Topic: So you think you're going to start a Bitcoin business, right? - page 11. (Read 71771 times)

Well, the anonymity side has been intentionally left blank. I can say for sure you're not the only one holding that position however.

I agree with the majority of the statements laid out here, though I do have just a bit to add.

To me, the most meaningful aspect in a business venture is transparency. Having a WOT account doesn't cut it. If you want me to invest in you, I want to know every detail about yourself and your business. In WOT, JohnDoe99 could have a 500+ rating from all his micro-transactions and other trades...but he may really suck at running a business. If that happens and his business goes sour, I want to know who I invested in to get my money back (if possible).

I understand the whole "anonymity" aspect with Bitcoin, and I don't have a problem with it when it comes to the general public. But if you're looking to raise money for a business or other project, I want to know who you are. To me, resistance in this area means you've got something to hide. It doesn't matter if I'm looking to invest 1 BTC or 500 BTCs... just as I am in real life, I don't invest in something I don't know. Anyone who has read through my Fund info knows I'm all about detail.

That said, I generally still agree with everything else noted in the intro. Get to the know the community...make meaningful posts...show people you're not some dumbass troll. If you make valid, well thought-out, arguments, meaningful posts, and you post elsewhere on the forums besides the 'Securities' section, then that indicates to me that you're invested and interested in this community.

Ok, something more like that, yeah.

that argument is faulty.
a 4 room plan leaves no room for expansion.

only to stay within the general picture, i would compare the approach as outlined by me to acquiring some real estate with the option of building a home, a brewery or beer factory, according to business development.

What in the world are you on about?


If you plan to live in a four room house arguably it's better to start building it according to the four room floor plan even if you're only building one room for now.


But the BTC specifica is very important, and moreover people don't tend to realize that the business 101 leaflet is relevant. Because "Bitcoin is new" or somesuch. So that's two reasons right there. In general, I am hired to speak for MPOE, and many of my posts fall in line with the general education CSR expenditure of that business.

(It's pamphlet btw).

Web of Trust

http://bitcoin-otc.com/

you can for example see my feedback on bitcoin-otc and my orders in my sig.

I think there's around a dozen or so people in the bitcoin-community that want to run "beer factories", as someone put it.
The whole econosphere is much too small for multiple endeavors of that scale.

Most of the eco-universe surrounding bitcoin consists of micro-breweries with handwritten receipts.
As those breweries grow, they will necessarily have to adapt most procedures outlined.
Then they will be able to buy a factory. But that's years later.

By and large, your abstract comes across kind of condescending, and I wonder what the motivation was to write such a pamphlat, since anyone could just open a business101-leaflet and be told just about the same thing (sans the btc specifica).

Bitcoins, so is my impression, brings about the entrepreneur in a lot of people. Let them try, fail, try again.
If someone decides to sind >5000k into his "start up", good for him. But it's not for accounting or MLA regulations, it's for the very simple stuff. A website, some decent code,

Sort of like the "Mircea hired a PR lady" story. Yes, that was a grand success.

What exactly is the problem with hiring someone to do what they need to do but can't or won't?

If they don't use the WOT they don't have a BTC business. Simple as pie. Are there people who will foolishly charge forward on the mistaken assumption that they have a BTC business when they do not? Certainly. Will it come to anything? Certainly not. Will these people make a difference? Nope. That's pretty much the whole story.

To put it another way, meet Rakim:

http://www.bannedinhollywood.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/05/computers-are-racist-588x281.jpg
(Mod edit: removed embedding because it was causing this page to be detected as malware)

Rakim believes computers are too complicated, and Rakim feels they should be made "easier", so people from "the community" could get good paying jobs. This is what you are arguing: an argument from ignorance ("I don't know how to use X") coupled with an argument from laziness ("And I'm too lazy to learn"), all supported on the very queasy footing of an appeal to the people ("And we are all lazy and ignorant").

