@tempus what do you think would happen if they just didn't stake those billions? Just said, ok the foundations just won't stake at all. I'm curious what the calculations for inflation and distribution would be then.
That's not possible, because of the network. Staking keeps the Blockchain rolling. So they have to stake.
But if we would say, there would be only 0.1% interest rate (just for a calculation-example) and we say they start the project like they did:
3 billion in total
100 mio for the market
2.4 billion "growth-foundations" to distribute the supply.
And let's say the ICO was sold and really in public hands, they could distribute 2.4 mio over time and various ways - like they say. If the public would trust them, without fear of "team-dumping" or that somebody would hack them or whatever, they could distribute it, if they see demand and could hold if not - they could distribute without time-pressure. They could tip little amounts wherever it's possible, pay those who would like to implement it and a Game-Dev would see more value in it, the chance would be higher that he would accept NEU for his work and so on.
They also could control the price, because it would rise with a growing demand = user-growth and they could sell more. They would act like a central bank and over time the growth-foundations would distribute the billions and it would become a decentralized currency.
If it would be really successful the price would explode because there wouldn't be much inflation and I believe that they don't want that. It's a tipping-currency and they don't want too much volatility.
Interest-Rate is also needed to motivate the user to stake, and that's like Proof-of-Work for Bitcoin. So there has to be some more interest-rate.
They could have chosen a lower interest-rate... like 20% and decreasing or just 6%. But it's also the huge premine that makes it complex. That's an issue in itself I believe. Because if they want to give the people some intention to keep their coins and stake, for the best of the network, they have to chose an interest-rate that makes some sense for the usual investor. But with that huge premine --> they will stake always more. That's really a problem at every interest-rate.
Maybe a solution could have been, if technical possible (I'm not an expert): Different wallets with different interest-rates. That the growth-foundations would stake, would keep the blockchain rolling and protect it, but with only 3% interest rate (just a number), but all public users would stake at 100% but decreasing. They would sell 100 Mio and it would become to >200 Mio after one year just out itself ("public-staking") and they could use their billions to invest in games and distribute it with tipping and so on and they could sell, if there should be much user growth.
It would need some time to figure out the best solution for various scenarios, but the current design is suicidal.
Ah very interesting... it makes sense they don't want the price to be too high since it's a tipping currency, but then that leads to the question of why they priced the presale so high. You would think that they would try and do more to get hype or excitement on the forums, maybe had a simple web game that accepts neucoin or something at least that released at the same time the coin did. Where did they expect the price to go if they didn't really do anything at launch? How is that fair to the presale buyers that bought at that price if they couldn't even get enough buyers to sustain that price? I was reading back at the post:
http://forum.neucoin.org/t/the-neucoin-pre-sale-price-is-going-to-be-01-what-do-you-think-of-that-valuation/148 and a lot of the community were saying how they were thinking the launch would be different than other cryptocurrencies, that this coin would have a bunch of uses at launch, thus getting more users etc.
I really can only speculate about the question what exactly they believed or what strategy is behind.
Regarding the price: It's not that they don't want it to rise. It's more that they don't need that. If we think it this way: 1 NEU = 1 Dollarcent, the Crypto-User (like we are here) would like to see it rise... if it would go to 2 cent it would be 100% in profit about the price.
But: What the Neu-Group would see: More demand and they would meet that demand. They would sell, so the price wouldn't rise much. I believe that's also the reason they've chosen the 100%-interest-rate. The Investor shouldn't think about profit in price, but profit in interest rate. With other words: The price could stay the same, because if there is growing demand the Neu-Group will sell into it, but if you stake you make about 100% profit in supply in 1 year or more because of compound interest.
And you should trust them and the "non-profit-foundations" in that way: "Nice, they have a growing supply, that's a lot of potential to grow to mass-adoption", because they say that they'll distribute it for the best of the project... buying into games, tipping over Facebook or whatever.
In fact there would be two markets (that's what they most probably want)... not completely separated because that's impossible, but nearly. We are in the Crypto-Scene, watching charts and trade for profit, monitoring a blockexplorer and so on. But they don't focus on this market. They want to sell it besides the market to a public that would use it, but without understanding it. For the non-crypto-public the price wouldn't be very important. The ususal user would hold 300 NEU for 3 Dollar or something like that and if the price would go down, he wouldn't recognize that or don't care about it. He just would tip with it etc.
But they would meet every demand in every way... on the exchanges and through easy-to-use payment methods besides the Crypto-World. That would be a constand pressure on the price. And the initial-seed and angel-investors would dump 2% every month and at the same time they also would have an increasing Neu-supply, because of the high staking rate.
