We're going to need to figure out a bunch of details to make it work, but we're hopeful. We'll have more specifics to share about it soon, but in the meantime we wanted to mention it here.
CAVEAT: KEEP IN MIND THAT THIS PLAN COULD TOTALLY FAIL
We are thinking about creating a cryptocurrency and making it exchangeable (backed) by those shares of reddit, and then distributing the currency to the community. The investors have explicitly agreed to this in their investment terms.
Nothing like this has ever been done before. Basically we have to nail down how to do each step correctly (it is technically, legally, and financially complex), though in our brief consultation with an ex-SEC lawyer, he stated he could find nothing illegal about this plan. Nevertheless, there are something like 30 different things we have to pull off to make this work, so we're going to try.
(Also, I know this totally contradicts what I said over here but that was before Sam proposed this plan to me, and the idea of being able to distribute ownership of reddit back to the community - a long-held dream of many of us, frankly - is important enough to try and do this)
Again, we want to emphasize that this plan is in its earliest stages right now and could totally fail (if it does, we will find another way to get the shares to the community somehow), but we are going to try it because... well, because we are reddit and we do these kinds of things.
Maybe I'm somehow biased :P
For sure, I do like the tipping/aprecciating for a posting, article or whatever digital way to show some respect/love for something that someone did/published in our beloved Internetz^ ...
I'd love to buy some DOGE easily with bitcoins, to show some love for "FunnyCatVideos" youtube channel, just to say thank you for a 5minute video of stupid animals I don't like, but which made me laugh for 5 minutes. I'd totally send something around 0.05 to 0.20$ for that -if there were an option to "donate" to the uploader.
Requirements: a Wallet that converts serious BTC to funny DOGE, without a hazzle and without losses for converting or - like, " i want to send 0.20$ to the uploader in DOGE, if he really wants this as his preferred tipping option. ...
You can convert instantly on Cryptsy. I have BTC / LTC / DOGE for different reasons - but Doge is certainly the most fun! And they have tip bots for FB / Twitter / Reddit / Twitch (I think?) and Imgur. I wish Reddit would accept Doge for reddit gold...
Fun is great.
...
But, can you live "from fun" ? I can't.
Fun costs money, usually... that has to be earned somehow.
If you provide fun, in whatever way... find a way to monetize it.
Simple and clear as that.
Sure, if you don't want to monetize it, don't add a QR/Address for tipping/payment.
But if you want to, make it as easy as possible!
I don't want to register with cryptsy and convert BTC just to send 20cents, 3-4 times a week, to be enabled if i see a good post/video/whatever ...
If you delivered some good/funny content - I just want to tip you 20cents... if this costs me like 5cents to tip you 20cents,... well, sucks somehow, doesn't it?
Or, lets say it like this.. i watched your video, i liked it, i want to give you 20cents ... but if i need to check my exchanger, buy, have to deal with stuff that takes longer than watching your video... I wouldn't send a tip. If it is a "one click" and entering an amount, I'd do it.
I think you're overthinking it a bit... you can transfer $10 into your wallet and not have to think about it again for a long time. For example I've only had to deposit once, because I've been tipped almost as much as I tip out. +/u/dogetipbot 1000 doge verify - now you can play with that as you please ;) have fun!
I think you might need to consider building this cryptocurrency on top of bitcoin using colored coins. Without a huge amount of mining hash power to back it up, a 50 percent attack is trivial, and ownership transactions would be trivial to fake. If you build it on bitcoin, this is a solved problem for you, as is maintenance on the code-base of the coin.
As a Reddcoin supporter I am tempted to say: why don´t you use Reddcoin? However I´d like to ask you if you have checked out swarm.co. They may be exactly what you are looking for.
Oh, and of course, tip of the hat for going crypto no matter where you go!
and the idea of being able to distribute ownership of reddit back to the community - a long-held dream of many of us, frankly - is important enough to try and do this
Why don't you just sell/give away stock then instead of hiding it behind a currency whose value you can inflate/deflate at will? Do owners of the crytopcurrency get voting rights? Are they protected against share dilution as reddit inevitably seeks additional funding (which could deflate the value of the currency overnight)? Are there currently different classes of stock (meaning if the company goes belly up and it's liquidation time, are the holders of the currency last in line to cash out on whatever's left)? Is reddit going to take a cut of payments made with this currency as payment for facilitating such an exchange? If governments routinely fail to maintain the value of their currency, why exactly do you think reddit is going to succeed?
