Topic: [ANN][XCP] Counterparty - Pioneering Peer-to-Peer Finance - Official Thread - page 241. (Read 1276936 times)

Just to clear up confusion, Counterwallet uses Forex currency pair naming (see http://www.investopedia.com/terms/c/currencypair.asp). The rule system we employ with which currency is the base currency, and which is the quote, is as follows:

* If XCP is either one of the two assets, then XCP is the base currency
* Otherwise, if BTC is either one of the two assets, then BTC is the base currency
* Otherwise, the base currency is the currency whose name comes first, alphabetically

So we do have a system in place, but I can understand how this is still confusing to people (and to be honest, forex currency pair conventions are definitely counter-intuitive...I had the same issue with them as well). To me, it seems that the exact convention used in Bitcoin-space can be inconsistent. You have sites like BTC-e.com, which seem to use this same Forex convention, and then you have sites like Poloniex, which at one point months ago seemed to use the inverse, but now also seem to be on this same forex currency pair system. So, as far as the XCP/BTC type syntax, on second thought I'm not 100% sure where the confusion lies, as it's the same convention many/most of the BTC exchanges use.

However, regarding the buy/sell interface itself, I can understand people's objections, specifically that it's a) not what they're used to with regular BTC exchanges and b) that the interface can be confusing in some regards. As a response to this, I did put together some proposed tweaks to our trading interface that I'm thinking may help make the interface more user friendly (but I could be wrong, or may have missed something). User input is welcome. Please feel free to comment on the github issue here: https://github.com/CounterpartyXCP/counterwallet/issues/238

We are considering adding proof-of-stake voting to Counterparty. At a high level, how we see this working is where an issuer/owner of a given token could create a protocol-level 'referendum' event, which would most likely reference an external URL  (and could include a hash of that URL's content, to ensure consistency). The URL would point to a .json file with the referendum text, the voting end date, etc, as well as the possible choices (similar to how we do today with extended asset and feed info). Holders of the coin, via Counterwallet or similar, would then be able to vote on the referendum, and their vote would count in proportion to the amount of coin they hold out of the total amount created (or, in circulation). As these votes are done on-blockchain, they could then be easily tallied up, and there would be a clear audit trail for verifiability.

I'm thinking this feature would open Counterparty up to all sorts of interesting political applications, as well as faciliate organizational governance for companies that do crowdfunding on the platform.

Thoughts? If we can see enough interest in this feature, we can add it.

I like the general idea but it doesn't solve the problem of having to convert to XCP first. If you had to do BTC -> XCP -> SWARM you've increased difficulty rather than decreased it (although for repeat participants it could be a very significant net benefit). Very much like the idea of programmable escrow regardless.

What do you think of setting up a new type of order using XCP that essentially lets anyone do a "kickstarter" style threshold-or-everyone-is-refunded asset sale order?

" I'm buying x TOKEN for y, but only once amount z is bought at the same time."

Those orders would accumulate and then excute all at once, as soon as the goal is reached. Optionally you could put a date your order expires, which is a personal "end of campaign" threshold for each person.

and it would only be possible with an XCP based instrument, so bitcoin would be out and XCP is suddenly the crowdfunding token because it can be escrowed

That would take all the trust off platforms like swarm and coinpowers, and be one of the first real uses of escrowing on the blockchain, and a damn good use for XCP - Bitcoin is the currency, and XCP is the crowdfunding/cryptofinance platform built on top.

Hello,

I'm trying to sign & broadcast a transaction made with coinsweeper in counterwallet but I got this error message in the signed transaction box :


Any clue of what I'm doing wrong ?

Github I guess

I partially agree with you. I agree on that XCP and BTC are bad units of accounts. I'll also add that Counterparty is a platform where anyone can issue / invent a better currency, e.g. a trustworthy company can issue a counterparty-asset backed by the dollar. Then it's up to the free market (i.e. users of counterparty) to decide on their preferred choice of currency. At the moment XCP and BTC are the least worst, hence chosen by the market.

The problem with "inverse" prices, however, is merely a psychological one. In real life we buy a Snickers bar for price $2 at the supermarket, right? It's equally to correct to say that we sell dollars for price 0.5 Snicker at the supermarket... Next time you enter a store, tell the clerk you have some dollars you want to sell

In the Counterwallet I suggest just that when XCP or BTC are part of a trade, these will be assumed as currency (no change needed in Counterparty itself). There might be some more elegant way of dealing with the problem. E.g. by counting how many different token each token has been traded against. The higher count, the more likely it is to be the "currency". 

