Very well expressed and objective view point, mochillies. I appreciate that you took time to communicate your opinion, which, I have no doubt is shared by many others and most likely explained why there has been a sudden drop in the demand for DNotes.
“Speculation is NOT a dirty word. I feel this community sees speculators as pump and dump vultures. We need to expunge this toxic idea from our consciousness. Speculators are not the enemy, they are the lifeblood of a project like this. When Google and Facebook and Amazon IPO their companies on the market, they're offering shares to SPECULATORS to catapult their business potential into the stratosphere. The best thing a company can do to grow is to attract speculators on purpose by offering them shares, or in our case coins.”
I agree with you that speculation is not a dirty work. Loosely used, we all are speculators and all business owners and investors are speculators. We are not against speculators or have made any attempts to discourage them from investing in DNotes. This is a free market. People buy and sell at will. However, I can say this definitively:
• We do not support pump and dump, but not all speculators are part of P&D
• By strategic choice DNotes is positioned as a long term investment and as such not likely to be a favorite of short term investors
• DNotes is not dependent on the industry as its only market target. It has been positioning itself to reach out to the global market, as reflected in the creation of CryptoMoms, Family of CRISPs, DNotesVault and DCEBrief. Achieving marketing penetration beyond our industry, is a very long process with little near term payoff but the correct path to gain mass acceptance over the long haul. This will not happen overnight. A 5 to 10 year period reasonable for any long term investment.
• We believe that the true value of DNotes can only be realized if it can meet the full functions of money (unit of account, store of value, and medium of exchange) not a single digital currency including DNotes and Bitcoin has succeeded so far. Consequently, I have to add that the bankers, including Jamie Dimon, CEO of JP Morgan Chase, has good reasons not to consider our industry as a threat. We will not be until there is a digital currency that can meet or exceed the full functions of money. That is DNotes’ strategic goal but it will take years to accomplish our mission, hence a long road ahead.
• Technology evolves quickly. Many great “innovations” in our industry that have driven the price of many altcoins to the “moon” are now ice-cold rocks on earth. Investing heavily in technologies before there are sufficient users’ demands is not the best use of limited resources. Many great ideas or projects failed because they invested heavily in technology and other infrastructure before there is sufficient need for what they have to offer. Investing heavily in payment network and mobile applications at this time or promoting DNotes as a medium of exchange is a loosing proposition. Many have tried and they all have failed.
Mochillies, I appreciate the time you spent to express your opinion, but I respectfully disagree that we have to change course in response to the DNotes price decline. I understand the concern and it is disappointing to me as well. That is the nature of speculative investing in a free market environment.
If you believe that there are things that you can do to help improve DNotes stakeholders’ value I am sure you will get the support of our community and it will be very much appreciated. We are all stakeholders with a mutual interest to see that DNotes be successful. It is very natural that there are differences of opinion on the best way of getting there. Perhaps if more people could pitch in to help, it may make a difference.
Ok, lets look at price. DNotes is currently number 174 out of 672 AltCoins in price alone. But, we number 38 out of 672 in Market Capitalization. Sorry, I don't see a problem here. As with all things in nature and human kind, slow and steady is the way to lasting success. At the present time, it is less important that each DNote has a high value, then it is that people know about DNotes, wither they use, or hold them, or not.
As a relatively new coin, DNotes has done quite well in it's short lifetime. As the coin matures along with it's ecosystem, the value will start to rise, slowly. And that is the key. Almost all altcoins that have achieved a high monetary value in a short time have either failed completely or are almost worthless now. There are some exceptions but, they mostly serve niche markets, some of which DNotes would not want to be connected to.
Our marketing will spread the word in a realistic and sustainable manor. There is no long term value to being a "flash in the pan". Consider this analogy; the Pyramids in Egypt still stand, they took a lifetime to build. Your typical house built today in a month will be gone a hundred years from now. Slow and steady with solid foundations will endure the test of time, and with time comes value.
