The value of GoldCoin is always equal to the Value of Backing / Number of GoldCoins.
Presumably someone wants GoldCoins so they have to 'buy them' and if they are bought from the Network the purchase price goes into the backing / escrow fund and this builds up the supply.
So all GoldCoins are bought at todays price, then the price of Gold doubles relative to Master Coin and the backing is now only 50%.
You then posit that people will continue to trade these coins at near face value because, eventually, demand for GoldCoins would push the price above market value despite only having 50% backing. Assuming Gold is in a bull market, the backing behind the GoldCoins would continue to fall toward 0 even if the Escrow fund never had to intervene.
There is only one way to resupply the fund and increase its backing, and that is for new money to enter and pay above market price for GoldCoins which would allow the fund to 'issue' at the new price. Unfortunately, this would mean someone paying full price for a GoldCoin and converting that into a 51% backed asset.
If everyone wanted to convert their GoldCoin back into MasterCoin then the result would reveal the fractional reserves for what they are and everyone would get $0.51 on the dollar.
Because all information is public the 'smart money' would start to sell as the reserves shrank. This would put downward price pressure, which would then cause the fund to start consuming the reserves it does have to payout those who want to redeem at face value. Sure, you have daily withdraw limits and employ other tactics used by banks to prevent runs. Unfortunately, you have no way to raise capital while the price is below market and everyone knows it. It then becomes a game of musical chairs where everyone races to the exits.
The only way to manage this system is to have a way to bring in more capital when the price moves against the escrow account. Unfortunately, no rational individual throws good money after bad which means that absent a legal means of collecting a debt, the Escrow fund must start out with a multiple of its initial value. Thus $200 in Master coins to create $100 worth of GoldCoin. This would allow the escrow agent to safely control the price as long as it traded in a safe range. Of course, the original source of these funds would have to come from someone and it wouldn't be people buying GoldCoin because they will only pay $100. It has to come from people shorting GoldCoin.... and because they are short, their funds are held in escrow until they buy it back and take their profit or loss. And *tada* you now have BitShares.
Conclusion, your escrow funds are undercapitalized and will always result in a bank run / bank holiday / daily withdraw limits until there are no funds left. If you properly capitalize them someone has to take extra risk... 'be short' and provide the capital in case the price of GoldCoin rises against MasterCoin. The only time you are 'over capitalized' is when MasterCoin appreciates after issuance of GoldCoin so to the extent that MasterCoin could grow in value faster than everything else your system would work, otherwise it is SOL.
As soon as you have two human actors (short and long) you no longer require an oracle, aggression factors, withdraw limits, or arbitrary time delays.
Once you have fixed your collateral / escrow system you are now at a point where the difference between BitShares and Master Coin is only in the transport layer. You want to use the bitcoin chain and I am creating an alt-chain network. As a result you will have an order of magnitude higher transaction costs and lower throughput. This will dramatically impact your market.
Topic: MasterCoin: New Protocol Layer Starting From “The Exodus Address” - page 158. (Read 448489 times)
August 02, 2013, 06:59:35 PM
August 02, 2013, 06:25:52 PM
I'm about to go offline for the weekend, so please don't expect any answers from me before Monday.
First, I'll clear up this misunderstanding:
What you say would be 100% correct if the escrow fund was run by a human being, but it is not. Its behavior is built into the protocol. The software everyone runs determines what the escrow fund does, and anybody running software with different rules for the escrow fund behavior would create a hard fork in MasterCoin (that is, their version would not be accepted by the rest of the network). It would be just like if somebody tweaked the bitcoin code to have different rules.
See you guys Monday!
First, I'll clear up this misunderstanding:
Lets look at all parties self motivated actions.
The escrow agent has every opportunity to scam the people who hold GoldCoin. Assume this agent is in a foreign country where their actions are not 'illegal' because they couldn't operate legally in the US without being regulated as the issuer of a digital currency. This means there is no legal recourse if the escrow agent scams you if you can even detect that it was the agent doing the scamming.
Now I would start out entirely legit to earn some trust and establish a market. Then once the market 'expects' me to intervene to bid the price up if it falls to low, I would start trading GoldCoin for real Gold as fast as I could without triggering a panic sell. If I did my job right, the confidence game would cause other players to speculatively keep the price pegged until I had converted as much GoldCoin to Gold as possible. I would use my escrow power to prop up the price as I kept selling. At the end of the day the escrow fund would be depleted in an attempt to keep the price propped up against my own selling.
Of course, no one would know that I was both the escrow agent and the 'attacker' and I would walk away with a ton of free money.
Here is the major problem: the system depends upon some party trading 'something for nothing' or 'nothing for something' and this violates what I would consider to be an economic 'law' similar to the law of conservation of energy... all trades must be 'equal value for value' where the result of the trade is that both parties feel they have gained value. If you want to design an alt-coin you must have a proper grasp of certain economic 'rules' that must not be validated:
1) Prices cannot be calculated, averaged, added, or otherwise manipulated by math operations.
2) All transactions must represent an exchange of about equal value (in the opinion of those making the trade, before the trade each party values the other item more than the item they have in their own value system)
3) There is no such thing as a 'unit of value' only relative values between all goods that are different for every individual and time.
4) Arbitrary numbers, ratios, and constants must be avoided at all times. Reliance upon any such 'number' is usually a sign of price fixing which the market will find ways of bending some place else.
These rules can be applied to every system that is proposed and will reliably identify the problem areas. Violating them is like ignoring gravity and aerodynamics while inventing an airplane.
The escrow agent has every opportunity to scam the people who hold GoldCoin. Assume this agent is in a foreign country where their actions are not 'illegal' because they couldn't operate legally in the US without being regulated as the issuer of a digital currency. This means there is no legal recourse if the escrow agent scams you if you can even detect that it was the agent doing the scamming.
Now I would start out entirely legit to earn some trust and establish a market. Then once the market 'expects' me to intervene to bid the price up if it falls to low, I would start trading GoldCoin for real Gold as fast as I could without triggering a panic sell. If I did my job right, the confidence game would cause other players to speculatively keep the price pegged until I had converted as much GoldCoin to Gold as possible. I would use my escrow power to prop up the price as I kept selling. At the end of the day the escrow fund would be depleted in an attempt to keep the price propped up against my own selling.