Well...what difference does any of that make? It takes skill to drive a car, it costs money, you need to buy the actual car...what difference does any of that make? Even if 99.9% of "the people" are too lazy to learn how to drive a car, even if 99.9% of the citizenry thinks learning all those complicated traffic lights is too much hassle...these sorts of things are exactly the type that build civilizations. As such, they will be learned either willingly or at gunpoint, but learned they will be.

The criteria is not whether Rakim feels GPG is easy enough for him. The criteria is that GPG solves a problem nothing else solves. As such, GPG is the solution (and Rakim is part of the problem, or moreover, Rakim is a problem all of his own).

To address the earlier point about who demolished GLBSE: MPEx had higher volume than GLBSE every month since about June or July, every week since June or July and pretty much every single day since August. Related to this, GLBSE volume was dropping every month, almost every week and most days. The event of Nefario running away from it is an event, but the process of MPEx owning GLBSE was not something Nefario or anyone else of their people could have either prevented or even slowed down. So, if Nefario wasn't Nefario you'd still look at a GLBSE default just like if Trendon Shavers wasn't Pirate you'd still look at a BTCST default. The timing might have varied. The net result was pretty much set in stone due to reasons far outside of the reach of either. I wonder, however, why do you feel so strongly on this matter? Do you think yourself an expert on the topic? Are you just threatened by the apparent need to learn something quite to the degree of frothing around the mouth?

Sure, and that's why you have tax advisors.  The person starting the business does not handle the taxes themselves, they pay someone.  Someone starting a business is not going to use WOT, they are going to ... pay someone?  No, they are just not going to use WOT.

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-205_162-57539366/the-25-most-common-passwords-of-2012/

And you somehow think those millions of people are going to use GPG?  They can't even be bothered to use a unique password (I did not even say secure) and you think they are going to use GPG?  Really?  Cause that's Joe Sixpack right there.

That's okay: as far as the economy goes (be it Bitcoin or fiat) most of the general population is discarded.

Note that this is not about "how should Joe Sixpack go about buying a sixpack". This is about how to start a beer factory.


Why do you think this "general populace" is ready to start a business or should be starting a business?

If you happen to live in the US, the tax code can also be generally said to be outside of the grasp, not only of the general public, but of absolutely each and every last one expert in the field. So? It's still the tax code, and guess what? If you break it you go to jail.

GPG would be an incredibly hard concept for just about anyone I know to grasp or learn to use.  So yes, it does invalidate that consideration.  WOT and MPOE miss the mark on general populace usability, and no amount of "no really, it's not that hard" is going to change that fact.

It boils down to this - decide yourself whether you want to tie your reputation to

a) something designed and used by cryptographers that even after worst compromise can be revoked

or

b) to some forum/website where you have to trust admins, moderators, VPS provider and God knows who else.

I don't see how in any way Joe Sixpack invalidates this consideration. GPG isn't so hard to learn even for him.

MPEx demolished GLBSE?  When did this happen?  MPEx sucked from day one and continues to suck.  GLBSE self imploded and MPEx played exactly zero part in that.

Additionally, the whole bit about WOT is a joke.  Very few people care about, pay attention to or use WOT.  The idea behind WOT is not a bad one, but much like MPEx, the user interface is shit, whereas the user interface on MPEx is complete, utter shit.  As such, nobody really cares about either website in the greater bitcoin community.  I'm not sure why you are trying to push WOT so hard, but whatever.  

The fact that you use MPEx as an example of a "good" Bitcoin venture is rather telling, though.  WOT is only for the hardcore geeks, as is MPEx.  The rest of the Bitcoin community has little to zero knowledge and cares even less about either of them.  There is no way in hell you're going to get Joe Sixpack to use either site.  Citing irc-based identification as a good thing also indicates you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about when you're talking about the general public.  

Some of what you've written is definitely true, but you have a very tenuous grasp on the fundamental interaction between Bitcoin and the general population unfortunately, so most of your message will be discarded.  

Yea I do not have a WOT rating but anyone I have done business with on here will vouch for me I am sure, Im not talking 100 dollars here or there either talking 1k and over transactions.
The key would be, just build a decent reputation like you would any where. Leave what you do outside of here out no one gives a shit unless you own some major company or something. All in all just treat other like you would want to be treated and you will get along just fine.