On a different subject but, not far removed, here's one of the best articles on crypto detractors and supporters I have ever read:
http://bit.ly/1NgEGLL In some ways it speaks to Notes as well as Bitcoin.
That was a great read RJF.
John Biggs is a New York-based writer. After spending years as a programmer, Biggs decided to become a full-time journalist. His work has appeared in publications such as the New York Times, Gizmodo and Men's Health. Biggs is currently an editor for TechCrunch. In this piece he details why he thinks bitcoin will eventually succeed.
A week ago I was in Belgrade watching a panel on "blockchain."
The makeup of the panel was typical: a young, plugged-in VC, an older banker guy and a crypto-anarchistic dude in a T-shirt. It was like watching a movie called "Bitcoin is Good And Bad" for the 50th time. I knew what was happening but I couldn't look away.
The panel started normally - VC guy said he liked the blockchain specifically but was iffy about those bitcoins, the older gentleman said bitcoin was bad, but then the anarchist dude was quiet. He let the banker talk. The banker said that bitcoin was untraceable. It was a fad. The crypto guy let him talk. bitcoin was a tulip bulb, said the old dude. It would never work, he clamored.
And the anarchist stayed quiet. Then the old dude was done.
The anarchist calmly explained what the future of bitcoin and cryptocurrencies held. He made cogent points that he had practiced many times. While the banker chortled at his own jokes, the VC talked about the blockchain and the audience grunted.
The anarchist won the discussion through reasoned argument.
'Bitcoin in a suit'
This is the face of bitcoin discourse in late 2015. It's a calm discussion where the craziest people in the room are the ones who are against bitcoin. We've won.
I asked the anarchist, Aaron Koenig, what he was thinking on stage. He said:
"I've been through this many times."
He was used to that line of questioning. He knew how to handle it and how to ignore it. In fact, it's the folks who don't understand cryptocurrency and the folks who don't understand bitcoin that seem the craziest these days. It's a fascinating flip.
We're basically seeing the dawn of bitcoin in a suit.
Just as Red Hat turned Linux into something an IT department could use to replace Microsoft, the new bitcoin users are turning crypto into something that a person can use to replace a bank.
The accretions of a dozen decades of banking tradition have convinced those inside the big institutions that their way is right and will be right forever. Those outside, the scrabbling sea monsters trying to figure out a new way to walk on land, know that isn't true.
There's an old quote I love, written by Wilhelm Stekel but made famous by Holden Caulfield in Catcher In The Rye.
"The mark of the immature man is that he wants to die nobly for a cause," Stekel said. "While the mark of the mature man is that he wants to live humbly for one."
The true bitcoin believer needs to take this to heart. We've already won. We've moved past the era of raving lunatics howling in the wilderness about digital gold and the end of governments.
We're in a position to make real, meaningful change in the world and to do that we need to listen more than we speak.Malaise among investors
In my time as a bitcoin entrepreneur, I've seen a certain deep malaise rising in the investor class.
They've met too many wide-eyed Jeremiahs fresh from the desert with a plan to put our DNA on the blockchain.
They've seen investments crash quicker than HSBC after another scandal. They've been burned by guys who write banking code in PHP and host it on public servers. Now they're doing technical diligence and they're offering objections to every claim.
But there's one thing to remember in every investment scenario: objections are a buying signal. Say what you want about short-sighted folks stuck in the past: investors know that something is brewing.
In 1995, you'd have been hard-pressed to convince anyone that email was anything cooler than a way for scientists to tell each other where to point a giant telescope in Peru.Then came Hotmail and the utility of email became obvious. The same happens with any previously complex technology: the objections die when the technology becomes part of the white noise of commerce, communication or reproduction.
Embedded in banks
So let them howl. Let hem hoot. Let them say you're doing something wrong. None of their objections are real.
This is likely just scratching the surface in uncovering the ghosts hiding in big bank's closets. They may have been deemed to big to fail, but no one is too big to jail!
