Topic: MasterCoin Buyer/Seller Thread - page 84. (Read 226689 times)

 It was a mistake to have bought so many Mastercoins initially, and it will be quite difficult for you to backtrack effectively

Again, no promises. The board would have to agree, and I'm not sure I can convince them. I'll do my best, because I really think this is best for our investors.

I won't argue that, keep it coming

If that can take you to be full-time to MSC I'm happy with it.

That's a hell of a "pump"

I think perhaps it is time to convert more of our BTC to MSC. I'd rather have MSC in a rainy day fund than BTC anyway. As you say, giving away BTC attacts people more interested in BTC, and I'd rather the foundation hold MSC than BTC.

Here's my crazy proposal:

1) Keep only the 1000 BTC we've already moved into offline wallets
2) Use the remainder of our BTC to purchase MSC over the next few months on the distributed exchange
3) Pay all future bounties exclusively in MSC
4) Keep half of our MSC money for a rainy day and/or future distributed bounty system
5) If our rainy day fund becomes excessive, we can always vote to lower the ratio later

I realize that this would potentially make all of our existing investors absurdly wealthy, but, well, the stated purpose of the Mastercoin Foundation is to serve the holders of Mastercoins, and I'm having a hard time seeing this course of action as anything but a huge positive for them, as long as we do it transparently and over a long enough period of time that nobody who wants to sell to us is left out.

Also, MSC prices would probably go up to the point where I'd sell 1% and quit my job to work on MSC, which I hope would also be in the best interests of our investors.

On Thu, Nov 21, 2013 at 11:13 PM, ----<[email protected]> wrote:

    Hi J.R.,

    I am an investor in Mastercoin, and have been following the Mastercoin
    threads and developments on Bitcointalk closely. The following post,
    by user zbx, on the Buyer/Seller thread expressed a concern that I too
    have:

    "If and only if you think that the price is too high right now, you
    should sell some of your Mastercoins (and undercut our asks). And
    though it would be bad for the price in the short term, it's very bad
    for the MSC economy, in the long term, for one person to hold so many.
    Kill two birds with one stone."

    You never responded to zbx's post, and as a result, I am writing to
    encourage you to start selling your Mastercoins.

    Your current Mastercoin holdings, amounting to 30% of all Mastercoins,
    will harm the Mastercoin project for both pyschological and strictly
    economic reasons. Regarding the latter, the most obvious problem is
    that you control the price of Mastercoin. As long as you hold
    approximately one-third of all Mastercoins, you are distorting the
    supply-and-demand of the latter. Your plan to sell 1% of your total
    holdings when the exchange rate is .7BTC/MSC will not necessarily help
    matters. First of all, 1% is not enough. Second, the price of
    Mastercoin and its value as a financial platform are not necessarily
    correlated. It is possible, for example, that the price will rise to
    .7 during a speculative bubble, and that you will either feed the
    bubble or pop it by adding your Mastercoins to the economy at such a
    point. Even if you perceived the bubble, you couldn't tell the
    community, as you could easily induce a panic and make the crash more
    severe than it would have been otherwise, and you would be forced to
    sell, as you have already made a public statement saying you would do
    so. It is irresponsible to let the *price* of Mastercoin determine
    when and how much you start selling; rather, you must carefully
    consider the total state of the project, and must do so dynamically,
    not once and for all.

    Within Mastercoin, then, you are almost a benevolent dictator, which
    is a precarious position, especially within the Bitcoin community. I
    am worried that you may have lost sight of the precariousness of your
    position because the current tenor on the Mastercoin threads is much
    less skeptical than it was in August. From what I've read on the forum
    threads, it seems that at this stage of Mastercoin's adoption, the
    initial nay-sayers have already decided not to invest, while those who
    are now showing interest in Mastercoin are manifestly less skeptical
    both of your position within the project and the project itself. It is
    important to recgonize that this constituency is unrepresentative of
    the future Mastercoin adopters; we are at a unique point in
    Mastercoin's history. People will continue to take issue with the
    amount of power you have within the Mastercoin community, and that
    just because you and I believe in your trustworthiness, that doesn't
    mean everyone will - nor should they! They are investors, not friends.
    You will have to prove your trustworthiness over and over again. Such
    a state of affairs is unacceptable and moreover unsustainable; your
    power within the Mastercoin cannot constantly hover as a specter
    around the Mastercoin community.

    It will only be a matter of time before investors realize there is no
    reason for you to have so much power over Mastercoin, and I believe
    you will continually be asked, for the good of the project, to lessen
    your stake. This will not only be a request, but a challenge; the
    community will be testing you to see whether you are willing to put
    Mastercoin's needs ahead of your own. The more successful Mastercoin
    is, the more you will be asked to sell many of your Mastercoins. If
    you start selling your Mastercoins before there is general pressure
    from the community to do so, it will be clear that you are willing to
    sacrifice significant personal gains to the success of the project,
    without being pressured to do so. And if you lay out your reasons for
    selling your shares, emphasizing and explaining the positive effect it
    will have on the economy, investors will be reassured of your
    understanding of financial systems.

    You repeatedly say in your forum posts that the biggest threat to
    Mastercoin's success is that someone else will create something
    better. Aside from any technical improvements that can be made upon
    the Mastercoin protocol, the creator of another protocol may own a
    much smaller percentage of the currency than you do, which while
    perhaps in itself is not enough to have people switch from Mastercoin
    to another protocol, will not help. In any case, it seems
    irresponsible not to address such a gratuitous problem.

    It seems to me that you are not only overly concerned about the
    symbolic value of selling or continuing to hold your Mastercoins, but
    fundamentally misinterpret how your holdings look to others. Firstly,
    if you refuse to start selling you Mastercoins, and hurt the project
    thereby, other Mastercoin investors will not thank you for your
    symbolic act of commitment. Secondly, your unwillingness to start
    selling your Mastercoins does not, in my view, betray your commitment
    to the project, but rather makes you seem greedy. At the time that I
    am writing this, the total valuation of Mastercoin is over $70
    million, which makes your holdings worth over $20 million. You have
    recently written that you will sell 1% of your Mastercoin at
    .7BTC/MSC, at which point your holdings will be worth over $90
    million. It may well be asked, who needs so much money for reasons
    other than greed? It is true that what you do with your money is not
    other people's business, but since you have consistently published
    details of your personal life and wealth, the question will arise, and
    will become more and more pressing as the value of Mastercoin
    increases.

    It was a mistake to have bought so many Mastercoins initially, and it
    will be quite difficult for you to backtrack effectively.

    As an investor, I am very anxious to hear your response.

    Thanks,
    ----

I think perhaps it is time to convert more of our BTC to MSC. I'd rather have MSC in a rainy day fund than BTC anyway. As you say, giving away BTC attacts people more interested in BTC, and I'd rather the foundation hold MSC than BTC.

Here's my crazy proposal:

1) Keep only the 1000 BTC we've already moved into offline wallets
2) Use the remainder of our BTC to purchase MSC over the next few months on the distributed exchange
3) Pay all future bounties exclusively in MSC
4) Keep half of our MSC money for a rainy day and/or future distributed bounty system
5) If our rainy day fund becomes excessive, we can always vote to lower the ratio later

I realize that this would potentially make all of our existing investors absurdly wealthy, but, well, the stated purpose of the Mastercoin Foundation is to serve the holders of Mastercoins, and I'm having a hard time seeing this course of action as anything but a huge positive for them, as long as we do it transparently and over a long enough period of time that nobody who wants to sell to us is left out.

Also, MSC prices would probably go up to the point where I'd sell 1% and quit my job to work on MSC, which I hope would also be in the best interests of our investors.