Topic: [ANN] RealPay [A new e-commerce business platform][Release Date: TBA] - page 2. (Read 20266 times)

This does sound in some ways like a much larger-cap version of the approach the UKB, CDN etc folk had in mind for United Kingdom Britcoins, Canadian Digital Notes and so on. But their plans called for only issuing the same number of coins as BiTCoin will eventually end up having issued, thus maybe putting the time when its value could start to float on markets instead of being fixed to a particular type of fiat a little sooner than realcoin's one trillion coins might lead to.

The idea of using a central node to secure the mining is interesting; the UKB, CDN etc etc folk have instead gone with just using Open Transactions for now until they think it feasible to deploy their blockchains securely. The central node lets them already have the blockchain out there from the start, which might make some difference public-relations-wise, possibly. Or not.

-MarkM-

I think the idea of a limited number of coins was that they could potentially increase in value down the road, if they were all issued and in circulation and none could be bought from the central entity anymore.  With a lower limit, this could potentially happen in a short period of time, but I think $1T is lofty enough that no one would hold the coins for that purpose.

I do like the idea of returning investments to holders of the coins though.  It'd be easy to do, and would give some incentive for holding/using them.

Interesting. It wants to be a cheaper, simpler alternative to paypal. Ok, thats a reasonable business model. In which case, you dont really need a fixed number of coins. Let people buy as much as they want and as and when they want. Since its tied to USD, there is no incentive to invest and hoard RLC anyway.

I do like the idea of a crypto bearer bond. Lets call the issuer a cryptobank.

A cryptobank issues coins that are redeemable for cash. It invests the cash in AAA rated investments and gives interest to holders in RLC. This would be great because you dont need to keep account ledgers. You would get dividends based on the number of coins you own. This may not be different from flexcoin but a 'bank' that invests your coins may raise lots of interest (no pun intended)

The same could be said of Paypal.  Why use Paypal dollars when you can already pay with a credit card?  Well, because Paypal is faster/more convenient.  I think RLC would be even more convenient than Paypal, based on my recent purchase of a Bitcoin Magazine through bit-pay.  No logins, no hassles, I just copy/pasted the address to pay, sent the payment, and the whole thing was done in less than 20 seconds (in part, because my browser auto-filled my address information).

An added bonus for some is that the RLC could be fairly easily anonymized, even while the central agency is fulfilling all MSB regulations.

I agree with your two final points though.  I though $1B or $10B would be a reasonable cap on circulation, and that $1 should equal 1 RLC.  However, it is not up to me. 

Yes, but if 1RLC = 1USD, why do you even need RLC? Right now USD is as electronic as it needs to be. Why add another layer? Who would want to buy into and pay in RLC if paying in USD is already more convenient?

If preventing uncle sam from tracking your currency moves is the only benefit, I have no doubt that the US secret service will shut this down before you can say RealCoin.

This idea may be on to something but I think it needs to be fleshed out a bit. Sounds like its just a bank, they take your money and invest it and give you something akin to bearer bonds. I think this project should consider dropping the name realcoin and position itself as a bank. And get the network up and running first, and once it can guarantee security, then start accepting money. That way, you can get rid of the centralization.

Also make version 1 smaller like $1 million. 1 trillion? Come on, seriously? Also who is gonna spend $100 on a coin? Denominate it in 1$. 1$=1RLC. its easier.

First of all, we would like to openly thank both SgtSpike and viperjbm for their contribution in the final version of RLC. (for those who are not aware of their contribution you can check the first version of RLC to see their suggestions and ideas)

Secondly, we would like to thank both of them as well as some others for their replies and support in this thread.

Important: They have no financial interest in this project and their contribution was out of interest and with the intention to help create something different than just another Bitcoin clone. As you can see their help was priceless since RLC has the potential to become a PP alternative.

@SgtSpike: Actually you have replied to questions far better than i would have and thats why i let you and some others continue replying since you know most parts of this project and your replies are correct. So feel free to keep posting.

