Quote from: Bimmerhead on October 20, 2018, 06:49:35 PM

As someone who has been an Auroracoin enthusiast since February 2014, I have to say I was a little surprised to read that the foundation had liquidated 80% of their AUR holdings.

I believed in the Auroracoin idea in part because I thought Iceland was the ideal laboratory for this experiment: a geographically small, isolated region, with a technologically advanced populace with a long history of currency debasement and an extraordinary stockmarket crash due to banker machinations during the 2008 crisis.

But I look at projects like Byteball, who have over 200 retailers accepting their currency in Milan, Italy and Bunz, also with hundreds of shops in Canada accepting their token, and I wonder why adoption of AUR has been glacially slow in Iceland.

Its too bad some of the foundation funds weren't used over the past 3 years to fund development and adoption. Maybe the story would have been different, or maybe not. Maybe Iceland is not the ideal laboratory for this type of experiment after all.

I also was curious about the decision to liquidate 80% of the funds. However, seeing how the foundation vertically grew into the Icelandic Blockchain Foundation and hired a full-time director to manage the group, it is apparent that it was a positive move in the right direction.

Before the IBF, auroracoin had a perception problem concerning its slow movement and lackluster support within Iceland.

However this move has brought much needed legitimacy to auroracoin by decoupling the foundations focus on auroracoin alone from blockchain technology in general.

This coin agnostic approach has given the foundation, and auroracoin in return, a more objective perception and allowed those hesitant towards auroracoin a fresh perspective.

Right now the focus is on the general auroracoin meetup tomorrow night, Oct 24th, where we can now plan on continued auroracoin growth within the IBF.

In regards to merchant adoption, there has still been a need to build up the team to present a stronger support network for continued adoption.

When we have this momentum going I strongly believe that the remaining coins will have stronger intrinsic value under this much larger IBF umbrella.

- michael hannes