Do you really want the number 4 billion? 4 means death in a lot of cultures.
It's true.
Especially in China, 4 is the worst number.
It equals to the 13th Friday in Western.
Edit/I basically agree to investment fund.
But it may have a problem of a lawsuit by stakeholders who did not receive coins in the future when NEM value is incredibly high.
Burning them erases this problem in advance.
Burning them will prevent this probable lawsuit and also result in investment fund increase in the end.(by the scarcity of NEM and high value of each NEM.)
what about 3,999,000,000? we could just burn one stake, or maybe even burn one NEM, and have it be 3,999,999,999. I personally would volunteer 1 of my NEM to be burnt pre-Genesis block, just to make Asians happy. I do know that this is serious. I once lived in a building with no 4th floor. Really, the elevator went 1, 2, 3, 5, 6..... People take this seriously. Not exactly the mark of the beast for Christians, but many Asians really don't like 4.
Are we considering changing the total to something other than 4 billion units?
What about 3,888,888,888?
It has three triple 8's in sequence. In the Chinese culture this would be very fortunate.
"In Chinese numerology, 888 has a different meaning, triple fortune, a strengthening of the meaning of the digit 8. For this reason, addresses
and phone numbers containing the digit sequence 888 are considered particularly lucky, and may command a premium because of it."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/888_(number)Lucky numbers: Eight
"The number 8 is viewed as such an auspicious number that even being assigned a number with several eights is considered very lucky."
Unlucky numbers: Four
"Number 4 is considered an unlucky number in Chinese because it is nearly homophonous to the word "death". Due to that, many
numbered product lines skip the "4": e.g., Nokia cell phones (there is no series beginning with a 4), Palm PDAs, Canon PowerShot G's
series (after G3 goes G5), etc. In East Asia, some buildings do not have a 4th floor."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbers_in_Chinese_culture
The number 4 is omitted in some Chinese buildings.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d4/ShanghaiMissingFloors.jpgChina= 19% of the world's population.
http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/china-populationWe would need to subtract 111,111,112 NEM (~111 stakes).
If we want to keep it closer to the original 4 billion, a couple more choices:
3,999,888,888 double triple 8's (-111,112 NEM)
3,999,999,888 single triple 8's (-112 NEM)
Or preferably just keep with the original 4,000,000,000, it's easier to remember.
Yes 3,888,888,888 is a good number and it wouldn't take much to discard to reach. You wouldn't see that number on coinmarketcap but it's something which could be mentioned in media articles for sure.
I'm not really sure what's happening in mainland China in regards to digital currencies.
We know elsewhere that digital currencies are becoming popular in Hong Kong and Vietnam. NEM is something that could thrive in those two locations but also mainland China and island of Taiwan. Eventually South Korea and Japan will get into digital currencies as well.
Despite MtGox being located there, Bitcoin hasn't really seen much adoption or usage in Japan itself - the emerging trend in Japan is Mona coin (that was $8 million at one point and almost entirely located within Japan) and maybe NEM could get popular over there.
