Luxcore AMA № 2

The following is a transcript of the questions and answers featured in the second Luxcore AMA, posted to our YouTube channel on September 17, 2018. You may watch the AMA in its entirety below. And don't forget to subscribe!

johnnystar: Hey guys, John here from Luxcore. We're here to do another AMA. We really appreciate the feedback that you guys gave us last time. We're gonna be switching things up a little bit just to make things look a little more natural and organic.

I have with me on the line fragilemk. He leads our communications and social strategy. He'll be moderating all the questions that you guys gave us, and if you just want to give yourself a quick introduction fragile?

fragilemk: Sure, yeah. As John said I'm fragilemk. I lead the communications and social strategy for Luxcore. I'm the one that's putting out all the new campaigns we have initiatives on Twitter and Medium and so on and so forth, and it's part of my job to make sure that the community knows what's going on with our product, and the AMA is part of that. So it's only natural for me to get involved and be the one to help push this thing along, make it a little more natural, and we really want it to be more of like a conversation as if you were asking these questions of us.

Hopefully you guys you like this new format and in that spirit we'll keep them coming. If you have more pieces of feedback you want to give us, please do. We'll continue to evolve and improve and do whatever we can to keep things moving in this direction with that open communication and transparency moving forward.

So John, if you're ready to go I'll go ahead and start with the first question?

J: Yep, let's do it.

F: Cool, man. So the first question is, "Can you please give us an update regarding the circulating supply for Lux? How many premine coins are now in circulating supply? Coinmarketcap isn't taking any of the premined coins into circulating supply. I understand if you don't want to release details about what has happened to premined coins, but I would like to see at least how many coins are in circulation." You want to go ahead and take this one?

J: Yeah, so, this question has come up in the community a lot ever since we released our blockchain. We did have a 5% premine, but one thing we note is that Lux did not have an ICO so that 5% premine is purely for development, marketing fees, exchange listings, salaries, and company founders, things of that nature. We use that premine in order to keep developing, and so that we can freely keep developing as well too because without funds, obviously, we wouldn't be able to release new products like the PoS Web Wallet.

This 5% premine is for the entirety of the project and how long the blockchain lasts. It's not something that we're going to have an ICO or something out of nowhere or take any other coins. That's it. You know, it does help us out a lot, and I think it's something necessary that we had to do.

F: Just to chime in also on that, something to note is you know unlike ICO's with the funding we also launched a mainnet with a product already. We've got a lot going and we have products that are launched and in development. So it's more than just an idea; we're actually bringing stuff to market.

Awesome! That's really cool! A personal question of mine - and I think some people might feel the same way I don't want to know - it's good to shine light on the premine and the history and what our plans are for it… But can you talk about how we're currently doing on spend? Maybe a little bit about our financials?

J: Like you said, I can't go into specifics. We do document every spend that we've done from our premine. So everything is documented; don't worry about that.

I think one important thing to note is that we don't actually sell our funds pre-emptively but rather we sell it when we need it, on a need-by-need basis. I think that's pretty important because we don't want to be putting coins out there into circulation every month. We'd like to hold it as long as possible too, so only when we actually need it.

Also, what you were asking about how much percentage have we used, I would say around 30 to 40 percent, and that's actually a lot less than what we foresaw so I think that's actually a pretty good turnout from what we expected.

F: Awesome! That shines a lot of light on there, and if you have any follow-ups, community, please let us know!

Let's move on to the next question. "According to McAfee, the DEX is the most exciting, crucial, critical piece of development Lux can bring out. The quote/unquote "common folks" do not understand a DEX or its benefits/disadvantages, like liquidity. Having a nice GUI will help users, but if Lux wants the DEX to succeed I think more effort efforts will be needed. What will you do to promote the DEX, educate users, and onboard those less technical?"

J: To the first point, I completely agree with John McAfee that the DEX is a very integral part of blockchain and cryptocurrency itself. The main purpose cryptocurrency was created was for decentralization, right? A DEX further improves decentralization from central exchanges, like Binance or whatnot. I think it's important that - for people like "common folks" it is a little more difficult to use - so we need to educate our users; we need to educate people in general on how to use a DEX. Things that we're going to be doing in the future: video tutorials, guides, we'll have influencers reach out to people to gain more exposure on how to educate them, and we have our Lux Academy - and I'm sure you know that pretty well fragile; you lead that effort. We'll be using all sorts of these resources to educate our users.

F: Yeah, that's a big focus. Just again to chime in on that, in addition to the Academy there's a lot of other stuff that we're working on to educate people overall on the space. So it's not just about our project, but it's about what's special about our project in this space. We've even just - a little sneak peek - have some stuff that we're working on. What we're going to be showing, security tips stuff about just how to how to keep yourself secure and we think that's very important. We want our community to stay safe out there and this kind of Wild West that we're working through right now.

J: Exactly.