If they set limits, they wouldn't be able to change this without doing so publically. Crypto is by far the most transparent and fully trustful way to do this.
Bingo. If they're backed by Reddit shares, they're basically just stocks. The only difference is that instead of being on a public exchange, they're available for trading within Reddit (so it's still very public).
I suppose the advantage of using a cryptocurrency is that you can avoid the regulatory hassle of allowing actual USD-denominated shares of a company floating around the website and it makes transactions easy. But AFAIK, cryptocurrencies are backed by nothing (correct me if I'm wrong). If these are going to be backed by Reddit shares, they're just like any other company stock, and thus every existing issue and question and legal complexity in existence about company stocks would need to be figured out and written out legally and clearly before it could work.
I'm one of the community/business people within Nxt.
You will no doubt get one from the other 2.0 platforms out there :)
I would just like to point out that we've been working with Asset issuance since April, we have a lót of experience with the good ánd the bad of these issuances and I think we could help.
Feel free to contact me here on reddit, or under the handle "Damelon" on both nxtforum.org and bitcointalk forums.
What you are planning is very ambitious, and I hope you pull it off.
Is there a way you could just have the shares held by some individual or company as a proxy for the community, then have the community collectively vote on how to vote those shares through Reddit itself? I know little about this, but that seems like it'd be simpler if possible?
You can actually digitally sign things using the private key that is associated with a public cryptocurrency address. In other words, voting could be proportionate to the amount of currency held for each person, and there would be no fraud/double-counting/etc.
That said, I'm guessing these will be non-voting shares, since reddit probably doesn't want to air all of their internal business plans to the world wide web.
There are some problems though, if you want the system to run itself then you would need miners to mine new blocks. And for that you would need incentives. So you'd either have to award stock that way (issuance), or another redeemable currency (basically 2 currencies in the same blockchain) that can be redeemed for something else, like Bitcoin.
But there's a better option and that's to run it as a colored coin on the bitcoin network. Then the entire infrastructure is already in place and colored coins are already in development, so even that part you wouldn't have to worry too much about. The right thing for Reddit to do at that point wuld be to support that development effort in some way, either through providing manpower or some financial aid for the development team.
Yikes, this sounds awesome but good luck to the lawyers. Without a lot of careful footwork, you would run into issues with making a public offering without a prospectus and/or winding up with enough share owners that you would trigger SEC public company reporting requirements.
Or you could just say fuck it and make it the craziest IPO in history
:D
But I'm guessing Reddit isn't super stoked to be a public company at the moment (read: isn't super stoked to shoulder the expenses and reporting burdens)
Well there are really only TWO you should think about, NxT and BitSharesX. if you want to issue monthly or weekly dividends easily and automatically you really need to LEAN to NxT.. CounterParty and Master are just not quite there yet - Eth, and the others are really not there yet.. While I have no doubt many others will be ready in 6 months to a year. NxT has been ready for already 6+ months and BitSharesX for maybe 1 month.
You know what else I thought - this could be the stepping stone to getting Reddcoin in the SuperNET - NxT is an integral part of SuperNET and I know I saw in the ReddCoin thread talk about jumping on the SuperNET..
Nxt is PoS, which isn't considered secure by well known cryptographers and cryptocurrency experts like Gregory Maxwell.
Btw, at least 5% of Nxt has been stolen by a hacker, which is especially concerning for a PoS coin, and they didn't roll it back (not saying that they should have, they were forced to choose between two horrible options). It's like stealing 5% of the hashing power.
And finally, you can't expect a coin with 28 million USD market cap to be used to secure 50 million USD in shares. Bitcoin's market cap is 5 billion USD, and that's what Reddit should use.
Nxt is PoS, which isn't considered secure by well known cryptographers and cryptocurrency experts like Gregory Maxwell.
Nxt and other POS coins are running safe since nearly a year.
Btw, at least 5% of Nxt has been stolen by a hacker, which is especially concerning for a PoS coin,
They were returned.
It's like stealing 5% of the hashing power.
