Okay, how about detailing your plans for the coin for the short term and long term ?
You said you'd like to work on the coin full time. Are you a developer or a marketer?
What's your formal education?
Do you have a grasp on the technical issues with crypots?
Do you have a marketing team? Development team?
You mentioned a Montreal meet-up, when is it happening, maybe I can come by?
I understand that right now you have the Quebec angle, X11 and DGW, but what else?
Is that enough to survive in the jungle of cryptos?
Lets say that all people in Quebec adopt QBC, like you said that's only 8 million people. On a global scale, that's not too high.
Of course you can realistically count on 1% adoption, since only very few people know about cryptos.
I am not trying to be negative, just realistic.
Really only a few coins managed to make an impression beyond the crypo community.
(Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin are the 3 famous ones, there are other innovative ones like Darkcoin - first X11 and DGW, Primecoin - first useful work other than useless hashing, Peercoin - POS and no hard limit, Namecoin - for obvious reasons)
However, the general public has not heard about cryptos.
I have heard the comparisons of cryptos to internet circa mid-90's but im not sure i see the parallels, to replace fiat currency it will take more than a generation IMHO.
In my opinion for a coin to survive it must have a lot of services and sufficient marketing.
Block explorer is a must. Merchant tools are a big plus.
I know you will attract miners for two reasons:
1) X11 - GPU miners moving over from scrypt
2) speculators - they always jump on new coins since the difficulty is low.
But it is not guaranteed that they will stay for the long term.
In summary im looking for what sets QBC apart from any other coin to help it with long term survival.
Ok second try at this answer, hopefully I won't delete it again like a fool.
The shortest short term is finishing this IPO successfully and moving on to the mining phase. There will be password protected zips available a bit before launch and the first 72 blocks have no block reward to let miners set up their gear and DGW kick in correctly. An android wallet is a top priority since it's an essential tool to make QBC mobile (iOS wallet can be expected only if apple opens their walled garden). Short term promotion will be done through small scale giveaways to the entire community and specific giveaways targeted at the local (Québec) demographic who are the most eager to try out QBC. These are the people who will explain it to their friends and the people who will be the first to accept it as payment for their small businesses. You have to target the right people, the innovators, because those are the people you have to count on for getting the word out. You mention that we can realistically count on 1% adoption, and that's exactly why there is a delayed airdrop procedure. It seems that most people in crypto lately are focusing on the short term since a new coin is born and dies every day. That's not the right way to do any crypto, let alone a nation coin. You've got to build it from the ground up. Take a look at this graph which a lot of people are familiar with.
You can't just airdrop all your coins and expect people to get it and adopt it right away. It has to be done in stages. Crossing the 'chasm' on the graph is done by targeting the right people to ensure a connection between innovators and early adopters. Spain/Greece/Whatever coins (apart from being moneygrabs and scams) have NO chance of working. They are basically using a crypto-shotgun and blasting the crowds with unwanted coins (and those are countries with populations in the tens of millions). Basically the other 99% of people haven't even had a chance to hear about the Nation-coin and here they are just giving them away. QBC is a sniper, you target a few people to start with and move on and change your strategy as adoption increases. There are a total of 5 airdrops for QBC, spaced out by block reward halvings. A similar number to the variety of people in the graph above. A lot of people have been saying the distribution is too far away, but that's a short sighted way of seeing it. If we presume for the sake of our example that bitcoin is here for the next 50 years, it's the gold standard and allows all other altcoins to live (in this example). Then 10 years down the line when the laggards on the graph get their share of QBC, everyone else will already be using it and they can ask anyone how it works. This type of project has to be planned for the long term, no matter what the current state of cryptocurrencies may be.
I'm going to be both developer and marketer for QBC, the team at the moment is 2 people and that includes a partner/friend who takes care of graphical design and marketing part time. My formal education is actually in finance but my programming experience is in C++ and python mostly. I'm currently learning all the ins and outs of crypto to make sure that I'm able to respond to any other problem that may arise. I had a conversation through PM with "Brunic" who is also from Québec, where I noted that I'm no team of coblee&warren, the litecoin devs. I'll be able to make sure everything runs smoothly and that we stay up to date, but I won't be creating any new features by myself (for the moment).
QBC has X11 and DGW, and what else? As far as the tech specs go, we will have whatever is needed to be up to date in the crypto world. The important thing is that it works as a currency for Québec, not that we create amazing new features, because initially X11 and DGW are there to attract miners and people who care about crypto. What will make sure we survive? Read on below.
The mining distribution for Québecoin has been carefully crafted. I'll reitirate from a previous post. QBC generates 14976 coins per day. Vertcoin for example does about 2x that at 28800 and a badly planned nation coin like SpainCoin generates about 5x times more ! 72000 coins a day! Vertcoin is a popular coin and even though it has a higher total coin cap, in times of low demand the higher production rate means the price will be less stable. And for SpainCoin it simply means the coins you buy today are worth less tomorrow since the market is getting flooded with a big supply every day. QBC is designed to be valuable and distributed in a manner that allows it to keep value. Take a look at this comparison graph I posted earlier (SPA in yellow, VTC in green and QBC in blue)
The IPO for Québecoin is also precisely calculated. The IPO coins represent almost exactly 14 days of mining (576 blocks per day x 26 QBC / block x 14 days = 209 664 (compared to 210 000 for the IPO). Which is also exactly 1% of the premined coins. This creates a well balanced equilibrium between miners and IPO investors. The amount of the IPO premine is small enough that the market can absorb it but big enough that investors are happy. And the mining rate means that there can be growth without being hindered by an abundance of coins. DarkGravityWave means that there won't be one person who ends up with most of the coins. A delayed airdrop ensures that the market is safer for investors and miners because there aren't any free coins watering down the market while at the same time not wasting coins on people who don't even know why they should use it and what it is.
But far more importantly we have an actual plan. It's not filled with fake promises that we made up to get your attention. I actually thought it through the best I could while asking myself, how is it really going to unfold? I absolutely love the concept of nation-coins and I have no idea whether any of them are actually legit! (Auroracoin could be an exception). So when I thought about Québecoin I had to ask myself what it would take to actually make it happen. What does it take to create an alternative to the currency in place with a cryptocurrency? The answer is a natural growth following adoption in cycles.
WALL OF TEXT ABOVE : QBC is the only realistic nation coin currently on the market. I've actually taken the time to consider what it would take to really make this happen. Every part of the chain has been factored into crafting Québecoin. Technical specs, realistic promotion and goals, delayed airdrops separated into adoption cycles, carefully crafted mining distribution to ensure a steady but slow flow of coins into the market. Whether you're a Québecer, an investor, a miner or a speculator, some part of Québecoin has been built while thinking about each of these people.
Will Québecoin be a success, there's no way to know right now but we've planned for the future.
Our biggest challenge right now? (I was going to quote a post some guy made but he deleted it apparently) Basically it's the fact that nation coins have been given a terrible reputation by a big gang of greedy scammers who are making every possible nation coin while making it a shitcoin too. That means that if someone sees Québecoin, they come in here and yell 'scam and pump and dump' without actually taking the time to read and give us a chance. The people who actually did read through my posts and the questions I've answered are actually thinking about giving a nation coin a second look.
Maybe I've repeated myself in some place but that's it. Every part of the plan will be refined as we move forward.