@DeathAndTaxes: We cannot guarantee a specific date that we will switch off central approval of blocks and let RLC run completely decentralized for one and only one reason. We dont know for sure when an attack could be non profitable for an attacker. We also believe that it is in our best interest to make RLC as decentralized as possible for the advantages posted above by SgtSpike. We would also appreciate any help from you as an experienced member of BTCtalk (and an experienced miner) to figure out the numbers behind mining and the point where we should switch off the central approval.

Now people wonder why would we want as a business to decentralize rather than keep all power in our hands. Well you can look at it this way: IMO there is a point where decentralizing could give a lot more power to RLCXE as a business rather than keeping it centralized.

Why? Because IF RLC becomes successful it will be target for a lot of people. This means that security measures around a central server would have to be huge and this means a lot of expenses.

Also think about government interference. I think they can easily attack a central server if they want to and burn everything to the ground in a matter of minutes.

Going decentralized from the beginning is not an option for obvious reasons.

Thus central approval at the beginning will help RLC avoid the early dangers and going decentralized at a later date will hopefully help RLC to stay in business for years to come if it turns out to be as good as we think it is.

Important: For some weird reason i get the feeling that some people in here have taken the part around mining and central approval a bit wrong. The central approval measure will be just a security measure against people trying to harm RLC. IF you are a miner willing to do good and power up the network then you shouldnt be worried about mining blocks because all your blocks will pass the approval. I think that you are overreacting when you hear the word "central". We are not gonna reject any blocks coming from honest nodes. We just want to have an added measure in case someone tries to harm RLC. If this happens we will be able to stop him before he does a lot of damage. As soon as it is deemed safe to switch off central approval then we will be more than happy to do so.

UPDATE: There was a bug found yesterday in the code and the developers are fixing it. We want to launch with a 100% secure and functional client and therefore we will have to postpone tomorrow's launch for a couple more days. As soon as i have news from the developers, i ll post a specific date.

I figured it'd come up, given that I am responding to more inquiries than TheGobbler is... I should probably step back and let him answer more of the questions.  :p

Fair enough, was just wondering. 

I gave TheGobbler a lot of tips in his original thread, and he took most of them.  I don't have any financial or other interest in the project though.  I do want it to succeed simply because it is nearly exactly what I would have done if I had the proper group of programmers/investors.  It's a smart gap to plug with Bitcoin-like technology, IMO.

But that's why I am helping defend the idea - because a lot of it was created with my input.  And because I believe it can work.

If I was doing it, there's a few things I would do differently, but the overall idea is the same, and should proof similarly (whether it works or does not).

Out of curiosity, Spike, what connection with this do you have?

I think RLC has a few advantages over using straight BTC.
- You don't have to immediately exchange it for USD.  There'd be no steps beyond making sure the RLC hits your wallet.
- Prices are easy to calculate/figure out.  The customer doesn't wonder how much RLC a shirt in a store will cost - they already know, since RLC is tied to USD, and easy to convert.
- The customer doesn't have to play games with the exchange rate.  They don't have to wonder if they will save money by waiting 5 minutes to purchase the shirt.
- If RLC becomes big, I see it being used in transactions more than BTC would be, since it is stable.  I would imagine most consumers are more likely to use something for transactions when they know exactly what purchasing power it has.  I think BTC has the potential to become stable enough with high enough usage, but it isn't there yet.
- AFAIK, the only instant liquidator is bit-pay, and they charge 3% on each transaction.

Agree on your comment about the 1 trillion...

I'm sure the plan will be to remove the central node "in 4 - 6 weeks".

Basically, RLC is not a cryptocurrency, but a corporate scrip tied to USD. In this respect, its exactly like disney dollars.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disney_dollar

Also issuing your own currency is not illegal

http://www.treehugger.com/culture/how-to-print-your-own-money-build-community-not-get-arrested-by-the-feds.html


Now the question about its usefulness is an entirely different issue.

