First of all, I want to state explicitly that I have no affiliation with buymastercoin.com (as might be guessed from critical comments of Mastercoin's development, which would not be in the interest of someone looking to pump up the price).
I'd like to start by saying that there are many of those selling Mastercoins on mcoin.io, the orderbook, and other third party sites for 0.3-10 BTC/MSC. Infact the average asking price is well above what we sell our Mastercoins. JR who holds ~30% of the coins has publicly stated he will not sell for less than 1 BTC/MSC, and if someone offered him that he wouldn't think twice to sell. Nobody is calling these people scammers.
The idea that the orderbook denotes a "market price" is very misleading, especially with 90% being outdated orders.
That is extremely misleading. The question is not what the average price in the orderbook is, but what the going-rate for Mastercoins is at the time someone is interested in buying.
I'd like to add that we have always fulfilled every single order we received and have responded to every single email. We attempt our best to acquire Mastercoins for our customers at a low price point but unfortunately there are barely any sellers. The orderbook is highly outdated, and it is impossible that every order that we receive we would go to the forum hoping to find someone who is online and willing to sell. Our stated goal is to provide a SAFE, EASY, and CONVENIENT way for customers to purchase small and medium amounts of Mastercoins, and we are proud of achieving this goal.
This. buymastercoin just does what most people here are probably trying to do: buy low and sell high. Granted, given the opaqueness of the Mastercoin market and the fact that their website looks very official (and has a very official sounding name), they have been able to do this with much greater success than the average Mastercoin speculator. As far as I can tell, the only thing they've lied about on their website is regarding what you can do with Mastercoins; right now you can't do anything with them that they advertise. But no one is criticizing that.
Also, buymastercoin performs a distinct service for sellers: they contact sellers directly, and buy in bulk at prices competitive with the market-rate. Often, there is not enough sell pressure to sell in bulk without greatly disrupting the market.
It is worth stating if people are really so disgusted with buymastercoin, they don't have to sell them their MSCs. MSC is a small enough community to where this may have some real effect, and force buymastercoin to lower its prices. This all seems rather similar to people's moral outrage over the unfair wages laborers in China get, and yet still happily shopping at WalMart or Target (the analogy doesn't break down because of those two stores low prices; if buymastercoin has to lower its prices, it will).
Without us there would be no way for certain people to get Mastercoins since not everyone speaks english, has a bitcointalk account and trusts a google doc orderbook. We have processed more orders and volume than all other sellers combined. We teach people how to send and receive Mastercoins.
+1.
Basically, buymastercoin is a very normal operation, and I am not quite sure what people want from them: do they expect buymastercoin to advertise the GoogleDocs orderbook on their homepage? Or to state explicitly that they are charging well above market price? Or to admit they are scammers? Or to say they're sorry? I am surprised that they even give a disclaimer, saying that their prices may not match market prices.
Th most germane criticism of buymastercoin is that their strategy is extremely short-sighted and will most likely hurt both themselves and Mastercoin: Right now, there are very few people interested in Mastercoin, and the current market-price is well below what it will be if Mastercoin makes good on what it promises; indeed, I would argue that the price on buymastercoin.com is also quite low, when considered from this point of view. Therefore, if/when Mastercoin's proposed features get developed and more people are interested, there will be higher demand and hence higher price, and as buymastercoin has already managed to find itself a bad reputation in the community, they will most likely miss out on the real, future profits. Before we cross that adoption barrier, however, Mastercoin adoption will probably be hurt by such a major seller having such a huge mark-up; it will probably make those who calls Mastercoin a "scam" shout even louder.
If somebody wants to undercut buymastercoin, they can register the domain name "buymastercoinsforcheap" or something, offer the same services, and start raising awareness of buymastercoin's 'unfair' prices. But certainly complaining about them on a bitcointalk thread - where *much lower* prices are advertised - is not really getting to the root of the problem.
You don't get to tout free market economies and get mad when someone takes advantage of them...
My critic is aimed both at buymastercoin and the mastercoin fondation for promoting that shit. Still they didn't give any official statements although the question has been in this thread for some time now. It seems like the executive director is involved in this ripoff in some way. If someone wants to buy 5 MTC for 0.419 I'm happy to get rid of them. buymastercoin them self is buying for 0.15.
That's great DarkEmi, let me know if I might help you in any way.