Of course, no one would know that I was both the escrow agent and the 'attacker' and I would walk away with a ton of free money.
Here is the major problem: the system depends upon some party trading 'something for nothing' or 'nothing for something' and this violates what I would consider to be an economic 'law' similar to the law of conservation of energy... all trades must be 'equal value for value' where the result of the trade is that both parties feel they have gained value. If you want to design an alt-coin you must have a proper grasp of certain economic 'rules' that must not be validated:
1) Prices cannot be calculated, averaged, added, or otherwise manipulated by math operations.
2) All transactions must represent an exchange of about equal value (in the opinion of those making the trade, before the trade each party values the other item more than the item they have in their own value system)
3) There is no such thing as a 'unit of value' only relative values between all goods that are different for every individual and time.
4) Arbitrary numbers, ratios, and constants must be avoided at all times. Reliance upon any such 'number' is usually a sign of price fixing which the market will find ways of bending some place else.
These rules can be applied to every system that is proposed and will reliably identify the problem areas. Violating them is like ignoring gravity and aerodynamics while inventing an airplane.
What you say would be 100% correct if the escrow fund was run by a human being, but it is not. Its behavior is built into the protocol. The software everyone runs determines what the escrow fund does, and anybody running software with different rules for the escrow fund behavior would create a hard fork in MasterCoin (that is, their version would not be accepted by the rest of the network). It would be just like if somebody tweaked the bitcoin code to have different rules.
See you guys Monday!
August 02, 2013, 01:55:17 PM
Lets look at all parties self motivated actions.
The escrow agent has every opportunity to scam the people who hold GoldCoin. Assume this agent is in a foreign country where their actions are not 'illegal' because they couldn't operate legally in the US without being regulated as the issuer of a digital currency. This means there is no legal recourse if the escrow agent scams you if you can even detect that it was the agent doing the scamming.
Now I would start out entirely legit to earn some trust and establish a market. Then once the market 'expects' me to intervene to bid the price up if it falls to low, I would start trading GoldCoin for real Gold as fast as I could without triggering a panic sell. If I did my job right, the confidence game would cause other players to speculatively keep the price pegged until I had converted as much GoldCoin to Gold as possible. I would use my escrow power to prop up the price as I kept selling. At the end of the day the escrow fund would be depleted in an attempt to keep the price propped up against my own selling.
Of course, no one would know that I was both the escrow agent and the 'attacker' and I would walk away with a ton of free money.
Here is the major problem: the system depends upon some party trading 'something for nothing' or 'nothing for something' and this violates what I would consider to be an economic 'law' similar to the law of conservation of energy... all trades must be 'equal value for value' where the result of the trade is that both parties feel they have gained value. If you want to design an alt-coin you must have a proper grasp of certain economic 'rules' that must not be validated:
1) Prices cannot be calculated, averaged, added, or otherwise manipulated by math operations.
2) All transactions must represent an exchange of about equal value (in the opinion of those making the trade, before the trade each party values the other item more than the item they have in their own value system)
3) There is no such thing as a 'unit of value' only relative values between all goods that are different for every individual and time.
4) Arbitrary numbers, ratios, and constants must be avoided at all times. Reliance upon any such 'number' is usually a sign of price fixing which the market will find ways of bending some place else.
These rules can be applied to every system that is proposed and will reliably identify the problem areas. Violating them is like ignoring gravity and aerodynamics while inventing an airplane.
The escrow agent has every opportunity to scam the people who hold GoldCoin. Assume this agent is in a foreign country where their actions are not 'illegal' because they couldn't operate legally in the US without being regulated as the issuer of a digital currency. This means there is no legal recourse if the escrow agent scams you if you can even detect that it was the agent doing the scamming.
Now I would start out entirely legit to earn some trust and establish a market. Then once the market 'expects' me to intervene to bid the price up if it falls to low, I would start trading GoldCoin for real Gold as fast as I could without triggering a panic sell. If I did my job right, the confidence game would cause other players to speculatively keep the price pegged until I had converted as much GoldCoin to Gold as possible. I would use my escrow power to prop up the price as I kept selling. At the end of the day the escrow fund would be depleted in an attempt to keep the price propped up against my own selling.
Of course, no one would know that I was both the escrow agent and the 'attacker' and I would walk away with a ton of free money.
Here is the major problem: the system depends upon some party trading 'something for nothing' or 'nothing for something' and this violates what I would consider to be an economic 'law' similar to the law of conservation of energy... all trades must be 'equal value for value' where the result of the trade is that both parties feel they have gained value. If you want to design an alt-coin you must have a proper grasp of certain economic 'rules' that must not be validated:
1) Prices cannot be calculated, averaged, added, or otherwise manipulated by math operations.
2) All transactions must represent an exchange of about equal value (in the opinion of those making the trade, before the trade each party values the other item more than the item they have in their own value system)
3) There is no such thing as a 'unit of value' only relative values between all goods that are different for every individual and time.
4) Arbitrary numbers, ratios, and constants must be avoided at all times. Reliance upon any such 'number' is usually a sign of price fixing which the market will find ways of bending some place else.
These rules can be applied to every system that is proposed and will reliably identify the problem areas. Violating them is like ignoring gravity and aerodynamics while inventing an airplane.
August 02, 2013, 01:23:30 PM
I don't believe this is true. A government (or any other entity) cannot maintain a peg indefinitely unless they have a indefinite amount of resources with which to do it (and no, money printing doesn't count 
).
). Panamá and Hong Kong have their currencies pegged to the USD for decades now, don't they?
AFAIK, all cases of failed pegged currencies were in situations where the money issuers also attempted to use money creation to manipulate interest rates (or any other price). As long as it only creates and destroy currency with the goal of keeping a parity price with a foreign currency, I fail to see what's the great danger.
