Topic: Would you buy a 0.1 BTC Casascius Physical Bitcoin as a giveaway? (Read 6588 times)

It was worth as much as $3.20 earlier this year.

You can hold it like a penny stock.

I agree, it's not much use.  But it's a heck of a lot more intriguing than being worth nothing.

Again, what can you use 0.1BTC for?  Does any vendor sell anything for so little?  Can you withdraw such a small amount?

This has got me thinking about all kinds of things, such as embedding a metal strip with the private key inside the coin, and you could break a seal to pull it out.  Or micro RFID chips (that can only be read from millimeters away) embedded inside.  I don't know if/how RFID would work with a metallic coin though. Nothing very practical though....

I'd love a roll.

+1  Perhaps include a code with the coin that allows the bearer to purchase a replacement coin with the same key.

No one ought to accept one as payment.  In fact, I could make it very clear, printing "single use only" on the sticker.  Remember, anybody with a peeled Casascius coin could already do this themselves, attempting to pass the token off on somebody who doesn't realize that the value of a bitcoin is in its key and the blockchain, not the piece of metal itself.  It's for that reason I deliberately avoided marking the piece of metal as a brand name.  It's an anonymous piece of metal that says "1 Bitcoin", backed by nobody.

The fact that the private key could be copied, in such a case, is actually desirable: you can spam these coins out IRL, (geocaching, etc.), and at some later date, take back the BTC from the ones that never got used.  The recipient never paid for them, so it's not like they should be concerned that they got nothing for nothing.  If they wanted the value, they should have redeemed them in a timely manner.  I get checks in the mail all the time (mail-in rebates, or refund for paying too much co-pay at the doctor, for example), that expire if I don't cash them in 90 days.  If I don't deposit them in time, it's my loss.  I could print "must redeem by 3/31/2012" on the stickers as well.

The logistics would be the same whether it's repurposing 1BTC blanks versus doing new aluminum coins.  The aluminum coins would be a bit cheaper, but I happen to have a surplus of the regular coins, assuming I decide that in 2012, I want to issue as few "2011" coins as possible.  And I have them right now.  I could go print off a stack of gold foil sticker sheets with private keys and start taking orders this weekend.  And thanks to USPS Flat Rate Priority Mail Box, I can ship a good 500+ coins anywhere in the USA for $4.75 (or worldwide up to 250 coins for $13.25).

I would have no problem applying some stickers.  But if the end user applies the stickers and/or loads the bitcoin value, then there would be no guarantee that the only copy of the private key is the copy on the coin.  In other words, the BTC value of the coin becomes very suspect in terms of using one as actual payment. But I suppose that would be ok, given that these would mostly be used for promotional purposes.  Also, are we talking about re-purposing the 1BTC blanks for this or the new aluminum coins?

If you want a less labour intensive way to create physical bitcoins, has anyone looked in to smartcards and/or NFC? Granted, not all that many PCs have smartcard readers, but its becoming more and more popular, at least here for homebanking and to read our digital ID cards for stuff like online taxes and any other government communications. NFC is also poised to become a standard feature on smartphones if nothing else.

Not sure what it would cost, or how you would go about implementing a bitcoin wallet on it properly, but it kind a makes sense for a digital currency. It may not have the charm of the coins, but unlike the coins, they could become quite useful.

I assume these would be 1 btc since the coins say 1 btc on them, right? Are you thinking of printing the mini key right on the gold foil?

I'm just wondering if this will cause confusion with your original 1 btc series since the coin will look the same.

I suppose you're right.

What if I offered a roll of 50 blanks, plus 50 printed gold foil stickers with the bitcoin addresses on them.  I preload, or you preload, but either way, you stick them on.  I actually have gold foil round stickers (same size as holograms) that have an invisible layer that can be printed on.  If I don't have to apply the stickers by hand, the price goes way down.

All of these are materials I have today, right now.  Minting new coins, that'll be a couple months.

Yes, I think part of the allure is that they contain actual bitcoin value that you can use.

Same here. Tokens without actual bitcoin value is worthless to me. Stick with the 0.1 btc aluminum coins. I will definitely buy them to give away and help promote bitcoins.

Me personally, not interested. Unless I misunderstood, it would be no different than buying tokens for a carwash and giving them to people saying they are bitcoins.

They are just clean blanks. "broken coins" come with a ruined sticker, the roll of 50 would just be clean coins with no sticker.

So that would basically be 50 blanks like the "Broken 1 BTC" that you currently sell?

0.2 BTC / coin isn't too bad a price.  I probably couldn't buy 50 of them though.  But it does sound like a good idea...

OK, here is a random thought...

What if I sold rolls of 50 of the bitcoin brass coins?  The exact same 1 BTC coin, but just the metal part.  I could offer this today.

I have like 6,000 of ones with year 2011 left, and have already ordered some with the year 2012 printed on them.

A roll of 50 1BTC blanks, I could sell for as little as 10BTC.

I'd probably buy 24 if they were reasonably priced and I could get them before Hanukkah. 8 days, 3 kids... plus they could play dreidel with bitcoins. Awesome!

Not quite true; they just have to be in the blockchain.

http://firstbits.com/1ecdsa

But sending an address 0 coins is at least as hard as sending it any other value…