How much extra time do you thing the confirmations take?
Approx 10 minutes on average for each confirmation. The first one will be the most variable but once it's in the blockchain it counts up as the blocks come in. 
Topic: Flexcoin is LIVE to everyone! - page 6. (Read 12928 times)
How much extra time do you thing the confirmations take?
* Requiring 15 confirmations on deposits when six is more than sufficient.
I think that one is nitpicking a little bit. 9 more confirmations is just a little bit of extra security.
It's not a little bit extra security. It's a LOT more extra security. It's the difference between sending an armored car and an army.
* Closing accounts with zero balance after two weeks. There are many scenarios where an account might need to have a zero balance for longer than that. If such a rule is needed at all, it should be at least two years, not two weeks.
* Closing accounts after 18 months of inactivity. There are many scenarios where an account might need to be inactive for longer than that. If such a rule is needed at all, it should be at least ten years, not 18 months.
What??? Well, my accounts are probably gone too. That's a silly policy.
* Requiring 15 confirmations on deposits when six is more than sufficient.
I think that one is nitpicking a little bit. 9 more confirmations is just a little bit of extra security.
I was about to sign up, but I decided not to after reading about the following:
* Requiring 15 confirmations on deposits when six is more than sufficient.
* Closing accounts with zero balance after two weeks. There are many scenarios where an account might need to have a zero balance for longer than that. If such a rule is needed at all, it should be at least two years, not two weeks.
* Closing accounts after 18 months of inactivity. There are many scenarios where an account might need to be inactive for longer than that. If such a rule is needed at all, it should be at least ten years, not 18 months.
* MOST IMPORTANT, a minimum fee of 0.01 BTC to send BTC. This is hardly conducive to micropayments, and indeed, it's the biggest thing that's keeping me from signing up. With such a fee, Flexcoin offers me absolutely nothing I can't do myself.
* Requiring 15 confirmations on deposits when six is more than sufficient.
* Closing accounts with zero balance after two weeks. There are many scenarios where an account might need to have a zero balance for longer than that. If such a rule is needed at all, it should be at least two years, not two weeks.
* Closing accounts after 18 months of inactivity. There are many scenarios where an account might need to be inactive for longer than that. If such a rule is needed at all, it should be at least ten years, not 18 months.
* MOST IMPORTANT, a minimum fee of 0.01 BTC to send BTC. This is hardly conducive to micropayments, and indeed, it's the biggest thing that's keeping me from signing up. With such a fee, Flexcoin offers me absolutely nothing I can't do myself.
"the account is closed after 2 weeks of zero balance"
Oh well, there goes my account. 8^(
Oh well, there goes my account. 8^(
Some Questions from my side - first seven "quick questions", and then the most crucial important question at the end:
1.) Will there be an Android App to link to QR scanner, such that I can pay with flexcoins to an outside BTC-Address (like "bitcoin wallet" Android App)?
2.) I do not like that the account is closed after 2 weeks of zero balance. In that case, my flexcoin name would be gone and I would have to open a new account with another name. Very bad idea I would say. Is there at least a protection mechanism, such that I am not allowed to move my balance below 0.00001 Flexcoins or so?
3.) I do not like that 18 month of inactivity leads to closure of the account and loss of all flexcoins. This looks dubious. 18 month can quickly happen, for example if somebody goes to a journey around the world or Himalaya, or a severe disease. And when he comes back, all Flexcoins are gone. I think this period should be extended to 5 years minimum. Could you imagine to extend this period?
4.) Minimum payment of 0.5% or 0.01 BTCs appears a lot. 0.01 BTC = 0.10 USD is already in the order of magnitude of credit card fees, and 0.5% is 50 cent on 100 EUR, which is a lot, too.
5.) Who guarantees me that the terms and conditions do not change against my favour, once I have deposited some BTC funds into the Flexcoin bank? For example increase of fees or shortening of the idle times before the account is closed, etc.?
6.) Are you planning to issue flexcoin credits in the future?
7.) Are you planning to provide interest payments on flexcoin accounts in the future?
