MicrostockGroup
Microstock Photography Forum - General => Selling Stock Direct => Topic started by: mike_snaps on October 21, 2017, 07:21
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Hey Guys,
My name is Mike and I am new to the community. I am a fan of photography and been involved with numerous art/photo tech projects in the past. Currently, I and my friend are thinking about creating a new peer-to-peer stock platform where artists will have the ability to sell images/videos directly to buyers with very low transaction fees (5-10%). We are doing research in the space and would really appreciate your feedback. Would you be kind to fill out the short survey below:
https://goo.gl/forms/Ev00fvEjzN4MoHXS2
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Two words. Mar. Keting. Finding a platform isn't a problem, the aforementioned two words are.
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Search for Symbiostock on this forum as well for a lot of history of similar attempts. Symbiostock is still going, but my sales using the approach have been pitiful, I'm afraid, mainly because of those two words mentioned earlier.
In essence, many people search for images, but don't want to spend money. The ones that spend money usually have accounts at an agency somewhere and go there first.
Steve
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This has been tried before and was not too successful, but not for lack of enthusiasm. You might want to look up past discussions about Symbiostock to see what was done previously. That one was basically free but my impression is it required too much effort to get started. These ideas are easy to come by but difficult to implement. You should think about it carefully and come up with a really good idea before proposing much here - this bunch is pretty jaded after all of the previous attempts to do this. The problem is marketing - oops, somebody just beat me to it, see previous posts.
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Mar........- as in buyers, not just contributors.
Attracting the B's are the biggest problem.
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This has been tried before and was not too successful, but not for lack of enthusiasm. You might want to look up past discussions about Symbiostock to see what was done previously. That one was basically free but my impression is it required too much effort to get started. These ideas are easy to come by but difficult to implement. You should think about it carefully and come up with a really good idea before proposing much here - this bunch is pretty jaded after all of the previous attempts to do this. The problem is marketing - oops, somebody just beat me to it, see previous posts.
It was easy to start ... it was ... poorly received and implemented.
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Yes, as another Symbiostock early birder, who invested some $$ and a ton of time, energy, and enthusiasm on a personal stock site that ultimately crashed and burned, I'm not eager to go that route again.
Mar-keting
Yep, that's the biggest problem.
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Hey Guys,
My name is Mike and I am new to the community. I am a fan of photography and been involved with numerous art/photo tech projects in the past. Currently, I and my friend are thinking about creating a new peer-to-peer stock platform where artists will have the ability to sell images/videos directly to buyers with very low transaction fees (5-10%). We are doing research in the space and would really appreciate your feedback. Would you be kind to fill out the short survey below:
https://goo.gl/forms/Ev00fvEjzN4MoHXS2
I see your questionnaire mentions both 'freelance work' and 'stock'.
Are you scoping a traditional stock type platform, or a platform where buyers make requests and photographers vie to respond, or some hybrid of both?
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First of all, thanks for all of your comments! You are absolutely right about marketing being the game changer factor in this space. It is important to have a critical mass of buyers to ensure constant stream of revenues for quality contributors. However, what is equally important is the way a p2p platform is set up with regards to pricing, distribution and transaction fees. Platforms like Symbiostock are not pure p2p platforms as they charge fees for hosting and other flat or reoccurring fees. What we are building is a fully transparent p2p platform based on blockchain. In our network, both buyers and contributors will be better off by having full control over pricing and distribution. In other words, by diminishing the role of the middle man, buyers will pay less and contributors will earn more.
We are committed to building this platform and that's why we are really excited to learn from microstockgroup community and your personal experiences (also through the survey shared above).
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Hey Guys,
My name is Mike and I am new to the community. I am a fan of photography and been involved with numerous art/photo tech projects in the past. Currently, I and my friend are thinking about creating a new peer-to-peer stock platform where artists will have the ability to sell images/videos directly to buyers with very low transaction fees (5-10%). We are doing research in the space and would really appreciate your feedback. Would you be kind to fill out the short survey below:
https://goo.gl/forms/Ev00fvEjzN4MoHXS2
I see your questionnaire mentions both 'freelance work' and 'stock'.
Are you scoping a traditional stock type platform, or a platform where buyers make requests and photographers vie to respond, or some hybrid of both?
We are thinking about a more hybrid solution that would enable custom requests and projects on top of regular stock trading.
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I don't think you understand what symbiostock was. Not the hosted pls form.
Anyways, I'm not interested. I don't have time or interest in finding my own buyers. That's why I split the fee with an agency. "Blockchain" sounds cool and trendy, but I don't see how that helps anything.
If people want custom work, they can just get in contact. I don't need a platform for that.
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I don't think you understand what symbiostock was. Not the hosted pls form.
Anyways, I'm not interested. I don't have time or interest in finding my own buyers. That's why I split the fee with an agency. "Blockchain" sounds cool and trendy, but I don't see how that helps anything.
If people want custom work, they can just get in contact. I don't need a platform for that.
Yeah, sounds like the original Symbiostock. Where individual sites were grouped into networks. Unless, I'm misunderstanding the P2P aspect of it. It would be nice to have a new software platform to run my site on. Everything seems to get old and broken in a short period of time though.
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Did licensing stock become a target for blockchain technology boosters somehow? This is the second fishing expedition in a short time that was long on technology, short on problem solving:
http://www.microstockgroup.com/newby-discussion/hey-all-i-am-newbie-on-this-website/ (http://www.microstockgroup.com/newby-discussion/hey-all-i-am-newbie-on-this-website/)
I was about to complete your survey, but you want an email address. I don't mind handing over some data anonymously but I'm not willing to provide income range and an email address to some random survey request.
I didn't think the survey was very well put together - for example, you have a very small list of things we'd like changed in existing agencies that doesn't even begin to cover the issues contributors face. There's no "other" option for input.
I participated in Warm Picture (a collective site) and Symbiostock in its original incarnation (a network of independently hosted sites) - in other words I am open to finding alternatives to the existing agencies.