I could basically replace this with an automated calculator and BTC liquidator.

i.e. I buy 2 coffees from starbucks. Price is $6.6. I ask to pay in BTC. They calculate it to BTC 1.02. I pay, they exchange it for dollars right away. The risk of slippage is small and they can mitigate it by simply charging slightly more for BTC.

And oh, a 1 trillion $ play may piss off some governments a lot more than you expect.

That's a good explanation.

I agree, metrics would be good.

I suppose we should list the potential advantages/disadvantages of decentralizing the transactions.

Advantages:
- No downtime if central node goes down - can still perform transactions.
- Government can't easily stop the transactions (though they could surely freeze funds in RLC's reserve).
- Anti-DDOS.
- Public ledger (if it was completely centralized, the company could potentially alter the ledger and no one could prove that they did so).
- Government couldn't force RLC to de-anonymize the blockchain (via IP address that transactions originated from, or other means), if it transactions were processed in a decentralized manner.

Disadvantages:
- Users could potentially double-spend via a 51% hashing attack.
- Requires paying fees to miners.

I think some very careful analysis would be needed to calculate the feasibility of a 51% attack when the company considers switching over to decentralized transacting.  A switchover cannot happen until a 51% attack is completely unfeasible, from the perspective of profitability of the attacker.

I do see what you are saying though - why pay miner's fees?  If they are successful as a centralized entity to the point where decentralization would be feasible, why decentralize?  Maybe the disadvantages aren't worth the advantages?  Given that they are targeting the Bitcoin crowd though, I think that people here feel better with public, transparent projects.  Having the blockchain public, and constantly having other miners verify it as legitimate, would help maintain credibility.  Also, the anti-government aspect is an advantage that likely would see particular favor among this crowd.

I'm speculating as much as you are though.  Just pointing things out.  I do understand your point of view, and you could be right.  But right now, I'll give the project the benefit of the doubt that they will do what they say they will do.

Nothing.  Although in a perfect world some transparency on metrics for the conversion to decentralize processing would be nice.  A vaguely worded statement of "someday" doesn't inspire much confidence.    I mean if it works centralized then why decentralize it?  

Because the company would like to share the transaction fees which are generating revenue?  
So it can add the risk of 51% to its business plan?

My totally self admitted unsupported belief is no company which is profitable using a centrally processed system will decentralize it to share those profits with the masses.  If they aren't profitable then the network likely never got to the point where decentralization was possible making the whole debate academic.

How about, call it a centralized digital USD equivalent (I wouldn't call it a currency of its own) that strives to eventually have decentralized transaction processing?  What's wrong with that?

It is impossible for distributed transaction processing to be cheaper.  There is massive overhead in using a blockchain and proof of work.  It can never be cheaper (under any circumstances) than a simply ledger system.  A server w/ a single core celeron and couple gigs of RAM could handle all the transaction processing for Bitcoin much less RealCoin. 

Mining isn't just something which is bolted on top, it is the "cost" of acheiving consensus without a trusted third party.  So if it is not a distributed crypto-currency then be honest about it.  Drop the miner charade and call it a centralized digital currency.  Done. 

so no physical security then?

i would hope someone that breaks in couldn't do too much, banks at least have insurance so there is some guarantee of ze monies safety.

I believe he said he will use smart investments to slowly grow any monies invested, which would be returned both into the company itself, and to miners.  I would hope that this means that all funds are available within X number of days, if necessary.  IMO, the funds should be invested in very safe, but very liquid investments.  I think he said the minimum balance needed was $200k for the particular investment he was looking at starting with.

No, it is not a guarantee.  I guess I don't understand your point?  Why does it matter to you whether miners play a role in it or not?  This is meant to be a Bitcoin-like Paypal alternative.  Something where people can buy and sell in USD-equivalents, without paying Paypal-level fees (advantage vs Paypal), and without worrying about their money losing value while they hold it (advantage vs BTC).  Ideally, miners would be able to eliminate the need for a central authority signing transactions, but the system still works even if that never happens.

If it's tied to USD, it'll inflate just as much as the USD will.