i hope you guys can release a new alpha demo video in the coming days cos that vancouver presentation was a disaster. full of bugs, hardly anything worked.
It was not that bad. I know how tricky it is to show working demo of early version of any non-trivial piece of software. Dev handled all the issues very well, kudos! On the other hand I can imagine how much effort production version can take. Most optimistically 2017 might be that year. I'd like to see more competing projects in this area, this sea can take more than just two fishes (Synereo and Steem).
I believe the market is huge in this area and even Steemit is still the only active one till date because Synereo is not active yet and there is a new project on the block PostBase. Hope one of them truly get this right because I don't see the Steemit model being sustainable on the long run because the distribution seems rigged
Distribution was misleadingly 'rigged' to a degree yes but Steemit's fundamental problem is that it is not economically viable at all. They have no business model. They are diluting Steem holders at like 0.2% a day to fund content creators.
So they are attracting users by diluting speculators and hoping those user numbers will consistently attract more speculators... But without a plan/model for monetising/generating income from users it's just a ponzi that will/is declining as the speculators dry up.
(Even looking at Redditesque sites that do have revenue, paying users for content is not feasible and Reddit in particular is still in the red, costs more to run than they earn, without paying for content.)
The Synereo model is slightly more plausible, directing advertising revenue to FB type users means users could get up to circa $50 per annum sustainably. However given the way they conducted their most recent funding round, my expectations for this project and the people involved are much lower too.
You are right that Synereo needs to address the distribution issues. This is clear, I would say the sooner the better. I am like many who want to invest but cannot if this is not addressed now.
I do hold the team in high regard. I think they are bright and have the right intentions. Also think if they were not doing this second funding now the project would die. How could it last with a pathetic 120k in funding from original ICO. I actually think this is smart to do.
Yeah the second funding round was needed, but exactly as I predicted on the date they announced it...
While the decision to time an additional fund-raising round with a major release was the correct one, price-fixing it was not. These periods are traditionally very speculative and volatile & hence attract large volumes from traders and speculators.
By price-fixing such a large quantity of AMP over the entire Alpha release period they have removed the volatility and profit motive which attracts so many new speculators and investors around major release times.
In practical terms you will see what were million dollar and rising daily AMP volumes dramatically shrink, (even when including off-exchange sales) and with it the demand for their second round AMP.
So it's a strategy that will likely end in them being able to sell only a fraction of the AMP they would have otherwise been able too and at a much lower price than the market may have paid. In fact speculative 'Alpha release' capital already invested in AMP may exit too, thus decreasing the current price. (Again ironically they would probably come to the incorrect conclusion they they price fixed too high in this case and not realise it was the act of price-fixing which caused it.)
So as you've seen, volumes two weeks before Alpha were hitting $1.5 million plus daily and rising. As predicted they shrunk dramatically, to less than 13% of that today (when they should have been exploding due to Alpha release and speculation) the result is they have sold a lot less AMP & for a lot less than they could have had they not price fixed. AMP is now and longer term a much smaller, less liquid & lower value market than it otherwise would have been, as a direct result of their funding approach.
