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Why wouldn’t this work?

Found cryptocurrency

Get it listed

Trade founders stock for something else (BTC?)

Sell BTC

Go home.

Umm, yes, but why wouldn’t it work?

11 thoughts on “Why wouldn’t this work?”

  1. I’ve no idea. I can only venture that I should not want to have any part of this, on any terms, ever.

  2. Happens all the time, hence why new cryptocoins trying to get some traction advertise “no premine” as a way to show it’s not a get rich quick scheme.

    Or, at least, not a blatant get rich quick scheme.

  3. Bloke in North Dorset

    Fucking hellski (as DK was wont to say), completely off topic but have you seen this from Chris Snowden:

    It appears MPs won’t be able to drink in their new offices when Parliament is closed for repairs because of an Islamic lease. So what do they propose?

    MPs did consider nationalising the Red Lion pub, which sits between parliament and Richmond House. Cordoning off the watering hole from the public would have allowed politicians banned from buying alcohol to drink in private next door to their offices.

    It is thought that nationalising the pub would have cut the price of a pint by £1 to match the rate in the Palace of Westminster grounds.

    as Chris says:

    Do they actually want us to hang them from the lamp-posts?

  4. You forgot a step there.

    1. Found cryptocurrency

    2. *Convince people it has value*

    3. Go home

    If people will consider it to have value then you don’t need to sell it for some other commodity and then sell that commodity to get cash – you just trade it for what you want as if it was cash.

  5. Yes. It’s all a bit underpants gnome. Getting it listed means attracting investors. Which is a good way of getting rich. If we really thought a novice could do this, we wouldn’t be here discussing it.

  6. 0.a. Study cryptography for years.

    0.b. Actually get your design right.

    0.c. No, I mean _really_ right.

    0.d. Implement.

    0.e. Don’t implement stupidly. Really, we do mean this.

    1. Found crypto currency …

  7. Darren has it right. While Bitcoin does have a few big legacy owners (the inventor apparently has around 10% of the total stock) that’s not much done now that there’s a lot of competition in new cryptocurrencies. More likely is an early distribution of large volumes of the currency to a dispersed group of initial adopters, rather than a single originator. I don’t think you’d get very far and or even recoup your time investment if you tried to keep that much of a currency now.

    But you can always find one of the neglected cryptocurrencies and buy up a large fraction of them for a trifle. Tim, Bolivarcoin (BOLI) is currently at a market cap of just $2300. I think it’s time to get in on the ground floor.

  8. ‘Money’ is a credible, enforceable promise to deliver something of real value at a later date.

    A ‘cryptocurrency’ is a way to record those promises digitally in a way that people can’t cheat on – counterfeit, double-spend, repudiate, etc.

    Implementing a secure cryptocurrency is certainly a thing of great value to many people; one that genuinely deserves payment. So if you allocate some of the initial currency to yourself, people are likely willing to trade real stuff for it to get access to your product. (i.e. you make good on your promise to deliver something of real value.) There’s nothing wrong with that – as SE says, implementing cryptography properly is incredibly difficult, and the skill rightly earns high pay.

    But ask too much, and people will go to the competition instead. That’s the usual supply-and-demand market. Being the first/only one in the market earns big profits, but quickly attracts lots of competition.

    However, what I suspect you’re talking about here is implementing a dodgy cryptocurrency and selling it out of the back of a van to mugs who wouldn’t know the difference between a secure cryptosystem and a cornflakes packet magic ring decoder. You can make money doing that, too, but there’s an additional risk there of one day getting caught by your customers after they realise.

    And after you’ve just lost a couple of billion of drug cartel money owned by third-world dictators with international death squads, or misplaced the US Government national debt or whatever, that’s not funny. (Or rather, it is very funny, but not for you.)

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