5 ms·

I wonder, do you see this changing now that the strategy of growth-at-all-costs is, at least for now, receiving more scrutiny?

rqtwteye 4y ago
Somehow I doubt it. They will just use different language.
- culi 4y ago
  In this modern age we should be able to offer something like "micro-stocks" to customers. Like a "our product isn't there all the way there, but you use us because you believe in us so we promise that if we are successful we'll pay back the people that believed in us". Even if the fractions are so small that it only amounts to cents, early supporters now have every incentive to tell ALL their friends about it and root for you however they can As a customer you also get the piece of mind that later price changes won't be unfair to you. You know that you were somehow compensated for your early commitments. In fact you even stand to benefit from all the new customers price drops could be bringing in
  - temp2022acc 4y ago
    This is usually how Cow Shares work; in practice it's closer to a deposit entitling you to benefits, which is probably the best type of contract for this situation.
  - dontknowwhyihn 4y ago
    If only there were some way to issue digital “tokens” in situations like this..
    - culi 4y ago
      one bitcoin transaction consumes 1,449 kWh, or about as much as 50 days of power for the average US household
      - DavidPeiffer 4y ago
        >one bitcoin transaction consumes 1,449 kWh Thank you, I knew it was an energy hog, but had never looked at it this way. That's enough electricity to melt 2 tons of aluminum, or about half an hour of peak production from an average size US wind turbine.
      - laserlight 4y ago
        Bitcoin is not the only digital token technology. Ethereum consumes a fraction of the energy Bitcoin consumes.
        culi 4y ago
        Right Ethereum is really lucky to have Bitcoin around to make it look good. It (very recently) cut it's energy usage by ~99.84% yet one ETH transaction is still 50x the amount of energy as a MasterCard transaction
        laserlight 4y ago
        Thanks for clarifying. This seems to be a better picture of reality compared to your previous comment.
    - rightbyte 4y ago
      You mean stocks?
  - ycombobreaker 4y ago
    If 500 customers did this, I think the SEC would label this as a "security" and the company would be required to register as a public company, more or less. This is essentially what happened to Facebook which led to them going public: the private equity pool became too diverse and triggered this threshold, so publicly listing made sense. Why don't Kickstarter campaigns have this problem? AFAIK it's because they are just presales, there's no notion of ownership so they aren't treated as securities. A poorly-designed kickstarter that looked like micro stocks would probably get shot down.

rqtwteye 4y ago

Somehow I doubt it. They will just use different language.

culi 4y ago
In this modern age we should be able to offer something like "micro-stocks" to customers. Like a "our product isn't there all the way there, but you use us because you believe in us so we promise that if we are successful we'll pay back the people that believed in us". Even if the fractions are so small that it only amounts to cents, early supporters now have every incentive to tell ALL their friends about it and root for you however they can As a customer you also get the piece of mind that later price changes won't be unfair to you. You know that you were somehow compensated for your early commitments. In fact you even stand to benefit from all the new customers price drops could be bringing in
- temp2022acc 4y ago
  This is usually how Cow Shares work; in practice it's closer to a deposit entitling you to benefits, which is probably the best type of contract for this situation.
- dontknowwhyihn 4y ago
  If only there were some way to issue digital “tokens” in situations like this..
  - culi 4y ago
    one bitcoin transaction consumes 1,449 kWh, or about as much as 50 days of power for the average US household
    - DavidPeiffer 4y ago
      >one bitcoin transaction consumes 1,449 kWh Thank you, I knew it was an energy hog, but had never looked at it this way. That's enough electricity to melt 2 tons of aluminum, or about half an hour of peak production from an average size US wind turbine.
    - laserlight 4y ago
      Bitcoin is not the only digital token technology. Ethereum consumes a fraction of the energy Bitcoin consumes.
      - culi 4y ago
        Right Ethereum is really lucky to have Bitcoin around to make it look good. It (very recently) cut it's energy usage by ~99.84% yet one ETH transaction is still 50x the amount of energy as a MasterCard transaction
        laserlight 4y ago
        Thanks for clarifying. This seems to be a better picture of reality compared to your previous comment.
  - rightbyte 4y ago
    You mean stocks?
- ycombobreaker 4y ago
  If 500 customers did this, I think the SEC would label this as a "security" and the company would be required to register as a public company, more or less. This is essentially what happened to Facebook which led to them going public: the private equity pool became too diverse and triggered this threshold, so publicly listing made sense. Why don't Kickstarter campaigns have this problem? AFAIK it's because they are just presales, there's no notion of ownership so they aren't treated as securities. A poorly-designed kickstarter that looked like micro stocks would probably get shot down.