I cannot see how RSC could ever be valuable.
Ripple Labs have ended their computing for good distribution program because it was progressively debasing XRP.
Research supporters donate their spare CPU to WCG anyway. While everyone would prefer a retribution, this leads to a tragedy-of-commons situation: "they give me something for practically no additional effort, so any positive amount is good enough".
RSC are IOUs backed by nothing. They do not even exist outside Ripple. They are not accepted anywhere. Their only value derives from that research support promise, but then again the 40% premine defeats this purpose. For example, let us say I am a wealthy research supporter. I already save enough taxes from my other donations, so I will instead give money to informally organized scientific computing projects on the internet. I can choose between two options:
- I can buy RSC, effectively donating to other supporters to retribute their WCG computations. They will get only 60% of my money, and many of them would have donated their spare cycles anyway.
- Or I can setup an inexpensive, massive digitalocean botnet to run WCG myself. WCG lets me select which projects I prefer. I will even get some RSC for doing this!
Who would ever prefer the first option over the second? In other words, what stops RSC price from falling to 0?
First of all, sorry for the late reply.
Yes, you can buy a massive digitalocean botnet to run WCG yourself. But it would still be just you and even if you were super-wealthy, your computing power would be limited.
Our records show that we brought quite a few new people to WCG. Also, some of those who switched to RSC from the Ripple giveaway probably wouldn't continue at WCG without RSC, or at least not with such a big computing power. It thus looks like we are succeeding in bringing people to WCG, or at least keeping them there. For us - good enough. And that's what you would support by buying RSCs.
About the premine - most of it will be used to support research as well, just in another way. When some of the premined coins will be used to buy some research equipment, we will display on our website a copy of the official acknowledgement issued by the respective university. However, none of the "premined" coins were released yet, so by buying RSCs you'll only support WCG contributors right now.
Regarding the RSC price: Strictly taken, every new coin has in principle zero value at the beginning. It gains value over time. And so does RSC. The RSC distribution formula is deflatory, what should contribute to increase of its price. Maybe that's why some people are already willing to buy RSCs. And I can assure you that none of the bid offers are ours. We are also working on new features that will bring more value to RSC.