However, unless there is a plan to attract buyers I have no interest in hearing anything about the great technology with which you (or anyone else) will build a site/network/platform/collective/???
Technology is not going to find buyers or cause them to switch from Getty, Shutterstock or Adobe Stock. Tossing in buzzwords about which technology you'll use really hurts your pitch instead of helping it - it suggests you're up for the technical challenge and uninterested in the heavy lift of building a business.
"...buyers and contributors will be better off by having full control over pricing and distribution..." Full control sounds good, but what does this really mean? Buyers never control price or distribution and contributors are only better off in control of both if they have buyers as customers. Which comes back to marketing the site to attract customers away from the existing agencies - how will you do that?
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Did licensing stock become a target for blockchain technology boosters somehow? This is the second fishing expedition in a short time that was long on technology, short on problem solving:
[url]http://www.microstockgroup.com/newby-discussion/hey-all-i-am-newbie-on-this-website/[/url] ([url]http://www.microstockgroup.com/newby-discussion/hey-all-i-am-newbie-on-this-website/[/url])
I was about to complete your survey, but you want an email address. I don't mind handing over some data anonymously but I'm not willing to provide income range and an email address to some random survey request.
I didn't think the survey was very well put together - for example, you have a very small list of things we'd like changed in existing agencies that doesn't even begin to cover the issues contributors face. There's no "other" option for input.
I participated in Warm Picture (a collective site) and Symbiostock in its original incarnation (a network of independently hosted sites) - in other words I am open to finding alternatives to the existing agencies.
However, unless there is a plan to attract buyers I have no interest in hearing anything about the great technology with which you (or anyone else) will build a site/network/platform/collective/???
Technology is not going to find buyers or cause them to switch from Getty, Shutterstock or Adobe Stock. Tossing in buzzwords about which technology you'll use really hurts your pitch instead of helping it - it suggests you're up for the technical challenge and uninterested in the heavy lift of building a business.
"...buyers and contributors will be better off by having full control over pricing and distribution..." Full control sounds good, but what does this really mean? Buyers never control price or distribution and contributors are only better off in control of both if they have buyers as customers. Which comes back to marketing the site to attract customers away from the existing agencies - how will you do that?
Hey Jo,
The email address in the survey is optional, so you can just skip it. The "other option" to the question you mentioned is now available. We would appreciate if you could complete it now.
I am happy to hear that you are open to finding alternatives which is not surprising given the tiny royalties paid by agencies in comparison to how much they charge buyers.
First of all, I would like to note that I was a buyer of stock photography for a few startups that I managed in the past. Besides marketing that does not provide actual value for customers, what really attracts buyers is the low price of stock photo as well as the flexibility to purchase photos in small quantities and not having to pay for subscription for ridiculous prices. By using blockchain technology, we are able to offer something which current agencies are not. It is the flexibility for buyers and contributors to freely trade stock photography by setting their prices without being charged high percentage transaction fees. By solving the microtransaction problem, we will be able to create an environment where buyers will pay 30-50% less while contributors will earn 30-50% more for the exact same content. This is only possible with decentralization and microtransactions available through blockchain. So to answer your question, buyers will switch to our platform as they will be able to pay significantly less as well as buy content on demand without increased rates (the case with most existing large agencies).
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How does block chain help with the costs of transactions exactly? Genuine question as it seems to be flavour of the month buzz word to drop into any new business idea.
I can see it being as a way to finally be able to track all license sales for a particular image but can't see any advantages to sales transaction processing right now.
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... what really attracts buyers is the low price of stock photo...
So what sort of low price do you have in mind?
This is no longer a situation where you just have to undercut Getty or Jupiter who charged $500 to license an image. At 123rf you can buy two images for $13 or 5 for $39. Deposit Photos offers 10 images for $49. BigStock offers 10 images for $35. How much lower than that do you envision your project going?
There's not much real freedom in "set your own prices" if the whole selling point of the business is to undercut existing agencies on price. I can't imagine too many contributors wanting to go there - a few might; see the threads here on the now-defunct Dollar Photo Club for that offshoot of an existing agency that tried to slash prices as a way of building market share.
All the Symbiostock sites allowed single purchases via PayPal and had very reasonable prices, but that wasn't enough to get a sustained stream of buyers. PayPal's fees aren't much. My most recent sale from my own site, PayPal deducted 59 cents from the $10 license (for a medium size image). When you talk about "solving the microtransaction problem", I don't see 59 cents on a $10 license as a problem.
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What they said. Sellers aren't interested in cool technology, and why would we be interested in slashing prices and undercutting ourselves?
Marketing. Marketing. Marketing. No amount of words you write will hide the fact that you have no plan to attract buyers.
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It is important to have a critical mass of buyers to ensure constant stream of revenues for quality contributors. However, what is equally important is the way a p2p platform is set up with regards to pricing, distribution and transaction fees.
No, it's not equally important. You are not listening, and notice that everyone is saying exactly the same thing here. Blockchain is cool, but do you know what else is cool? A credit card or a paypal payment. There is no demand for this tech among contributors. Zinch. You are not solving any problems. What is the problem though is the cost of customer acquisition, cost of conversion or whatever lingo corporate internet peddlers use. Not the pricing, not for contributors anyway. And the only few companies who can bring customers en masse are charging an arm and a leg for it. If you could whip all these buyers into buying staff directly from me instead by using a glorified in silico ledger, I'd be all for it. But you can't, can you? Because that's not what ledgers are for, are they?
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...You are not listening ...
And how often have we been here before, with people coming allegedly 'to seek our opinions', but really just want to mould us into what they want to do?
And where did any of them get?
Same old, same old, but with the additional barrier of blockchain.
::)
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...You are not listening ...
And how often have we been here before, with people coming allegedly 'to seek our opinions', but really just want to mould us into what they want to do?
And where did any of them get?
Same old, same old, but with the additional barrier of blockchain.
::)
I just hope they are some kind of internet trolls without much to do. Alternatives are much worse.
