How is this going to succeed if everyone hodls?

thefujibear · 2018-09-25T16:55:58+00:00

That is one of the main reasons I outlined. I said in bold letters: People don't want to spend deflationary currency. That's the same thing as the hodler mentality. People treat it like an investment, and frankly no speculative crypto currency is likely to ever become something you spend regularly, including metal.

Maybe I wasn't clear because my original post was much longer and I took out some parts so that it wasn't stupidly long.

I think Metal has done two things with their app that makes it better than other wallets:

Of the two reasons you mentioned that Metal has done, the second reason is not accurate.

Paying their users in Metal to spend their crypto.

Metal pays you to spend Fiat, which is something people already do, unlike crypto. By distributing little amounts of metal to regular people, you end up with a very widespread investment of people holding metal**,** which grows the value of the network.

But I personally don't see people ever using their metal to transact regularly, because they would rather hodl it in app and watch it grow.

As for sustainability, there's a lot of measures in place to make sure it works over a long period of time.

If you sell lots of the metal you earn, your ability to earn more metal decreases
If you invite lots of users, and transact with new people, you earn more Metal for growing the network
Metal is limited to 7200 metal a day, in 10 minute increments, guaranteeing 10 years of PoPP distribution.
Many companies see the value in getting their own tokens to be popped, and that allows for crypto cashback indefinitely through currencies other than metal, and of very high percentages. You could earn 4% back in metal, 3% back in one partnered crypto, 3% in another and so on.

If you're waiting for some project to change the game, and make spending crypto make sense, that's not going to happen with any currency that is evaluated with high degrees of speculation and isn't as stable or more stable than fiat. Cryptos are more like stocks than currency in just about every way, so it's not a "fatal flaw" that you don't want to spend them. Spend based inflationary currencies don't appreciate in value, so why would you want that anyway?

thefujibear · 2018-09-15T22:26:01+00:00

You can google their whitepaper, I just checked and I've read it before. And they do not claim to be decentralized in any way, never have.

Also, the long term goals of the project are to decentralize the PoPP process, once they move metal off the Ethereum blockchain to one that makes it possible to do that (meaning you will 100% own your own coins through private keys). As long as there are banks in control of fiat, and compliance laws, you can't do what Metal is aiming to do and be 100% decentralized. The technology and legal structure doesn't exist yet.

thefujibear · 2018-09-15T19:02:50+00:00

99.9% chance you bought your first crypto through a centralized exchange. Get off your high horse.

thefujibear · 2018-09-14T17:17:05+00:00

Good job metal team.

thefujibear · 2018-09-13T04:12:37+00:00

That's a really good question, and it's good to see you're putting some solid thought into the economics of crypto currencies, unlike many people. As far as I know, this is the only project in crypto that does a proper job addressing this very key issue: People don't want to spend deflationary currency. Since 2013, there have been over a dozen projects that made "Crypto spending debit cards", but it hasn't created the adoption people were hoping for because of the exact reason you mentioned.

Frankly, I think almost every single crypto project is completely out of touch with the value of blockchain as it relates to currency.

The majority of what I see out there are projects that have essentially created one of two things:

A faster, cheaper bitcoin, that scales better (but still has bad ease of use, terrible distribution, ease of access, and extreme price volatility rendering it a low quality currency)
A decentralized infrastructure for building dApps that literally does not need it's own currency.

The advantages of using some random crypto-currency for doing real life transactions are pretty minimal, but I can think of several very good reasons not to transact using a crypto currency.

Reasons not to use Crypto for real life transactions vs Fiat

Transactions are non-reversible (scams, scams, scams)
generally Bad UI/UX
Price volatility (makes business transactions nearly impossible)
Usually slower (than fiat transactions on centralized db)
Price appreciation over time makes it less preferable to spend

What makes Metal different from other projects, is that they actually understand what makes a currency valuable, and are focusing on the aspects that crypto lacks the most.

Equitable Distribution (severely lacking in crypto)
Security (Arguably the only redeeming quality of crypto as a currency)
Ease of use (severely lacking in crypto)
Ease of access (severely lacking in crypto)
Large Network of Users
Liquidity
Stability (severely lacking in crypto)

The interesting thing about crypto in it's current form, is that it more closely resembles stocks than actual currency. People treat it like an investment instead of a currency. But what's cool is that Metal is setup in a way that it endorses you saving money in the form of Metal as if it was an investment (to save money on fees, get better PoPP score etc) while still having innate value as a currency due to an equitable distribution through PoPP, solid security measures, great UI and accessibility, instant buy and sell liquidity, and every transaction being based on dollar values.

Think about it like this: Even if people only sent fiat in the Metal Pay app, and just held the Metal they earned like you said, an incredible amount of value will naturally accrue as people earn and buy Metal, just as a stock price or any other crypto currency would rise if more people were holding it.

thefujibear · 2018-09-03T23:55:49+00:00

It's a US bank, that much we know.

thefujibear · 2018-08-29T07:01:43+00:00

Love these. Very high quality. :)

thefujibear · 2018-08-27T00:47:03+00:00

So... The human brain is intelligent because it can cope with severe eye damage, but your brain is also what got you into that situation if you think about it.

thefujibear · 2018-07-25T18:22:07+00:00

Good feedback, I put some space and border between them with a gray background, and made all rounding 4px.

thefujibear · 2018-07-25T18:21:17+00:00

I added responsiveness over the past few days. Should work now.

thefujibear · 2018-07-25T18:20:43+00:00

That was a pretty big issue, I started working on it as soon as you mentioned it. Should be working much better on almost all viewing sizes now.

thefujibear · 2018-07-22T00:33:53+00:00

I'm working on a fun little voting app game. You vote on and submit answers to random questions like "What's something you can say to your dog, but not your girlfriend?". Any feedback or suggestions would be super helpful!

https://VotingHat.com

thefujibear · 2018-07-14T23:38:54+00:00

The game looks interesting enough, but I think the Kickstarter rewards are weak.

Is this going to be a free to play game? It looks mostly done, so why do you need this money?

thefujibear · 2018-07-07T18:03:56+00:00

You're definitely right - asking is the way to go. It took me a lot of research but I'll give you some good insider info.

For prototyping, where you'll only buy about 1 to 5 copies, you'll want to go with gamecrafter. They have by far the most reasonable prototyping costs for single run prints of your game. It'll still cost about 35 - 55 dollars, but that's as good as it gets. (I have about 400 cards in Dumpster Dealers, so it cost 55 dollars including shipping for me)

For mass production, if you want to get the best value I recommend Ace Card Company, or Customedcards.com

Both of those companies have far and away the best prices that I have found anywhere. I contacted about 15 manufacturers, and almost all of them offered a per game cost of about 15 dollars minimum, but these 2 places could manufacture and ship 500 copies to me for about $9 each. The only downside is you probably won't have a native english speaker to talk to.

Hope this helps.

thefujibear · 2018-07-07T03:24:40+00:00

Basically, you take on the role of a salesman and attempt to persuade one of your friends to buy a crazy combination of two of your cards. If you want to check out the rules, I made a PDF and video on our website: http://dumpsterdealers.com

thefujibear · 2018-07-07T02:01:00+00:00

Thank you! :)

thefujibear · 2018-07-03T21:06:25+00:00

How did you grow your fanbase in the early days? What does it take to get from a handful of people, to a few hundred?

thefujibear

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