Decentralized funding of SAFE pods through the value increase of MaidSafeCoin on exchanges

For the first time this morning I really paid attention to the action going on exchanges and the amount of money involved compared to what we are trying to raise through our crowd-funding campaigns to grow the wider ecosystem in Safe Pods outside of Troon, for education, training, outreach, etc. that are required for the long-term viability of the SAFE project. It felt to me after having learned about the limited interest of investors in supporting these initiatives that there is a limited understanding about everything that is required to make a project like SAFE succeed not only financially for the initial investors but socially for its actual mission of providing privacy, security, and freedom to everyone.

I believe many early investors are hoping for Safecoin to be provide similar returns on investments as Bitcoin did (10-1000x) once the network launches and the system starts providing actual value to real users. That strong focus on huge eventual payoffs and the disconnection between the money being made on exchanges by private investors betting on the community success for personal gains but who are not necessarily taking an active role in supporting the growth and maturation of the community frustrates me because a small part of the resources currently being used essentially for speculation would go a long way towards ensuring the success of the SAFE project, both as a social experiment and financial investment. In other words, I believe there is money to be made faster both for personal gains and in a more useful way to the community if current investors see themselves as stewards of the community rather than speculators.

I therefore have the following two hypotheses that I am willing to test over the next months:

  1. There will be enough money generated from the increase in value of MaidSafeCoin to significantly fund SAFE pods around the world to create a vibrant community of developers and supporters;
  2. The growth and maturity of that community will increase the technical and business expertise available to support the underlying technologies behind the network, therefore making the success of the project more likely and increase the financial value of MaidSafeCoin.

At this point, you can all see the positive feedback loop going on here, but I want to stress again that for that feedback loop to happen, investors need to reinvest a part of the money made in exchanges into the community, which I am not seeing at the moment at any significant scale.

Although up to now I had no interest in learning about how to make money from exchanges and would rather concentrate on making the SAFE network work and understandable, the impact potential seems sufficiently important to be worthy of attention while being overlooked by current investors. I am therefore willing to personally try the following experiment in trying to establish a positive feedback loop as an investor and test whether that can be used to fund Safe Pods. In doing so, I hope existing investors will follow suit, the amount of resources available to the community will substantially grow, and that in turn the technical and business expertise available within the community will grow.

Concretely, I will buy 1000$US of MaidSafeCoin sometime in the next weeks. Once that amount has increased in value by more than 20%, I will sell to realize a gain. Half of the net gain (at least 100$US) will be used to reduce the crowd funding amount of the lectures. The rest (at least 100$US) will be used to increase the initial capital. Rinse and repeat.

Should the capital grow enough to generate enough money to fully fund the lectures, we will simply release them for free. If I eventually can generate more than 2500$CAD per month, the excess will go towards funding undergrad students for summer internships, and master and phd students for full-time studies related to problems linked to the SAFE network inner workings.

I will publish the MaidSafeCoin address from which I will start the experiment so that the whole community can monitor its evolution and I will post in this thread anytime some amount of money gets reinvested in SAFE pods. I encourage any other investor that does the same to post in this thread too.

Should that experiment be successful in getting support of enough investments, there is a point where the exchange value of MaidSafeCoin will overshoot its ‘real’ value and will stop increasing and maybe even decrease. That will be a good time to assess how much money will have been invested in the community, what initiatives it has supported and think about other ways of supporting SAFE pods.

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@erick, Starting in August, here in SF we’ve began to invest our own dollars into outreach - since then we’ve gained the attention of those who you suggest are in it for gains… it’s true. Yet, along with the message that these assets - maidsafecoins are undervalued included was that despite a substantial potential gain it will require input of such people to move past this and gain mass adoption of the software.

I’m not sure that 1000 usd and withdrawing after 20% on such a low priced item that ought to be priced at least 20-50 times current prices will help much since you can hold and make a huge impact 500-1000% down the road.

