-snip-
The difference between bitcoin/satoshi and radix/fuserleer is in Satoshi's time people were not thinking of ICO's, but today the chances of someone launching a cynical clone of Radix with scam ICO is near 100%, and that would damage Radix a lot.
1)
Don't compare an altcoin developer with Satoshi. The problem Satoshi solved is much larger than any contribution an altcoin can make.
2) Patenting, closed-source licenses and similar techniques do mainly one thing: they centralize development on one team/company. The downsides are not so obvious, but they exist:
- What happens if the company goes bankrupt and nobody wants to "save" it, and they refuse to "liberate" the technology? The value of the coin would drop instantly to ZERO, because nobody could develop it anymore.
- The innovation rate would be lower than in other competing, open technologies, because no developers from outside the team are incentived to participate (why should someone join a team where almost the whole profit has been made by others?). So even if the coin has some interesting feature, it will most likely be one of the "old, outdated" projects in short time.
- There would be compatibility problems with open projects. The project would not benefit from the open technology stack, and it could only use a subset of potentially interesting and useful technologies.
- Software patents are only valid in certain countries. A cloner would only have to move to a country where software patents are not accepted. So the whole effort of patenting some parts of the technology becomes futile.
Thus, I would never recommend anyone to invest in a patented cryptocurrency.
I do not fully agree with your worries. If the company goes bankrupt the company will be forced to sell all its assets, including the patented technology, to pay its debts. So the development would continue in a (probably centralised) way. If nobody wants to buy it. The patent technology would be sold very cheaply. I could buy it to make it open source.
I read on their website that the patented technology would be made open source after the platform reaches a certain adaption rate.
What
d5000 is not seeing is that most known and valuable Microsoft or Apple products are closed source, but it looks like everyone doesn't have any problems with that... But why is Radix closed source? They've patented the technology so:
1. others can't just steal their idea and a working product they've put so much time and work into for the past 5 years and this is an absolutely healthy move in my opinion;
2. banks can't copycat a superior tech to use it for their purposes (for free) but instead they will have to pay, which is very important, thus increasing the power of the Radix team and the ability to contribute further to the existing tech and mass adoption of it.
But unlike these Microsoft or Apple products
Radix is going to become opensource once it reaches some level of adoption and then everyone can verify its code is legit.
As to the point that if the company goes bankrupt and the value of the coin will drop to zero: Radix will be a
fully working product, so, from what I've learned, once a mainnet (aka the Universe) is launched you cannot modify (fork) or develop it any further, unless we're talking about modules like Marketplace, ChatRooms, WebBrowser, etc. which can just plug into an existing software.
And I am not certain that you can invest in radix. You can buy the native stable coin, but why would you buy something that is not going to appreciate in value (1 token is approximately 1 usd)?
The real incentive to buy RDX tokens when the platform goes live is not to wait for the price increase but instead
for the distribution of the newly generated by the system RDX tokens to the existing holders when demand increases (read the FAQ on their website).
It won't be x100 ROI due to marketcap increase by the factor of x100, because:
1. RDX holders receive 50% of the new tokens (this number is not final yet though);
2. the system will everytime recalculate how much of the total number of tokens you have, decreasing the % of new tokens you receive.
You can find a formula in a telegram chat if you wish to. Each boat rises equally.
Just keep in mind that Radix is a complex solution for scalability-volatility-centralization-ease-of-use-adoption problems, everyone's been waiting for soooo long!
Peace!