8.) You are calling yourself a "bank". Does this mean you are running a fractional reserve system? The informed reader knows that the main characteristic of a "bank" is that it uses a fractional banking system. This means, every bank possesses less cash than the sum of the money of all its bank accounts. This means, if every customer of a bank tried to withdraw the whole cash at the same time (a so called "bank run"), the bank could not cash it out - it could only cash out about 2 to 10% of it. (It sounds crazy, but it is no secret, you can read about this everywhere on the internet, even at the web sites of the central banks.) How about the "flexcoin bank"? Are you going to establish a fractional reserve system of Bitcoins with your bank, too? Technically, this would be no problem, because it is highly unlikely that every customer would withdraw his BTC funds from the flexcoin bank at the same time, so some "overbooking" would be possible. This is exactly how the fractional reserve banking system started to develop in banking history of our world. But of course, such banking system would not be desireable, because it means inflating the currency, it would not be limited to 21 Million any more, because there would be more flexcoins then Bitcoins in circulation.
So my question is: If the total number of Bitcoins paid into your bank is, say, 1 Million BTCs, will there be exactly 1 Million Flexcoins in existence, or will there be more then 1 Million Flexcoins? I think a big criticism of the current financial currency system is the fractional reserve property, because it can create big problems and eventually does so, sooner or later. So for me it would be absolutely crucial that your bank does NOT implement a fractional banking system, and this would be an absolute Pre-condition before I would use your service, and I guess this is the case for many other informed users, too. So if flexcoin implements a fractional reserve system, Flexcoins are not better than EUROs or USDs in the long term, with all the "diseases" associated to them on the long term.
8.b) If your anwser to quesiton "8.)" is "No, we are NOT going to implement a fractional banking system, there will always be a 1:1 mapping of flexcoins in circulation and Bitcoins deposited in the flexcoin bank", then my question is: How will you prove this to the world? There is a possibility to prove it, as described in the following - will you implement it?
Description: For example, you can assign each user a secrete ID or secret nick name (and the user can change this, if he wants), i.e. a nick name that only this user knows himself. And then, you publish on your website (open to be read by everybody) every day (or every hour or so) an up-to-date-list of secret nick names and associated deposited funds. The sum of these funds then amounts to the total number of flexcoins in circulation at this point in time. And everybody can check this. Since the nick names (or IDs) are secret, the list is anonymous, and nobody has to disclose his funds. To anonymize it even further, it is possible that a user defines several secrete nicknames and distributes his funds over these nicknames as he wishes. Then all these nick names will be listed in the pubic list, such that it would be even harder to track it. And the user could change these nick names at any time. Note that these nicknames are not to be confused with the flexcoin addresses like "coffeeshop"!!
Now, the second part relates to the bitcoins. The Flexicoin bank also would have to publish all Bitcoin addresses (public addresses like "1Msio5Diu3t8jdfg..."), and the associated fund of this address at the time of publishing. This way, every internet user could see for himself (by comparison with data from "blockexplorer") if the amount of funds contained by these BTC-addresses is the same as the sum of all flexcoins, or lower than that. Of course, the flexcoin bank could also list "wrong" Bitcoin addresses in this list, i.e. Bitcoin addresses that they do not actually own. However, this would be dangerous, because if the true owner of this Bitcoin address realizes this, the whole thing would become public and everybody would know that flexcoin uses a fake list to hide the fact that it is actually running a fractional reserve system. In this case, the trust into flexcoin would vanish instantly.
Note that this mechanism I just described is the same as the mechanism that the gold platform BullionVault is using to prove that the gold that their customers have bought is really existing physically in the vaults. What is the gold in that case is the Bitcoins in our case. And what is the list of funds in the BullionVault case is the list of flexcoins in our case here.
9.) If you are NOT implementing a fractional reserve system, my advise to you would be that you should not call yourself a "bank". Because many people associate the fractional reserve system with a bank (which is correct, because actually this is the crucial thing that "banking" is all about). And this is quite the OPPOSITE OF WHAT THE BITCOIN SYSTEM NEEDS.
