@soundposition:
Destroying the FUNK currency may drive up the price due to artificial deflation, however raising the price of something that already can't be used to buy anything useful, well... isn't useful. It's like if I had a big bag of rice, and everyone had plenty of rice and I said, "Yeah, but it's a really expensive bag of rice!" I don't think people would be lining up to buy it.
The value chain is different though. You can see what is happening with Blackcoin. People buy it simply because there's a guaranteed exit price, which is the multipool that mines other coins, converts them into BTC and buys up Blackcoin. The Blackcoin is then distributed to the people. But yes, it is artificial deflation. Not the best form of value injection. It IS still value injection though.
How do you manage who gets the money? That shouldn't even be a question, so I'm not sure why you would ask that. The musician gets paid the money DIRECTLY to their wallet. So I'm not sure what the problem is there.
Sorry. I think I need to clarify what I mean by this. Let's say music is made for "The Cypherfunks". If this gets sold, then technically we "all" own it. We are "all" a part of the band. We should all get proceeds from Cypherfunks songs being sold. For example, think of it in another way. What if "The Cypherfunks" get radio play and we get paid out royalties. Who gets the money? We all own it. So how do you transfer that value so that everyone in the community reaps benefit from it.
Tipping directly is a gesture to say thanks for the contribution. There's no reason to "sell" Cypherfunks music for FUNK. Just release it for free and get tipped for it. That makes the most sense. Selling it is only then an extra barrier.
However. If you are a musician and want to get FUNK and not release music under "The Cypherfunks", THEN it makes sense to be paid directly. ie I can release one of my old songs, sell it for FUNK. Then I'm using the value network of FUNK to tap into. I'm then using FUNK as currency, not as stock.
Did I clarify it correctly?
I'm really interested in making this work. As I said before that means turning making music into an income stream with FUNK. How do we increase the value of FUNK? I don't think injecting capital is the only way to do that.
"Capital" in this sense is any forms of value really. Currently that means using LTC/BTC/Doge to buy it one exchanges. Any additional income streams can hopefully feed directly into increasing value of FUNK. That's what I mean by injecting captial.
You summed it up in your last post:
"increase network effect of the coin -> increase demand for the coin -> get financially rewarded."
When I break that down, I don't follow the logic. How does increasing the "network effect" whatever that is, increase demand for the coin? Next, how does increasing demand for the coin translate to me getting financially rewarded?
If more people know about Cypherfunks, more people will want to get involved. In order to get financial reward from it, one should own FUNK. Using the currency represents the community of people, the idea. The value of the idea hopefully, over time, increases the demand for the currency beyond just the idea. As a reference, check out this post about currency as a language (I wrote: simondlr.com/post/81166506190/currency-as-language). It's like looking at new coins. The only way their value gets increased is if people are willing to jump in and take the initial risk (like the guy who bought the 10k BTC pizza). As the community (and network efffect grows), so the sum of the parts become more than the whole. People will exchange it for goods/services/etc. You get financially rewarded because you hold FUNK. Think of it like stock.
It's true musicians CAN get tipped FUNK coin, but will they? What incentive does someone have to tip a musician with FUNK when they can just hoard them, sell them on an exchange for BTC, and buy cheeseburgers (or whatever else with the BTC.)
That's how most alt-coins work at this moment. Bitcoin is a conduit for value for experiments like this. We rely on the fact that FUNK has real world value because it can be exchanged back into BTC and then back into Rand, Dollars, Euros, etc. Direct payment (a store accepts FUNK directly) or FUNK/fiat exchange only decreases the hops. You tip FUNK because you want this network to grow. It's like people giving out Bitcoin in the early days (I got 0.05 BTC from faucets back then). And it's not just free. We tip because we like things. To say thanks. To give kudos.
