Just wanted to dip my toes back in the murky waters of this thread... briefly at least.
Just some thoughts, take them for whatever they're worth:
There's been a lot of talk (from myself included) about the cost of certain ventures and the net worth of those involved. The thing is however that the real issues are often getting lost in the mud slinging. At this point in time, and with this size market cap, there are a couple realities that I think certain members of the community are missing:
1) There is absolutely
no possibility for a truly unaffiliated (non BC-holder) organization for BlackCoin at this point in time. This is a delusion. There is simply no pool of crypto-currency savvy individuals with significant business experience who are going to want to spend the time to help a coin that is just one of thousands to almost everyone
other than large BC wallet-holders. If we get to the point where we have a market cap of $100M+ and donation drives can easily generate $100K or more -
then we could revisit the issue and have a shot. NP boards are built of two kinds of people, one kind are those who are 'scamming' (or more accurately 'skimming') from the donations themselves for support and enrichment - we don't want one of
those ever. The other type are those who have more money than they could ever need, but either feel compelled to do something for the greater good because of personal reasons, or because they have an image problem they wish to correct by being associated with something less 'selfish'.
2) It is unreasonable to expect anyone (regardless of net worth) to dump a
significant amount of their own holdings into something that is almost purely for the community. I don't mean donations, and I don't mean there can't be transparency and accountability - I just mean that expecting someone to fund initiatives entirely themselves is unrealistic. Particularly with the current price of BC... even someone with 1M BC would be involved in a zero sum game then. Spend all of your BC pumping the image and price of BC... then have none of it left to actually benefit.
(This doesn't mean I feel people shouldn't put their money where their mouth is, and we've seen a good example of that just today!)
I was critical of IE a couple days ago about donations - but it was not because I think his initiatives aren't worth donating to, and I have done so. It was more because of the emotional escalation that was occurring, however he's clearly going
above and beyond in working on changing that attitude, and not getting sucked into the hyperbole and retaliation, and so I'll be donating some more to his efforts.
In the same way I am supporting the foundation as well. Transparency isn't something that's always possible up front, no matter what some people might think. We are way too young a coin to have independently supported people doing everything. We are also way to young to be hiring auditing agencies to validate the books every time something is suggested by someone. (Plus we have a blockchain... so we can audit for ourselves to a large extent). However, that doesn't mean I don't think details should be forthcoming - it just means that I think those that are skeptical or hesitant
should not donate. The rest will either pick up the slack or the initiative itself will die.
If you are like me and you accept that you could lose 100% of your investment at any time - then fund what is available that you agree with or feel will improve that value over time. Don't fund anything that you feel will
not improve that value over time. Even if IconicExpert never changed at all... if his projects increased the value proposition of holding BC, who really cares? I think he's really changed a great deal over the past couple days (or more accurately gone back to the IE that we met back in March), and I'm definitely willing to just let the past die here.
But seriously, if the biggest asshole
in the world handed you a briefcase full of cash... would you really tell him you weren't interested just because he's an asshole? If you knew a group of investors were secretly trying to get a bunch of value in a company simply because they owned a majority position - but you believed in the company itself, and owned stock yourself - would you actively try to
stop them just because they were selfish or greedy?
On the foundation side... donations (i.e. money you are 'throwing away at something') aren't required from anyone - but if the PR firm proves to be a benefit... then you all win! On the other hand, if it turns out to be a gigantic waste of money and time - then you also win, because this will basically be an 'ender' for the foundation if it's first big drive is a flop. If they have more to lose than you do personally... then why is there so much worry? You could always cash out of cryptos and move into fiat in a bank... that should get you some transparency.
The tl;dr is that we are all here, and we are all holding BlackCoin in our respective wallets because we are comfortable (or at least we should be) with taking
significant financial risks. If you dumped your life savings into cryptos...
get it back out ASAP and use some of it to see a financial advisor (a paid one, not a free one that makes commission). In fact, if that's the case you might want to use a little of it to see a good shrink while you're at it.
I'm cautiously optimistic with the tone around here recently... too bad I'm so swamped with work that I can't just hang out for awhile.
Edited for clairty (I think).
