On this point, you're both crazy. 

Ohad you should know better! 

The numbers don't matter a priori.  Any ratio of coins sold to coins destroyed is irrelevant.  You could work your system with an initial distribution of just one coin or a million, and the system as a whole functions just the same.  (Denomination is not value.)

To further assume that price discovery sets a floor is a bit unlike you.  Of course we should hope that this is the case, under an assumption that resource demand being initially high and resource supply being initially zero coupled with an assumption that, post launch, demand by publishers will continually outpace supply by providers (both growing proportionally) creating a natural scarcity of the representative token, such that market rates would never fall below the initial pricing.  Wouldn't it be great if that could be assumed to hold?  Of course it cannot be, as any number of factors could crash demand, skewing the proportional growth.  If this happens at a time where the ratio of oversupply subsequently becomes greater than the initial amount of demand at launch (relative to the zero initial supply) then it is only rational that the value of the token would cross below this floor.

This reminds me of an interesting model that I worked a few years ago about general asset pricing.  It seems to be commonly believed (particularly around these parts, heh) that any given asset has a lower bound on price at zero, and a non-finite upper bound.  This turns out to be logically backwards.  Under any rational model, an arbitrary asset actually has a finite upper bound on price (as there is only so much of value that is not the asset, to be traded for it) and a finite but *negative* lower bound, as any asset could eventually become toxic by way of an external interaction.  (Arguably there are hypothetical assets which might have an effectively unbounded low price.  For an example, a device which randomly and suddenly (in uncontrolled fashion) creates a black hole of any random size could be perceived has having a potentially infinitely negative value as it could come to "cost" the entirety of the universe to hold.  Of course this is a bit absurd, and no practical asset has such a pricing model, but the model is sound despite.)

Anyway, with all of that aside, how are the technical details coming?  I've been meaning to check in with you on the irc for quite some time now, but have been very busy.  Is there any progress on the verification of receipts?

I'm still on the fence about your "not an IPO" IPO.  If everything lives up to our ideals then I'm all in, but our ideals are set quite loftily.  I still see dozens of ways that this whole project goes the way of CPUShare et al.

If the verification doesn't work to sufficiently secure publishers, I'm out.  If the GPU is available as a resource but not adequately secured, I'm out.  If the identity model is insufficiently restrictive, or sees too much early gaming, I'm out.  If the reputation model isn't capable enough to handle all of the various concerns, I'm out.  If there is not sufficient protection to providers to preclude illegal/immoral uses, I'm out.  If this whole thing just evokes some 0day in the hypervisory layer, I'm out.

There are a lot of ways that this whole thing falls over.  If it doesn't, it will be awesome.

I'll catch you on IRC again soon.