Hi all,
I’m brand new to counterparty, have been reading up, and would like to ask some help to get my bearings.
I’ve got a web advertising system. It accepts only Bitcoin, and pays commissions to publishers, also in BTC only. Advertisers need to preload their accounts so for at least a short period of time I am holding the user’s funds as either advertising credits ready to spend to pay for advertising or as commission payments ready to withdraw by publishers. Since the advertising credits were created with BTC their value as they are being spent are equal to BTC and the commission earnings are too but the accounting is all off blockchain and the transfers between the accounts is all done on my own server.
I noticed XBTC was in development but then seems to have stalled and I was wondering what it’s status is? Is it still running? Usable? etc.
If so, my next question is (if I am understanding XBTC correctly) how does XBTC accomplish its price discovery for exchanging XCP back into Bitcoin? If that price discovery is somewhat reliable (it doesn’t have to be perfect) I probably could do the same arrangement (i.e. accept XCP as payment and pay commissions in XCP) as I do now with Bitcoin. In addition, I am just now completing an exchange where users can offer their earnings for sale, for cash, directly to the advertising customers. If I started to accept XCP they also could be offered for sale, for cash to customers as well.
There might be some way I can issue these advertising credits as an asset but I don’t have my head wrapped around counterparty yet to see if I can or how to go about doing it.
To give another perspective on the situation, in my documentation of the exchange I use terminology referring to the advertising credits as a “psuedo alt coin” that I’ve dubbed “AdCoin”. By using this approach of a fictitious altcoin I can use crytocurrency terminology to explain the trading better (I hope). So, for example, AdCoins aren’t mined into existence but, rather, are created - one AdCoin/advertising credit for every one Bitcoin deposited into a users account (the Bitcoin are deposited into cold storage immediately). The publisher’s commissions are earned and credited as AdCoin/advertising credits. They can be sold for cash at our exchange, they can be redeemed for Bitcoin from me (which destroys or burns the AdCoin) or, lastly, they can be spent by the commission earner to buy advertising for their own websites.
So what I see as the potential for XBTC in this is that once something (whether AdCoin, advertising credits, XBTC etc) is pegged to Bitcoin then it becomes just a matter of semantics what we call it because, when it is all said and done, an AdCoin = advertising credits = XBTC = Bitcoin. As the developer of XBTC points out in the thread about it, it does change the situation from a trustless situation into one requiring trust but until someone creates a crypto “time machine” there will always be a time element between the acceptance of an offer (creating a contract) and the eventual performance of the contract which is another way of saying there will always be a need of some trust whenever there is a time element involved. What my approach tries to do is to reduce the amount of trust needed to a level so low as to become ridiculous.
Your thoughts and feedback will be greatly appreciated.
Hi and welcome to Counterparty 
I’m developing XBTC. The public release has just been delayed. We are now in the final stages of getting it ready. We wanted to make sure it was stable and ready for the general public.
The way that XBTC pegs it’s value is through restriction of the availability of the asset and a guaranteed price by the gateway.
Is your purpose to create an asset which can be traded freely in Counterparty but have the same value as BTC? It is possible that you can attempt to peg a value of an AdCoin to any other value. eg 1000 AdCoin = 1 BTC
The main reason for the delay is that we are creating a product called Vennd which is based upon the code written for XBTC. One of the use cases for Vennd is that it can be used as a digital vending machine. The user sends BTC and it automatically sends back AdCoin.
If you’d like to discuss your ideas further, feel free to send me a PM.
[quote author=BungeeBones link=topic=393.msg2655#msg2655 date=1402666705]
Hi all,
I’m brand new to counterparty, have been reading up, and would like to ask some help to get my bearings.
I’ve got a web advertising system. It accepts only Bitcoin, and pays commissions to publishers, also in BTC only. Advertisers need to preload their accounts so for at least a short period of time I am holding the user’s funds as either advertising credits ready to spend to pay for advertising or as commission payments ready to withdraw by publishers. Since the advertising credits were created with BTC their value as they are being spent are equal to BTC and the commission earnings are too but the accounting is all off blockchain and the transfers between the accounts is all done on my own server.
I noticed XBTC was in development but then seems to have stalled and I was wondering what it’s status is? Is it still running? Usable? etc.
If so, my next question is (if I am understanding XBTC correctly) how does XBTC accomplish its price discovery for exchanging XCP back into Bitcoin? If that price discovery is somewhat reliable (it doesn’t have to be perfect) I probably could do the same arrangement (i.e. accept XCP as payment and pay commissions in XCP) as I do now with Bitcoin. In addition, I am just now completing an exchange where users can offer their earnings for sale, for cash, directly to the advertising customers. If I started to accept XCP they also could be offered for sale, for cash to customers as well.
There might be some way I can issue these advertising credits as an asset but I don’t have my head wrapped around counterparty yet to see if I can or how to go about doing it.