August 02, 2013, 01:20:15 PM
When Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn described TCP/IP in their whitepaper published in 1974, they didn't follow up with requests for compensation. That is how a protocol works, it is submitted, reviewed and then vetted by professional peers - and either taken up into projects and worked into hardware/software, or abandoned if it is found wanting.
The fact that this protocol release is imitating an early 2000's tech-bubble IPO is extremely worrying, and I have grave doubts about the entire undertaking, even if your ultimate aim is to "improve bitcoin". You don't want to "compete" with bitcoin, but you'll gladly craft a system that takes "Tragedy of the Commons" to new heights of exploitation.
The blockchain isn't your personal hard drive to stuff with whatever you wish, it is a payment system and a global currency. There seems to be quite a lot of greed-driven behavior in bitcoin, and I'm sorry to say that this effort is no different.
Release the protocol and behave like the noble founders of the internet did, or get money signs in your eyes and behave like the monied interests that most people despise. It's your choice.
The fact that this protocol release is imitating an early 2000's tech-bubble IPO is extremely worrying, and I have grave doubts about the entire undertaking, even if your ultimate aim is to "improve bitcoin". You don't want to "compete" with bitcoin, but you'll gladly craft a system that takes "Tragedy of the Commons" to new heights of exploitation.
The blockchain isn't your personal hard drive to stuff with whatever you wish, it is a payment system and a global currency. There seems to be quite a lot of greed-driven behavior in bitcoin, and I'm sorry to say that this effort is no different.
Release the protocol and behave like the noble founders of the internet did, or get money signs in your eyes and behave like the monied interests that most people despise. It's your choice.
All very valid concerns. I think this idea is worth a (well executed) shot. Let's address *every* possible technical issue to a logical end in your theory this month before you undertake writing the source
I think I would prefer if these coins are destroyed via making 1exodus a blackhole by destroying every copy of the key, and for a separate fund to be created to support development, or vice versa. You can even send the coins back to the sending address if it turns out there's a flaw, and start over. Anyways, would this be more fair? why or why not. because if you spend bitcoins from 1exodus, the coins will get recirculated into the bitcoin ecosystem. i don't think this is good for establishing the value of MSC. Consider the fact that we have not had the luxury of two years' obsession poring over these ideas when answering our questions and concerns. The important thing is that we discuss these things through to a logical end.
But, all in all, this idea is too good to just let it not happen. We must make it happen.
I think I would prefer if these coins are destroyed via making 1exodus a blackhole by destroying every copy of the key, and for a separate fund to be created to support development, or vice versa. You can even send the coins back to the sending address if it turns out there's a flaw, and start over. Anyways, would this be more fair? why or why not. because if you spend bitcoins from 1exodus, the coins will get recirculated into the bitcoin ecosystem. i don't think this is good for establishing the value of MSC. Consider the fact that we have not had the luxury of two years' obsession poring over these ideas when answering our questions and concerns. The important thing is that we discuss these things through to a logical end.
But, all in all, this idea is too good to just let it not happen. We must make it happen.
If you already answered this, my apologies, though I'd appreciate a link to where you did or perhaps more clarification. I just want root reasoning for why this method and not anything else
The questions for whether or how much I should be compensated for this are interesting. I'm very happy and comfortable in my current job, and wouldn't be dabbling in stuff like this if there wasn't a way to make significant money doing it. If someone wants to launch a similar project with more egalitarian ideals, that's fine with me. Maybe the market will prefer that, and you will be successful, and I will lose out.
However, it should be clear by now that I have a lot of motivation to see this succeed. I have a huge vested interest in making MasterCoins valuable now. Idealistic projects can be abandoned as quickly as they are picked up, if there is no financial penalty for doing so.
So there will be no apologies about this - let me be perfectly clear: my goal is to make MasterCoins valuable, for myself, my children, and everyone who decides to come with me. If you want to come with me, that's awesome. If you don't like capitalism and you want to start your own thing, that is awesome too.
I plan to be extremely pragmatic about this. If one idea isn't working, we'll try something else. The goal will always be an increase in the value of MasterCoins.
With that, I really need to get some other stuff done. Sorry guys.
August 02, 2013, 01:10:24 PM
All very valid concerns. I think this idea is worth a (well executed) shot. Let's address *every* possible technical issue to a logical end in your theory this month before you undertake writing the source
I think I would prefer if these coins are destroyed via making 1exodus a blackhole by destroying every copy of the key, and for a separate fund to be created to support development, or vice versa. You can even send the coins back to the sending address if it turns out there's a flaw, and start over. Anyways, would this be more fair? why or why not. because if you spend bitcoins from 1exodus, the coins will get recirculated into the bitcoin ecosystem. i don't think this is good for establishing the value of MSC. Consider the fact that we have not had the luxury of two years' obsession poring over these ideas when answering our questions and concerns. The important thing is that we discuss these things through to a logical end.
But, all in all, this idea is too good to just let it not happen. We must make it happen.
I think I would prefer if these coins are destroyed via making 1exodus a blackhole by destroying every copy of the key, and for a separate fund to be created to support development, or vice versa. You can even send the coins back to the sending address if it turns out there's a flaw, and start over. Anyways, would this be more fair? why or why not. because if you spend bitcoins from 1exodus, the coins will get recirculated into the bitcoin ecosystem. i don't think this is good for establishing the value of MSC. Consider the fact that we have not had the luxury of two years' obsession poring over these ideas when answering our questions and concerns. The important thing is that we discuss these things through to a logical end.
But, all in all, this idea is too good to just let it not happen. We must make it happen.
If you already answered this, my apologies, though I'd appreciate a link to where you did or perhaps more clarification. I just want root reasoning for why this method and not anything else
August 02, 2013, 01:09:44 PM
When Vint Cerf and Bob Kahn described TCP/IP in their whitepaper published in 1974, they didn't follow up with requests for compensation. That is how a protocol works, it is submitted, reviewed and then vetted by professional peers - and either taken up into projects and worked into hardware/software, or abandoned if it is found wanting.
The fact that this protocol release is imitating an early 2000's tech-bubble IPO is extremely worrying, and I have grave doubts about the entire undertaking, even if your ultimate aim is to "improve bitcoin". You don't want to "compete" with bitcoin, but you'll gladly craft a system that takes "Tragedy of the Commons" to new heights of exploitation.