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... what really attracts buyers is the low price of stock photo...
So what sort of low price do you have in mind?
This is no longer a situation where you just have to undercut Getty or Jupiter who charged $500 to license an image. At 123rf you can buy two images for $13 or 5 for $39. Deposit Photos offers 10 images for $49. BigStock offers 10 images for $35. How much lower than that do you envision your project going?
There's not much real freedom in "set your own prices" if the whole selling point of the business is to undercut existing agencies on price. I can't imagine too many contributors wanting to go there - a few might; see the threads here on the now-defunct Dollar Photo Club for that offshoot of an existing agency that tried to slash prices as a way of building market share.
All the Symbiostock sites allowed single purchases via PayPal and had very reasonable prices, but that wasn't enough to get a sustained stream of buyers. PayPal's fees aren't much. My most recent sale from my own site, PayPal deducted 59 cents from the $10 license (for a medium size image). When you talk about "solving the microtransaction problem", I don't see 59 cents on a $10 license as a problem.
Thanks for bringing up the examples. Lets take the specific example with Deposit Photos.
10 on demand images will cost the buyer $50 which is $5 per image. Contributors, on the other hand, will earn 34-42% per image which on average which equates to $1.9 sending $3.8 to Deposit Photos.
In our case, we will charge 5-10% (to cover markeing and transaction costs) for the same transaction. The seller will be able to charge $3.5 (for example) for the same image earning $1.25 more ($.35 goes to the platform) while the buyer will pay $1.5 less (30%) not to mention the fact that they will not have to purchase in bulk. This kind of microtransaction is only possible through the blockchain technology we are currently building. If you do the same with paypal or credit card, the transaction fee alone will be more than $.35 leaving the middle man with nothing. That is how we will have an advantage in terms of costs and value proposition that can be used in our marketing campaigns.
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It is interesting to get most of your feedback. I just wanted to clarify that the reason why we posted our idea here was precisely to hear your thoughts about the potential challenges that we may run into. We are not after buzz trends or are amateur rookies that have no clue how to start and build sustainable businesses. We have been buying stock photography for a few years for our prior projects and know the buyer-side market quite well. We have seen inefficiencies and are determined to build a platform that will solve them (see my posts above for more details).
Again, marketing is important, but most buyers care about the costs they are incurring more than anything. So when you offer a superior cost structure made available with new technology, it will be easier to attract new buyers. That being said, we understand the difficulty and expected cost of user acquisition and will be using most of our investment and future earnings to attract buyers.
Also, we would be happy to share a more detailed explanation of how blockchain will help us solve some of the problems that exist in the stock image world covering user acquisition, transaction fees, decentralized management, copyrights and etc.
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How is this "peer to peer" if you're going to do marketing and transactions? That makes you another "agency". Albeit one that doesn't know the true cost of marketing.
I don't think I'm really interested in making buyers get accustomed to licensing "cheaper", even if it means a few more cents for me.
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... what really attracts buyers is the low price of stock photo...
So what sort of low price do you have in mind?
This is no longer a situation where you just have to undercut Getty or Jupiter who charged $500 to license an image. At 123rf you can buy two images for $13 or 5 for $39. Deposit Photos offers 10 images for $49. BigStock offers 10 images for $35. How much lower than that do you envision your project going?
There's not much real freedom in "set your own prices" if the whole selling point of the business is to undercut existing agencies on price. I can't imagine too many contributors wanting to go there - a few might; see the threads here on the now-defunct Dollar Photo Club for that offshoot of an existing agency that tried to slash prices as a way of building market share.
All the Symbiostock sites allowed single purchases via PayPal and had very reasonable prices, but that wasn't enough to get a sustained stream of buyers. PayPal's fees aren't much. My most recent sale from my own site, PayPal deducted 59 cents from the $10 license (for a medium size image). When you talk about "solving the microtransaction problem", I don't see 59 cents on a $10 license as a problem.
Thanks for bringing up the examples. Lets take the specific example with Deposit Photos.
10 on demand images will cost the buyer $50 which is $5 per image. Contributors, on the other hand, will earn 34-42% per image which on average which equates to $1.9 sending $3.8 to Deposit Photos.
In our case, we will charge 5-10% (to cover markeing and transaction costs) for the same transaction. The seller will be able to charge $3.5 (for example) for the same image earning $1.2 more ($.35 goes to the platform) while the buyer will pay $1.5 less (30%) not to mention the fact that they will not have to purchase in bulk. This kind of microtransaction is only possible through the blockchain technology we are currently building. If you do the same with paypal or credit card, the transaction fee alone will be more than $.35 leaving the middle man with nothing. That is how we will have an advantage in terms of costs and value proposition that can be used in our marketing campaigns.
So you reckon less than 10% of your income is enough for marketing? When then the market leaders who already have a presence typically spend 30% plus. "but most buyers care about the costs they are incurring more than anything"- You need to do a bit of research about marketing.
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Also, we would be happy to share a more detailed explanation of how blockchain will help us solve some of the problems that exist in the stock image world covering user acquisition, transaction fees, decentralized management, copyrights and etc.
That's as may be, but how are you going to persuade a large number of buyers to buy into blockchain? Like bitcoin, not all buyers are anxious to be 'cool kids'. Are the business bean counters going to jump on board?
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if blockchain offered any appreciable savings for middlemen, SS or Adobe would have set it up long time ago. It doesn't take that much nowadays, and they have the resources to hire people if any additional expertise was needed. They aren't exactly completely IT tech ignorant, being what they are. Clearly there isn't much there. But hey, good luck becoming another SS plus Adobe plus Getty aggregate but without associated expenses. Let us know when you do, we'll all transfer our portfolios at this very moment.
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if blockchain offered any appreciable savings for middlemen, SS or Adobe would have set it up long time ago. It doesn't take that much nowadays, and they have the resources to hire people if any additional expertise was needed. They aren't exactly completely IT tech ignorant, being what they are. Clearly there isn't much there. But hey, good luck becoming another SS plus Adobe plus Getty aggregate but without associated expenses. Let us know when you do, we'll all transfer our portfolios at this very moment.