Consider you are highly intelligent, and are effective with funds. Your 200 usd gain is not such impactful. However, of several who have downed 100,000 usd + thoroughly understand that if they have 1,000,000 usd understand they owe that 100,000 to the network that made it happen.

Considering this; there are substantial plans for reinvestment… and thorough outreaches.

What has been done so far not just here in SF, also in Montreal is just the icing for the cake that could come from all of these endeavors. + Troon!

In the plans is to tour and launch PODs everywhere possible. This is mainly due to the significant effect SAFE network should have on the cloud computing industry.

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Erick,

Essentially what you are doing is day trading.

If it was as automatic and guaranteed as that (“I’ll make 2500/month trading X”), everyone would be rich. Of course that is not the case and many retail traders get washed out. One doesn’t need to look past the retail Forex/Stock market where a huge amount of people go bust rolling the dice.

Your algorithm only works if:

  • the price will in fact increase (which you call out as your premise/assumption, which is fine)

  • the price increases are smooth and linear (this is not the case in markets. A “5 year annualized return of 30%” for example actually doesn’t say anything about how it got there. 80% of that move could have come in the last day for all you know, and there could have been a long period, say 3 years, where price was actually going down - this is called a drawdown, and is what kills a lot of traders. Price moves come in jolts). You’d have to be a master timer, and if hedge-fund managers and professional day-traders can barely make it, you should think twice.

The sentiment of re-investing in the community (which I agree with) is a separate point, but I’ll leave my response for a bit later.

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would it be possible to design an app once maidsafe is released that allows the SAFE pods to earn farming fee’s from potential farmers who frequent a app that passively allows the pod in question to earn the i think its 10% of that farmers earning potential for them using said apps .

Also is this not just a temporary problem until the network is launched? isn’t there amounts in the distribution model to help exactly this once the network is live?

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I think it’s a noble idea, but you’ll never win from the market. Daily volume is already something like 40.000 dollar. So you need at least that amount of money daily to have a great influence on the price. I think indeed it’s like daytrading/swingtrading. I tried that for while with stocks and it’s quite hard! Over 90% of people loose money when they start trading. Another point to be made is that the crypto’s are way more risky than some stock ETF. If you bought some BTC and lost 50% you need a 100% gain to get back at the old price. So I hope of indeed to make some money on Maidsafe, but not by swingtrading. I just hold them and when the 1.0 is out and the price is way higher, I might sell some to take some profit.

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I am glad to hear you guys believe in investing in “peripheral” activities such as outreach in recognition on the impact it has on the community.

I also believe MaidSafeCoin are currently undervalued and given your own estimates, there is a lot of room for increase in value which could support Pods with the strategy I mentioned. I disagree however that more impact is to be had by having every investor hold the realization of the gains until we reach 500-1000% because such a realization of gains is still highly speculative at this moment and critically depends on mobilizing enough technical expertise around the project to make it succeed in a timely fashion.

I am not trying to match the impact potential of an investment 1000x the size of mine, I am trying to create a public precedent of investment with an explicit and public community growth goal with the hope that others will follow. My goal is also not to maximize the return on investment but to make more resources available to the community now. There is growing awareness about the project in Montreal and people are getting interested in contributing but many are held back by the fact that they still need day jobs to pay for rent and food. Also, the amount of money you need to convince a highly-skilled grad student to work on advanced technical problems is actually fairly low. I am curious about how fast I could make that happen.

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I am willing to fail at it and get washed out. Worst case I lost 1000$US and move on and everyone can learn from it.

I do not expect the price increase to be smooth and linear, I expect the average value over some period of time to go up. I did not mention any time bound on when to realize gains, I simply mentioned that when I do realize a 20% gain over the amount invested I will sell and realize the gains. The monthly figure of 2500$CAD/month does not mean I expect to be consistently making that amount of money every month, it simply gives an indication that I am not in this for the money, I am in it to support people. People could retrospectively hold me accountable for not having fulfilled that promise but it says nothing about when the gains would be realized and how much they would be.

