I'd probably order between 10 and 50 if the premium to face is very low, and if I like the final designs and name. This also assumes that after I dig through your post history, etc, I don't uncover any trustworthiness red flags. I also echo Mike's concerns regarding private key safety. 100mBTC coins can add up, and it would be awful for bitcoin in general if a bunch of physical coins end up getting cleaned out down the road, be it from malice or negligence. Mike has earned the trust he has in the community by publishing his real-world details, crypto-signed communications, and producing a number of tools that indicate his technical ability and attention to detail and security.
Im painfully aware of those issues, and I do agree that a malicious (or incompetent) supplier of physical coins would be terrible for bitcoin. Its also a reason I want to do this; someone besides Mike is going to sell such products sooner or later and at least I trust myself more than I trust someone I dont know
. No matter what I do, I can not make you trust me, but thats ok. I prefer taking the risk of not selling enough coins to pay back my investment over seeing someone else pull another pirate like scam with physical coins.
I have ample respect for Mike and will gladly use his expertise and implement his good ideas, possibly even his tools, and draw from the community at large, but its not an insurmountable challenge to produce the keypairs on an offline airgapped machine and securely format and/or physically destroy the ssd or usb key afterwards, wipe printer memory if applicable etc. I will explain in detail how I go about doing this before I actually produce these coins, but I cant do that now as I am yet to decide whether I will print keys or buy a laser engraver, use QR codes or not. I will be experimenting first once I receive some blank samples. I also have yet to decide on the software, Ive looked at the tools Mike published, I will look in to Armory. Either way I will be completely transparent about how I make these things.
If we are honest, when applying sufficient paranoia, common sense and proven software, the real issue isnt accidental leaking of private keys, its deliberate theft. Mike is currently trusted for over $8 million worth of bitcoins. Thats a huge amount of money to trust anyone with, and frankly more than I would even want to be trusted with. Im not sure how to put this without being misunderstood, its not like I distrust Mike, but publishing personal info (which I will too) or crypto signing messages (?) isnt enough to warrant $8M worth of trust. We are all taking a leap of faith here, myself included as I do trust him, at least for the handful of coins of his that I own. By comparison, my first production run will amount to $15K worth of bitcoin at todays value, assuming I would sell out, which is far from certain. Thats not pocket change, but I think you will agree its quite a different level of incentive, its almost 3 orders of magnitude lower.
Trust is built over time, and while its never absolute, I have to start somewhere.
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