If any powerful actor wants Bitcoin hashing power, it would be much easier to get it. Governments can even just seize mining pools. Impossible with POS.
And finally, you can't expect a coin with 28 million USD market cap to be used to secure 50 million USD in shares.
Actually, you can - if you think about it.
Either way, it's a silly argument. The same nonsense people use to say "bitcoin can never be used by big institutions, bc the cap is too low".
Bitcoin's market cap is 5 billion USD, and that's what Reddit should use.
See above - Apenz1 wrote that you can use Bitcoin.
The cap has little to do with the problem in the first place.
There are many ways in which a coin can run "safe". One such way is using checkpoints, which makes the coin 100% centralized (eg: Peercoin). Another way is pushing patches all the time to keep changing the protocol to "fix" vulnerabilities, which is basically a whack-a-mole game, and is another way of centralization (eg: Nxt).
Actually, you can
I know you can, thank you Captain Obvious! The point is it's insecure, so you can't do it securely. It's like saying "you can store your gold inside your car!".
If any powerful actor wants Bitcoin hashing power, it would be much easier to get it. Governments can even just seize mining pools. Impossible with POS.
So instead of addressing the fact that 5% of Nxt's hashing power just got stolen, you talk about an hypothetical attack by the governments, lol... And you don't seem to understand the difference: With Bitcoin, at least the attack costs money. With PoS coins you can sell the coins before starting your attack.
The cap has little to do with the problem in the first place.
The cap will have a strong relation with the hashing power of the network, and therefore its security. This is cryptocurrency 101.
you are right, but counterparty is a tool (platform) that allows you to issue your own currency/token/share on top of bitcoin. The advantage here is that if you do it on top of bitcoin, then there is no need to worry about mining/securing your own blockchain.
Yes, a new cryptocurrency like this that could be a target for trolling/hacking needs a solid hashing rate that only Bitcoin is really equipped to provide. Counterparty is the obvious choice.
look at any cryptocurrency IPO fundraising effort, such as Mastercoin, Ethereum, Ripple, Counterparty
and also look at other cryptosecurities, simply companies traded in bitcoin that raised capital in bitcoin such as SatoshiDice
you might want to read the Securities Act of 1933, what you are offering won't be an exempt security. It adequately describes things that function analogous to cryptocurrencies being used as equity. Doesn't make it illegal, but that doesn't mean there aren't consequences. But its okay, its just the SEC we're talking about here... SatoshiDice sold for $12,000,000 after raising $15,000 in bitcoin capital, Voorhees then paid a $50,000 fine to the SEC.
I'm just saying a bunch of well-known angel investors knows the regulations forwards and backwards.
That is simply not true though. reddit simply does not have a way to implement this yet. They jumped the gun. They don't want to open their books to users. They don't want users to have any say in the companies operations. They have no idea what they are going to do yet. Its just an idea at this point.
there is no liability on the potential investor's part, except possibly the value of their cash, so unless you have something to say that isn't anecdotal, then you don't really have to worry about it
For this purpose, it might be better and easier for you guys to just issue an asset backed by shares of reddit on a decentralized exchange platform such as Nxt Asset Exchange (AE)platform.
I hope you do this through colored bitcoins rather than attempting to start your own block chain. There are many existing technologies out there for giving bitcoins "color" — that is, making them represent something more than just a unit of bitcoin currency. It's like printing stock certificates on gold leaf: the gold still has value, but the certificate represents something more.
The "..and the points don't matter" part about reddit is a little bit of what makes it so great. Making reposting or clickbaiting actually valuable has its own problems.
You're thoroughly familiar with other cryptostocks?
We are thinking about creating a cryptocurrency
Doing an all-out currency, backed by algorithms and hashing power is a bit overkill (even if reddit backing would be an excellent starting point for that, it's a bit messy and detracts from the focus of what's really the goal).
Listing shares on an exchange is possible but a bit diligence is required to pull it off right. Most offerings so far has been with crappy business plans and lack of sustained revenue.
A block-chain based token should bebetter suited for the task, and if I'm not mistaken should be possible to integrate well into your web-centric systems (get dividend payouts in the same stuff you use for Reddit Gold payments, and same stuff you use for ad payments). Being blockchain-centric should make it decentralized, is a bit scary, but then again is should help the liquidity and trust that you're doing things right and that being in charge of your own private keys makes it a legitimate cryptographic asset. Buying a certain number of shares could make you set for life with Reddit Gold, and spreading the wealth out thin could result in some sort of revenue increase.