To be fair established businesses are often not good at spotting emerging opportunities - one word KODAK. But I'm not seeing the big benefits here maybe I'm shortsighted and at least they are trying something different.
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"Thanks for bringing up the examples. Lets take the specific example with Deposit Photos.
10 on demand images will cost the buyer $50 which is $5 per image." Sadly a tiny proportion of my sales there are from these packages....the vast majority being sub packages where of course transaction costs are much less as its a single monthly payment.
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In our case, we will charge 5-10% (to cover marketing and transaction costs) for the same transaction.
OK, I get it - the idea is that blockchain technology will decrease the real costs of transactions so that buyers and sellers can both have more money in their pockets. The problem is that 10% isn't going to leave much to let buyers hear about it, especially considering that you want to lower prices and presumably keep some of it yourself for profit.
can be used in our marketing campaigns.
Which are? What kind of marketing campaigns and how much will they cost? How well is the marketing campaign outlined in your business plan? (you do have a thorough business plan, right?)
We are not after buzz trends or are amateur rookies that have no clue how to start and build sustainable businesses. We have been buying stock photography for a few years for our prior projects and know the buyer-side market quite well.
Buying photography for a few years doesn't make you an expert in selling images! You certainly are amateurs when it comes to setting up selling platforms and attracting buyers. Have you set up a successful agency or selling platform before? If yes, then maybe you are not amateurs. If not, then you really don't have a clue. These ideas are a dime a dozen but implementing something like this is extremely difficult in practice as we unfortunately have seen many times before.
Again, marketing is important, but most buyers care about the costs they are incurring more than anything. So when you offer a superior cost structure made available with new technology, it will be easier to attract new buyers.
And sellers care about getting the highest prices - nobody here wants to find a new technology to lower prices. Now if you can find a way to attract buyers without significantly lowering prices then that would be great, but otherwise what would happen in the long run is that buyers will get lower prices and sellers will get next to nothing. Anything that lowers the price of images in the minds of buyers is hurting us long term. Plus it won't be easy to attract buyers if they haven't heard about you.
we understand the difficulty and expected cost of user acquisition and will be using most of our investment and future earnings to attract buyers.
How much do you anticipate spending for advertising? What sort of campaigns on what platforms? How will you get the word out relative to what SS and the other major agencies are spending?
How many images do you need to attract buyers? Will these be individual sites linked together a la Symbiostock or will you be starting an agency? If the latter, what will your prices be and how will you review images? What kind of search algorithms will you use?
It seems to me you have identified perceived "inefficiencies" in the costs of transactions that can be solved through blockchain technology - great - but haven't thought through all the other aspects of starting and promoting a new agency - or whatever structure you envision for this endeavor. Many more details about your business plan are needed for us to understand what you are trying to do and to judge whether it is a good idea with any chance of success. Sorry for all the negativity and skepticism but we have seen this many times before.
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To be fair established businesses are often not good at spotting emerging opportunities - one word KODAK. But I'm not seeing the big benefits here maybe I'm shortsighted and at least they are trying something different.
You're not shortsighted. Blockchain is simply what it is, an encrypted distributed ledger. It does not sell stuff by itself, it does not wash dishes or cure cancer. When people start throwing in the air buzzwords that they heard at a presentation but did not have the ability to process or understand, that's the moment when they lose credibility. Decentralized management? How did that get into the picture? If I am going solo, without an agency, the only way I can "decentralize management" is to sever left-brain hemisphere from the right-brain hemisphere. Copyright protection? How is that possible if international enforcement is not a viable option? Anyhow, people should know their stuff before pitching.
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The seller will be able to charge $3.5 (for example) for the same image earning $1.25 more ($.35 goes to the platform) while the buyer will pay $1.5 less (30%) not to mention the fact that they will not have to purchase in bulk. This kind of microtransaction is only possible through the blockchain technology we are currently building. If you do the same with paypal or credit card, the transaction fee alone will be more than $.35 leaving the middle man with nothing. That is how we will have an advantage in terms of costs and value proposition that can be used in our marketing campaigns.
1. These kinds of "microtransactions" are possible in a million different ways.
2. Nobody wants buyers to get used to paying even less for images than they do now.
3. Who cares about the middleman?
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My day job is related to software. I'm familiar with the complexity in building software but moreso the ongoing obstacles with supporting it long term. This is one of the reasons I never even remotely considered Symbiostock. It's a nice idea and I give the guy big credit for taking it on, but from the beginning there was no financial model or plan for long term support. For contributors like me/us, adding content to a site is a huge investment of time with planning, configuration, SEO, etc. I'd only invest time where I'm seeing something that gives me some confidence that the platform will still be in business and supported a few years down the road.
Regarding price, I'm not interested in selling for less. In fact, I'd like to see a system that offers so many benefits to buyers that they would be willing to pay more for it. And by more, I'm talking a single use license between $50 - $1,000. Not unlimited RF for a few dollars or cents.
While the fact that you been on the buying end is encouraging, I haven't seen anything that makes me interested.
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who is going to inspect the files to see if they have logos hidden somewhere? If the file is overfiltered and has artifacts? If the file has a professional model release signed by a witness?
You see customers want to know that there are no legal and quality problems if they license a file.
And all agencies employ a huge team of reviewers from across the globe to check EVERY SINGLE FILE at 100%.
They also need lawyers who keep them up to date on the ever changing copyright landscape and agencies often pull thousands of files if there is a new legal problem.
Having a team of several hundred image inspectors, a team of 300 IT people...and in addition a marketing a sales department...that is what makes selling stock so expensive.
Buyers want an all clear before they pay money. It is the main reason, they don't use the millions of free files or those with a cc license.
Software cannot do that for you. The individual artist cannot do that for you.
That is why 10% will never cover the costs of your agency.
So good luck, but from your questions, I have the impression you really don't understand how this industry works.
We get people with ideas like these every year.
