Topic: [ANN][NOTE]DNotes - Celebrating DNotes 3rd Birthday - Forum Now Open - page 338. (Read 814544 times)

Correct, correct, and correct. It is very over-sensationalized by the media, and is greatly hindering mass adoption. The numbers do not add up at all. And kanus is right, when they bust a drug deal they do not villianize the cash they used for the transaction. Don't expect ANY good coverage from the media. Aint gonna happen.

Smokey

It is sad. As with anything, people will try to exploit the system. Hope they catch them.

This has been going on for as long as I can remember with fiat currency.  The really sad thing is a new emerging industry is suffering because of this.  I realize the company is to blame as well as the media exaggerating the facts, but greed also seems to be playing havoc with the investors' common sense.

It is like the wild west right now, without protections in place. When you hand over your bitcoin it is like handing over a pile of cash. Except when you hand over a pile of cash no one demonizes the cash...

This is another sick day for the industry.

Here are my prospectives. Many bad things have been done using money by bad actors, including countless ponzi schemes. This happened to be another one "that used the veneer of Bitcoin trading as its lure." That is sad.

What is worst is how the media exploited the situation and greatly exaggerated the amount recklessly to make it sensational. This kind for negative headline and false narrative will affect our ill informed political leaders and regulators to react in very damaging ways in the name of consumer protection.

Our industry's concerned supporters should take serious notice of this and unit to protect the hugely innovative Bitcoin technology that has very positive and significant implications for the betterment of humanity. A united and positive push-back is in order.

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Jon Southurst (@southtopia) | Published on February 9, 2015 at 10:12 GMT NEWS
http://www.coindesk.com/hong-kong-exchange-mycoin-disappears-387m-reports-claim/



Reports are emerging from Hong Kong that local bitcoin exchange MyCoin has shut its doors, taking with it possibly as much as HK$3bn ($386.9m) in investor funds.

If true, the supposed losses are a staggering amount, although this estimate is based on the company's own earlier claims that it served 3,000 clients who had invested HK$1m ($129,000) each.

For perspective, bitcoin's entire market cap today stands at around USD$3bn.

The issue came to light on Friday when about 30 people claiming to be victims of the company's actions petitioned a local member of the Legislative Council, Leung Yiu-chung.

The victims are reportedly due to make a statement to Hong Kong police on Wednesday.

Ponzi scheme suspected

Adding to the mystery are reports the company never operated as a genuine bitcoin business at all. Testimonies from customers describe an operation more like a Ponzi scheme that used the veneer of bitcoin trading as its lure.

One local woman was quoted as saying:

"We were told by those at higher tiers [of the scheme] that we can get our money back if we find more new clients."

Adding to the business' pyramid-like feel were promises of cash prizes or Mercedes-Benz cars if customers could recruit new investors, said a report in Hong Kong's South China Morning Post.

Customers were promised returns of HK$1m in four months, and had been pressured into buying bitcoin-based contracts by real estate agents, insurance agents and law firm clerks. But after slowing down the release of payments, the exchange's office boarded up its doors for "renovations" last month, the report says.

Regulation trigger

The incident could lead to greater regulation of the bitcoin industry in Hong Kong, which has so far operated with little scrutiny. Councilor Leung has said he wants to meet with Hong Kong's Monetary Authority to discuss better protections for bitcoin investors.

It's not the first time Hong Kong bitcoiners have found themselves out of pocket. Chinese trading platform GBL, purportedly based in Hong Kong, also disappeared in November 2013 with $4.1m in customer funds.

At the time of writing, MyCoin's site appeared to be still up and running, although there are clear indications all is not well. It is not possible to create a new account, and the listed bitcoin price is under $2.

Another Hong Kong exchange, KBBEX, has informed Leung that it is willing to provide assistance to help those affected, in order to regain trust in bitcoin and perhaps perform technical analysis if required.

Some posts in public forums appeared to confuse MyCoin with Maicoin, a reputable Taiwan-based bitcoin services company that is still functioning and healthy.

A Maicoin spokesperson said there had not been a material impact on the company's business, but an end to the confusion generated by the similar names would be welcome.

Yes. It is quite amazing. Although we focus in offering limited selections to be most efficient, we have well over 10,000 unique varieties, all located in a 38 acre farm in Coldwater, Michigan. We created a few thousand high quality new hybrids in one year. At least 500 of them are worthy of registration and introduction. May not mean much to the layperson but a very big deal to daylily hybridizers. That is another amazing winning strategy by itself. Very few hybridizers have been able to accomplish that in a life time. If I can free up some time this summer, I am planning on taking a lot of observation notes and registar 100 new daylilies with AHS next winter. It's a lot of fun work. Any one who loves flowers should learn more about daylilies. They are the best investment for any garden.