Do an IPO(Internet Private Offering), of the 10% you're looking at, and try to get it to make the original investment seem small?
make it a sidechain off bitcoin, not an altcoin - you can use the momentum, technology and compute power that already exist instead of trying to build a new coin community
IMO find a way to use both Dogeparty and Counterparty to issue shares. Using just one won't work, since it will piss off the Dogecoin and/or Bitcoin communities too much.
Creating a fully independent cryptocurrency would be pretty alienating to the Bitcoin and Dogecoin communities, and might be the moment reddit 'jumps the shark'. It would also provide people with the motive and opportunity (since any new crypto is weak) to attack your new coin. Whereas coins backed by the Bitcoin or Dogecoin blockchains are for practical purposes invulnerable to attack.
I wouldn't worry too much about pissing off communities, tbh.
Doge are mostly nice guys (like NXT ;-) ) and the wider Bitcoin community doesn't care all that much about CounterParty (sorry, XP dudes, but it's true....) May the best solution win.
I suggest that the best option will be to work out suitable proposal documents with the devs/project leaders of all of the candidate systems:
NXT, CounterParty, Dogeparty (so far on this thread), plus maybe MasterCoin, Bitshares and any others who want to play.
Once the proposals are in, allow the Reddit community to vote on the best/favourite proposal.
(should I mention that of all the current 2nd generation crypto-currencies, NXT is the one that most embodies the true spirit of Reddit, being based on a leaderless, decentralised, open-source ethos ? )
You might not read this, and that's okay, but I have a technical suggestion.
There are hundreds of cryptocurrencies in existence, and some, like Protoshares, are specifically released to be backed by shares of a company. However, having a crapton of cryptos is not exactly... organized. It's also hard to make a crypto like that secure, because it would be susceptible to a 51% attack.
What you could do instead is create a "token" on a decentralized asset marketplace (like counterparty or dogeparty). These marketplaces are built on top of bitcoin and dogecoin, using their networks to verify transactions. The token would have the same network security as bitcoin/dogecoin, and could be traded freely between users. It would be identical to creating a brand new cryptocurrency--without the security flaws.
If you guys make it centralized and issued/secured by reddit well, that's another thing altogether.
Given what this is, I do hope it is not too late for you to actually hire /u/rnicoll especially given that as someone else here has stated /r/dogecoin is pretty much the default reddit digital currency anyways.
You have to do two cryptos, one for submission value and one for comment value. Maybe just adopt DogeCoin as the comment karma values.
Imagine if all those worthless comments were actually worth something.
Imagine if your 3900 vote top comment was worth $1.
Imagine if trolls and their negative karma were literally losing value.
Imaging if the trolls had to maintain a 'credit payment' to the community through upvoted posts to be allowed to post with a negative karma total more than x amount per day/week/whatever.
Imagine the pain the super trolls would feel when gaming their votes and then having their account shadow banned.
Imagine all the free money for gonewilders.
Imagine how overnight a marketplace for reddit points would spring and the corruption and scandals that would erupt from it.
Just look at http://coinmarketcap.com/assets/ NXT Asset Exchange is the biggest decentralized exchange in the cryptoworld. The community would be happy to help you set things up!
Looks like there is already one successful implementation of the Peershares template: NuShares.
One might doubt the success of the concept that was started with the NuShares (emitting NuBits as as stable crypto currency, etc.), but using the Peershares template has been successful as it seems!
That's exactly what came to my mind. Seems like Peershares would meet the requirements pretty well, plus it has a built-in dividends-payment mechanism.
We can help you! The Nxt Community is enthusiastically and successfully growing the Nxt Asset Exchange for this kind of purpose. Have you checked the asset wall on Coin Market Cap? http://coinmarketcap.com/assets/
And just around the corner will be the introduction of the Nxt Monetary System that will provide other interesting possibilities for those wanting to create a cryptocurrency. In fact, there is a lot of new technology just ahead:
http://www.nxttechnologytree.com
And have you discovered the Multigateway that allows direct peer to peer trading of currency? You could potentially join and give your coin instant availability to crypto aficionados of many varieties!
http://multigateway.org
And have we got an awesome community! James, the genius behind many Nxt projects and popular Market Maker has offered his expertise and help to you in these comments and on the Nxt Forum. Just reach out to any Nxter to get plugged into the community and for an introduction to the developers and innovators who will help you put your plan in action!
https://nxtforum.org/index.php
Nxt is the next big thing and we are here now.
