Phil, this is Phil. It's a pleasure to meet you, Phil.
@biophil recently launched a subchain; pockets, and Phil from @phelimint started taking orders for steem branded silver coins.
Massive gold star if you've already guessed where I'm going with this
Ever since I started learning about blockchain tech, I've heard reference to the idea of 'coloured coins'. These are blockchain tokens which represent ownership of an asset in the physical world.
This has me wondering if there's scope to track claim these 1500, limited edition 2017 coins, designed by the delightful and generous @bearone; on the steem blockchain.
Now I know we have some brilliant, patient coders in here, who will forgive me if any of this is unworkable or outlandish.
I'd like to see each physical coin exist on the blockchain in one of 3 possible states; chosen by the steem account to which it was most recently assigned.
"Owned" - I'm claiming to have this coin in my possession.
"Untracked" - I'm not claiming to have this coin in my possession.
"Missing" - This coin is not in my possession but should be.
All 1500 digital coins would start life under the @phelimint account.
Phil and Eli would contact each of their customers and ask which steem username they'd like their coins assigned to.
I know there were group buys in the UK, and here in Australia.
The mint would just assign all those coins to @silverstackeruk and @buggedout, who would assign them on to their owners.
Those coins who's owners want to stay private or don't reply would remain assigned to Phelimint, recorded as 'Untracked' until a steemer presents video proof of posession of both the coin and the Certificate of Authenticity.
They might be the original customer or they may be several owners later.
I imagine that coins marked "Missing" would have the lowest resale value, although the legitimate owner could change that at any time if the coins are recovered.
A thief would face the possibility of a well informed potential customer looking up the legitimate owner on chain, and alerting him to details of the sale.
While it might seem self evident that most owners would keep their coins in an 'untracked' state until they want to sell, (for general privacy reasons), they would risk having their coins physically stolen and quickly on-sold to a legitimate customer, who has no reason to suspect that the "untracked' coins are not owned by the thief.
I could see it working like Pockets, with a few tweaks.
They'd need to be recorded as discreet entities, named 0001 - 1500, so
coin17send:306@lukestokes
would have to assign coin #306 to @lukestokes, instead of sending him 306 of something. Naturally, some syntax rules to send multiple coins would be helpful too.
coin17send:306-310,312@lukestokes
for example, would send him coins 306 to 312, except coin 311. Again, I'm no coder, but you see what I'm driving at.
I think this would make for an incredible experiment, generating really interesting data, particularly if we continue the experiment in subsequent years; tracking each year's coins as they drop onto and off the radar, changing states and owners.
We'd also be putting Phelimint on the map, driving up the value of those coins and bringing the stacker and crypto communities closer together.
Now the hard bit.
I say, 'We', but I'm not the one coding. I know @biophil is busy with a paper at the moment, so might not be interested or available.
Is anyone with the relevant skills, or able to learn them in the next few weeks, as keen on this idea as I am?
What am I missing? Should there be more states? Fewer? Are there some pitfalls I haven't anticipated?
As always, have a fantastic day.
Technically, this is very easy. You could do this natively on Bitshares already (or on Nxt, or Counterparty, or Omni, or etc etc...). If you wanted to surely connect it to a Steem account, something like Pocket would be a way to go.
But you and @sirstackalot make good points: there are strong incentives not to register your coins. The game theorist in me is geeking out about the freeriding problem you'd end up with: everybody collectively benefits from the existence of a registry, but each person also has a strong individual incentive not to register. For me, the best situation imaginable is if I'm the only person who hasn't registered his coins.
So the technical challenge is deceptively difficult: how do you build a system that has the benefits of a registry without the individual disadvantages of registering? The person who solves that problem could become quite wealthy by it. :)
Oh my goodness. I guess I'll start by saying Hello to other Phil @biophil.
That's some serious high level geeking out there, I am certainly not the one to solve this riddle as it's taking all my mental faculties just to understand it...lol. The only benefit I see to this is if there is ever a problem with counterfeit rounds and confirming the authenticity of something.
It's the Wild West, you're sitting at a table in the saloon, and someone walks up and offers you a key.
This is for that homestead up the next bend in the river. I need money, how much will you give me for it?
You offer him a dollar, just in case, but you're not confident he actually owns the place.
He pulls out a deed and points to the name - Jeffrey Example.
It comes with a deed in my name, I'll sign it over to you and it's all yours. What will you give me for the key and the deed?
You offer him $10. It's a big property, and you're a bit more confident that it may be legitimately for sale, although you're still not sure. He may not even be Jeffrey Example.
Come over to the registry office with me. They'll identify me, and change the registered owner of the property from me to you, and I'll throw in the key and the deed. How much will you give me for all that?