Under the line it would be (in best-case, if successful) a money-machine out of nearly-nothing for a few people. The Crypto-User is needed to bang the drum for it, to stake it and protect the network, without thinking too much about concerning scenarios and that it's in fact a ponzi because they wouldn't run out of supply for many-many-many years... If successful it would be like selling sand in the desert. And they would have a lot of control about it all, including the price. They're already doing that. Above 1 cent they'll sell more... if it goes down they withdraw some supply of the market. So it won't have much volatility.
If you (we all) are not concerned about what they stake, and the increasing supply they have out of nothing... they would have time to sell/distribute it. If there is more demand they sell more, if less demand they hold it and their NEU-supply grows. We should just think: Nice, that's potential. But for them it's money if there is increasing demand... because they'll sell. Forget the "non-profit". Yes, they'll distribute some millions with tipping and they would pay Game-Devs with it if somebody agrees to get paid in NEU. But as long as the Crypto-Community would have complete trust, they wouldn't have any time-pressure.
But there are too much issues. Investors won't ever trust that way. And nobody wants to feel just used to make little profit and they would sell sand in the desert if successful. It's a ponzi... and even if there would be some success and the press would pay some attention.. it would be outet as what it is. There can't be mass-adoption. Everybody can imagine the headlines about the "CEO" behind it and the design. It's arrogant and naive to believe that nobody ever would analyze it very deeply. And they made huge mistakes... they would have to be completely transparent, as promised. But they're showing very clear that there is too much to hide.
And... let's say they'll go on with it and the price will be stable because they keep it stable, and let's also say they get some non-crypto-user in and nobody cares too much about the critics. The internet doesn't forget. If there should be more attention in the future, more people will read about how they bought the own ICO, looking into the blockchain, reading this thread, thinking about the design, about the lack of distribution, the lack of transparency, broken promises... they can't ever hide that. So they shouldn't ignore that, but that's what they're doing.
I'm really curious what happened to Darteous now because until I left, he was still very convinced NeuCoin would live up to his expectations. But I don't know, maybe this is what everyone was expecting?? This is the first coin launch that I have been apart of so maybe my expectations were too high? Maybe a coin launches just for the sake of launching, then major features they promised would be released months/years later? Can someone help explain to me? Maybe compare a successful coin launch vs Neucoin's launch vs what happened with Paycoin? And can someone do a tdlr of what exactly happened with Paycoin? All I know is that they promised to keep the price at $20 but that didn't happen.
Also speculative: I belive that some who were involved know too much what's concerning and maybe anticipated that this is a project to lose credibility. If a highly skilled Dev has some optimism about Crypto in general, seeing a great future in Crypto, he won't take the risk to lose his credibility in a project that has so many weak points. I can't know the reasons but if I were a Dev I wouldn't agree with something like this. I would fear that it would fail right in the beginning and I would also fear going mainstream, because I don't believe that it's legit in a legal way. There is too much manipulation. And obviously they don't have that highly skilled Devs. I mean, there is a lot of complaining about technical issues.
What everyone was or is expecting... also very speculative. There is not much defense. If everybody who is involved would feel all right with this, they would communicate it and defend it more. There are a lot of big Investors who gave their names and... they could show up and communicate what they see in it and what the normal investor should see in it. It wouldn't need discussions here... they could write blog-articles or whatever. But I don't see anything like that. So, I believe that they don't feel very good with this. But I can't be sure about that. Maybe they're still believing in a great future and that FB-User will tip each other and World-of-Warcraft or something like that will implement it... I don't know. I don't understand why they gave their names and money... if they really gave money. Never saw more than the 4000 BTC.
It's not easy to compare it with other projects, because so far it's hard to say which projects will be successful... they're all in the beginning, even BTC is. I believe that Crypto in general has a lot of potential but it's unpredictable if the "Google" of Crypto is already there... or the "Facebook" of Crypto. But it won't be a ponzi-scheme and it won't be a central-bank-system like Neucoin. I believe, Dash has some chances. It has a public and skilled team, ongoing development proven over years, and it has a better distribution (there is some instamine). It has constant volume so far... it's pretty stable I would say and with a good potential. But that's what I believe, it's really unpredictable because there is so much innovation that something like ETH or a network like Supernet could make the "older-fashioned" projects irrelevant.
Paycoin: I didn't follow close enough to give a good overview. But there were tons of lies to bring people into it and the team behind it dumped it into oblivion. I never understood what was the strategy because it was... kind of irrational out of everybody's perspective.... a lose-lose-situation. Many lost much and those who made money out of it don't sleep very well and the "irrational-mastermind" is still on the flight as far as I know. There are SEC-Investigations and... you can read the complete story here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=857670.0;topicseen But that are a lot of sites to read. I hope for a book or a movie. ;-)