Sorry I haven't posted in a while... I have been pretty busy and going through some personal issues, so I haven't had much time to work on this. Let me bring you guys up to speed and tell you the full story thus far in one post. As always, I am brutally honest on these forums and I will continue that trend in this post. Sorry for the wall of text... I am good at making those!
My inspiration for the project: I do not own any physical cryptocoins and never have, although I always thought they were a really neat idea (good job Casascius!) However, I have come to the conclusion that they are all extremely overpriced. I think they are charging a large mark up.
Either that, or their manufacturers are really ripping them off and they did not shop around... I think this is unlikely. So, I aim to bring much cheaper physical cryptocoins to market that will satisfy the need for cheaper coins. Physical cryptocoins are a great way to spread the word about cryptocoins. My hope is that by making them cheaper, people will be more willing to give them to friends and family and introduce new people to cryptocoins!
Current status of the project: I have received the coins and holograms and I am working on finishing the website to facilitate orders. As soon as the website is done, you will be able to place orders for immediate shipping. I expect this to be done either this week or next week. Please bear with me, I do not have money for a web developer so I am doing it myself in what little free time I have available and it may take longer than stated here.
Design changes: I have decided NOT to sell pre-loaded (funded) coins unlike most other physical cryptocoin companies. I simply do not have the time and also do not want the legal liability. It has recently been shown that physical cryptocoin are not as tamper evident as we all thought (Google Defcon Casascius.) It seems pointless to me sell funded coins because there is no way to tell if someone has tampered with the hologram (or very little evidence.) Along with this, I feel I simply do not have the time to assemble hundreds of coins. I am pretty busy and have several things going on at once. Therefore, all coins will come unfunded and with two holograms, so the customer will assemble them themselves. Each coin comes with two holograms, because it can be easy to disrupt the tamper evident properties of the hologram when placing it on the coin. Transfer tape is a necessity to remove the hologram from its wax paper and putting it onto the coin without disrupting the tamper evident properties. Again, using your finger, finger nail, or anything other than transfer tape to place the hologram will make the tamper evident properties noticeable after hologram placement. I had a friend (shout out to msm595) port the Casascius Bitcoin Utility to Litecoin (thanks again Casascius!) This is what customers are recommended to use to print coin inserts. It is a very straightforward process, and will be explained in detail on our website. The program will be open sourced, so the code can be reviewed by the community to make sure that there are no security issues or back doors in the program.
Bad news: The quality of the holograms is not what I was expecting. At certain angles, they look brilliant. However, at certain angles you can hardly see the hologram design. However, the quality is not what people are used to seeing from other physical cryptocoins. Another reason why my first coins are not as nice to currently available physical cryptocoins is that I did not have enough money to make coins out of more quality materials and by more quality manufacturing techniques. If these coins sell well, I promise to spend more money in the future when making my products and searching for the best quality possible. I am confident in my ability to make higher quality coins for MUCH cheaper than the competitors. Unfortunately, if these cheaper coins do not sell well, I will have already wasted more money than I am comfortable with, and will not be making higher quality coins. I hate to leave it open ended like that, but it is what it is. I am not rich and cannot afford to blow thousands of dollars.
Good news: People have been asking me forever... "What is the price?" Well, today I can finally answer that, since I now have the final numbers of the manufacturing costs. As stated before the point of this project was to make an affordable physical cryptocoin. I have done just that, my coins will retail for $1.49 USD!!! This includes a coin and two holograms. Coins will be assembled by the customer, so no need to trust me.
Pictures: And finally, I apologize for the low res camera photos. But, they serve their purpose to illustrate everything I have talked about in this post and to see what the coins and holograms look like from multiple angles. Again... the holograms look great from some angles, but not so great from other angles. I'll let you be the judge, please tell me your honest opinion. (Please excuse the mess up on the last two images.. I accidentally enabled both cameras and part of my face/hair is in the last two pictures... just noticed that when typing this. Oh well....
http://imgur.com/a/MGjCX