To give another perspective on the situation, in my documentation of the exchange I use terminology referring to the advertising credits as a “psuedo alt coin” that I’ve dubbed “AdCoin”. By using this approach of a fictitious altcoin I can use crytocurrency terminology to explain the trading better (I hope). So, for example, AdCoins aren’t mined into existence but, rather, are created - one AdCoin/advertising credit for every one Bitcoin deposited into a users account (the Bitcoin are deposited into cold storage immediately). The publisher’s commissions are earned and credited as AdCoin/advertising credits. They can be sold for cash at our exchange, they can be redeemed for Bitcoin from me (which destroys or burns the AdCoin) or, lastly, they can be spent by the commission earner to buy advertising for their own websites.
So what I see as the potential for XBTC in this is that once something (whether AdCoin, advertising credits, XBTC etc) is pegged to Bitcoin then it becomes just a matter of semantics what we call it because, when it is all said and done, an AdCoin = advertising credits = XBTC = Bitcoin. As the developer of XBTC points out in the thread about it, it does change the situation from a trustless situation into one requiring trust but until someone creates a crypto “time machine” there will always be a time element between the acceptance of an offer (creating a contract) and the eventual performance of the contract which is another way of saying there will always be a need of some trust whenever there is a time element involved. What my approach tries to do is to reduce the amount of trust needed to a level so low as to become ridiculous.
Your thoughts and feedback will be greatly appreciated.
[/quote]
Hi BungeeBones,
XBTC is 100% backed by BTC. Here’s what happens:
You send BTC to the address supplied by Global_trade_repo (soon to be provided), and it sends you XBTC back. Likewise, if you send it XBTC, it sends you BTC back.
I think Global_trade_repo will be charging a .1% fee, so you’ll get 99.9 cents on the dollar, using XBTC. However it’s advantages are indisputable.
[quote]Is your purpose to create an asset which can be traded freely in Counterparty but have the same value as BTC? It is possible that you can attempt to peg a value of an AdCoin to any other value. eg 1000 AdCoin = 1 BTC[/quote]
Sort of, and I think so, and almost there (but not quite). My approach wasn’t to create a “real” virtual currency like you did. “Adcoin” is a pseudo coin I call it. They are created when a Bitcoin is deposited and burned when it is withdrawn. Pretty much the same as XBTC except I didn’t do any premining (not that doing that is a problem). The only difference I see is that yours are tradeable externally whereas my AdCoin are only tradeable internally within my website (more like a token or credit). I haven’t figured out if making AdCoin into a “real coin” will be needed or not and am trying this out one step at a time.
I am definitely leading towards creating an asset. It seems this model I am trying to work out would also have applications to any other service or product offering too. The key to me making it an asset, I think, is whether my pricing mechanism could be written into the asset or not (which might take some time to explain). While my AdCoin is pegged to Bitcoin, my prices have to float in relation to the Bitcoin price. That means if the price of Bitcoin doubles after someone deposited it but before they spent it they have twice the purchasing power. The value of the advertising service itself hasn’t changed, however, so the AdCoin/Bitcoin price they pay would adjust to half the number they were paying before. On the commission side, the commissions are all a percentage of the advertising fee so they, too, would numerically be cut in half (but their purchasing power would remain the same).
I need to study the settings one would place on an asset better but they look flexible enough to be able to accommodate my situation. I think it looks very promising that we’ll be able to add “web advertising” and “website monetization” to the list of products available through counterparty.
There may be a model for Adcoin already. I thought that AdamBLevine’s LTBcoin was going to be a proprietary coin in just the same way that Adcoin is. Can someone comment on this?
[quote author=sparta_cuss link=topic=393.msg2660#msg2660 date=1402697036]
There may be a model for Adcoin already. I thought that AdamBLevine’s LTBcoin was going to be a proprietary coin in just the same way that Adcoin is. Can someone comment on this?
[/quote]
Kind of. LTBcoin is basically like a “rewards” program. Participate on the site/in the system (comment, post stuff, read articles, make tips etc.) and you receive LTBcoin as a reward. that ltbcoin can be used to purchase ads and show sponsorship as well as some other stuff
[font=courier][size=2]It looks pretty certain I’ll at least start accepting XBTC as payment. Because I set mine up as Bitcoin only and pay out commissions in Bitcoin as well as accept payments I’m probably going to have to immediately convert it back to Bitcoin. I PMd Global Trade Repo and that is at the core of their functionality it seems.[/size][/font][font=courier]My next step it seems, then, is for me to start accepting XBTC. I imagine I definitely need a wallet. I already have bitcoind running so I assume that CounterParty can run off of it. Or does CounterParty install its own blockchain in addition to bitcoin’s?[/font]
[font=courier]I’m just now starting to be able to create Bitcoin addresses and watch the blockchain with RPC and PHP so after the Counterparty wallet issue it would be nice if I could get set up with similarly watching for XBTC payments. [/font]