The blockchain isn't your personal hard drive to stuff with whatever you wish, it is a payment system and a global currency. There seems to be quite a lot of greed-driven behavior in bitcoin, and I'm sorry to say that this effort is no different.
Release the protocol and behave like the noble founders of the internet did, or get money signs in your eyes and behave like the monied interests that most people despise. It's your choice.
The fact that this protocol release is imitating an early 2000's tech-bubble IPO is extremely worrying, and I have grave doubts about the entire undertaking, even if your ultimate aim is to "improve bitcoin". You don't want to "compete" with bitcoin, but you'll gladly craft a system that takes "Tragedy of the Commons" to new heights of exploitation.
The blockchain isn't your personal hard drive to stuff with whatever you wish, it is a payment system and a global currency. There seems to be quite a lot of greed-driven behavior in bitcoin, and I'm sorry to say that this effort is no different.
Release the protocol and behave like the noble founders of the internet did, or get money signs in your eyes and behave like the monied interests that most people despise. It's your choice.
August 02, 2013, 12:27:55 PM
Hi Erik!
I think it is worth taking a minute to define how a speculative attack on a pegged currency works. A government can actually peg their currency indefinitely just fine, and not worry about speculative attacks. The problem comes when they ALSO try to set interest rates (i.e. control the money supply to juice their economy).
In a free market, this creates an arbitrage opportunity which means one of the government's goals (interest rate control or price stability) will always collapse eventually. This is called the "impossible trinity". I would suggest anybody worried about speculative attacks on my escrow fund read this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_trinity
I don't believe this is true. A government (or any other entity) cannot maintain a peg indefinitely unless they have a indefinite amount of resources with which to do it (and no, money printing doesn't count
). If the entity is ALSO trying to control interest rates, that might make the peg even harder to maintain (or maybe easier in some cases) but in any case the peg will be broken, regardless of the interest rate environment.The Impossible Trinity is indeed impossible. But so is maintaining a peg indefinitely without unlimited resources. Note that a peg CAN be maintained for a long time, years even, but eventually it'll be broken once a group of aggressive, deep-pocket speculators get organized against it. The difficult of doing such a speculative attack on small crypto-currency assets is trivial.
I suggested that it would be possible to crash a pegged escrow-backed currency by creating one which RISES 10% a day forever. (In fact, I intend to create a few such currencies, just to watch them die, and learn from them.) An escrow-backed currency can handle massive volatility just fine. It only corrects very long-term deviations from the target.
Here's what you're missing... the speculators will take whatever assets exist on this system, and start buying (or selling) them in one direction over and over and over until the escrow system dies. In other words, they will take the asset and cause it to become one which rises 10% (or more) per day forever (or one which falls in a similar way).
This is why the peg will break. Speculators will buy (or sell) the asset in perpetuity because they know the escrow agent will run out of funds trying to fight them. A sustainable peg is an aberration of a market... and will be severed.
I agree that such an attack is possible, but disagree that it would be profitable. The attacker could crash the currency, but would lose a tremendous amount of money doing so. Without exploiting the competing goal of maintaining a fixed interest rate, there is no profit motive for crashing a currency in this way.
Now could a government do this out of sheer spite? Yes, I suppose they could. That would be very interesting, but it is a different problem.
The failure scenario I consider most likely is the "many years" scenario, when nobody wants MasterCoins or anything based on them anymore because something better came along. That's when I expect the currencies to fall apart.
(Yes, I was going to leave this thread alone, but hey, it's Erik Voorhees)
August 02, 2013, 12:23:03 PM
Hi Erik!
I think it is worth taking a minute to define how a speculative attack on a pegged currency works. A government can actually peg their currency indefinitely just fine, and not worry about speculative attacks. The problem comes when they ALSO try to set interest rates (i.e. control the money supply to juice their economy).
In a free market, this creates an arbitrage opportunity which means one of the government's goals (interest rate control or price stability) will always collapse eventually. This is called the "impossible trinity". I would suggest anybody worried about speculative attacks on my escrow fund read this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_trinity
I don't believe this is true. A government (or any other entity) cannot maintain a peg indefinitely unless they have a indefinite amount of resources with which to do it (and no, money printing doesn't count
). If the entity is ALSO trying to control interest rates, that might make the peg even harder to maintain (or maybe easier in some cases) but in any case the peg will be broken, regardless of the interest rate environment.The Impossible Trinity is indeed impossible. But so is maintaining a peg indefinitely without unlimited resources. Note that a peg CAN be maintained for a long time, years even, but eventually it'll be broken once a group of aggressive, deep-pocket speculators get organized against it. The difficult of doing such a speculative attack on small crypto-currency assets is trivial.
I suggested that it would be possible to crash a pegged escrow-backed currency by creating one which RISES 10% a day forever. (In fact, I intend to create a few such currencies, just to watch them die, and learn from them.) An escrow-backed currency can handle massive volatility just fine. It only corrects very long-term deviations from the target.
Here's what you're missing... the speculators will take whatever assets exist on this system, and start buying (or selling) them in one direction over and over and over until the escrow system dies. In other words, they will take the asset and cause it to become one which rises 10% (or more) per day forever (or one which falls in a similar way).
This is why the peg will break. Speculators will buy (or sell) the asset in perpetuity because they know the escrow agent will run out of funds trying to fight them. A sustainable peg is an aberration of a market... and will be severed.
August 02, 2013, 12:17:22 PM
I put my project milestones at post #2 in this thread. They are currently as follows:
And with that, I need to leave this thread be for awhile. Thanks everyone for taking such an interest in my project!
Project Milestones, in rough order of implementation:
Again, please remember that these features will probably come a lot slower than you want them!
