So I sent .42 btc... Now what?
same here. was there supposed to be something coming back?
Nope - you have created MasterCoins via your transaction, and you own them until you publish a message sending them to somebody else.
Can someone please explain how this works further or point me to an explanation of how this works? The MasterCoins were created when I sent some BTCs to the ExodusAddress. Then my claim to the MSCs is in the transaction record? I own them until I publish a message sending them somewhere? I guess I can send them to myself at another address? How do you do this? What indicates you have them? I will consider investing a bit more but only if I can understand this better.
The transaction of you sending coins to the exodus is everyone's proof you own the mastercoins. Hence the bitcoin blockchain contains the transaction record. You own them until you publish a message on the blockchain by means of sending specific transactions to 3 different bitcoin addresses, of which 2 are real and one is a fake of which contains information about the transferring of the mastercoins. At this moment transactions have to be built manually but there will be software soon that will streamline this for you.
Eventually you will have a mastercoin client which shows you your coins and you'll be able to send them freely to any bitcoin address. Along with many other things you can do with them like buy mastercoin based "coins" that represent the value of gold or USD or bottlecaps.
You may want to watch the presentation JR did for bitangels. It explains transferring mastercoins.
https://drive.google.com/folderview?id=0B2R_eSvAkuXSWXNmU2dneFlLTkk&usp=sharingThank you! I just watched that and read your post which is helpful.
Another question: if there are say 300,000 to 500,000 mastercoins created depending on initial investment (that's in the ball park I think) and mastercoins are divisible to 8 decimal points, is there any concern that that number will not be optimal if the concept really takes off?
Related point: for mastercoin to be valuable it needs to capture market through widespread acceptance, but what is stopping others from copying the idea and implementing it for particular purposes.
Could this type of project damage bitcoin if many try to implement similar protocols on top of bitcoin? thanks