.... you need a building, huge power lines, a massive cooling system, and 24 hour security to keep people from running off with your expensive hardware.  Not to mention, keeping that many rigs running would be a full time job for at least one person.

You obviously have never dealt with large-scale computing.

[Otoh]

this is a great idea and even better linking it to Gavin's proposed foundation

Many thanks to you both, I'm picking up very positive vibes that the universe or whatever wants this to go ahead & enabling Gavin's BTC NPO seems the ideal way to do it, I read Mageant's post with much interest & will later check out the full thread that he referenced

In other news on the way to dinner with my best friend I met up with the friend who knows E longtime, these 2 are actually neighbors & he just happened to be out by the road, so I stopped to chat & for a couple of beers & he's well in to the concept of Bitcoin & it's possibilities, he's French & strongly of the 'Liberté, égalité, fraternité' school of thought, is a life long trade union head, is strongly behind the Arab Spring movement & believes it is the inevitable result of new tech like the Internets & mobile coms, he's perfectly happy that I use his name when applying to E for funding & this will make a big difference I'm sure to how it's received as it's from not just someone local but a friend of someone E really likes, my friend said he'd send me another contact email address for the foundation that's more local to me here, it's centralized elsewhere atm so I'll see, his info may be out of date if there's still an office here, but if so then that would be a much better way to approach it, in any case the application will now for sure stand out from the crowd of worthy causes & definitely be refereed to E rather than been just dealt with by E's NPO's board

& just as a side note that I mostly put here to remind myself, I intuitively think the Bitcoin concept & it's potential benefits may be especially relevant or applicable/beneficial to the African continent, where E supports a load of charitable initiatives - building hospitals, schools, orphanages, refuges etc - so if anyone had any proposals of how to blend a project that was good for BTC & also something Africa related then I'd be very grateful to hear any input on that or brain storming, it may be a good way to get E's & the foundation's initial interest & funding

Thanks again & if this seems to be moving forward to something more than just throwing an idea out there in a speculative manner to see what may happen, then I would be more than happy for this thread to be moved to a more appropriate section, Bitcoin forum, maybe development, which ever - I haven't explored so much to know which would be best for this at this stage

[notme]

this is a great idea and even better linking it to Gavin's proposed foundation

Many thanks to you both, I'm picking up very positive vibes that the universe or whatever wants this to go ahead & enabling Gavin's BTC NPO seems the ideal way to do it, I read Mageant's post with much interest & will later check out the full thread that he referenced

In other news on the way to dinner with my best friend I met up with the friend who knows E longtime, these 2 are actually neighbors & he just happened to be out by the road, so I stopped to chat & for a couple of beers & he's well in to the concept of Bitcoin & it's possibilities, he's French & strongly of the 'Liberté, égalité, fraternité' school of thought, is a life long trade union head, is strongly behind the Arab Spring movement & believes it is the inevitable result of new tech like the Internets & mobile coms, he's perfectly happy that I use his name when applying to E for funding & this will make a big difference I'm sure to how it's received as it's from not just someone local but a friend of someone E really likes, my friend said he'd send me another contact email address for the foundation that's more local to me here, it's centralized elsewhere atm so I'll see, his info may be out of date if there's still an office here, but if so then that would be a much better way to approach it, in any case the application will now for sure stand out from the crowd of worthy causes & definitely be refereed to E rather than been just dealt with by E's NPO's board

& just as a side note that I mostly put here to remind myself, I intuitively think the Bitcoin concept & it's potential benefits may be especially relevant or applicable/beneficial to the African continent, where E supports a load of charitable stuff - building hospitals, schools, orphanages, refuges etc - so if anyone had any proposals of how to blend a project that was good for BTC & also something Africa related then I'd be very grateful to hear any input on that or brain storming, it may be a good way to get E's & the foundation's initial interest & funding

Thanks again & if this seems to be moving forward to something more than just throwing an idea out there in a speculative manner to see what may happen, then I would be more than happy for this thread to be moved to a more appropriate section, Bitcoin forum, maybe development, which ever - I haven't explored so much to know which would be best for this at this stage

I've read mobile payments are big in Africa, but that fees are very high.  Perhaps bitcoin could help people keep more of their money while still enabling instant mobile to mobile transfers.

[Otoh]

the friend I just had dinner with rang now to say he'd had a call from a very close friend of his who's also a very good friend of E with totally unexpected news re something that just happened* that in some way may (just maybe) be the beginning of a rapprochement of the long standing fall out between them, it's a big happening & so totally unexpected that it really reinforces to me that the gods are behind this one or at least find it amusing enough to encourage, it also reminded me that this other guy who I also know well is actually even more buddy's with E than my French friend, so maybe I can drop both of their names with the pitch for the foundation's support, the synchronicity it's timing are quite mind blowing to me atm

* he asked me not to let anyone know about it as though it's no big deal is still confidential atm

[Mageant]

& just as a side note that I mostly put here to remind myself, I intuitively think the Bitcoin concept & it's potential benefits may be especially relevant or applicable/beneficial to the African continent, where E supports a load of charitable initiatives - building hospitals, schools, orphanages, refuges etc - so if anyone had any proposals of how to blend a project that was good for BTC & also something Africa related then I'd be very grateful to hear any input on that or brain storming, it may be a good way to get E's & the foundation's initial interest & funding

There actually has been some discussion on how Bitcoin could be useful for Africa:

Bitcoin – a real chance for Africa?
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=16230.0
http://78.47.182.40/gromobir/gromobirblog/?p=109

The idea basically is that Bitcoin could be used as a cheap method for African expatriates sending money back home.
Currently used systems like Western Union have very high fees.

[Otoh]

many thanks for both suggestions, I will follow the threads up tomorrow

[Transisto]

Gosh!..., I had written a very long post that unfortunately disappeared. Will try to remember and spew parts of it since I'm now very tired.
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I always found the speculation sub to be the best place to find trools, / not surprised.

I would be very careful in spending large amount of money onto bitcoin before it has matured natually.

Core:
First, There are some needed changes and research to be done around the core protocol definition that would benefits from minimal funding, ~250k$

Ecosystem - distribution :
Then supporting development of related software and services...
Finding new ways to distribute bitcoins as evenly as possible via freebies and offers but mostly through empowering people to work and earn them for simple yet engaging tasks.

Mining:
Bitcoins generation (mining) is more and more at risk of being centralized and prohibitive due to private large scale fgpa / ASIC mining operations.

We are struggling to coordinate and fund development of dedicated mining hardware.  People in the industry give estimates between 500 000 and 10m$ for a fully custom ASIC (depending on technologies and scale).  This would be the holy grail for affordable network security.  

There has to be a balanced momentum of people joining in, security going up and affordable mining hardware being deployed.

Increased network security would in turn attract biger player.