Ok, so this is how it shook out.
-If anyone has any corrections or opinions, I welcome that sorta shit.
Maybe you know all of this but here's a little extended provenance on the history of this round.
You probably know
Bernard von NotHaus' story.. If not -I hate you and I have no idea why you give a shit about Bitcoin. People that trade bitcoin for government FIAT really piss me off.. but I digress. So anyhow.
In 2012-2013 a cat named Joseph van Perling took a chance and leased the rights to create a New Liberty Dollar. Josephs round looked a lot like Bernards on both sides, even carried the 888.LIB.DOLLAR phone number, but he removed the DOLLAR SIGN and the relative value.. just selling the round for a few bucks above spot.
Joseph then created a non-Liberty Dollar called the '
Bitcoin Specie' which carried a QR code on the back and linked to a URL that worked in the same manor as the round I made.. Only problem with his 'Bitcoin Specie' is that Joseph is the kind of guy who makes a lot of sites and they seem to go-away after a time.. so I knew it would eventually happen to the QR conversion page he was running - making the coin pretty but useless commemorative of itself. Still a super great idea and I loved it while it lasted. But I have a problem relating values so I felt that I REALLY NEEDED that page to work FOREVER!!
I wanted to re-create a silver art round that would FOREVER remind me what the SPOT value of 1oz .999 silver was worth: except not only in USD, ..Bitcoin, Litecoin, Dogecoin, Monero, DASH and Etherum; all crypto currencies.
So I'd been stacking rounds for a while.. but it's hard to find worthy art rounds, and creating a worthy round is expensive. I didn't want to design some piece of garbage 2D trash round.. I wanted something that I would actually buy in quantity - if only just for my own horde. If others wanted them, then of course I'd be happy to sell them, but they're really just my own personal treasure..
Joseph had already 'Ripped Off' (I say lovingly) the 'Liberty Dollar' with his 'New Liberty Dollar'. (I myself purchased 100oz of them from him).. so why not rip off his 'Bitcoin Specie' AND Bernards 'Liberty Dollar' at the same time.. with my own creation.
The 'Crypto Dollar' an Altcoin Specie was born. ..but what was it going to look like?
The 20yr Anniversary of The Liberty Dollar was approaching and Bernard seemed to have gone dark so I wrote Bernard and he agreed to license the obverse 'Lady Liberty' image for my project then I began designing the reverse with the QR code. Ever designed a 1oz round?.. it's a lot of work only to find that: while beautiful.. The point of the round (the embedded QR code) doesn't work very well. *May as well do it up* and pay homage to both 'Liberty Dollar', 'Bitcoin Specie' as a crossover: so I had them test mint 100 PROOFS just to see how well it worked.. 'eh - not TOO bad.. but a pain in the ass scanning 20 times to get the QR code to hyperlink to the conversion page.. So I had North American Mint number them 001-100 and went back to work re-designing the reverse as a 'Liberty Dollar' 'Altcoin Specie' crossover.. after all I was now converting SPOT into more than just Bitcoin (Josephs round only converted SPOT to Bitcoin). When the next came out the QR was simpler and scanned a whole lot faster so we minted 200 PROOF of them and numbered them 101-300. There were now 300 individually numbered 'First Strikes'. No doubt that soon DIE would begin to show wear so I had North American Mint strike 400 PROOF ALTCOIN SPECIE rounds to have a horde of my own and had them sandblast the Obverse DIE and BOTH the versions of the Reverse dies so that no more of either could ever be made as PROOF versions: My father requested 40 of the now-satin finish 'Bitcoin Specie' rounds and I have been minting satin 'Altcoin Specie' rounds as requested for sale.
RECAP:
100: (Numbered 001-100) PROOF BITCOIN SPECIE - Liberty Crypto Dollar / Altcoin SPECIE rounds
200: (Numbered 101-300) PROOF ALTCOIN SPECIE - Liberty Crypto Dollar / Altcoin SPECIE rounds
400: (NOT-Numbered) PROOF ALTCOIN SPECIE - Liberty Crypto Dollar / Altcoin SPECIE rounds
40: (NOT-Numbered) SATIN FINISH BITCOIN SPECIE - Liberty Crypto Dollar / Altcoin SPECIE rounds
My Dad owns all those300+: (NOT-Numbered) SATIN FINISH ALTCOIN SPECIE - Liberty Crypto Dollar / Altcoin SPECIE rounds
In the end.. it's really not important to me that anything follows common standards of numbering 001-300 .. or that they're satin or proof.. or that anyone even ever buys them. The real important thing for me is that it paid for itself and that I foster a better mental correlation between the value of ONE OUNCE silver to various altcoins.. and to a minor degree the US Dollar, as in my opinion the US Dollar is garbage ..and altho I like precious metals: There can only ever be 21m Bitcoin ..84m Litecoin.. and so on for the other crypto-currencies. The very nature of a shared ledger (block-chain) currency is immutable. The value of it is set by the very fact that in order for the number of 'coins' in circulation to be inflated it would require that 51% of it's users all agree, not only to do it.. but on what to inflate it to: AS IF & which would require a programming fork and spawn a completely new concurrent currency that may or may not catch on or be used.
One day we will mine space rocks and precious metals will be abundant but you will never find anymore Bitcoin.
THE END?
Thanks, Bernard von NotHaus & Joseph van Perling for leading the way and the inspiration.
http://convert.libertycryptodollar.info