9.b) If you do implement a fractional reserve system (i.e. number of Flexcoins > number of Bitcoins deposited in your Flexcoin bank), I have no more to say, other than: "Without me!", and I think it will not be successful, because the Bitcoin users are better informed than the average people in our world, and Bitcoins is exactly the OPPOSITE of the idea of fractional banking.
1.) Will there be an Android App to link to QR scanner, such that I can pay with flexcoins to an outside BTC-Address (like "bitcoin wallet" Android App)?
2.) I do not like that the account is closed after 2 weeks of zero balance. In that case, my flexcoin name would be gone and I would have to open a new account with another name. Very bad idea I would say. Is there at least a protection mechanism, such that I am not allowed to move my balance below 0.00001 Flexcoins or so?
3.) I do not like that 18 month of inactivity leads to closure of the account and loss of all flexcoins. This looks dubious. 18 month can quickly happen, for example if somebody goes to a journey around the world or Himalaya, or a severe disease. And when he comes back, all Flexcoins are gone. I think this period should be extended to 5 years minimum. Could you imagine to extend this period?
4.) Minimum payment of 0.5% or 0.01 BTCs appears a lot. 0.01 BTC = 0.10 USD is already in the order of magnitude of credit card fees, and 0.5% is 50 cent on 100 EUR, which is a lot, too.
5.) Who guarantees me that the terms and conditions do not change against my favour, once I have deposited some BTC funds into the Flexcoin bank? For example increase of fees or shortening of the idle times before the account is closed, etc.?
6.) Are you planning to issue flexcoin credits in the future?
7.) Are you planning to provide interest payments on flexcoin accounts in the future?
8.) You are calling yourself a "bank". Does this mean you are running a fractional reserve system? The informed reader knows that the main characteristic of a "bank" is that it uses a fractional banking system. This means, every bank possesses less cash than the sum of the money of all its bank accounts. This means, if every customer of a bank tried to withdraw the whole cash at the same time (a so called "bank run"), the bank could not cash it out - it could only cash out about 2 to 10% of it. (It sounds crazy, but it is no secret, you can read about this everywhere on the internet, even at the web sites of the central banks.) How about the "flexcoin bank"? Are you going to establish a fractional reserve system of Bitcoins with your bank, too? Technically, this would be no problem, because it is highly unlikely that every customer would withdraw his BTC funds from the flexcoin bank at the same time, so some "overbooking" would be possible. This is exactly how the fractional reserve banking system started to develop in banking history of our world. But of course, such banking system would not be desireable, because it means inflating the currency, it would not be limited to 21 Million any more, because there would be more flexcoins then Bitcoins in circulation.
So my question is: If the total number of Bitcoins paid into your bank is, say, 1 Million BTCs, will there be exactly 1 Million Flexcoins in existence, or will there be more then 1 Million Flexcoins? I think a big criticism of the current financial currency system is the fractional reserve property, because it can create big problems and eventually does so, sooner or later. So for me it would be absolutely crucial that your bank does NOT implement a fractional banking system, and this would be an absolute Pre-condition before I would use your service, and I guess this is the case for many other informed users, too. So if flexcoin implements a fractional reserve system, Flexcoins are not better than EUROs or USDs in the long term, with all the "diseases" associated to them on the long term.
8.b) If your anwser to quesiton "8.)" is "No, we are NOT going to implement a fractional banking system, there will always be a 1:1 mapping of flexcoins in circulation and Bitcoins deposited in the flexcoin bank", then my question is: How will you prove this to the world? There is a possibility to prove it, as described in the following - will you implement it?
Description: For example, you can assign each user a secrete ID or secret nick name (and the user can change this, if he wants), i.e. a nick name that only this user knows himself. And then, you publish on your website (open to be read by everybody) every day (or every hour or so) an up-to-date-list of secret nick names and associated deposited funds. The sum of these funds then amounts to the total number of flexcoins in circulation at this point in time. And everybody can check this. Since the nick names (or IDs) are secret, the list is anonymous, and nobody has to disclose his funds. To anonymize it even further, it is possible that a user defines several secrete nicknames and distributes his funds over these nicknames as he wishes. Then all these nick names will be listed in the pubic list, such that it would be even harder to track it. And the user could change these nick names at any time. Note that these nicknames are not to be confused with the flexcoin addresses like "coffeeshop"!!