The volume I would trade is well below the daily trading volume, and the 20% appreciation is well below the fluctuation in value we have seen even in the last month so that seems at least initially possible.

I would call the whole thing a success if I end up generating at least the initial amount invested (1000$) and that would have served to support non-financial projects such as our lecture series, and still have money to reinvest. The bar is pretty low and I am patient. I am not pretending I want to become a hedge fund manager or make a career in finance, I just want to try to set a public example of investment with an explicit community growth goal in mind, rather than a personal enrichment one.

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You’ll definitely succeed; yet if we start to extract profits from when maidsafecoin was .00002700 you’d never have a chance to realize your gains, plus make other wary of buying maidsafecoins…

So, realistically this would only work on the scale you’ve described and only from one front at this time… I’d say the purpose of the original crowdsale was to deploy all aspects of MaidSafe including the launch of the SAFE Network product.

Then we can scale the strategy as the trading volume increases. If it helps support more activities in the community, that would probably make later investors (but still pre-launch) more confident that the project will succeed, raise the price, and maybe augment the trading volume. I am certainly not saying that 1,000,000$ investments can fully realize gains now given a daily trading volume of ~20,000$. On the other hand, it does not mean either that the gains to be realized now are insignificant. Even at the small scale I am going to do it, it is still significant in supporting initiatives such our lecture series so I do think it is at least worth trying.

You are correct, I trade maidsafecoin throughout the June and July months and earned approximately 20.00 usd every other day… I wish used that time for developing things instead :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

Though, at that time trading volume was around 2,000 bucks and with 500.00 worth of maidsafecoin I was able to crash the price 25%; After that I realized we could use some help…

Currently, I assess that you can reasonably withdraw 200.00 usd trading maidsafecoin and likely in the future if a localbitcoins services emerges soon for safecoin you will be able to earn the 20% you’ve described… Yet, this will all be easier and reliably fruitful with a functioning safe network. This will add tangibility to what people can trade and utilize.

I am not trying to make money by directly influencing the price with a high enough trading volume, I simply want to see if some of the fluctuations can be leveraged to fund actual projects that strengthen the community.

I am willing to publicly fail at it and move on if it is too complicated ;-).

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You can succeed at this, though some infrastructure and a lot of thorough time will be necessary to make it happen :slight_smile:

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I fully agree that a functioning SAFE network would both enormously reduce the investment risk, bring actual value to people, and make it easier to earn money from exchanges. At that time, I believe there will be more interesting ways of supporting Pods than trading MaidSafeCoins and I will fully drop out of it. But we are not there yet and we still have to make that functioning safe network happen! That is what I want to support!

If it takes too much time, I will drop out of it and move on.

Well check this out: any person with who is reliable, and values reliability can extract from bitcoin easily 20-100 usd per day; which should average to 50 dollars per day trading in bitcoins… assuming there is infrastructure in safecoin network it will be possible for a student to provide this type of market making service and extract 1000-1500-2500 easily within a month, part time. Knowing this a person can be at their own will without a boss, and on their own hours.

I think that this is ample, and considering the real service that safecoin affords these types of things are likely to occur. (the trading of safecoin for fiat and extracting a small percentage profit)

What I am conveying to you @erick is that this is a perfect model to conduct and present to others; however, at this stage the infrastructure for safecoin to facilitate this does not yet exist; yet I am with you in that contribution of time in order for this infrastructure to exist.

Please be patient with whatever you do, the best things in life take time. Trading MaidSafecoins will only benefit you, if you got a lot of money. News and big money decides the prices of these things, especially in sucha early stage.

I love the work you guys deliver, count on me for donations.

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@dallyshalla

Do you mean it would be easier to generate 20-100 $US in BTC than in MaidSafeCoin?