- Create simple greasemonkey script to run on blockchain.info and tell people how many MasterCoins they purchased (including the 10%/week earlybird bonus)
- Start the "MasterCoin Adviser" software project with code to implement "Simple Send" for test MasterCoins, then regular MasterCoins
- Do a small MasterCoin giveaway thread using the above "simple-send" software
- Update MasterCoin Adviser to scan the block chain and track MasterCoin transfers (probably steal heavily from Armory)
- Update MasterCoin Adviser to create and track "Savings Wallet" logic (Test MasterCoins first, then MasterCoins)
- Update MasterCoin Adviser to create and track currency sales between MasterCoin and other currencies on the block chain(Test MasterCoins first, then MasterCoins)
- Update MasterCoin Adviser to create and track "Data Stream creation and display" logic (Test MasterCoins first, then MasterCoins)
- Update MasterCoin Adviser to create and track "Distributed Betting" logic (Test MasterCoins first, then MasterCoins)
- Update MasterCoin Adviser to create and track "User-Defined Currency" logic (Test MasterCoins first, then MasterCoins)
Again, please remember that these features will probably come a lot slower than you want them!
And with that, I need to leave this thread be for awhile. Thanks everyone for taking such an interest in my project!
August 02, 2013, 11:56:18 AM
SOMEBODY BOUGHT 420BTC WORTH OF MASTERCOINS!!
Ahem, "420?". Seems like Mastercoin will be used for drugs initially.
Looked like it came from a Nigerian IP too!!!
August 02, 2013, 11:50:46 AM
You are correct that markets factor in eventual price recovery an people will bid speculatively. To some extent BitShares relies upon this behavior to reduce losses during periods of high volatility resulting in a momentary sub 100% reserve as shorts blow through their margin.
So it seems like you are more wed to the idea of embedding messages in the block chain than to the particular currency details. So each of your transactions caries a cost equal to several bitcoin minimum trx fees + min dust output.
The value of the master coins or GoldCoin depends upon someone accepting them in trade or being able to convert GoldCoin into Bitcoin so they can covert to USD. From what I can tell your system allows people to post messages, but is unable to enforce any transfers of value.
Anyway... wish you the best but I am not going to invest any more time into this thread.
So it seems like you are more wed to the idea of embedding messages in the block chain than to the particular currency details. So each of your transactions caries a cost equal to several bitcoin minimum trx fees + min dust output.
The value of the master coins or GoldCoin depends upon someone accepting them in trade or being able to convert GoldCoin into Bitcoin so they can covert to USD. From what I can tell your system allows people to post messages, but is unable to enforce any transfers of value.
Anyway... wish you the best but I am not going to invest any more time into this thread.
I really appreciate your taking the time to post in my thread. I'll just add a final note that value transfers are enforced by everyone running the same protocol. For instance, if I post a message sending money to somebody else, everybody's code will recognize them as owning that money. Nobody is going to accept that money from me if I try to spend it again in the future.
Thanks, and good luck!
August 02, 2013, 11:47:05 AM
I keep seeing questions about why I need "so much money" to do this. I don't. I'm proceeding with this project regardless of how much money I raise, albeit very slowly.
The question of why I need "so much money" to quit my job is an entirely different question, and has to do with my personal budget, my wife's desire for stability, children in private school, mortgages, and so on. For a long, long time I hoped somebody "cheaper" would give this a shot, but I got tired of waiting.
Also, I keep seeing the claim that I need $1M to quit my job, which I have never said. I don't actually know the number - it depends on what I can sell to my wife, who has a desire for stability and security to an extent that many of you would consider unreasonable.
The question of why I need "so much money" to quit my job is an entirely different question, and has to do with my personal budget, my wife's desire for stability, children in private school, mortgages, and so on. For a long, long time I hoped somebody "cheaper" would give this a shot, but I got tired of waiting.
Also, I keep seeing the claim that I need $1M to quit my job, which I have never said. I don't actually know the number - it depends on what I can sell to my wife, who has a desire for stability and security to an extent that many of you would consider unreasonable.
August 02, 2013, 11:39:38 AM
You are correct that markets factor in eventual price recovery an people will bid speculatively. To some extent BitShares relies upon this behavior to reduce losses during periods of high volatility resulting in a momentary sub 100% reserve as shorts blow through their margin.
So it seems like you are more wed to the idea of embedding messages in the block chain than to the particular currency details. So each of your transactions caries a cost equal to several bitcoin minimum trx fees + min dust output.
The value of the master coins or GoldCoin depends upon someone accepting them in trade or being able to convert GoldCoin into Bitcoin so they can covert to USD. From what I can tell your system allows people to post messages, but is unable to enforce any transfers of value.
Anyway... wish you the best but I am not going to invest any more time into this thread.
So it seems like you are more wed to the idea of embedding messages in the block chain than to the particular currency details. So each of your transactions caries a cost equal to several bitcoin minimum trx fees + min dust output.
The value of the master coins or GoldCoin depends upon someone accepting them in trade or being able to convert GoldCoin into Bitcoin so they can covert to USD. From what I can tell your system allows people to post messages, but is unable to enforce any transfers of value.
Anyway... wish you the best but I am not going to invest any more time into this thread.
August 02, 2013, 11:37:45 AM
You are being way too public with how much BTC you own, in my humble opinion.
Even before the above statement you gave out plenty of information.
Are you ok with the entire world knowing exactly how much money (or crypto-money) you have?
Even before the above statement you gave out plenty of information.
Are you ok with the entire world knowing exactly how much money (or crypto-money) you have?
I'm not ok with it, but I think that being transparent will help my credibility.
August 02, 2013, 11:35:48 AM
I agree and can understand the thinking also (I rushed to get CIYAM Open online well before I was really ready although I didn't ask for any investment).
Hopefully he will take his time and work out a more considered path forward (am still interested somewhat in the concept although I don't really like the idea of creating "dust" tx's that can never be spent).
I realize this may seem rushed to you guys, but my first revision of this idea was published Jan 6th, 2012. I've been percolating on it for over 2 years and getting feedback for over 1.5 years, so it doesn't seem rushed to me at all - it seems positively glacial
August 02, 2013, 11:33:32 AM
Well, yes... You'll need it to run on servers you can trust. Otherwise server can make it look like you received a payment when you didn't.