I've been trying to learn about Counterparty.

I read https://github.com/CounterpartyXCP/Counterparty and found it seems to be quite a mess.

I don't know enough to fix most of the problems, so submitting a pull request doesn't seem ideal.

Where's a good place to point out the errors I found?

Maybe bad idea, but how if make two different view for different users what can choose from settings? One like now and one where you can see order book what looks like normal exchanges list where you can choose asset and see all next prices and maybe also choose max price what want pay and make then order?

Yes.  Something like a "Pre-BTCPay" to go ahead and send the BTC at the same time that the buy order is placed, when there is a very good probability that it will match an existing sell order.  Maybe this should come with a warning (or only be able to do it when sending BTC directly to asset issuers) but the potential loss of security makes up for a big gain in functionality.  Especially in these early days when we are all sending .01BTC to buy random assets just for the hell of it and to try to get the economy going.

Of course, the flipside is that maybe it *should* be hard to buy assets in BTC in order to drive up XCP usage and value.

Or maybe some sort of BTC-to-XCP-to-Asset purchasing, where assets are required to be natively denominated in XCP but are automatically and indirectly priced in BTC through the DEX, when the buyer wishes to purchase in BTC?  And somebody(ies) with deep pockets and some good exchange bots acts as market maker in the BTC/XCP DEX?

Agreed.

Really great to see all this feedback. Awesome.

YES on confusing

This is horribly confusing. Is there a way to do some sort of fractional notation? ^21.5/_5.0 ^SWARMPRE/_XCP

Absolutely NOT on assuming XCP or BTC is the currency, simply because while Bitcoin and XCP are possibly reasonable stores of value, they are both horrible units of account because of the fixed demand-inelastic supply. What is a reasonable (something)/BTC trade this year is probably going to be a horrible trade next year. If your goal is to confuse new users and encourage them to make bad trades, calling BTC/XCP currency is a great way to do it.

But if you actually want real value growth of the trade economy, it has to be a reference unit of account that has properties more like Hayek money with some better price stability properties.

The statement of what you are buying was very clear, but I would guess that at least 50% of people (the general public, not the type of people on this forum) never even get to that point because it is too confusing.

I totally agree with this post!

This is also a very good idea. We should be able to implement this pretty easily, I think. (Through the 'extended asset info' standard.)

Thanks everyone for the feedback, by the way. It's very helpful. We'll look into inverting the prices, too, in case that could help.

I agree and I feel I may have to switch exchanges due to people saying they can not use the system or know how.  I have had people message me asking me about the system, I have no clue how to use it beyond what I have been showed in a video.

Agree. though in my case I select EUR. I use this option on all wallets where available. I also use mBTC rather than BTC.

Jpja - I have traded stocks for 30 years (the past 5 years online) and also done some crytocurrency trading (via Cryptsy) and I was still totally confused by the way the order book is presented at counterwallet.co due to the inverse way the prices are presented.

I agree with hozer, that showing the value in USD would be a big help. I am not experienced in Bitcoin enough to be able to see a USD value in my head when I see a BTC amount (like .000236 BTC). Those small BTC amounts are almost meaningless to me unless it is something easy like .10 BTC or .50 BTC, and even then the BTC price constantly changes so I just know a ballpark estimate.

I also agree it would be much easier if their was a more automated way for a company to sell an asset to the public, like a Buy Now button. It doesn't need to be as simple as using a credit card, it could just be a counterwallet.co address to send a certain amount of BTC to, or programming that uses an API to automated multiple steps.

Also, unrelated to that, buying the Soybeans (http://www.7el.us/crypto-commodities.html) asset seems very similar to buying a Soybeans future on the commodity exchange. While I am not sure if there are any legal issues in pre-selling a commodity, it would seem that the fact that it is meant to be traded on an "exchange" makes it a security like Soybean futures (listed on the Chicago Board of Trade), and that would be subject to SEC regulation. See info about the SEC crackdown on this at   
https://nxtforum.org/asset-exchange-general/legality-of-assetexchange-offerings/msg35025/#msg35025 . Other than that potential issue, it seems like a great idea.

- Eric