[marklawrutgers]

Is this the one that forked off BitCoin due to differences centered around how it didn't make its investors/founders enough money?

From the last thread they pointed out: "Zcash's monetary base will be the same as Bitcoin's — 21 million Zcash currency units (ZEC, or ⓩ) will be mined over time. 10% of that reward will be distributed to the stakeholders in the Zcash Company — founders, investors, employees, and advisors. We call this the “Founders Reward”."

It's nice to have a currency with more security and privacy features in mind but I would be extremely wary of compromises like this for that achievement.

[OrpheanBeholder]

> Is this the one that forked off BitCoin due to differences centered around how it didn't make its investors/founders enough money

You must be thinking of something else. Matthew Green has said he would have much rather got this implemented in BitCoin.

ZCash forked off of BitCoin because BitCoin core wouldn't accept it. The proposed solution was a "side chain" to BitCoin. Side chains have been being talked about since around 2009, and that's all that is happened: talking. There is no code and no agreement on how they should work.

The fork happened when it became apparent that this would never make it into Bitcoin in any form.

[nullc]

Hi. Who are you? You're saying a number of things which are outright untrue, and I think it would be helpful to know who I'm speaking to here.

Matthew Green was _insistent_ about making an altcoin. I believe can substantiate this with DKIM-signed emails by Google, if it's actually being refuted. He was especially concerned about difficulties monetizing any other path.

In particular, later I begged for access to the efficient SHA256 circuits which had been created and benchmarked as part of their publications, which were held back from publication with libsnark. ... so that I could begin working on applications of them with Bitcoin, only to be blown off.

> and that's all that is happened: talking. There is no code and

https://github.com/ElementsProject/elements sidechain right here.

[OrpheanBeholder]

> Matthew Green was _insistent_ about making an altcoin

"Let me reiterate, I would 10,000x rather have put Zerocash in Bitcoin." - https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/78154154453702656...

> He was especially concerned about difficulties monetizing any other path.

"Rewards doesn't even start the discussion. I'd have done it for free just to see it used." - https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/78153489377171865...

admittedly he does bring up monetization: "And even when you got the code, nobody ever answered the problem of how you pay miners and devs." https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/78154634460341043...

>sidechain right here.

"Last I checked - a few months back - it was just a bunch of ideas. No code on main." "And more importantly, no schedule on when it was going to go live. You can't build something that doesn't exist." - https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/78154605479791821...

"A cynical part of me came to think the whole thing was just a put-on designed to squash competing coins." - https://twitter.com/matthew_d_green/status/78154720002742681...

[wmf]

Yeah, I hate those compromises like capturing a fraction of the value you create and using it to pay your developers.

[vegabook]

fraction?? The money supply of the world is about between 30 and 80 trillion dollars. Let's call it 50 trillion. Let's say crypto gets 10% share over time, and these guys get 10% of crypto. That's 1% of the money supply. So... 500 billion dollars. 10% for founders = 50 billion dollars. Isn't that just, a bit, ambitious in your opinion? This fork of bitcoin is worth 5 million dollars MAX for the founders efforts up to now (it's a fork, remember), namely 1/1000 of my already conservative scenario. Let's hyperbolically discount that for the huge risk, and therefore generously multiply my scenario by 10. We're talking 1% premine fair value, max.

Let's get real here. These guys are fucking opportunists at best, ponzi median, outright thieves at worst.

[andrepd]

Absolutely irrelevant and ridiculous comparison. On what basis did you come up with those numbers? 10% of the world's money supply?? Why??

Let's do something more reasonable, which least is approximately in the order of magnitude. The BTC market cap is ~$10bil. 1% of that is 100 million dollars. Which means that if Zcash ever becomes more valuable than the phenomenon that was bitcoin, you have a 100 million dollar stake for the founders. A pretty penny, but still a far cry from your ridiculous half a trillion.

[vegabook]

Firstly I did not say half a trillion. I estimated that the kind of investor who will buy into zcash has to believe in crypto upside, and I assumed 10% crypto share of global money supply over time. IE 5 trillion. Second I said, along the same lines, that to buy zcash you have to believe in an upside scenario of 10% of crypto market share for zcash. 500 billion. 10% of that is 50 yards. Does that sounds reasonable to you? You have said 100 million is reasonable. I say you're right. But that's not the pitch here.

The pitch is that zcash will "uplift millions of people". As per your numbers, you're saying 2e-06 proportion of global money. Can you see the disjoint between the ambition pitched and the (entirely reasonable) numbers that you cite? They're pitching a game change ("zcash begins") and you're saying their target is 2 in every 1 million dollars of global cash?? Come on. If that's true, fine, 10%. But that is not "uplifting millions of people" and this is not "Zcash Begins", biblical style.

What we have here is an unfeasibly large founder's share in the case of success, and this unreasonableness is precisely the signal that indicates that they do not believe in long term success, themselves. Therefore we have a credibility problem.

TL;DR: If they had 1% founders share, they'd have a shot. At 10%, they're doomed to failure. 1% of something or 10% of nothing.

[wmf]

Good point. Perhaps startup founders should limit their stake to 1% just in case their company ends up being worth $100B instead of only $1B.

[gpshead]

+1 trolling :)

[vegabook]

You need to recalibrate your sense of scale when moving from equity micro to global macro. We're not in the domain of some tech startup. We're talking a venture that takes on the global money supply, 1% of which is 500 billion dollars. Your analogy is way out by at a minimum two orders of magnitude, and probably four. 0.02% of market share in the world of fiat currency is called wild success = bitcoin. Think about that before implying that 1% and 10% numbers are reasonable. Saudi Aramco is worth 4%. Apple is 1%. The whole of IBM is 0.3%.

What you're basically doing is analogous to applying planet scales to a galaxy.

Even accounting for miniscule market share, 10% "founders reward" for any venture targeting global money, is a ludicrously large sum and a strong signal of probable charlatanry.

[erikpukinskis]

> 10% for founders = 50 billion dollars. Isn't that just, a bit, ambitious in your opinion?

If they can provide 1% of global transaction services for 100 years then sure, $500 billion seems super reasonable.

I mean, that's about 10x of a SnapChat or an Instagram.