Going further, I really don't see why you would want to bloat Bitcoin blockchain with data... Basically, you just need to timestamp messages, and there is much less wasteful way to do it.
E.g. you can put all these data-transactions into a Merkle tree and timestamp only root of that Merkle tree. Or you can use a merged-mined alt-chain.
Let's summarize You use Bitcoin for two things: secure timestamp via proof-of-work, and storage of data. Storage of data is expensive.
Thus you can drastically reduce costs if you store data elsewhere.
My protocol actually has a pretty small data footprint per transaction, but if it is successful, I imagine it will be wildly successful, and the number of transactions will look SatoshiDice look tiny in comparison.
August 02, 2013, 11:26:54 AM
Very interesting stuff. I love seeing the brilliance among this community. However, I sit in the camp that says the escrow agents aren't going to work.
Whenever someone says the word "peg" in relation to monies or commodities or assets of any kind, huge red flags should go up. We have seen often in discussion regarding Bitcoin, people have suggested, "well why not just peg it to gold, or to dollars, or some other other stable asset to eliminate the volatility?" (Max Keiser suggested such a thing a couple months ago...
) The reason is that you cannot peg one asset to another in an open market. The peg will be broken.
The reason is what some of the others here have described - it will become the target of a speculative attack. And the attacker has a nearly guaranteed chance of winning if he has enough money to throw at it. In the real world, we have seen such speculative attacks on government currencies including the Thai Baht and UK pound (that's how Soros got famous). If private actors can break the pegs of government currencies, it can be reasonably inferred that breaking a crypto-asset peg with a market cap of only several million dollars would be trivial.
An escrow fund cannot be expected to keep an exchange rate stable when set against the forces of hostile speculators.
Dacoinminster says
He's suggesting that currencies/assets which don't move in a volatile manner, like 10% a day, would be able to be successfully tracked long term by the escrow fund. What he's missing is that when you add speculative attacks, the attacker can turn any otherwise stable asset into an asset that is trying to appreciate/depreciate 10% per day! That's the problem. Anyone with a bunch of money can come in and start acquiring or dumping the asset in question. The escrow fund will bankrupt itself trying to re-balance in perpetuity.
I do not believe there is a way around this problem. If there was, why don't we just create an escrow agent for Bitcoin, right now, that keeps the price forever between $95 and $105? Why doesn't MtGox create a capital pool of $100m in escrow to enforce this peg? Because someone with $200m will break the peg, and make a killing (and the attacker probably doesn't even need that much when you throw in various leveraged instruments).
I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater here, however. Dacoinminster - do you believe your system is worthy of development if we assumed the escrow/stability idea was proven to be unworkable? Is that escrow/stability system for user-defined currencies the core value proposition of your idea?
For the record, I don't think "stability" of an asset price can be achieve through the machinations of market actors. Stability is something which must be arrived at, over time, as a market finds equilibrium. It's an organic process, which cannot be counterfeited, though so many central planners have tried.
In any case, this is really fascinating technology being discussed and kudos to you OP for the creativity and work that's gone into this.
Whenever someone says the word "peg" in relation to monies or commodities or assets of any kind, huge red flags should go up. We have seen often in discussion regarding Bitcoin, people have suggested, "well why not just peg it to gold, or to dollars, or some other other stable asset to eliminate the volatility?" (Max Keiser suggested such a thing a couple months ago...
) The reason is that you cannot peg one asset to another in an open market. The peg will be broken.The reason is what some of the others here have described - it will become the target of a speculative attack. And the attacker has a nearly guaranteed chance of winning if he has enough money to throw at it. In the real world, we have seen such speculative attacks on government currencies including the Thai Baht and UK pound (that's how Soros got famous). If private actors can break the pegs of government currencies, it can be reasonably inferred that breaking a crypto-asset peg with a market cap of only several million dollars would be trivial.
An escrow fund cannot be expected to keep an exchange rate stable when set against the forces of hostile speculators.
Dacoinminster says
Quote
You are quite right that some currencies will fail. For instance, if I define a currency that appreciates at 10% a day, it will definitely not be able to track that.
He's suggesting that currencies/assets which don't move in a volatile manner, like 10% a day, would be able to be successfully tracked long term by the escrow fund. What he's missing is that when you add speculative attacks, the attacker can turn any otherwise stable asset into an asset that is trying to appreciate/depreciate 10% per day! That's the problem. Anyone with a bunch of money can come in and start acquiring or dumping the asset in question. The escrow fund will bankrupt itself trying to re-balance in perpetuity.
I do not believe there is a way around this problem. If there was, why don't we just create an escrow agent for Bitcoin, right now, that keeps the price forever between $95 and $105? Why doesn't MtGox create a capital pool of $100m in escrow to enforce this peg? Because someone with $200m will break the peg, and make a killing (and the attacker probably doesn't even need that much when you throw in various leveraged instruments).
I don't want to throw the baby out with the bathwater here, however. Dacoinminster - do you believe your system is worthy of development if we assumed the escrow/stability idea was proven to be unworkable? Is that escrow/stability system for user-defined currencies the core value proposition of your idea?
For the record, I don't think "stability" of an asset price can be achieve through the machinations of market actors. Stability is something which must be arrived at, over time, as a market finds equilibrium. It's an organic process, which cannot be counterfeited, though so many central planners have tried.
In any case, this is really fascinating technology being discussed and kudos to you OP for the creativity and work that's gone into this.
Hi Erik!
I'm super-pleased that you have taken a look at my paper. (By the way, anybody who hasn't seen Erik's excellent talk at the San Jose conference should do so right now: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H2YllvbJo6g)
I think it is worth taking a minute to define how a speculative attack on a pegged currency works. A government can actually peg their currency indefinitely just fine, and not worry about speculative attacks. The problem comes when they ALSO try to set interest rates (i.e. control the money supply to juice their economy). In a free market, this creates an arbitrage opportunity which means one of the government's goals (interest rate control or price stability) will always collapse eventually. This is called the "impossible trinity". I would suggest anybody worried about speculative attacks on my escrow fund read this article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impossible_trinity
I suggested that it would be possible to crash a pegged escrow-backed currency by creating one which RISES 10% a day forever. (In fact, I intend to create a few such currencies, just to watch them die, and learn from them.) An escrow-backed currency can handle massive volatility just fine. It only corrects very long-term deviations from the target.