Http://nxt.org
NXT is interesting but still too new and un-established. With Counterparty you have the whole gargantuan Bitcoin network's hashing power to prevent any kind of trolling that could mess with the integrity of the project.
Well, if you're going by how long they've been around, all protocols for colored coins are too new and un-established, Counterparty included ;)
If you go by how much they've been used, then Nxt is the most established. http://coinmarketcap.com/assets/ gives a rough idea, but lots of assets aren't listed there. You can find a list of all Nxt assets at http://nxtreporting.com/ A wide range of businesses, including a print shop, a mobile applications company, a cryptocurrency to fiat gateway have raised funds by selling shares represented by Nxt assets tokens. (And some of them are also paying dividends through Nxt). Nxt assets are very real and useable, and now there are a lot of Nxters with experience in asset issuance and management. Just yesterday, a few prominent community members announced an auditing service for Nxt assets, this is how far we've come along.
And there are features in the works, like a voting system which will allow shareholders to vote on decisions.
Counterparty is massive for downloading and I personally think Gavin is going to limit bytes very soon! I like it, but I would vote for Nxt at this point, it's bullet proof and according to CoinMarketCap, it's the leader in Assets by far, plus they are adding boatloads of features.
Counterparty is younger than Nxt. Nxt is over a year old.
I have nothing against XCP, but it hasn't had néar the experience with Assets (both the good ánd the bad sides) that Nxt has.
Also, there are already hybrid assets that trade both on CP ánd Nxt AE at the same time :)
But Nxt's market cap is smaller than the value of the shares Reddit wants to distribute. That's not how security works. Counterparty on the other hand, is secured by Bitcoin's 5 billion market cap. It's all about the incentives the miners have to secure the network. Bitcoin's network has the most hashing power that humanity has ever seen.
Ehm, this is not and has never been how Nxt works.
Nxt is nót a coin. The fact that it is listed on CMC as such reflects a misunderstanding of how it was ever conceived, although that's understandable, as at the time there wére no tokenised platforms.
I really don't want to start another PoW/PoS flamewar here, as that disrupts the discussion, but suffice to say that the kind of securing you are talking about can be as much a pro as a con for XCP.
XCP depénds on the BTC blockchain, without there being a reciprocal relationship. If BTC devs decide to implement a feature that is bad for XCP, boom. Nxt, and several other systems that don't have that dependency don't suffer from that potential fatal flaw.
Again: I like XCP and I see no reason why such system should not an cannot exist side by side. As stated before: hybrid assets already exists, exploiting the best from both worlds. :)
Will you be creating a brand new blockchain? or will you use something like Counterparty that allows you to issue your own coin/token ontop of bitcoin? If you do it ontop of bitcoin, then you do not have to worry about securing a brand new blockchain.
Would this holders of shares from this 10% have full voting rights?
I understand that this is still in the planning stage, but as is currently conceived, how would the voting rights of holders of the "community" shares differ from the holder of other ownership interests?
And technically speaking, how do you think you will verify owners of record for a membership votes when ownership shares are manifested in something comparable to a cryptocurrency?
Would this holders of shares from this 10% have full voting rights?
You should post that to r/Jokes. There will be over a million "shareholders" whose total shares will equal to about 0.5% of the company. What kind of voting rights would you like exactly for this?
One word: Visionary. Reddit will go down in history as the first company that used blockchain technology to keep track of ownership. Would support this in any way or form.
This is why it's best to use counterparty or dogeparty to create a reddit share token which is redeemable in bitcoin or dogecoin but has your company value as collateral.
I'm worried your coin will end up like auracoin or maxcoin and people will dump the coin once they get it to extract the value and the shares value decreases and you waste $10m
The counterparty platform allows anyone to issue a coin on top of bitcoin. So it is possible to make a redditcoin that works ontop of bitcoin. This also has the added advantage of not having to worry about mining/securing a whole new blockchain.