Now, the second part relates to the bitcoins. The Flexicoin bank also would have to publish all Bitcoin addresses (public addresses like "1Msio5Diu3t8jdfg..."), and the associated fund of this address at the time of publishing. This way, every internet user could see for himself (by comparison with data from "blockexplorer") if the amount of funds contained by these BTC-addresses is the same as the sum of all flexcoins, or lower than that. Of course, the flexcoin bank could also list "wrong" Bitcoin addresses in this list, i.e. Bitcoin addresses that they do not actually own. However, this would be dangerous, because if the true owner of this Bitcoin address realizes this, the whole thing would become public and everybody would know that flexcoin uses a fake list to hide the fact that it is actually running a fractional reserve system. In this case, the trust into flexcoin would vanish instantly.
Note that this mechanism I just described is the same as the mechanism that the gold platform BullionVault is using to prove that the gold that their customers have bought is really existing physically in the vaults. What is the gold in that case is the Bitcoins in our case. And what is the list of funds in the BullionVault case is the list of flexcoins in our case here.
9.) If you are NOT implementing a fractional reserve system, my advise to you would be that you should not call yourself a "bank". Because many people associate the fractional reserve system with a bank (which is correct, because actually this is the crucial thing that "banking" is all about). And this is quite the OPPOSITE OF WHAT THE BITCOIN SYSTEM NEEDS.
9.b) If you do implement a fractional reserve system (i.e. number of Flexcoins > number of Bitcoins deposited in your Flexcoin bank), I have no more to say, other than: "Without me!", and I think it will not be successful, because the Bitcoin users are better informed than the average people in our world, and Bitcoins is exactly the OPPOSITE of the idea of fractional banking.
USDs were never mentioned anywhere. Flexcoin is an easy way to store your bitcoins and to make/receive payments. So yes, it is a sort of e-wallet with added benefits (you can earn some if you keep your bitcoins there)
So this is just an e-wallet, then?
I wholeheartedly agree with this one. I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that this is *highly* frowned upon by *most* legal jurisdictions that I have done business in.
The second we start accepting USD or any national currency I agree.. but we cleared this with legal 1000 times, as long as we stay within the bitcoin realm we're fine.
Oh dear, that implies you will never have a USD in or out. 8^(
Calling oneself a bank should not be done whimsically. I hope you have sought compliance with the laws of your jurisdiction. While there may not be laws specific to Bitcoin, there are almost assuredly laws related to banking practices.
I wholeheartedly agree with this one. I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that this is *highly* frowned upon by *most* legal jurisdictions that I have done business in.
The second we start accepting USD or any national currency I agree.. but we cleared this with legal 1000 times, as long as we stay within the bitcoin realm we're fine.
Oh dear, that implies you will never have a USD in or out. 8^(
Calling oneself a bank should not be done whimsically. I hope you have sought compliance with the laws of your jurisdiction. While there may not be laws specific to Bitcoin, there are almost assuredly laws related to banking practices.
I wholeheartedly agree with this one. I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that this is *highly* frowned upon by *most* legal jurisdictions that I have done business in.
The second we start accepting USD or any national currency I agree.. but we cleared this with legal 1000 times, as long as we stay within the bitcoin realm we're fine.
Oh dear, that implies you will never have a USD in or out. 8^(
Do you comply with Know your Customer? How do you plan to handle issues like eGold and other centralized digital currencies faced with being help accountable for illegal transactions?
Calling oneself a bank should not be done whimsically. I hope you have sought compliance with the laws of your jurisdiction. While there may not be laws specific to Bitcoin, there are almost assuredly laws related to banking practices.
I wholeheartedly agree with this one. I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that this is *highly* frowned upon by *most* legal jurisdictions that I have done business in.
The second we start accepting USD or any national currency I agree.. but we cleared this with legal 1000 times, as long as we stay within the bitcoin realm we're fine.
Calling oneself a bank should not be done whimsically. I hope you have sought compliance with the laws of your jurisdiction. While there may not be laws specific to Bitcoin, there are almost assuredly laws related to banking practices.