For the record, even without escrow-backed currencies, I think message-based currencies like MasterCoin add a lot of value to bitcoin.
August 02, 2013, 11:17:15 AM
I can't understand why your fundraising you've stated you want to fit this around your job. It's a no overhead project and you've $120k in spare bitcoins floating around!
You say you're worried about other people doing it first, but publicly announcing all the project details before you've even started coding.
I was very excited about this when I first started reading yesterday, and took the day off work to read everything I could starting with the youtube Video from Bitcoinfest which obviously gives you a lot of credibility.
I get a bit of a hint of arrogance about you and that you can't listen to people or accept criticism, calling your paper the 2nd Bitcoin in the first place is a bit crazy but you've still got it filed in the eponymous folder after you've clearly caused a bit of an outcry over it.
You seem to skim over questions or not elaborate on your answers and most importantly when you announced the first paper you had mostly negative/constructive/it wont work criticism and you've leapt straight from that to saying everything works fundraising time without going through the process again with your new paper to Iron out the chinks.
I think you've got dollar signs in your head which are clouding your objective vision and this is reflected in your posts and papers ( I don't mean this in a you're a scammer way).
Forget money and work out if your passionate about it creating something new and if you are do it right from the offset you're going ass about face about in my opinion and I can't put any money in to it (not that you need it)
Best of luck if you do continue I'll be watching this space, but personally I think you should refund everyone and come back for a fundraiser if and when you need it.
You say you're worried about other people doing it first, but publicly announcing all the project details before you've even started coding.
I was very excited about this when I first started reading yesterday, and took the day off work to read everything I could starting with the youtube Video from Bitcoinfest which obviously gives you a lot of credibility.
I get a bit of a hint of arrogance about you and that you can't listen to people or accept criticism, calling your paper the 2nd Bitcoin in the first place is a bit crazy but you've still got it filed in the eponymous folder after you've clearly caused a bit of an outcry over it.
You seem to skim over questions or not elaborate on your answers and most importantly when you announced the first paper you had mostly negative/constructive/it wont work criticism and you've leapt straight from that to saying everything works fundraising time without going through the process again with your new paper to Iron out the chinks.
I think you've got dollar signs in your head which are clouding your objective vision and this is reflected in your posts and papers ( I don't mean this in a you're a scammer way).
Forget money and work out if your passionate about it creating something new and if you are do it right from the offset you're going ass about face about in my opinion and I can't put any money in to it (not that you need it)
Best of luck if you do continue I'll be watching this space, but personally I think you should refund everyone and come back for a fundraiser if and when you need it.
August 02, 2013, 11:16:53 AM
Ok so it now seems that you have received $10K+ in funds for this project and are apparently providing a large amount of personal funds for this. I hope you have a plan for refunding everyone's money because I would wager money that your system cannot and will not work as you think it will. I was going to leave this thread be, but for the sake of those who are sending money in I wanted to make one more attempt to engage in real debate regarding the economics behind this.
1) I have read your more recent paper and most of my critiques still stand, but I will attempt to refocus them here.
2) My critique isn't that you couldn't manipulate prices using supply, but that manipulating supply is a very 'sloppy' control and has some lag. Markets can develop momentum and thus change faster than your supply manipulation can correct. It would be like attempting to fly an airplane with a 30 second lag between when you issue the command and the flaps adjust. It would be very easy to 'over correct' yourself into the ground.
That said, it would be possible to 'price fix' if the escrow fund had a bottomless ability to buy when the price started to fall and then sell when it got to high. Unfortunately, this means the fund either has the ability to create money from nothing, hyper-inflate, or go bankrupt. It is also clear from your paper that you have introduced the potential for multi-day lag before they can enter/exit the market.
In your paper you show the escrow fund as an 'entity' that is attempting to buy low and sell high. You already assume that these escrow funds could 'make mistakes' by being too aggressive and that when they are weak they will take longer to get the price back to parity. These escrow funds ability to influence the market is directly proportional to the real economic value backing the fund. Every mistake these funds make directly undermines the value available to back these coins.
3) I was suggesting other means of accomplishing what you are doing that have SIGNIFICANT advantages and which your system will be competing with in the market because I have far more financial backing than you do at the moment. This means you are taking peoples money to develop a system that will be competing against what I am doing and yet have failed to produce a comprehensive critique of what I am doing and how your system will out-compete mine in the market. From what I gather you admit my approach will work and has no need for any trusted parties, public oracles (data feeds), or price fixing authorities. Seems like your marketing is based entirely upon using Bitcoin's blockchain as some sort of credibility while destroying bitcoins as people convert to your system in a one-way trip.
Suppose I were to issue bytemaster coins to anyone willing to destroy a Bitcoin to create one.... the act of destroying the bitcoin does NOTHING to give value to the BytemasterCoin.
You then go on to state:
Because these are 'fake addresses' and money is being sent to them (or Bitcoin would block them as dust) all of this money must be destroyed or lost as you do not have private keys for these data addresses. This represents a VERY HIGH COST-PER-BYTE for your protocol. Not to mention the fact that you incur the full overhead of a bitcoin transaction just to communicate a relatively small amount of information imbedded in the address.
I have spent SIGNIFICANT time thinking about scalability issues with BitShares which I am actively working on 80hrs /week and I recognize that every byte of bandwidth counts. Furthermore, if you want a reasonable buy-sell spread you need a large number of market participants or you will have a thin market. This implies a need for a significant number of transactions and for your system this represents a large amount of overhead.
Lastly, you have said that you didn't want to go in my direction, but have not stated why which would have enabled some useful discussion. I have spent significant time explaining the problems faced with your approach and you owe it to those sending you money to do the same.
Investor beware... don't send him money on faith alone until he has throughly vetted his idea and addressed heavy critique that should be a prereq. for any fund raising. I vetted my idea and paid money for people to find problems with it. I suggest he start a bounty and pay people to prove him wrong as this would be far cheaper than building it out and learning it the hard way.
