We're happy to announce a new program that we've been working on. We recognize that the community has become increasingly concerned with the price of MastCoin over the past several days, and we are taking action. We are working to actively seek to improve the price of MAST with direct intervention into the market.
The Plan
We have begun buying up MAST on the open market, and will be continuing to do so. Because MastCoin is now PoS-only, any buys on the markets will help increase both trade volume and increase the price of MAST. Increased volume and price will grow the community and bring awareness to the coin, which will further increase the price and benefit everyone.
PR & Giveaways
We have wanted to do more PR and giveaways to promote MAST, as we've had success with that in the past. Because we did not have an IPO/ICO and only a minimal premine, which has been mostly used, we haven't been able to fund new giveaway programs recently.
A large portion of coins that we buy will be used to build a reserve of MastCoin for upcoming giveaways and promotional efforts. During launch week, we did a giveaway on Twitter which was extremely popular -- we'll be looking to repeat that success soon. Additionally, we will increase our giveaways via the IRC tip bot.
AltCoinToday also held a popular giveaway for us previously, and have offered to conduct more giveaways if we fund them.
After launch, we funded ThisWeeksCoin's promotion services from our team's own BTC accounts to help market and promote the coin, which proved to be successful and was part of the basis for the price rise to 0.0003. We're going to be looking into other similar promotion services again, as well as contacting PR agencies to pursue mainstream news media coverage.
Bounty Programs
As you've seen recently in this thread, we're working on generating ideas for both marketing and MastCoin ecosystem development projects. A portion of the coins will be used to provide the basis for funding bounties for these ideas. Once we have more concrete plans established, we'll also be creating a system to allow you to help donate to fund projects of your choosing.
Bonus Effect
Any coins that we buy now, at the currently undervalued prices, can be used in the future as if they were five, ten, or even hundreds of times the number of coins that we're buying! Giving away 10 MAST coins today for a bounty may seem unimpressive because of its relative BTC value; however, we hope to see the price rise significantly which will make every coin we buy today more valuable and useful for bounty rewards in the future.
It's really nice to see devs investing in their own coin, this definitely proves you believe in it and will not let it die.
I think making giveaways and giving bounty should come right after the coin recycler release, not before, because even with a good marketing, if the coin doesn't have something really unique people will not be interested.
i contacted vir6 in cloakcoin irc he told me of course he would give the 5k mast he got from the donation address for any giveaway or bounty...
Our team has invested heavily in MastCoin from the beginning. All told, our team has put well over 20 BTC into mining, funding development and promotion, and buying MAST on the open market for our own investment. This is a separate program from our own existing investments, with the specific goals we've mentioned above.
And yes, our plan is to work on a marketing push with giveaways to coincide with our large upcoming releases: MAST-MAST anonymous transactions, CoinRecycler GUI wallet, and more!