http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gifI'm going to invest. The only strange this is this sentence:
Most escrow services and private escrows turned us down, as they do not like the idea of handling this kind of business.
Why would they turn you down, but accept some random crap/clonecoins at the same time?
Here is how our escrow search went:
Step one: Finding a serious escrow that does other things than bitcoin. This was actually a very hard step, there needs to be a good index of escrows somewhere. We'd have even been ready to pay to see a detailed lists of escrows, their trust rating, and what kind of business they accept.
Step two: Having the escrow accept us. Most escrows did not want to be associated with IPOs or with people who decide to remain anonymous because they are the ones who look bad if the IPO fails or ends up being a scam. We offered a testnet wallet to prove that we were real, but all but two didn't even want it and stopped their business with us at this step.
Step three: We had only two escrow options left. One of them was not looking serious enough however. We believe that he was probably a scammer, as he was offering to do it for 0% fee and without any cost. In our eyes, this was extremely suspicious, and felt like he was just waiting for an opportunity to run away with some big money.
Step four: The escrow service we were left with is a semi-automated service. For small escrows, they have a website, but they are ready to handle big escrows like IPOs for us in exchange for 1btc in advance and a fee of 1%. We also have to keep track of investors ourselves, and tell them who to give the Sparks to. This might sound like a lot of negative things, but there is a much bigger positive with them: They were willing to give us a real life identity and prove (through a bank payment of 0.01$) that they are the two persons they say they are.
Communication with them is not easy as they are in an asian timezone and are slow at writing english in real time chat, but when we take our time we can understand ourselves just fine. We did not even ask for the real life identity verification, they offered it themselves, and we appreciated that gesture a lot.
It seems like cryptocurrencies that are not established yet and IPOs have gained an association with scams, and when looking for an escrow you are caught in the middle of this. In their eyes, you are just like the rest, a scammer trying to make quick money. Even after offering to give them a working version of our wallet on testnet, they mostly refused and dismissed us as they do not want to be attached to something that is not big like bitcoin.
http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gif http://i.imgur.com/rRY7MUg.gifOne question I have for the developers is how many total coins will there be? You mention in your earlier thread that one billion will be distributed initially, which could now be outdated information. Please clarify.
From this thread:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=525419 : « There will be 1 000 000 000 (one billion) sparks distributed initially, with nothing at all premined or reserved for the developers »
This information has not changed since, we will stick with this number.
Yes, I saw that. It says
INITIALLY. I wanted you to confirm the
TOTAL lifetime amount of coins. Is the total one billion? Thank you.
Yes, with no mining, the number of coins can not go up.
However, as we mentioned on the original post, there is an annual 10% proof of stake inflation of the total amount of coins. This gives a small advantage to people who decide to have their Sparks in a wallet (even locked/cold storage) where they can hoard them or spend them in shops and e-commerces. The reason for this is that we want to encourage people to use wallets for their Sparks instead of keeping them on exchanges.
The PoS minting is done every day (about 0.028% inflation per day), and is the only way new Sparks can be introduced. It would not even be possible for us to insert more Sparks in the economy without making a hard fork, as only the cloud with the id 0 can contain new Sparks, and that cloud has already been generated and locked.
The stake generation will only start after a bit over one year, on the 1st of May 2015. Until then, the number of coins in circulation will be exactly one billion, not less not more.
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