Wow, I would love to work in the field again with plants, etc. as I do miss those days!!! Nothing beats a hard days work in the field and the pride and sense of accomplishment that goes with it. And in your case having such beauty to look at. Amazing!

That must have been intended to be a birthday surprise. Thank you, Smokey.

For the records, the one way trip normally took 3.5 hours depending on traffic and weather conditions. Many trips did take over five hours and a few as many as 7 hours because of extensive road construction and accident. Everything else is accurate.

I have remained very healthy after that heart incident which happened at the hospital out patient section when I was going through a stress test with MRI. I completed the test successfully but knew that something was wrong almost immediately. Within minutes, a team of Doctors, using balloon angioplasty was able to open up two clogged arteries; 1 was 100% clogged and the 2nd was 95% clogged. I still have regular check ups as well as stress test every year or two but never had any problem since. As it turned the daylily farm has been good for my health. A twelve hour day in the field for seven years was a normal day.

We made six acquisitions the first six years and grew Smokeys Gardens to be one of the largest daylily growers in the world. The business was started in May 2007 with $500 and a commitment to be best in class. The starting strategies were very simple. Run it like a business. Be the best in everything. Develop and take full advantage of the economy of scale. Go the extra mile and do things others won’t do, so that one day you can do things others can’t do. Try calling in an order at midnight, the owner’s wife will pick up the phone and happily take your order and answer any questions. Smokeys Gardens today can harvest and plant more daylilies in one day than most of its competitors could in the entire season.

DNotes is a bigger challenge, but a lot of the principles are the same. I am not going to say that it is going to be easy or that we will get rich quick. What I do know is that we are on the right track and that we will prevail. It is not where we are today but where we are going from here that matters. Nothing started out as a giant; it grew to become a giant. It is true with Walmart, Apple, Amazon, McDonald and all other giants. DNotes will be a giant. Don’t sell it short.

I will make one last "light, fluffy" post today, Dyna's birthday, then back to serious work! Dyna, DNotes and my wife and I have spent the last 7 years building Smokeys Gardens to be "Best in Class". In those seven years, we have had many, many obstacles thrown in our path:

Dyna had heart surgury (was back in the gardens in about 3 weeks I think, can't keep a good man down)

I had Esophageal Cancer (Stage T3,N1,M0, with a 7% survival rate) Looks like I will be part of the 7%, as the 5 year anniversary date is March 1 of 2015, meaning on that date, I am officially cured of cancer!! WOO FREAKIN HOO!! (if you are in remission for 5 years, you are considered cured, but I knew I was gonna be fine from the start)

We had one of our "divisions" almost totally wiped out within a year because of a huge dropoff in the Recreational Vehicle industry (We were installing huge Outdoor Woodburning Furnace Systems for companies that had to heat huge buildings and landfilled LOTS of wood scrap, and our "sweet spot was 2 counties over, Elkhart County, where over half the RV's in America are made). In fact, Obama gave an important speech there in 2008, cause it was the county in America with the highest Unemployment Rate at the time.

Our "core business" was a retail fireplace store that was suffering from a huge loss of income because of the recession. We went from 1.7 million in sales to under a million in a few short years.

The 20,000 sq. ft. building in a prime location I had purchased in 2004 became worth half of what it was over a few short years.

I suffered huge losses on rental properties I owned, due, among other things, to the recession, loss of nearly half the value of the homes, and the fact that tax laws were changed, lowering homeowner's taxes, and drasticly raising commercial property taxes.

Despite all these obstacles, we were able to make Smokeys Gardens "Best in Class". How do we know that we are best in class? In some ways, by visiting our compitition, and seeing for ourselves how we stacked up against them. We have devoloped the most efficient way of harvesting and planting in the industry. When we started, it would take a couple of young, strapping boys a half a day or more to dig 500 clumps of flowers. We developed a machine on a tractor that one person can now dig the same amount of flowers in about 15 minutes. Hand planting took HUGE quantities of labor. We converted a 50 year old vegetable planter to have it plant daylilys, and now a 3 man planting crew can plant 2000 to 3000 plants PER HOUR! When we started, we needed 6 people full time to rinse the dirt off the flowers before shipping. (daylilies are shipped "bare-root", no state-to-state shipment of dirt allowed). We found a vegetable washer made by a company in Canada that we converted to washing daylilies, now we have a person "washing" about 3 or 4 hours a day, instead of 6 full time. There are also some solid, factual ways we know we are best in class also. It only took us about 4 years to have the highest traffic of all our competitors on our internet sites. We offer more varieties than anyone, especially newer, much more valuable varieties. We have perfected our methods, so that we can ship a daylily fan to your door for under 25 cents, on average. On the higher-value daylilies, Dyna did not let me machine harvest or machine plant them until we could prove that the sucess rate would be at least 95% or greater. We reached that point, and now, it does not matter if you pay 50 cents a fan for a Stella de Oro, or 100 bucks (yes $100.00) for a double-fan of a daylily called "Easter Egg", it still costs us less than a quarter a fan to deliver it to your door, because all the daylilies are planted and harvested using the same efficient methods, no matter if it sold for 50 cents or a hundred bucks. Last fall we finished a two year project, moving all our flowers about 30 miles to a 40 acre farm we obtained. Grueling two years.