1) I have read your more recent paper and most of my critiques still stand, but I will attempt to refocus them here.
2) My critique isn't that you couldn't manipulate prices using supply, but that manipulating supply is a very 'sloppy' control and has some lag. Markets can develop momentum and thus change faster than your supply manipulation can correct. It would be like attempting to fly an airplane with a 30 second lag between when you issue the command and the flaps adjust. It would be very easy to 'over correct' yourself into the ground.
That said, it would be possible to 'price fix' if the escrow fund had a bottomless ability to buy when the price started to fall and then sell when it got to high. Unfortunately, this means the fund either has the ability to create money from nothing, hyper-inflate, or go bankrupt. It is also clear from your paper that you have introduced the potential for multi-day lag before they can enter/exit the market.
In your paper you show the escrow fund as an 'entity' that is attempting to buy low and sell high. You already assume that these escrow funds could 'make mistakes' by being too aggressive and that when they are weak they will take longer to get the price back to parity. These escrow funds ability to influence the market is directly proportional to the real economic value backing the fund. Every mistake these funds make directly undermines the value available to back these coins.
3) I was suggesting other means of accomplishing what you are doing that have SIGNIFICANT advantages and which your system will be competing with in the market because I have far more financial backing than you do at the moment. This means you are taking peoples money to develop a system that will be competing against what I am doing and yet have failed to produce a comprehensive critique of what I am doing and how your system will out-compete mine in the market. From what I gather you admit my approach will work and has no need for any trusted parties, public oracles (data feeds), or price fixing authorities. Seems like your marketing is based entirely upon using Bitcoin's blockchain as some sort of credibility while destroying bitcoins as people convert to your system in a one-way trip.
Suppose I were to issue bytemaster coins to anyone willing to destroy a Bitcoin to create one.... the act of destroying the bitcoin does NOTHING to give value to the BytemasterCoin.
Quote
There is one last thing I would like to point out that you must address:
Bitcoin has some little-known advanced features (such as scripting) which many people imagine will enable it to perform fancy new tricks someday. MasterCoin uses exactly NONE of those advanced
features, because support for them is not guaranteed in the future, and MasterCoin doesn't need them
anyway.
Bitcoin has some little-known advanced features (such as scripting) which many people imagine will enable it to perform fancy new tricks someday. MasterCoin uses exactly NONE of those advanced
features, because support for them is not guaranteed in the future, and MasterCoin doesn't need them
anyway.
You then go on to state:
Quote
MasterCoin transactions are defined as a series of bitcoin payments from a bitcoin address where the payments match this pattern: ... One or more “data” payments (of any amount) to fake bitcoin addresses. (A fake bitcoin address can contain 20 bytes of arbitrary data, not including overhead such as the version number and
check-sum of the address.) This is data used by the protocol, such as the number of MasterCoins being paid.
check-sum of the address.) This is data used by the protocol, such as the number of MasterCoins being paid.
Because these are 'fake addresses' and money is being sent to them (or Bitcoin would block them as dust) all of this money must be destroyed or lost as you do not have private keys for these data addresses. This represents a VERY HIGH COST-PER-BYTE for your protocol. Not to mention the fact that you incur the full overhead of a bitcoin transaction just to communicate a relatively small amount of information imbedded in the address.
I have spent SIGNIFICANT time thinking about scalability issues with BitShares which I am actively working on 80hrs /week and I recognize that every byte of bandwidth counts. Furthermore, if you want a reasonable buy-sell spread you need a large number of market participants or you will have a thin market. This implies a need for a significant number of transactions and for your system this represents a large amount of overhead.
Lastly, you have said that you didn't want to go in my direction, but have not stated why which would have enabled some useful discussion. I have spent significant time explaining the problems faced with your approach and you owe it to those sending you money to do the same.
Investor beware... don't send him money on faith alone until he has throughly vetted his idea and addressed heavy critique that should be a prereq. for any fund raising. I vetted my idea and paid money for people to find problems with it. I suggest he start a bounty and pay people to prove him wrong as this would be far cheaper than building it out and learning it the hard way.
I love the pilot/airplane analogy. I spent 10 years developing software for an avionics firm, which is where I was exposed to the idea of a PID loop, which I used the Integral term of for this revision of the paper.
You are correct that the escrow fund acts slowly, with a very long time lag. This is quite intentional, because the escrow fund isn't actually trying to "fly the airplane". The purpose of the escrow fund is to make sure that the price will eventually converge. The cool thing about markets is that when everyone in the market knows that the price of two assets will eventually come back in line, they tend to do so very quickly, because buying the low one and selling the high one is essentially free money. I'm sure you are familiar with arbitrage, but some of the readers of this thread probably aren't.
Whatever "mistakes" the escrow fund makes, it will still be buying low and selling high, and making itself more healthy, not less. The possibility of collapse comes from possibility that the value of MasterCoins could crash to near zero - not from any actions the escrow fund might take.
I'm really honestly happy that you have raised more money than me. That is fantastic. We really need innovation in this space! I suggest everybody on this thread go take a look at your whitepaper - it may be they should be investing with you instead of me!
I'm just really enthralled by the idea of a message-based currency stored in the block-chain. That's all there is to it. I think its really simple to understand and really flexible. It's not that I know of some fundamental flaw in your approach. Eventually, the market will decide the best way. I hope that you will be successful with your project, and I will continue to follow your progress.
Yes, this protocol does rely on sending unspendable transactions, and therefore destroying bitcoins. The typical MasterCoin transaction will destroy 0.00006 BTC (one data transaction just above the dust threshold), thus adding about half a cent of cost to each transaction at today's prices. However, I feel that the benefits outweigh that cost. Also, any bitcoins destroyed make everyone else's bitcoins more valuable, essentially paying a tax to the bitcoin protocol layer that supports us.
Note that a second dust transaction goes to the exodus address, and a third goes to the reference address. Those bitcoins aren't destroyed, but the minimum cost to the sender then is about 1.5 to 2 cents a today's prices.
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