You offer him $100, because the Titles office will only record one owner at a time, and you know this.
He may have an accurate key, and an official looking document, but there could be dozens of identical keys and documents claiming to bestow ownership over that homestead, while each property only has one owner recorded in the Titles office, and you know that's going to give you the best claim to exclusive use of the homestead.
If there wasn't a Titles office, just the deed and the key, the property would only be worth $10.
It's only worth what people will pay for it, and they'll discount their estimate substantially in the face of uncertainty.
(Even attending the homestead in person wouldn't offer definitive proof. The real owner might be away.)
Building a Titles office would therefore add a massive amount of wealth to the community, driving up the price of registered land, and even increasing the value of the remaining unregistered land.
Maybe the homesteader who lives on the unregistered land doesn't want his name in the office; but he'd be glad, when the time comes, to sell to somebody who does.
The buyer, knowing he can establish himself definitively as the first, registered owner of the land will happily pay more, knowing he'll have the option to sell for more.
We don't actually know how much the uncertainty around counterfeiting (both of coins and certificates) has depressed the value of silver coins, because there's never been a Titles office.
This is certainly becoming more interesting and I've been pondering it extensively since I read this yesterday. It does become interesting once we consider the potential growth in interest in the coins. 1500 is not very much. We now have a proof of concept perhaps we can sell 5-10k annually in following years, as interest in these coins and steemit grows and blockchain technology grows they will most definitely raise dramatically in value. It would likely be valuable for us to have a mechanism to track the coins down the line.
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Providing a way to track these makes the coins more personal in my opinion, and when it comes to trading down the track this allows transparency.
Which I think is a good thing for this type of limited minted coin, and for a possible collector this could be just the thing to bring them into our community if they are not on Steemit.
A website to track would also provide further security to the new purchaser and help build the profile of the coins.
Stack on! @mattclarke
I'm guessing you'd meet more than a little resistance to that idea. The concept of tracking collector coins using a blockchain app crosses a very big line for collectors who wish to remain private.
If I owned 1000 oz of gold and silver, the last thing I would want is to have it advertised worldwide on some blockchain complete with all of my contact information.
I can guarantee you I would not be purchasing a coin or set of coins that had tracking capabilities.
Nice idea, I just don't see it getting traction with this particular community.
Good feedback. I'm new to the concept of stacking, so there's always a risk of leaving some bruised toes on the dance floor :)
This would be completely opt-in.
The guys in the mint would ask if you'd like your coins to be tracked on the blockchain; if you don't want that, you say 'No'.
If, down the track, you sell a coin to someone who does want to be the registered owner on the blockchain, he can ask the mint to assign the coin to him, bypassing you completely.
In that case, as best I can tell, the only way the tracking will have affected you is to drive up the value of your coins.
Quick Edit: It might be less confronting if we refer to them as 'claimable' rather than 'trackable'.
The owner, and only the owner, could publicly claim to own the coins.
Steem branded coins are quite an original idea. I will follow the development. I hope this works out
I'm with @phelimint on this blockchain stuff. It's way over my head. But, I've seen ethereum and litecoin silver coins on eBay that had some sort of digital certificate that came with the coin and it actually had a certain number of the digital currency, be it ethereum or litecoin attached to the digital code I guess. That would be cool here too if there were actual digital steem currency associated with each steem silver coin.
That might be similar to what I'm talking about. Do you recall if these ownership certificates were advertised as on or in a blockchain?
I don't think they were. Not that I recall anyway.
You made good points here, especially for the missing coins. Let us see if this is really possible for the coders to implement it.
They can do it fairly easily, it's just a little novel for the stacking community.
We'll work something out, even if I just roll it out myself, for my coins and for anyone else who can demonstrate ownership.
Great post buddy. Im ok with sorting the UK stackers out for the first and future orders i arrange through pheli
There's been a bit of privacy based hesitation; and I can appreciate the mint won't want to change the offer after taking our money, so might want to just consider it for the 2018 coins.
I'm thinking I might just issue the digital versions myself.
Owners would need to prove to me via video that they have the coins and certificates; and everyone would need to trust that I'm on the level; but we could use it as a test run; and give the mint and the coder some takeaways for next year.
I'd love to see the difference in asking price between claimed and unclaimed coins.
Will people buy unclaimed coins cheap, just to add them to the blockchain and sell them on at a premium?
@mattclarke I swear I could hear your brain ticking through that! Im finding the concept very interesting too. Though I might give it another read tomorrow and the comments too.
Thanks for the food for thought!
An excellent article @mattclarke, the idea of colored coins, I also wondered and thank you for explaining something.