I wholeheartedly agree with this one. I know beyond any shadow of a doubt that this is *highly* frowned upon by *most* legal jurisdictions that I have done business in.
Calling oneself a bank should not be done whimsically. I hope you have sought compliance with the laws of your jurisdiction. While there may not be laws specific to Bitcoin, there are almost assuredly laws related to banking practices.
well typing in the register information over and over again because the flexcoin id is already taken is highly annoying
and it will only become worse with time.
even better... give me a quick easy to way to test if the id is taken or not.... or let me register and then pick an id so
i can try many times a minute until i find something neat. i would like to think we are not at the point i have to choose
sun1245 and can still get a generic noun.
and it will only become worse with time.
even better... give me a quick easy to way to test if the id is taken or not.... or let me register and then pick an id so
i can try many times a minute until i find something neat. i would like to think we are not at the point i have to choose
sun1245 and can still get a generic noun.
Understood... that IS on the plate ... I know the problem because during testing / invite process we ran into the same thing... fill out the form... hit submit and it says it's taken already. I suspect that will get done shortly as well considering everyone here at Flexcoin is reading this thread.
Minor: just include a link to the FAQ on the account page. you don't have to add the same html and associated code.
Not Minor: please explain in detail to everyone why this is a safe service and why, specifically, it is not going to rip off my bitcoins like mybitcoin did.
Not Minor: please explain in detail to everyone why this is a safe service and why, specifically, it is not going to rip off my bitcoins like mybitcoin did.
Done -- links are up on the client going to the WWW version of the site (all the documentation is a drop down under FAQ)
The second question is fair considering what happened with mybitcoin, it's also the reason we didn't launch was when the bank was ready to go live... because we knew we had a problem due to their epic failure or theft whatever camp you belong in.
Mybitcoin never had revenue model. They said they "sold advertising" but that never generates income to any large extent and it was never tied into the wealth or fortune of the bitcoin community. This smelled bad from the start, he filed an LLC overseas so no one can touch him. Never was active in the community.
Flexcoin, LLC is backed by Yooter InterActive Marketing, a digital advertising agency that services fortune 500 firms based in the United States Clearly I'm not hiding. The more transactions you guys make, the more revenue we generate, and the higher the payments come back to you (in the form of the 70% discount) and us (our 30% share of the transaction fee). In other words we're tied to you... our incentive is to make it as easy as possible for you to transfer bitcoins in and out, and transfer flexcoin to flexcoin ... because the wider adoption flexcoin has the more revenue we generate. Our goal is to have at least 1% of the bitcoin community using flexcoin to flexcoin transfers because at that point we believe that it would reach critical mass and everyone would use it to save on transaction costs as well as the bigger factor, instant transfers (no next block).
We believe it's the best solution to make bitcoins widespread and adopted. I believe I got it hammered down to allow bitcoins to be used for all, including grandma.
You think we mapped out a whole business model to ruin my name or to change the world?
well typing in the register information over and over again because the flexcoin id is already taken is highly annoying
and it will only become worse with time.
even better... give me a quick easy to way to test if the id is taken or not.... or let me register and then pick an id so
i can try many times a minute until i find something neat. i would like to think we are not at the point i have to choose
sun1245 and can still get a generic noun.
and it will only become worse with time.
even better... give me a quick easy to way to test if the id is taken or not.... or let me register and then pick an id so
i can try many times a minute until i find something neat. i would like to think we are not at the point i have to choose
sun1245 and can still get a generic noun.
Minor : I will have the links put up, programming guys want it as separate as possible from the WWW version of the site but I see your point and I will have that addressed.
FAQ inside "bank" was my quibble earlier. Thank you for adressing it.
" programming guys want it " be very careful here. Programmers are very smart but have a habit of thinking they know much more than they actually do.
I'll bet not one of them has taken as much as one class in Industrial Engineering or User Interface Theory.
If you are going to succeed in the long run most of your users will be average human beings, not programmers. It will be a delicate balance for you to keep both sides mollified. 8^)
Afaik MyBitcoin simply waited for the next block to be found, but it didn't check if the actual transaction was included in the block.
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