But the stock market is very specialized, it cannot be replaced by a simple plattform.
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Great questions and comments! We are happy that you are curious to find out more about our project. I think some of the points you brought up are valid concerns and will be addressed. That was exactly our goal when we decided to share our survey (https://goo.gl/forms/dhcLoEDocR5Hx3Ir1) and get your feedback.
In short, to fully understand the advantages of StockChain (platform we are building), it is important to be familiar with such concepts as cryptoeconomics, smart contracts, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO) and advantages that they offer particularly with respect to marketing and building P2P marketplace networks. Some of these may be perceived as buzzwords but there is strong value in the underlying technology and the opportunities it creates. One of the key components of DAO is that it incentivizes all network participants (in this case contributors and buyers) to expand the network and bring more participants as trading takes place in native currency which everyone in the network holds. We understand that these ideas are hard to grasp at this point as blockchain and cryptocurrencies are in their early stages of adoption.
We are currently working on finalizing our business plan that will outline all details with regards to business model, marketing and sales, technology and other important topics. We will share the document with you soon to cover some of your questions above and to get further feedback. We are committed to full transparency and active communication with future participants of StockChain network. Please be patient and we will answer all of your questions soon. We are currently focused on building the network and the supporting infrastucture and plan to have the demo version in the first quarter of 2018.
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We understand that these ideas are hard to grasp at this point as blockchain and cryptocurrencies are in their early stages of adoption.
Thank you for explicit clarifications Mike. I still have my worries about sciens and techmology, is it good or is it wack?
From my end I understand that it is very hard for image buyers to understand the concept of revenue, but with time it will become very clear as things progress.
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In short, to fully understand the advantages of StockChain (platform we are building), it is important to be familiar with such concepts as cryptoeconomics, smart contracts, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO) and advantages that they offer particularly with respect to marketing and building P2P marketplace networks.
Customers just want to buy pictures easily and cheaply.
How will StockChain do that better than existing agencies?
If you can't explain without patronising us with jargon, and belittling us for our lack of esoteric technical knowledge, then you might as well give up now.
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In short, to fully understand the advantages of StockChain (platform we are building), it is important to be familiar with such concepts as cryptoeconomics, smart contracts, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO) and advantages that they offer particularly with respect to marketing and building P2P marketplace networks.
Customers just want to buy pictures easily and cheaply.
If you can't explain why StockChain can help them to do that better than existing agencies without patronising us with jargon, and belittling us for our lack of esoteric technical knowledge, then you might as well give up now.
In the end us contributors can only wait and see what benefits it might deliver.....if I were an investor I don't see anything that would make me want to buy into it. Time will tell I guess.
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One of the key components of DAO is that it incentivizes all network participants (in this case contributors and buyers) to expand the network and bring more participants as trading takes place in native currency which everyone in the network holds.
I don't want to be paid in "native currency". I want US dollars.
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Yeah, I want cold, hard, dirty, filthy cash. When all the booze shops and bars accept complicurrencies then maybe I'll accept something else.
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Perhaps StockChain is providing a complicated technological solution to a problem buyers don't have.
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Perhaps StockChain is providing a complicated technological solution to a problem buyers don't have.
Nor contributors. "Trust us with managing your assets. Unfortunately we can't tell you how we are going to make money other than drop the prices and the clients will come". Plus, we are told that technologies at the core of the payment system, the engine of the entire business, is "in their early stages of adoption". That inspires so much confidence that it will really take off. Just wait till governments step in and start heavily regulating this whole p2p sales sector.
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One of the key components of DAO is that it incentivizes all network participants (in this case contributors and buyers) to expand the network and bring more participants as trading takes place in native currency which everyone in the network holds.
I don't want to be paid in "native currency". I want US dollars.
It then becomes a mix of a platform to buy and sell pics and crypto currency speculation. So no one will know from day to day what they are buying/selling for.
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We are currently focused on building the network and the supporting infrastucture and plan to have the demo version in the first quarter of 2018.
I'm sure we will all be waiting with bated breath.
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... One of the key components of DAO is that it incentivizes all network participants (in this case contributors and buyers) to expand the network and bring more participants as trading takes place in native currency which everyone in the network holds....
If you'd said up front you were selling a Bitcoin rival cloaked in a story about licensing images, that would have saved everyone the trouble. There's nothing hard to understand about the idea that this is a speculative pyramid scheme where no one is getting paid in currency with stable value. All the blather notwithstanding, Bitcoin is speculation, not a currency - it has no stable value, and there are a fair number of articles out there by people much more well versed in economics than I am as to how it can never be.
You're wasting our time
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2017/05/17/bitcoin-is-an-asset-not-a-currency/#59346d742e5b (https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2017/05/17/bitcoin-is-an-asset-not-a-currency/#59346d742e5b)
https://www.wired.com/2017/01/bitcoin-will-never-currency-something-way-weirder/ (https://www.wired.com/2017/01/bitcoin-will-never-currency-something-way-weirder/)
There's lots more out there to read.
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That is what I love about the stock community. We have so many people with different skills, it is easy to decrypt anything people throw at us.
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LOL. Maybe I'm daft, but is just selling images for prices that make everybody money really so terrible.
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... One of the key components of DAO is that it incentivizes all network participants (in this case contributors and buyers) to expand the network and bring more participants as trading takes place in native currency which everyone in the network holds....
If you'd said up front you were selling a Bitcoin rival cloaked in a story about licensing images, that would have saved everyone the trouble. There's nothing hard to understand about the idea that this is a speculative pyramid scheme where no one is getting paid in currency with stable value. All the blather notwithstanding, Bitcoin is speculation, not a currency - it has no stable value, and there are a fair number of articles out there by people much more well versed in economics than I am as to how it can never be.
You're wasting our time
https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2017/05/17/bitcoin-is-an-asset-not-a-currency/#59346d742e5b (https://www.forbes.com/sites/jeffreydorfman/2017/05/17/bitcoin-is-an-asset-not-a-currency/#59346d742e5b)
https://www.wired.com/2017/01/bitcoin-will-never-currency-something-way-weirder/ (https://www.wired.com/2017/01/bitcoin-will-never-currency-something-way-weirder/)
There's lots more out there to read.
