2. Token Value
In regards to how we plan to grow the value of Signal Tokens, that is not based on whether or not Spectiv is profitable, but based on whether or not content curation is profitable. Consider this, as VR grows and the Spectiv platform grows, curators will be able to drive more traffic to the Spectiv platform. The more traffic that a curator drives, the more money that they earn for generating a signal.
For example, let's say that during year 1 of operation a good content curator is able to profit $1 for every $.50 that they spends on generating signals. During that first year, the curator triples his fan base and in return now makes $3 for every $.50 that he spends on generating signals. Now the cost of generating a signal is significantly lower than the potential revenue for doing it, so the potential value of a signal token is theoretically higher. The market will naturally adjust to this new defined value of a Signal Token and over time, a Signal Token will grow in value until the potential profit and the cost are in a reasonable equilibrium.
There are a couple other points that will factor into the value of Signal Tokens, such as the number of curators that are on the platform and the "minimum" threshold of followers a curator needs to have in order to profitably generate signals. I won't get into that right now because it is all theoretical at this point, but at the end of day, the value of Signal tokens will naturally adjust to be in line with the potential revenue of generating a signal.
Thank you for the reply.
I appreciate that there will be little to no ad revenue initially. And going forward? Who knows. No-one can say. Including you guys. You can make estimates, sure. But this is online advertising we're talking about here. Income from this is far from a given. And uptake may be slow. As in, years slow. You can't assume the number of people using the internet, or playing consoles, just now will automatically translate to the same numbers for the VR market. Sure, it will grow I believe. But how big and how fast? I suspect our estimates there may be slighly different.
Which again takes me back to the value of SIGS. As this is what ICO investors are actually buying.
Sale price - $0.50.
Used solely by creators to propogate content via personalised links.
OK.
Like I say. I work for a tech company. We make EPoS. Biggest in my country. With some presence in the USA. We run loyalty programs. Loyalty programs are a similar system to your signals. At the end of day, they are personalised links to promote content (in my case - offers, in yours - VR videos). In my case, the companies we service use them for mailshots, sale-point discount, repeat buyer discounts, etc etc. Some of these loyalty campaigns contain millions of (uniquely identified) users. My role in all this to stress test the entire setup. The company I work for employs several hundred people. Has it's own dedicated data centres. I work with both dev, test and infrastructure teams. I have to in order to understand what they're doing so I can stress the correct parts of the system.
And we don't have to store and stream VR standard videos! That is a MUCH higher server demand than anything we host. (And we host a lot. Not just loyalty stuff.)
I'm just making the point that this is a BIG technical undertaking you're going for here. Snopes (the fake news website) has estimated running costs (they have an ongoing legal battle going on at the moment so have financial problems) are estimated at $100k per month. I can see costs for a VR streaming site of any sort of size being considerably higher than that. And thats an established site. Without additional revenue, I can see the ICO money getting burnt through pretty fast just on setup, never mind running it.
So where does the value in the token come from?
You sell them at $0.50 during the crowdsale. A curator uses them to "curate" (advertise, whatever ..... they share a specialised link generated through using the token). OK so far. This is where I start losing the track. The white paper then goes on to say that they earn "interest" based on the uptake generated through their signal posts. Right? So where does that interest come from? I see part of the ICO fund being held to pay early curators (again, in the white paper). Personally, I don't like that model. As it means ICO money could end up being used to pay people for uploading and spamming rubbish. (Moderation of interest is mentioned. Not sure how you plan to do that though. I reckon I could pretty easily set up an automated system, that switched exit nodes via a VPN or something so it looked like unique users, and create a whole bunch of fake interest from my own link ...)
But new users also get a 30 SIG bonus on sign up. And a free google cardboard.
So far, all payments to anyone, be they new users, curators, or whatever, appears to be coming out of the ICO money. On top of all your other setup and running costs.
Lots of costs. But little guaranteed revenue post-ICO.
But the white paper also states that
"The interest that users earn on Sigs they deploy is distributed as a share of the ad revenue generated from the content they signaled."Although, you said (in your reply I have partially quoted) that SIGS do not have to rely on the site being profitable to make money.
The statement above (from your white paper) implies the exact opposite. If the site is not generating ad revenue. Then once the money from the ICO is burned through, how do you pay them if the ad revenue is still low?
And I still don't see how any of this causes the token itself to gain value? Besides, as I mentioned earlier, ignorant market speculation. Thats hardly a stable base to build a business on.
Why does a SIG gain value? If, after the ICO money is gone, the only revenue to SIG users will be through (hopefully) ad revenue?
Also, if the SIG token does gain a LOT of value (although we're still not sure if they'll end up on an exchange - this detail isn't nailed down yet either), will this not prevent new "curators" from staking them? Why risk a $100 (for the sake of example - I'm not saying they'll ever hit $100) to promote a link you may get very little return on. You'd be better off selling it on an exchange. But, conversely, as a buyer of token as the ICO stage, I want them to go up in value. Problem is, I'm still failing to see why they will! I mean, if they DON'T end up on exhanges, why would they ever be worth more than the $0.50 ICO price? In fact, why does it need to be a cryptocurrency at all? The SPEC token isn't. As you say it needs to be a controlled price. As a curator using the SIG token, I would rather not be at the mercy of the insanity of crypto markets to determine whether it costs me $0.50 or $50 to promote a link. Why not make that one controlled as well? Except then your sole link to crypto, and investment money - which you'll need to run the thing, is gone.
Apologies for seemlingly asking the same question constantly. But that's only because I've yet to see an answer that tells me where the value comes from. And, unlike a lot of people buying crypto (the "crypto = lambo" idiot crowd), I actually do my research. I'm an analyst by trade. I'd rather not throw my hard earned cash away!
As it stands, as a VR user:
1. Would I try your site? - Yes.
2. Would I continue to use it? - Maybe. Impossible to say without seeing at least some sort of demo. But VR video is low on my use list. Even if I did continue to use it, it would not get much of a proportion of my VR time. The whole point of VR, for me and most of the people I know who are into it, is INTERACTIVE immersion. VR video is immersive. But not interactive. I see it a bit like Oculus before it got Touch. Half the system was missing. It's the main reason I stuck with the Vive over it (I had both at one point). Even with Touch now in place, their tracking system is not quite so good so I'm still happy with my decision to back the Vive. Although, the Oculus closed market system is fucking stupid and the LAST thing a small emergent market like VR needs. But thats what happens when you let Facebook pull the strings.
3. Would I invest in your token? - At the moment, no. See above.
(PS - the other potential problem I see for this is bandwidth. From the user end. You're talking about starting out with users offering live VR feeds yes? How many people do you think have the upload bandwidth to upstream decent quality VR video? I would burn through my mobile allowance in minutes. To do it live, requires a live data connection. So unless we want to watch some guy sat in his VR room, that data connection needs to be mobile. Or else you're into record and playback/stream at home territory. Not live. Look at the feeds on Periscope. Their quality is massively variable with lots of dropout, freezing, bad connections, etc. And VR will have way higher upstream requirements ...)
Guys, you need to stop posting bounty questions in here, post them in the bounty thread.
THIS!!!
ABSOLUTELY THIS!!!
Without all the bounty shitposts, I reckon this ANN would be about 10 pages at most.