Can even they exchange their FUNK for BTC? In theory FUNK should be able to be exchanged into your currency of choice. That's only if people want them, and since they don't actually do anything useful, hardly anyone will want to buy them with BTC. So, you can put your FUNK up for sale on the exchange, but I'm not sure anyone will want to buy them, because they ask themselves, "What can I do with a FUNK coin except give them away for free?" Why would you want to buy something, and give it away for free unless you are a charity?
Like I mentioned previously, it's an investment in the idea & the community. There's an initial kick-start period where that is where a coin's value resides. All altcoins & Bitcoin you couldn't do anything with it except send it around like monopoly money. That's until enough people believed in the future potential to build out infrastructure so it becomes more useful besides just that.
I'll take GPUCoin for example. Started by Jaymes Reilly, he had bad experiences with computer retailers with a lack of stock and over priced goods. This was due to the high costs of the middleman, such as Paypal and Ebay charging 18% fees. As a solution he made his own alt-coin - the GPUCoin, which he accepts exclusively on his online store so he cuts out the middle men to save the customer money.
What increases the demand for the GPUCoin? It's not the "network effect". The high demand physical commodity (Namely, the GPU) that is sold at a reduced price and only sold in GPUCoin is backing the GPUCoin.
That's cool! That's what we also hope to achieve. Adding additional value to the currency besides its value as an idea.
Music products can be digital or physical commodities. What we need is to accept the FUNK coin as payment for REAL (or digital/virtual goods/services) that people actually want. It could be music, tickets, t-shirts, food, Gridseeds.. Whatever.. As long as it has a real demand in the real world.
You had it spelled out on the website that in the "future FUNK could be used to buy products that assist in musicmaking." Why stop at products that assist in musicmaking? Why not back this currency with something of real world value so people have a real demand for it like the GPUCoin?
There is not going to be a demand for a charity that tips musicians from money coming from donations of regular people. In other words, regular people aren't going to buy FUNK coins to tip musicians, so they can get continue to get free music.
Yep. That's what we'd love to do. It's really really hard work though. I'm already strapped for time & money (put in so much into FUNK). Our initial selling point will be products for music making. Stuff that fits our niche. But it will hopefully expand past this!
If I may be so bold and lead the way. Take something of value and sell it for FUNK coin, anyone can do it. Just like anyone can accept BTC for payments. Just make sure to charge the right amount. 34 million GPUCoins is worth about $300 which is enough to buy a video card. So 3 million FUNK coins should be worth about $15-20 about as much as a cheap ticket to a concert, or something music related. Price things according to the current exchange rate.
That would be cool.
So in short. FUNK's value is currently the belief in the idea (like how all altcoins start). Otherwise, no-one would mine it & no-one would want it. It firstly represents decentralized stock in a decentralized band. This is how we hope to catalyse the network effect. Grow, grow, grow until we start absoring more and more musicians. Once the value increases (people that take the risk), we can start rolling out other services to make the currency even MORE valuable.
That's the plan. And remember, this is an experiment. This is a world & reality that we think can exist. A currency kickstarted by a bunch crypto-musicians. How cool would that story be if we could make it work? But pulling reality into this timeline is not easy. It constantly feels like we are pulling people out of quicksand into this reality: telling them. "Look! How fucking awesome is a currency that represents musicians freely making music together from across the world? Look how far we've come already. Thought it would suck? NOOOPE. Look at the kick-ass tunes we've made already. Want to be a part of this awesome community? Then help us become so much more. \m/"
@MadCow
so the task is to COMPEL the 'buyers/audience' to pay in FUNK, and to CONVINCE enough suppliers of the other raw materials to accept payment in FUNK also (i.e. venues, equipment hire, sound engineers etc). You need to encourage people to hold their FUNK payments and not convert to fiat, otherwise people will mentally calculate exchange rates rates and feel like they're playing for free.
Yep. It's hard work. But that's the risk we take to create such a future.
We need more people who would love to spearhead such projects. I wish I had more time.
btw. Thanks for the discussion soundposition & MadCow.