First of all, we are not building a bitcoin rival :) and it is absolutely the opposite of a pyramid. DAOs and blockchain networks are flat and fully transparent economic units with fully liquid cryptoassets. You can find articles written by the same editorials mocking and cliticising renewable energy from 10 years back, and then look at the current developments in this space. I would recommend doing more research about DAOs and smart contracts and then maybe you will have a slightly different opinion.
In any case, If you do not understand or support blockchain, then perhaps what we are building is not for you, at least not now.
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Why do you want to use your fancy tech project on us?
you can easily build a plattform for people selling used cars, or kitchen appliances or books or music? or real estate? renting real estate? Car sharing service?
selling modern energy rights? Digital workshops??
Why the stock industry, where every file sold needs to have previous personal inspection by a skilled editor?
A used car plattform doesn´t need that. neither does a real estate business or any of the others I mentioned
Build the plattform, let the buyers and sellers work out the details.
Our industry is different because of the personal inspection process and the legal stuff, that needs to be cleaed for over 1.2 million new files that hit our industry every single week.
How will your plattform review 1 million files a week including all releases?
And why is our industry an interesting project for you.
I really don´t understand why, there are so any other options to build p to p networks and plattforms out there.
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Why do you want to use your fancy tech project on us?
you can easily build a plattform for people selling used cars, or kitchen appliances or books or music? or real estate? renting real estate? Car sharing service?
selling modern energy rights? Digital workshops??
Why the stock industry, where every file sold needs to have previous personal inspection by a skilled editor?
A used car plattform doesn´t need that. neither does a real estate business or any of the others I mentioned
Build the plattform, let the buyers and sellers work out the details.
Our industry is different because of the personal inspection process and the legal stuff, that needs to be cleaed for over 1.2 million new files that hit our industry every single week.
How will your plattform review 1 million files a week including all releases?
And why is our industry an interesting project for you.
I really don´t understand why, there are so any other options to build p to p networks and plattforms out there.
I think he said because in the past he bought stock photos. ????
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Isn't "peer to peer" an artist selling directly to a buyer? I'm not sure where these guys fit into that, since they want to do marketing and take some sort of commission.
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DAOs and blockchain networks are flat and fully transparent economic units with fully liquid cryptoassets.
We haven't had a crisis yet in the world of cryptomoney. Only then will we see just how liquid those cryptoassets prove to be.
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DAOs and blockchain networks are flat and fully transparent economic units with fully liquid cryptoassets.
We haven't had a crisis yet in the world of cryptomoney. Only then will we see just how liquid those cryptoassets prove to be.
They are only liquid if someone wants to buy them ;).
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DAOs and blockchain networks are flat and fully transparent economic units with fully liquid cryptoassets.
We haven't had a crisis yet in the world of cryptomoney. Only then will we see just how liquid those cryptoassets prove to be.
They are only liquid if someone wants to buy them ;).
By liquidity i mean there are no restrictions based on timelines or minimum amounts to convert your earnings to cash like its the case with SS and other platforms. No arbitrary minimum payout amounts or payment cycles. Of course, the liquidity would depend on the market in case of cryptocurrencies. Thats why it is called a decentralized market. It is based on demand/ supply. More details will be provided on this in the comprehensive doc that we will share.
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By liquidity i mean there are no restrictions based on timelines or minimum amounts to convert your earnings to cash like its the case with SS and other platforms. No arbitrary minimum payout amounts or payment cycles. Of course, the liquidity would depend on the market in case of cryptocurrencies. Thats why it is called a decentralized market. It is based on demand/ supply. More details will be provided on this in the comprehensive doc that we will share.
It sounds like "liquidity" means something very different to you than it does to the rest of the world. What other terms are you using in bizarre ways?
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In short, to fully understand the advantages of StockChain (platform we are building), it is important to be familiar with such concepts as cryptoeconomics, smart contracts, decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO) and advantages that they offer particularly with respect to marketing and building P2P marketplace networks.
<yawn>
As the Dragons would say at this point, "for that reason, I'm out"
(Do the Sharks say the same?)
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Yes, the Sharks say the same.
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I did bring up ptop, blockchain and cryptocurrency not long ago. I do think there could be a solution that works for contributors and buyers. I don't think marketing would be a problem if there was a way to buy and sell image licenses that was much superior to the options we have now.
I think it will take a few years for cryptocurrency to become more mainstream and it's going to be difficult to get people interested right now, as it's currently such an alien concept to the majority of people. Perhaps if the rumours are true and Amazon start accepting Bitcoin, it will become more mainstream?
The vast majority of people that I talk to about cryptocurrency think I'm crazy buying into it but I think they're crazy keeping all their money in fiat currencies that are dwindling in value. It feels like when I first started using the internet and most people thought it was a fad. I suggest everyone here should stop thinking that the sites we currently use are our only option. I never liked Symbiostock but that doesn't mean that some smart people wont come up with something much better.
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The vast majority of people that I talk to about cryptocurrency think I'm crazy buying into it but I think they're crazy keeping all their money in fiat currencies that are dwindling in value.
Except that inflation is very low in major economies. If you're in a country with high inflation, it's much more sensible to shift your cash into a basket of major currencies: dollar, yen, euro. That will preserve the value of your money, and by diversifying you reduce volatility.
Cryptocurrencies are, in contrast, VERY volatile. And we haven't had a financial crisis in the West like 2007 to 2009, or in Asia during 1997, to see how they react.
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I started to invest into cryptos years ago. I do it because I like profit and freedom. I am looking forward to the first decentralized peer2peer stock media platform. Good luck guys. :)
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The vast majority of people that I talk to about cryptocurrency think I'm crazy buying into it but I think they're crazy keeping all their money in fiat currencies that are dwindling in value.
