He consulted a number of people in order to reach this decision and I believe that his mind is already made up.
One hallmark of a strong leader is the willingness to reevaluate decisions given new information, and keep ego out of the equation. Several people here have made well-reasoned arguments for a cap, and against the idea that an unbounded crowd sale is "good for the community". I think most people would appreciate hearing a reasoned rebuttal, addressing the new points.
Otherwise, given the sale hasn't occurred yet, and modifying a line of the contract for a cap should be simple -- the head-in-the-sand response of "we've already decided" -- appears to be an emotional response. Indications of emotion-based decision making will not bode well for the project.
Anyone can contribute at the last hours/minutes of Phase 2 (for example), when he has more information about how the contribution campaign went.
That doesn't change the argument, only the time frame. For that argument to be true, only a few people would have the idea to jump in at the last minute, making only a nominal impact on the total amount raised. The problem is that an unbounded raise will lead a significant number the total investors to adopt this "last minute" strategy. In this situation the cap could jump by $20M in the last 10 seconds. People hit refresh to find out the value of their investment went down by half. Again, if the concern is truly for the community, then the team would not allow its most vulnerable members -- those with little to no investing experience, and without the ability to have their investments tied up for two years, until the market recovers -- to be placed at risk.
Hy Elevated,
your arguments are valid and true for investors looking for a fast and calculable ROI. In that case our campaign might not be the most attractive model.
However the primary objective of the campaign is not to make money fast, but to build something everyone on the world can profit from if they put energy, time and their mind into it. Sound out of the norm and emotional? Well change usually comes from outside the norm and our current economic-value system excluded emotions completely and created a framework of infinite growth on a finite planet.
We want to change that.
The missing cap should show the reflection of how willingly the world is to build something like this together.
How come you are so sure the price will spiral down?
There is a lot happening before the mainnet launch and we will continue to constantly grow communication and feedback with the community once the backing campaigns.
Honestly it will just get started then, since the æternity open source foundation will emerge out of the incubator phase between the 1st and 2nd backing campaign and from there many more projects will spawn that will keep exposure and interest high. Hence it's not unlikely that the speculative value of the coin will rise.
Furthermore I want to state that we are not primarily creating a coin, we want to build software that can help change the world to a sustainable piece of land, everyone can enjoy if they take responsibility for their selfs.
Cheers,
Dan