So, now that we are convinced we are Best in Class, how did we become "Best in Class"? Simple: By doing things others CAN'T or WON'T do. We put in the hours. We did the hard work. Our strategy was disscussed over and over, and constantly revised. Dyna commuted weekly from West Chicago, IL, to Ashley, IN for almost ten years, a five hour drive. He would spend 4 to six days a week in Ashley, staying at our home. Some weeks he would leave, go home and do his "chores at home" and head back the next day. Believe it or not, Dyna does all the cooking in his house (his first business in the USA was a VERY sucessful Chinese Restaurant, he is the best cook I have ever seen (sorry Mom!) but that is for another story). So Dyna would go home, kiss the wife, water his very impressive gardens, cook all his wife's meals for the next week, and head back to Ashley. We discussed strategy every nite till midnight. EVERY NIGHT! I learned more from him than I learned in 25 years of being in business before meeting him. I think we were brothers in a different life. Strange freindship, we are so alike, yet so vastly different on so many levels. Dyna was raised on the other side of the world. He was "rich and famous", hobnobbing with "the elite", I was raised on a farm in Indiana, and do not even own a good suit that fits me. I would not know which damn fork to use for what course during a fancy meal. Dyna was VERY humble, very quiet. I was loud and obnoxious. Dyna did not cuss very often, and spoke very eloquently. I cussed like a drunken sailor, and used all kinds of slang. We both had humble beginnings, but had taken divergent paths since then. Dyna went to college, and got an MBA, and kicked the world's ass. I graduated from high school and was ready to take on the world. No college for this chump. Dyna was meeting Bill Gates, Steve Ballmer, and Micheal Dell. I was running a fireplace store, laying bricks building fireplaces. We do have much in common, though. We both have an inner drive to succeed. We both have unquestioned work ethic. We both genuinely want to help others, espcially others who try their best and get shortchanged, and folks who don't even get a chance to succeed. We both have very supportive, very close families. We both have a dogged tenacity. We don't quit when the going gets rough. We help each other flesh out fresh ideas. It really did all boil down into one thing: We did things others would not, or coud not do (mostly would not). Simple as that.

We are using the exact same strategy for DNotes. By doing things others will not or can not do. Again, very simple stuff.

Interesting Story:

Since I have been picking on Dyna a little today, I will tell a story that is one of his favorites. (this is a story at MY expense). When we started the flower biz, it was out of necessity. This was right after the Hydronic Biz (wood furnaces) collasped. We were looking to "branch out" to utilize our workforce, and fully utilize our 20,000 sq. ft. building. Dyna came to me with this crazy idea of selling daylilies online. I thought he had lost his mind. I was a bricklayer, a builder, and a master of the service industry. Daylilies? I did not even know what the hell a daylily was. I thought it was just the weeds growing along the road. We called them "outhouse lilies", or "ditchlilies". I did not know there were 60,000 varieties. I did not know they were gorgeous. I did not know they were the number one selling perennial in the US (#1 in volume, in dollars they are #2, behind hosta). He had been a gardener for years, and had an impressive garden at his home. He finally won me over with this example:

OK, Smokey.....see that woodstove in the crate setting on the shelf? Yup. What will be there in a year if you dont sell it? A woodstove, I said. He said, OK, what if somehow you left if there and did not disturb it, and a year later there were THREE woodstoves (or more) setting there you could sell? I said it would be a VERY profitable biz. He said: BINGO....that is the dayily biz. In this biz, you buy product once, multiply it and sell it for as long as the public still wants it!
So, we were in the daylily business. Now comes the funny part. The first summer, we were planting flowers. (hand planting then). Dyna came over to see how we were doing. He looked at what I was planting, and started laughing out loud. Not just a chuckle, not just a laugh or two. A huge, drawn out belly laugh. What the hell, I thought. Here I was, hot as hell, on my knees, dirt up to my elbows, and he was laughing at me. I WAS PLANTING WEEDS, NOT FLOWERS!!! I knew what corn was, I knew what beans were, but apparently, I could not tell a weed from a daylily!!! Made his day, he still loves that story!