Except that inflation is very low in major economies. If you're in a country with high inflation, it's much more sensible to shift your cash into a basket of major currencies: dollar, yen, euro. That will preserve the value of your money, and by diversifying you reduce volatility.
Cryptocurrencies are, in contrast, VERY volatile. And we haven't had a financial crisis in the West like 2007 to 2009, or in Asia during 1997, to see how they react.
I think we are in a financial crisis in the west now. Government debts are astronomical, personal debts are at unsustainable levels. Economies rely too heavily on consumer spending. Ignoring the problem, raising debt ceilings and printing more money isn't fixing it. All that does is pass a huge burden to the next generation. Bitcoin might be volatile but its trend has been generally upwards for the last year, going from around $600 to $5,500. It's worth $10,000 in Zimbabwe, I hope the rest of the world never sees a financial crisis like that one.
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Still, while we discuss cryptocurrencies, the OP still hasn't addressed concerns about marketing.
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Well, they're not an agency, right? It's "peer to peer". That means no middleman.
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Well, they're not an agency, right? It's "peer to peer". That means no middleman.
That’s why there is the DAO. Try google ‘DASH DAO’ that is a real example of a Decentralized Autonomous Organization in practice.
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Still, while we discuss cryptocurrencies, the OP still hasn't addressed concerns about marketing.
As mentioned before, we are going to post an official document in about 2 weeks that will describe the process of establishing and maintaining StockChain platform in more details. It will also go over the diminished role of the middleman in initial phases of DAO (and eventual elimination of the middleman), marketing plans, p2p trading and etc. It is not possible to describe StockChain fully in a single forum post with no diagrams and background information about blockchain and smart contracts.
Thanks again for your feedback and questions!
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Just again for fun: who will inspect every individual file and read the releases?
Who will inspect 1.5 million new files every single week to see if they fit the technical and legal requirements so the customer can buy them?
Where are the image inspectors in your business chain??
Who will train them?
Who will pay the lawyers to keep analysing the ongoing legal changes worldwide in the image market?
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Im open minded enough to see what “the plan” is when it gets pit on paper.
I beleive all contributers would love to see someone develop a paraadigm shift in this industry, one that would be different,inique and a pleasant change for contributers
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Just again for fun: who will inspect every individual file and read the releases?
Who will inspect 1.5 million new files every single week to see if they fit the technical and legal requirements so the customer can buy them?
Where are the image inspectors in your business chain??
Who will train them?
Who will pay the lawyers to keep analysing the ongoing legal changes worldwide in the image market?
Im assuming this will be down to sellers just like if you ran your own site. I guess we will find out soon enough
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Im open minded enough to see what “the plan” is when it gets pit on paper.
I beleive all contributers would love to see someone develop a paraadigm shift in this industry, one that would be different,inique and a pleasant change for contributers
Yes I'm a natural skeptic hence my negative seeming comments but if it works then it could benefit.
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If we self inspect, then it is no different then selling via photoshelter, your own webshop etc...it will have no cumulative power, because the buyer does not benefit from a base standard over all files.
It then makes no difference wether you pay via a cryptocurrency, or paypal or credit card.
You add another currency to your webstore...so...how does that improve the quality of your files for the customer?
It doesn’t.
Will adding a cryptocoin payment option bring in customers who you couldn‘t reach before?
That is the only maybe...if you only accept payments in dollars,,but now add euros...but in practise paypal and credit card companies solve the currency thing for you.
If cryptocurrencies go mainstream, you will be able to use them via paypal or credit cards.
So...where is the benefit for the customer?
How does it improve our files?
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If we self inspect, then it is no different then selling via photoshelter, your own webshop etc...it will have no cumulative power, because the buyer does not benefit from a base standard over all files.
It then makes no difference wether you pay via a cryptocurrency, or paypal or credit card.
You add another currency to your webstore...so...how does that improve the quality of your files for the customer?
It doesn’t.
Will adding a cryptocoin payment option bring in customers who you couldn‘t reach before?
That is the only maybe...if you only accept payments in dollars,,but now add euros...but in practise paypal and credit card companies solve the currency thing for you.
If cryptocurrencies go mainstream, you will be able to use them via paypal or credit cards.
So...where is the benefit for the customer?
How does it improve our files?
As I said I'm a sceptic but if a large number of customers see this as a "go to" site then thats the benefit ....hence the concern about marketing spend. I don't really understand all the block chain stuff so will await to see what eventually emerges.
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I'm very sceptical, but I'll look forward to reading the report. I appreciate this is a wild generalisation based purely on my personal experience, so I apologise if I offend anyone, but the majority of avid cryptocurrency users I've met have been stoners, futuristic hippies, digital anarchists, hackers and tin foil hat types. Not exactly my target demographic for selling stock. Although to be fair, the remainder have appeared to be just relatively normal, forward thinking tech people and investors. They were in the minority though.
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I'm very sceptical, but I'll look forward to reading the report. I appreciate this is a wild generalisation based purely on my personal experience, so I apologise if I offend anyone, but the majority of avid cryptocurrency users I've met have been stoners, futuristic hippies, digital anarchists, hackers and tin foil hat types. Not exactly my target demographic for selling stock. Although to be fair, the remainder have appeared to be just relatively normal, forward thinking tech people and investors. They were in the minority though.
Early adopters probably tend to be the more unconventional sometimes new stuff works sometimes it doesn't. While the report might be interesting what I'm really waiting to see is some product...if it involves me risking any of my stoneage currency I'm out ;-). I've wasted plenty of time on other sites so happy to risk some of that! Its an odd strategy though to release all this info about what you are doing....no doubt SS etc are looking at this and considering a) What ideas they can steal b) How to strangle it at Birth.
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Perhaps a percentage of the coins could be used to pay for reviewers, lawyers, marketing and anything else that's required? All the good altcoins can be exchanged for bitcoin and that can be exchanged for dollars. It's not much different to someone in the US being paid in euros and exchanging it for dollars.
