This is a transcript from the conversation:
------------------------------------
cryptoisdafuture - Today at 3:28 PM
Hi guys, I have been following your coin for a while and had a questions, both regarding your code base and your business model. Is this a good time?
terry - Today at 3:28 PM
hey thanks for looking at our work. we're always happy to answer questions
cryptoisdafuture - Today at 3:29 PM
Great. My first question was what sets you apart from other insurance offerings on the blockchain such as InsureX?
terry - Today at 3:29 PM
great question. first of all, I think it['s important to note that we're not insurance. we're not offering any services in that space and we're not having customers sign insurance contracts.
We're really concerned about how millions of people have to pay huge out of pocket expenses, even when they already pay so much in premiums and that's true in almost every sector - auto, home, life ,health etc. we're trying to fill a certain niche and there are not many other offerings like us
and we're not in this to gouge you like regular insurers, our plan is to give you the principle of your policy back after one year if certain conditions are met. you don't get that with traditional insurance
cryptoisdafuture - Today at 3:32 PM
wow that full refund idea is wonderful. Do you intend to operate just in US, or other countries as well?
terry - Today at 3:33 PM
personally, I'm most comfortable with US jurisdiction, but we have a diverse team from Asia, Australia and Central America and the community in MENA / East Asia seems to be enthusiastic about this working there too. healthcare is much less of an issue in countries with socialized medicine but there are still auto mandates in a lot of places
if there are any issues supporting many different places, we can always make adjustments to our smart contracts but yeah initially we're aiming to cover as much as possible
cryptoisdafuture - Today at 3:36 PM
Right, I have some friends abroad as well who complain about out-of-pocket costs of auto insurance. However what do you think about legal challenges? Insurance and healthcare in general is such a regulated area and cryptocurrencies continue to have changing regulations by SEC. How do you plan to stay on the right side of law?
terry - Today at 3:36 PM
another great question, and a difficult one we get asked a lot. we've spent a lot of time ensuring we're on the right side of law and the SEC. we wrote up a terms and conditions you can see on our github and we link to on the website. Let me find it
https://github.com/umbrellacoin/umc/blob/master/documents/umc-terms.pdfBasically, US and HK residents can't participate in the crowdsale, we're not insurance and we're not here to promise if you help fund us that you will see any monetary gain
that's what a Ponzi scheme would do; we're trying to fill a legitimate customer need and we think blockchain is the best way to address the issue due to the efficiency of smart contracts and the security they provide so we're not going be a security
After the crowdsale, US customers are free to use our service, just not as an investment; you need to suffer real damages to have a chance at using our service - at best you should break even as far as insurance regulations go. we think we'll face licensing challenges from the insurance lobby, but the decentralized nature offers us time to build a customer base who actually love the service we provide. we go to this example a lot, but Uber and AirBnB would have been considered illegal because of licensing requirements when they started
but regulators weren't ready to deal with apps in 2008 and they were playing catch up so by the time they did catch up, there was a real user base and real demand for their services - regulators worked with them to coexist with taxi companies and ensure customer safety, driver background checks etc.
we'll be compliant with HIPAA for information privacy to begin with, but if regulators ask us to do more in the fture we can enable our contracts to do the same
cryptoisdafuture - Today at 3:44 PM
Wow, that was a lot of explanation to my simple question. I will check the link for sure. Thanks a lot for going through the pain to type all that out :smiley:
terry - Today at 3:45 PM
no problem. we've debated this a lot amongst the development team and it's questions like this which help us ensure high standards of customer service
do you have any other questions?
cryptoisdafuture - Today at 3:46 PM
Yeah, I did. It was on your code. So I am a software developer by profession, and I was going through your Github. I really like how you’ve created a separation of concerns in your frontend, server, blockchain and smartchain logic. Even though I have developed an idea myself, I just want to make sure I am on the same page so- how are you making sure you’re reducing the amount of gas (Ether) spent on verifying transactions?
terry - Today at 3:47 PM
great technical question - we don't get many of those from potential users but we are thrilled to answer this. we were founded on a passion of creating software
basically, we're trying to move as much of the code which executes smart contracts to the server as we can. we want to keep the critical business logic on the blockchain
for example, when you file a claim, the results from the vote will be processed on the server and based on the next action we will continue executing on the server
only when we know what the actual change will be (refund, claim state or some other core business logic) will we make a call to our contracts
you can see some examples in claims.sol or contribution.sol
cryptoisdafuture - Today at 3:50 PM
great. yeah, I went through some of those files and I will go through it again, might even tweak with your code if I find time. It sounds efficient. I see the blockchain integration code is not there yet. Is that something in the work yet?
terry - Today at 3:51 PM
we're focusing more on verifying the crowdsale and token contracts for now and standalone development of business logic contracts. we want to make sure the sale runs smoothly
but we also have the server piece being developed separately, mostly using mock data.
when we iron out more of the contracts to the point where all of the base cases are functional, we will start integrating smart contract calls with our javascript application
you can try our prototype at
http://staging.umbrellacoin.meteorapp.com/in the whitepaper and on the website, we gave an estimated date of launch around October-November of this year I think we're well on track for that
cryptoisdafuture - Today at 3:53 PM
sounds excellent.
I will play around with the prototype, thanks. I tried it once a week back or so, but will see any if there are more developments. Thanks a lot for answering my questions, I feel much more confident to use your services after this discussion and I hope other people also see the utility of this. If it's fine with you, can I share this discussion on the original BitcoinTalk thread
terry - Today at 3:54 PM
yeah sure, that's fine. we always appreciate the community getting involved and votes of confidence from our potential users. we want to make this product great and we want to make it work for the people using it. we love any feedback or further questions you might have
if not, have a great day
cryptoisdafuture - Today at 3:56 PM
Thanks again