well, my frustration stems from the fact that this doesn't seem to be a thing that anyone can answer. I assume SOMEONE can, but nobody on the mastercoin subreddit or in the general bitcointalk forum can.
it seems as if the currency aspect of the technology is limiting the flow of objective information, with the speculative nature of the currency unit hampering technical discussion
but, as someone that has considered buying mastercoin, I want to be able to do my own objective analysis of mastercoin's future demand, and so far this requires me to understand how many mastercoin people will actually need to do anything
Bingo. I'm guessing 90% of the people here don't understand or don't know how mastercoin will actually work. I have yet to receive a response from someone knowledgeable:
What can 1MSC do that .1 MSC cannot? What does an MSC (the kind selling at .17 BTC) actually DO? Is it SHARES in the mastercoin protocol corporation?Are MSC going to be used to launch 3rd layer applications? And if so, how many will be needed for each particular application?
Crossposted from the XCP thread.
Perhaps I'm not understanding stslimited, but isn't that analogous to asking what is the
functional difference between 1 BTC, 1 mBTC, 1 uBTC, and 1 satoshi? All of those monetary units can be used as a basic transfer of wealth (of which 99.99% of it is used for that purpose right now), to send messages, to denote proof of ownership (colored coins), etc. (the latter two are not the primary uses of BTC right now, but could be). Similarly with MSC and XCP, I expect similar analogies to apply -- a store of value, until a network can be built that utilizes the other functions of these coins. How many bitcoin do you need "to do anything"? What someone is willing to take for them in exchange for goods and services.
Where I could understand is if stslimited considers MSC and XCP transactional currencies, rather than stores of value. And that is right to an extent; the non store-of-value features of these currencies has been a selling point, so to speak. However, in light of this view, I'd like to point to several posts highlighting the
transactional currency status of BTC itself, which the community has (by now) embraced the store-of-value concept. Thus, I don't think at all that the transactional and store-of-value concepts should be segregated at all, at least when talking about these.