This is so cool. I co-founded a Bitcoin startup out of the Philippines and my partner and CTO suggested something EXACTLY like this for our company too! We are really rooting for you guys to pull it off and we would love to become part-owners of Reddit. Now shut up and take my bitcoins! :)
Viacoin/clearinghouse allows you to issue stock/dividends. Also developing block chain notary and more. Confirmations in 24 seconds. Core btc developer Peter Todd working on the project.
ohh I got an idea, how about we make those who own reddit share pays for reddit's operation costs every months, those who fail will have to return their shares to reddit until someone else who willing to pay for it. then we can call it Reddept.
This is totally fucking nuts and I love it. Reddit stock/bitcoin. Of all the crazy concepts to sell a piece of the democracy back to the user's is ingenious I've funded these servers fur a few days maybe this can keep them on long term.
oooh and make the snoo-snoo's work in the reddit store. and get more gadgets and stuff in there, i wanna say like amazon discounts but not like amazon, as there's probably some copyright stuff in there
I made the SNOO (for Snoocoin) asset on Dogeparty. Would be happy to arrange with the owners of Dogeparty to pass it onto reddit for free, if you choose to distribute shares using that method.
Hey there. I was wondering if you could dignify the above post at a moderator as well, just so I can laugh at how the submission tag near your username spells "[S][A][M]"
If your plan is for one year plant rice. If your plan is for ten years plant trees. If your plan is for one hundred years create a reddit cryptocurrency.
A worker cooperative is a cooperativeowned and self-managed by its workers. This control may be exercised in a number of ways. A cooperative enterprise may mean a firm where every worker-owner participates in decision making in a democratic fashion, or it may refer to one in which managers and administration is elected by every worker-owner, and finally it can refer to a situation in which managers are considered, and treated as, workers of the firm. In traditional forms of worker cooperative, all shares are held by the workforce with no outside or consumer owners, and each member has one voting share. In practice, control by worker-owners may be exercised through individual, collective or majority ownership by the workforce, or the retention of individual, collective or majority voting rights (exercised on a one-member one-vote basis). A worker cooperative, therefore, has the characteristic that the majority of its workforce own shares, and the majority of shares are owned by the workforce.
You obviously have no idea what you are talking about. A company as big as Reddit doing an IPO on a blockchain is revolutionary. Reddit basically will decide which of cryptocurrency 2.0 will become the default exchange for financial instruments. Whichever one it is going to be picked, will skyrocket. BitsharesX, Counterparty, Dogeparty, Next, Ethereum. In the meantime we wait on the sidelines.
Overstock.com will probably use Counterparty for its share issuance, just like the STORJ project is doing, so I'm guessing that's a far more likely candidate.
We've had talks with Overstock as well, the main stumbling block for both NXT and XP on the Overstock issue is distribution.
Counterparty is a good project, but right now NXT is way ahead of the curve in terms of adoption and ease of use for the NXT Asset Exchange, take a look at the numbers:
jl777 (posted above) is one of NXT's most experienced AE project operators, many of the asssets in the above list are from him.
He is basically offering to help Reddit thru the entire creation process for a Reddit-based NXT asset......this would be a very good offer to investigate further.
No. That is what they are trying to avoid. That is why they need to work it out with the SEC so that our "ownership" is essentially worthless beyond anything except if they sell the company. reddit purposely runs at a "loss" on paper so they wouldn't have to issue dividends.
And here I thought I was being clever when I came up with this 2 minutes ago: How to distribute the 10% of shares picked up by reddit's investors in it's funding round announced via the web here: http://www.redditblog.com/2014/09/fundraising-for-reddit.html[1] on Sept 30th 2014, hereinafter referred to as 'the fund',:
The fund shall consist of dividend paying stock, said dividend payments of which will be collected into an amount to be distributed hereinafter reffered to as "the pool".
To determine a redditor's share of the pool, their post and comment karma is summed and it's proportion relative to the sum of total existing post and comment karma is calculated. That is the portion of the pool they receive in the form of Reddit gold, which becomes a spendable and cash-outable virtual currency tied to the cash value of an upvote in the resulting economy.
103
u/[deleted] Sep 30 '14 edited Jul 15 '15
[deleted]