I think you misconstrue the WOT. For one, millions of dollars' worth of trade happened there (literally). Compare that to the measly tens of k's or whatever in any other venue. So no, the WOT is for the BTC millionaires, the other venues are where silly/geeky/whatever kids gather.

For another, suppose Joe Doe of 9 Ransack Avenue posts his gov't issued id or whatever here. Two weeks later he runs with your money and three weeks later he logs in to say sorry, but someone accessed his forum account. Not him though. (This, you will note, has actually happened). What now?

The irc-based identification prevents that, because people have to identify during each session, which requires them to actually decode an encrypted challenge. Quite a different level of safety. In point of fact, this forum was not designed to carry financial business any more than the now defunct GLBSE was. The WOT is an entirely different story.

I would much rather have verified information as to the location of residency of person(s) involved in a business instead of involvement on the WOT.  WOT doesn't mean much when it comes to conducting big business.  It's good for small trades between geeky people though.

True, it's not far from how much worth of my time I sank into coinbr for it to be able to use keys away from filthy VPSes and have reliable bookkeeping.

That's great. The truth of the matter is that pretty much everyone worth their salt goes through all that I listed up there (and more). It's just common sense, after all. I wrote this post because the people for whom it isn't common sense have no other way to find out about it.

Compare the case of A, who aspires to become an Opera singer, and B, who aspires to become a rap singer. A spends five hours a day practicing, doing boring stuff such as vocalize, paying canto professors and in general going to a lot of trouble. B spends his time posting on BlackPantherForum.gov

Five years later, A is singing her first paid engagement (not quite an established Opera house, but certainly a start) and B is a juvenile delinquent. As far as A is concerned, obviously B never had a shot to begin with: didn't work his voice, didn't practice, didn't X Y Z. As far as B is concerned however, A just got a lucky break, possibly cause she's white. Or a girl. Or whatever else. B doesn't even know about the X Y Z.


In as much as you agree with the simple notion that starting a BTC business such as a BTC bank and then "defaulting" is criminal behavior, that's exactly what I am saying.

To illuminate this point: default is a specified statutory protection (that's why it's called "chapter 11 or 7 protection"). There's no statute in BTC, and as such "default" can never exist in that sense, as something that "happens". The distinction between theft and "default" does not exist in BTC, mostly because it can't exist (and this is yet another of those many fields in which BTC forces economy back on a sound footing).

I specifically am not saying or hinting that some nebulous new legislation would impact Bitcoin in any relevant manner in the future or somesuch. The entire reasoning is the simple default = crime equation explained above.


The k factor comes from the specified nature of the business (ie, BTC business). In order to be able to offer BTC business you must at a minimum be able to correctly and safely handle payments. This is a cost, in an actuarial view of the world (in the sense it is a risk you undertake, and all risks can be viewed as costs).

A traditional business doesn't one day wake up to discover that Linode was hacked and so now they have to make good on about twenty thousand dollars they thought they had safely but, as it turns out, are gone (like slush was, back in the Linode "hack" or whatever it was).

Thus, by simply starting a BTC business you are already undertaking some risks, and so are sinking in some costs. This k starts out high (but not really that high, it's likely under 100k in all cases - which makes it negligible in comparison to regulatory and compliance costs in most real-world situations) and tends to zero over time. In the case of most established businesses it may be considered no longer a significant stand-alone factor (mostly on the theory that a business past the break-even point is breaking even on all its costs, not just some selection).


You will notice that article is a strict comparison of like things. If you're comparing apples and oranges, you can in principle disregard any risks they both share as fruit, even if you might consider risks one incurs for being limited to the color orange whereas the other not so much being red to yellow.

PS. We don't for a moment even contemplate the notion that people's skin tone has any impact on their general ability or odds to succeed in whatever they may endeavor. We do however believe even mediocre Opera is far superior to any rap music ever created.