What kind of infrastructure is currently missing? I thought it is currently possible for someone to exchange MaidSafeCoins for BTC and then BTC for $CAD or $US. Or do you mean the trading volumes are too low?

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An infrastructure for maidsafecoin to usd; right now you are betting with maidsafecoin and bitcoin which is quite volatile, you might sell today; and then the price rises 100% and miss out on many new opportunities;

In order to accomplish a trade you need to fulfill this:

Buy today 100
Sell today or later for 120
Buy back soon for 100

in order to keep your original assets and extract 20%
So for now buying back soon is at risk regularly since price is usually going up; and then you would need a buyer for your maidsafecoins;

currently there are many places where people are willing to pay 5-20% over the exchange price in the bitcoin ecosystem and then you can buy back at the exchange price instantly, and in the process capturing the percentage sought after.

maidsafecoin would need a direct method of acquiring through fiat, otherwise you are engaged in trading which is a field that as described before is like “crystal ball” type stuff.

During stable times you can likely make 1000 maidsafecoins at a time trading your maidsafecoins

for example

sell 10000 maidsafecoins @ .00017
buy 11000 maidsafecoins @ .00015

in the process you earn 1000 maidsafecoins worth .017 bitcoins which is about 35.00 usd on a lucky day

so you would need about 400 usd worth of maidsafecoins to start this

These are all metrics I know from experience; and it could work on up to 100,000 maidsafecoins; however, as you scale up the risks are much higher; imagine you sold 100,000 maidsafecoins and then the price goes up and you can only buy back 80,000 maidsafecoins… that’s a bummer, hence I am happy with what is now and just steaming away at code and outreach plans :wink:

You are right that the combined volatility of both Bitcoin and MaidSafeCoin make things more complicated for ultimately converting MaidSafeCoin gains to $US or $CAD that can fund community initiatives. If the wallet and exchange account management is not too complicated I am still willing to try it, otherwise I’ll delay the initiative for later ;-).

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You can also try doing this with bitcoin, and you will have the success you’ve asked for. Delay the maidsafecoin one to safecoin one, I’m sure you’ll succeed. !

I’m enthusiastic that you’ve come up with this strategy, since it is viable and useful.

Great you think these ways Eric, I applaud the initiative and recondition of an attempt that may work (who knows). So many variables it is hard to tell, I agree. Worth a try, well isn’t almost everything :slight_smile: My only concern though is time and how much time you may need to dedicate to watching charts and so on. As the network rolls out though we may see a similar thing every growing tech sees and that is fast growth of the values involved, I imagine in safecoin use/price as well all things being equal. So maybe the idea is not to watch charts but to know it’s perhaps volatile but growing, so over larger periods it becomes simpler to win.

Originally I had an idea that everyone could donate resources (when we were quid pro quo instead of safecoin). I was looking at ways to try and recognise where we had poor infrastructure and people and somehow allow those with resources to share a little with someone who has much less. The usual Africa story (it’s not an Africa story, Africa is badly misrepresented) where the network somehow could direct contributions to areas of the planet easily. I ended up thinking we could build something into the one laptop per child project and let them find the need cases. It could still work but perhaps easier if we built in safecoin wallets and some safecoin to such machines. Thereby getting more folks on. Of course in really poor areas they sell these for food as they should so it is not simple.

Love the idea of many folks using growth in their capital to fund more work and therefor more growth, to me it feels like the ultimate community drive, we pay to get paid kinda thing. Similar to MaidSafe trying to say hey here is everything we will work hard to increase value and we will make money because milllions of people will also make money and the tide will rise for us all. So yes we do not rob a few pennies from a few people, but work with millions of people recognising that we can all benefit and in a way where sheer numbers will protect the network from the usual profit decentralising business plans of many other companies. The ultimate speculate to accumulate model perhaps :slight_smile: Sounds mad but if it feels fair then it gives you a ton of strength and tenacity, especially if we protect people along the way.

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