Open letter

To: Whoever is making the decisions for talkcoin
CC: The rest of the talkcoin team.
BCC: The rest of the talkcoin community.

My name is Ko^lin Bur^ges (sic), I'm known for representing the bitcoin community against MtGox and for representing bitcoin in the media.
I'm a holder of talkcoin, I'm writing this because I'm concerned about what's going on here, both with the details of the takeover plan and the way it's looking more and more like a hostile move.
I have been speaking with other talkcoin holders about this and right now I am writing this on behalf of the owners of over 25% of all talkcoins in circulation. [If you're a coinholder and I haven't spoken to you yet, please see the end of this letter.]

It's not ok to wait until 6 days before the plan to fork to your inflation strategy before telling anyone about it, then to try to force it through even though the community clearly has major problems with it. You haven't managed to answer anyone's concerns, all we're getting is more and more rhetoric from the talkcoin team and this is worrying. I have made several important points and questions and none have had any serious answer.

The plan for inflation goes against all common sense and is going to be disastrous for talkcoin. Inflation at 21.6% of the current market cap per month will keep the value very low and will scare away any potential new investors. And at the same time the existing coin holders will lose most of the value of their holdings. Miners will stop mining when they realise they can't sell their coins any more, and I'm not sure we're so far from that point right now.

I can't figure out why you would even want to do this? And you haven't come up with examples of other modern-day coins which run on such a massive long term inflation model and survive. We have already tried it and it failed miserably. You say you've looked into the economics of it but for some reason you won't share with us what they are.
Some people are saying your motive could be to mine huge amounts of talkcoin for yourself/selves while it's worthless, so low mining competition, and then try to revive the price later. I don't believe this is the case, but your refusal to listen to reason is just going to fuel thoughts like these.

You'll be chasing away not only the current talkcoin holders but current and future potential investors. Take a look at what's going on on bittrex. As I type this there's a steady slope down from 1440 before your announcement to around 550 now, and a volume that has fizzled down to 0.18 bitcoins. Soon it could go below the 0.1 bitcoin volume which is necessary to remain on bittrex. Nobody has any confidence in this plan. I bet the only reason a lot of people are not cashing out their holdings right now at rock bottom price is that they can't - there are virtually no buyers left to cash out to! We have reached almost total collapse.
Please don't say that's down to marketing. Marketing doesn't explain the drop since last week. Marketing is bad but we don't live in an information vacuum and there are investors who have been watching this coin. There are also current holders such as myself who would buy more if the future looked promising. But as you can see, nobody's touching it with a bargepole. By the looks of the volume, not even yourselves!

If your plan is to be biased towards miners, this is deeply flawed and you're not doing the miners any favours. Giving miners a large fraction of a worthless coin is less rewarding than giving them a more reasonable fraction of a coin which has value and potential.
If your aim was to stock up on some cheap/easy talkcoin for a while and then hope it will pick up some value in May 2015 after the halving, or May 2016 after two halvings, it's simply not going to happen because we'll be competing against a new, advanced generation of coin technology. 9 months is an epoch away in crypto terms and for one thing we've got etherium looming on the horizon which will turn the altcoin industry on its head. Unless talkcoin has an already established market by then, it won't survive.

To be clear, we're not criticising your work on talkcoin. The large amount of inflation and the voting system were built into the coin before you came along and that's what brought it to its knees originally. We really appreciate the team's work and what you've been doing to try to fix up talkcoin.

But we have to do something about the disastrous inflation plan because our investments are at critical risk.

We would like to see the reasonable figure of 5 tac per block, which still comes to a whopping 650,000 TAC per month or 7.2% of the current market cap. This is still very high inflation compared to other coins, and personally if I had my way I would not have this many. But the boost this will allow to happen to the value compared to the current situation, as well as the extra stability, will give a much more palatable package to miners, potential investors, and current holders.

If you go ahead and try to force us down this path, we will not recognise you as the official developer and we'll do what we have to to get control of our coin. I've committed to heading up a new team if it's necessary. Please don't let things go this far!
I hope we can all work together. I want to see you guys running the coin and I hope I will be able to support you in this and help out if I can, but it absolutely has to be in the clear interests of the coin.

Kolin

*** If you're a coinholder and you agree with our aim to stop the crazy inflation, but I haven't spoken to you yet, please help us by sending me a personal message on bitcointalk to indicate your support. ***

Trying to introduce scarcity by heavily reducing the block reward will not do any favours long term. Outside this will be seen as an act of greed and unfair to new investors after the block reduction, it would in no doubt give advantage to those who got in before the block reward reduction. All that would do is scare investors away long term.

The plan put forward is a sane one and will see a reduction in coin supply over the long term by sticking to the more conventional inflation model put forward by Bitcoin. A reward halving at 1.5m blocks is within the first year. Artificially trying to reduce the coin supply outside of a well thought inflation model will only see a short term benefit if that. Those who are interested in the long term survival of Talkcoin will appreciate the plan put forward by the Talkcoin team which is made up of the most prominent members of Talkcoin. There are no better people to look after Talkcoin's well being and those who have been following Talkcoin will be very familiar with them.

I believe that the changes happening now are Talkcoin's best chances of longevity.