F: Cool, man! Well, let's move on. Here's another good one: "As we all know Bitcoin Cash is a hard Fork of Bitcoin, with one of the main reasons that Bitcoin core thought hard-forking Bitcoin was too risky. Luxcore doesn't exactly have a track record of pulling off hard forks without running into some issues. How will Luxcore regain its trust to pull off hard forks in the future, when the coin is much more widely used?"

J: Good question! That hard fork that we went through was probably one of the most chaotic times f not only our developers, but for community managers, for the whole team because there's a lot of things that needed to be done that had to be well-executed. But at the same time we needed to make sure that it was a smooth transition until we had a working blockchain. That was the hardest part, honestly. We want to keep our deadlines and I think that was a big part of why we kept trying to get a perfect blockchain right away: because we want to hit those deadlines. But I think in the future the most important thing for us would be to be transparent with you guys, the community and have something like what Ledger does.

Ledger, they actually have a public Trello, a project management site, where they show all their users, all their clients or whatnot what their progress is on that project. Something like that could probably help, and have our end game more transparency to our users.

F: In addition to that I would say for anyone who's not currently on it, join our Discard join our Telegram. Especially in Discord, you'll see the GitHub commits, you'll see the devs working 24 hours a day on updates and making sure that we're putting everything we have into our product.

Also, in addition to that, ask questions! We want to keep lines of communication open. That doesn't always have to be us towards you. If you have questions, come to us. I mean, that's what this AMA is! We're happy to keep that communication open and let you know how things are going with the project.

The next question: "I believe in the past I've heard you refer to Luxcoin as a commodity. The CFTC has worked towards classifying cryptocurrencies as commodities but the SEC is making efforts to classify them as securities. I'd think they could be both on a case-by-case basis, but within this regulatory climate how do you currently classify Luxcoin? How would you defend your position in regards to how you classify them or does it end up being malleable when working with different jurisdictions?"

This is right up your alley, John so have fun with it!

J: I was just going to say that's right up my alley! I think the first thing to point out is that Bitcoin and Etherium, we just recently found out, were accepted as commodities because of the fact that they're so decentralized. Just segueing off of that, we did hire lawyers at a top 10 - no, top 100 - law firm in New York City, and I'm closely working with one of the partners there. So we have gained progress on trying to figure out what we're going to be classified as. It's back and forth between us and the law firm, between documentation and all these things that they need. And once we get everything sorted out, they'll talk with the SEC and hopefully we'll get an answer on whether we're a commodity or security. But until then we can't really say what we are. I'm hoping that we're leaning towards the commodity. Like I said, we'll see.

F: The answer to this question is we obviously have our mind set on where we would like to lean but we are taking the right steps to get it right, to do right by the laws that are out there. As soon as we know more, and as soon as we're able to share information, we absolutely will.

Next question: "Will Luxgate require identity verification? And will the PoS Web Wallet always be free for Luxcoin holders, or is there a plan to charge a monthly maintenance fee in the future?"

J: Yes - this is an easy one. There will never be a Lux holders maintenance fee. The reason is because all of the monthly charges that we incur from this is going to be offset by when the clients start paying for a subscription base or however we're going to be marketing our product.

F: Okay cool! I think that we haven't really discussed too much - or at least you and I, John - but I think the answer to the, "Will Luxgate require identity verification" - we might have to get back to you guys on. Unless, John, do you know anything about that?

J: Unfortunately, not yet. We can follow up on that.

F: Awesome! Last question, and - it's weird - I've never seen this question before; it's brand new to me. I don't know how we're going to really address it, but here we go… "When will Lux become televised? Not a precise date, but a month estimate. And when will the Tier 1 exchange happen since it was promised since six months ago?"

J: For the televised event, we know we announced it and promised it a while back. We actually did finish everything. We finished producing it and creating the segment, but due to the reorg we have to reshoot it. That might take another month or two, so be on the lookout for that.

As far as the T1 exchange, obviously I'm not at liberty to say anything. We are in communications with a few exchanges - not necessarily T1, obviously. I can't really say anything until we get listed. I can assure you, though, that we are talking to them.

F: There's conversations going all over the place when it comes to that stuff. Just for people to understand - and I know we might have mentioned this before but it is important for us to get the point across - that when it comes to exchanges, it's really out of our hands. There's only so much we can do.

In addition to everything that we're doing from a communications standpoint, and transparency, and letting you guys somewhat behind the curtain, we will absolutely let you know as things go. There are certain times where we have a) no control, and b) we have nothing to update on. Please hang in there and we'll let you know - if you have the question, if you have it burning inside that you want to ask again - and we'll let you know where we're at. Just know that we will be honest.

That's the last question of the AMA so we are going to close it up now. Thank you everyone for tuning in! We really appreciate you taking the time to a) ask the questions, and b) come back for the answers.

If you have any feedback or ideas on how you'd like us to change things up, or suggestions, please let us know. John, is there anything else you want to add?

J: Just like fragile said, thank you guys for continually asking these questions. Keep them coming, obviously, and thanks for tuning in! Thanks guys.