There will never be more MasterCoins, unless the MasterCoin protocol gets hard-forked. Potentially anybody could do such a hard fork, and if it happened, people would have to decide if they wanted to stay or to join the new fork.
So far the price of BTC has risen faster than we can spend it, so we actually have a lot more money now than when we started, even though we've spent quite a bit. Of course, that could always change if BTC crashes, as it has been known to do. Because of that possibility, I'm a tightwad on a lot of things. Just ask the board - we're currently discussing whether we should hire a very prestigious PR firm who is offering us a discount and offering to take payment in BTC/MSC because they are hugely into what we are doing. However, it's still a LOT of money, and I'm looking at cheaper alternatives before we commit.
I hate PR firms and the notion of hyping this thing up. Let's just make the damn thing work really well. That will bring more users than 50 PR firms. Why spend 'a LOT' of money telling people about how great this is. Why not just let them find out on their own accord. This is accomplished for free the day we make the system highly functional. Putting pretty paint on it won't get us to the finish line any faster. Forget the PR and the hype. We don't need that. We need to focus on a kick-ass solution that just works. The rest will take care of itself.
I've already emphasized the point you've made before to the board that I do not want patting-ourselves-on-the-back self-congratulatory sort of PR but moreso to engineer a framing that would attract human investment ie developers so that we could accelerate the goal of "make[ing] the system highly functional"
The PR needs to focus on explaining the concepts to technical minds one concept at a time.
Start with the escrow, make a video explaining it, let JR give an interview on Slashdot and in the link have the video explaining the concept of the user currencies operating through the escrow.
But basically you have to explain something like this one concept at a time, through videos showing visual illustrations of the concept. That is how most of us learned about Bitcoin. The whitepaper and the video combined with interviews.
Finally the really technical stuff needs to be explained too, like what is the exodus address and what are type B transactions? What is a protocol layer? All that has to be explained to the technical types who want endless details via a wiki.
You should check it again. Totally open-source since a month . I agree they are not good at communicating but their main aim is not bitcoin community but exchange platform like zipzap and future gateways. With more gateways and nodes the ripple network will be distributed enough to be fair and honest.
New features are coming with "contracts". I don't think it's too complex, it can easily be integrated and someone could use a ripple wallet without even know about it. About flexibility I couldn't really tell I'm not competent enough to say.
XRP distribution model is particular but you don't need xrp to use ripple network (mm ok actually you need less than 1$ to fund a wallet...). About long-term appreciation I think it may appreciate if the network find more gateways and plateforms that use ripple. Otherwise it may also disappear (just like bitcoin or mastercoin actually since there's not real economy backing them).
Interesting. I'll have to look into Ripple Contracts (to see if it's an idea MasterCoin should steal
)
Smart contracts. It would make sense if Mastercoin has smart contract functionality. There are plenty of ideas on that such as mechanisms for time lock puzzles for use as a time release coin mechanism. I would guess this would be necessary to have expiration dates? Anyway I think it is something essential when the time comes so it should be on the to do list but to find out the different types of contracts which would be necessary perhaps we should set aside a thread just for brainstorming anything which isn't already on that list and then vote on the top contract ideas so that we have some quantification of the demand of the can't live without features.
You should check it again. Totally open-source since a month . I agree they are not good at communicating but their main aim is not bitcoin community but exchange platform like zipzap and future gateways. With more gateways and nodes the ripple network will be distributed enough to be fair and honest.
New features are coming with "contracts". I don't think it's too complex, it can easily be integrated and someone could use a ripple wallet without even know about it. About flexibility I couldn't really tell I'm not competent enough to say.
XRP distribution model is particular but you don't need xrp to use ripple network (mm ok actually you need less than 1$ to fund a wallet...). About long-term appreciation I think it may appreciate if the network find more gateways and plateforms that use ripple. Otherwise it may also disappear (just like bitcoin or mastercoin actually since there's not real economy backing them).
Interesting. I'll have to look into Ripple Contracts (to see if it's an idea MasterCoin should steal
)
I'm a ripple fan but you should probably steal that =p
I think that if mastercoin succeed it will stay inside a kinda "closed" crypto-world while some more FIAT friendly system like ripple will rule the woOOOoOOOoooOOOOOooooold
The exact opposite. For Mastercoin to succeed it has to free itself from the closed crypto world and become a FIAT friendly system. Mastercoin has to get value from the real world and not the virtual world.
If ripple has any use, it will be as a bridge to allow easier transport of Fiat value into Crypto. That's given a lot of if's. If it overcomes the stigma of adopting so many failing features of fiat, if it proves to be secure (It's code has NOT proven itself in any way as of yet), if it can become completely decentralized and trust free, if people will accept that there was a 100 Billion unit pre-mine and Ripple/Opencoin will be keeping most of them, If people don't just go to a BTC ATM (Which they will prefer to do, and we can expect a network of these can simplify the moving of value globally via BTC) or other simple and familiar system. If, if, if, if, if. And even if all those if's weren't, then the bridge will still burn when the value is mostly transported and it becomes redundant. This includes any outlying features. Especially if projects are building it fully integrated or more tightly bound to Bitcoin (Mastercoin, Coloured Coins, etc.). Why use two systems, esp considering all of these if's? With that said, competition and a diverse ecosystem is good. It keeps everyone sharp and innovating. So I wish Ripple all the best.
Mastercoin does not need Ripple to get fiat value and it does not need Bitcoin to get fiat value. The best way for Mastercoin to get fiat value is through direct transfer of fiat into Mastercoin. Anything else and it defies logic.
The Bitcoin ATM will be a good way for fiat value to get into Bitcoin and if that can work then it's probably open source and a patch can be released to allow it to transfer fiat into Mastercoin really easily. So the ATM machines are part of the solution certainly.
The other way is to just sell Mastercoin cards. These could be gift cards which contain Mastercoins. These could be sold just like prepaid credit cards too if necessary but they are in a user currency and backed by Mastercoins. So I don't think there will be any problem getting fiat value into Mastercoin once it's worth enough money to do so. Some business will form to do it just as we have gyft right now which is supporting Bitcoin.
