Hi Bitland team. We're trying to collect and distill information about ICOs. We've done a preliminary post about Bitland here (
http://www.smithandcrown.com/event/bitland-ico/). Comments or corrections welcome.
There are two questions we couldn't answer.
1. How exactly will Cadastrals be used in the final system? Who would buy them and who would sell them? We assume the supply is fixed - no new minting, no destruction of Cadastrals in transactions.
2. The Whitepaper gives some details about how the 30 million will get distributed that generally match the announcement thread, but we wanted to make sure that both are accurate. The White paper says:
"20 million will be sold in the ICO, 3 million in block rewards, 2 million for bitlands employees and contractors, 1 million through direct sales establish a multi-currency reserve, and 4 million to sell directly to governments to issue initial contracts" while the announcement says "21 million Cadastrals will be sold during the ICO hosted by Crypto Currency Exchange Denmark(CCEDK). The remaining 9 million is allotted for distribution over 99 years for various purposes."
Could you clarify?
Finally, out of curiosity, why not partner with Factom on this?
Thanks!
I will answer your questions in the order presented:
1. Cadastrals will be the de facto currency of the Bitland infrastructure. This will allow investors to enter contracts with organizations looking to get loans or investors. The contracts and ROI will be decided by the contractor/investor, as Bitland will have no say in those terms, but the platform will be where the transactions take place and are recorded onto the blockchain. The buyers would be people looking to invest in developing countries but also want to guarantee government oversight, as we are working with the Land Administration Project in Ghana to make sure all the transactions are legit and legal. No new coins will be minted, and the token is hard capped.
2. Yes, this is 100% accurate. If you look in the White Paper, you will see that this project has a 4 year plan that goes beyond the Pilot. We are trying to develop an infrastructure that can be applied across not only Ghana, but to other developing countries and developed countries as well. Since Ghanaian land titles have an upper limit of 99 years, our distribution of 3 million Cadastrals to the Oracles that witness the smart contracts will happen over the next 99 years. Any Cadastrals that go into the system will not be destroyed, but will be added to the Oracle pool to be distributed on the same 99 year cycles. There are also tokens set to be sold to governments as we seek out government contracts to get the large scale development of infrastructure completed.
Here is the breakdown from the White Paper:
-10 Million tokens for ICO at phase 1
-10 Million tokens for ICO at phase 2
-1 Million To Establish Basket of Currency Reserve during ICO Period
-2 Million to Pay Bitland Employees/Independent Contractors
-3 Million Designated to Smart Contract Oracles distributed over next 99 years
- 4 Million For Reserve for Governments to buy tokens, then pay out contracts through Bitland
Global GUI/Hardware
As far as why not partnering with Factom, there are various reasons. I am a former Community Leader at Factom, and at one point Bitland was considering using Factom. However, it was made immediately clear that Factom is more like SQL or Excel than a specialized land registry application. Factom is not set up to handle anything except the actual "recording" of data. In that regard, Factom is set-up for ANY type of record, and while simply recording titles would be great, we need much more indexing functionality than Factom has, and on top of that Factom cannot guarantee that the local electricity will be working. The biggest problem with applying blockchain technology to developing areas isn't the acceptance, it's the physical infrastructure. In most of Ghana, rolling blackouts happen multiple times a week. Using technology that needs Internet access will not be a logical solution in a place like this.
THIS is why one of the biggest aspects of the Bitland Project is to set up solar-powered wi-fi centers throughout Ghana so that the network will never go down due to electricity.
I hope this gives some insight, and if you have any more questions, feel free to keep firing away!
Also, we are in the process of making partnerships, and will make announcements as soon as contracts are finalized.
I want to sincerely thank you for posting our ICO on your site without us asking
We appreciate it very much!
Cheers!
Chris