OK, Dyna's birthday is over, time for me to get back to work.......

Smokey

Thanks, CrytoBroker79. I am honored to be of help. I don't get involved unless I am very passionate about it. DNotes is now getting all my attention. It is very important to me that we all can work well together, learn from each other and appreciative of the contribution of everyone. When we can stay the course and do the right things our mission will always prevail. That is the true power of the unity of force from a great community. I am privileged to be a part of history in the making. You guys are great.

Happy birthday Dyna, thanks for everything you do for us DNotes holders.

Thanks, Marc. It has been a great day.

Edited.

Excellent editing. I just sent a revised copy to our PR team. Thanks.

DYNA, Happy Birthday my friend! I can only wish and hope that it was a great one as you definitely deserve it!!

From CryptoMoms Forum:

Quote from: Ashley on February 07, 2015, 03:12:48 PM

Good news for Italy!


"ITALY’S CENTRAL BANK WELCOMES BITCOIN TO THE BOOT"   -  https://www.cryptocoinsnews.com/italys-central-bank-welcomes-bitcoin-boot/

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Quote from Shepherd:

“Suppliers of functional activities with the use, exchange and storage of virtual currencies and their conversion to/in legal currencies are not, as such, addressed money laundering legislation and therefore are not required to comply with the due diligence requirements.”

It is good news. At least they are heading in the right directions.

Bitcoin as a currency technology is far superior to any fiat currency. Coupled with the capabilities of the Blockchain, positive implications can literally be life changing for the better. People have done a lot of bad things with money, i.e. fiat currencies. Rejecting a technology as superior as digital currency, because bad characters can use it to conduct illegal activities, is most unfortunate and a setback to humanity.

"He led a startup company in 1989 to prominence by teaming up with two major partners to win two for two mega government contracts."
 
Winning two for two major government contracts was not a lucky draw but simply the result of a “winning strategy”. Better yet, it was a combination of executing multiple winning strategies.

The competitive forces of personal computers became ferocious very quickly. Thousands of newcomers around the world who knew where to source computer parts started their own business claiming to be “the finest computer manufacturer with the latest technologies selling their PC at the best price”. Does this sound familiar in the cryptocurrency world today?

I quickly realized then that to survive, Dauphin Technology needed to differentiate. It had to take a different path and not just be a “me too”. We decided to go after two major government contracts that included a large number of portable computers. I started doing a great deal of research on government contracts, which I knew nothing about going in. I was told every time by experts in that field that Dauphin would not stand a chance for obvious reasons, which I easily agreed. The company was young with zero experience in Federal Government contracts, did not have the right products and did not have the money to fund such a large contract.

Soon I started to wonder what if I would do something others won’t do. The end result could lead me to do things others can’t do. Doing things others won’t or can’t do is one of DNotes’ winning strategies.

"
The strategy of designing a number of portable computers that meet 100% of the specifications in accordance with the contract certainly paid off nicely. Riding on the momentum to advance the new start-up further, Yong went head on to compete with Apple Newton and others with the smallest handheld computer of its time, named DTR. It quickly became a media sensation which drew the attention of IBM top management leading to the signing of a manufacturing partnership."

So?? One doesn't need to be good at everything. He just needs to be smart enough to know what he doesn't know; humble enough to recognize the one who knows, and perhaps, joining force to make it a “winning strategy.”

Stay tuned for a true story in business.

Just figured since it was your birthday, I would tell a few stories that made an impact on me. (And mebbe embarrass you too!) We were not "poor", but damn close to it. Us kids just never knew it. Your family was VERY poor, but look what hard work and tenacity will do for you. You taught me this: He who does things that others cannot or will not, will win the race. Dont matter if it is a business, or a family, same thing applies. There are plenty more stories for the book that DEMANDS to be written. A book needs written about how the three of us were brought together, (Dyna, me and DNotes) mostly by fate, and by what we have accoplished. But the story is not finished just yet.

Interesting Fact:
Dyna is a genius in several areas, but comes up a little short in other areas. While commuting from Chicago to Ashley a few years back, he said his car would not go over 30 miles per hour! I started questioning him about the car, and asked him when it was tuned up last. He said what? I said, ya, change the plugs, rotor cap, ect? He said: Ya mean I need to tune it up? The car had over 200K miles on it, had oil changed regularly, but NEVER tuned up!!!! The guy does not even know which way to turn a nut to take it off.......I was driving trucks for dad and was so small dad had to put blocks on all the pedals!! Dyna was riding Water Buffalo when I was driving trucks and tractors!

Smokey

Lol. I just about fell out of my chair laughing.

Hey! Are you planning a tell all? If you don't hold back some, you may not sell a single copy, lol.