The main problem I see is that this is all so new and the decentralised versions of eBay, Spotify, YouTube etc. aren't that impressive right now. I think they will be in time but this is very early days. The concept is revolutionary, not having the internet run by a few big corporations. Having a way to compensate content providers without the huge fees to pay shareholders, investors, hedge funds etc. I think it will gather momentum, when most people can see the advantages.
The alternative is to do nothing and watch a few big corporations take over everything and keep finding ways to make more money from us. Was that really the way the internet was supposed to function?
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The alternative is to do nothing and watch a few big corporations take over everything and keep finding ways to make more money from us. Was that really the way the internet was supposed to function?
The people who create new forms of communication or help to popularise it in the early stages are often naive and idealistic, and have no idea how it will actually be used. For example, Bell thought people would use the telephone to listen to live concerts. TV pioneers thought we would use television to watch documentaries and to educate ourselves.
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Today's' naive idealist is tomorrow's big corporation...google, apple, facebook.......I suspect modern technology makes the tendency to monopolies easier.
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Today's' naive idealist is tomorrow's big corporation...google, apple, facebook.......I suspect modern technology makes the tendency to monopolies easier.
But technology also destroys monopolies more easily.
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Today's' naive idealist is tomorrow's big corporation...google, apple, facebook.......I suspect modern technology makes the tendency to monopolies easier.
But technology also destroys monopolies more easily.
While I am not a techie, this topic is interesting to me, even though bitcoin, cryptocurrency, etc. may not be ready for prime time. We are really discussing a potential future way of conducting business. To namussi's point, remember Blockbuster and Netflix? Blockbuster is no more. Why? Netflix chased technology that Blockbuster thought would never catch on, so they scoffed at Netflix's strategy. Game over for Blockbuster.
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watch a few big corporations take over everything and keep finding ways to make more money from us. Was that really the way the internet was supposed to function?
No, it wasn't intended to be a business opportunity, it was intended to be a method of sharing information for the common good.
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watch a few big corporations take over everything and keep finding ways to make more money from us. Was that really the way the internet was supposed to function?
No, it wasn't intended to be a business opportunity, it was intended to be a method of sharing information for the common good.
I thought it was a way for the military and government to maintain communications after a nuclear war.
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watch a few big corporations take over everything and keep finding ways to make more money from us. Was that really the way the internet was supposed to function?
No, it wasn't intended to be a business opportunity, it was intended to be a method of sharing information for the common good.
I thought it was a way for the military and government to maintain communications after a nuclear war.
That's not necessarily mutually exclusive.
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watch a few big corporations take over everything and keep finding ways to make more money from us. Was that really the way the internet was supposed to function?
No, it wasn't intended to be a business opportunity, it was intended to be a method of sharing information for the common good.
I thought it was a way for the military and government to maintain communications after a nuclear war.
That's not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Nor, for that matter, are business opportunities and sharing information for the common good.
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watch a few big corporations take over everything and keep finding ways to make more money from us. Was that really the way the internet was supposed to function?
No, it wasn't intended to be a business opportunity, it was intended to be a method of sharing information for the common good.
I thought it was a way for the military and government to maintain communications after a nuclear war.
That's not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Nor, for that matter, are business opportunities and sharing information for the common good.
Indeed, but it wasn't an original intention.
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watch a few big corporations take over everything and keep finding ways to make more money from us. Was that really the way the internet was supposed to function?
No, it wasn't intended to be a business opportunity, it was intended to be a method of sharing information for the common good.
Fair point.
I thought it was a way for the military and government to maintain communications after a nuclear war.
That's not necessarily mutually exclusive.
Nor, for that matter, are business opportunities and sharing information for the common good.
Indeed, but it wasn't an original intention.
Fair point.
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i used the internet before it was called the internet, when it was a network of decentralised computers connecting universities and yes, the military.
To share information for science but also to get behind the iron curtain and help those fighting for democracy or who lived under totalitarian rule. Give them a aplace to organize themselves and get connected while writing under an alias so they are much harder to track down.
The latter is being undercut these days, by countries who organize cyber attacks or countries that block access with very sophisticated technology and a huge army of tech cyber fighters.
Decentralized crypto currencies are an attempt to get back to the beginning, make a currency independent of national banks and greedy politicians.
But nobody knows how long it will take to have enough trust to be accepted as a mainstream alternative currency to the euro or dollar. And some countries are already trying to have their own national crypto currency...which the state would control...
It is an interesting idea, no question.
But I think unless you can easily buy the cryptos like any other currency via your bank or paypal or amazon pay or apple pay, it will be used by a fringe minority.
For stock customers I still don´t really see the advantage. And we don´t need a crypto currency to convince buyers to take our files.
But nothing wrong if someone wants to use their time to explore that.
I just don´t see how it will make us less dependent from the agencies. Customers need a good infrastructure, inspected content and editors who know the latest trend. Somebody has to be there to lead and have the vision.
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i used the internet before it was called the internet, when it was a network of decentralised computers connecting universities and yes, the military.
To share information for science but also to get behind the iron curtain and help those fighting for democracy or who lived under totalitarian rule. Give them a aplace to organize themselves and get connected while writing under an alias so they are much harder to track down.
The latter is being undercut these days, by countries who organize cyber attacks or countries that block access with very sophisticated technology and a huge army of tech cyber fighters.
Decentralized crypto currencies are an attempt to get back to the beginning, make a currency independent of national banks and greedy politicians.
But nobody knows how long it will take to have enough trust to be accepted as a mainstream alternative currency to the euro or dollar. And some countries are already trying to have their own national crypto currency...which the state would control...
It is an interesting idea, no question.
But I think unless you can easily buy the cryptos like any other currency via your bank or paypal or amazon pay or apple pay, it will be used by a fringe minority.
For stock customers I still don´t really see the advantage. And we don´t need a crypto currency to convince buyers to take our files.
But nothing wrong if someone wants to use their time to explore that. i just don´t see how it will make us less dependent from the agencies. Customers need a good infrastructure, inspected content and editors who know the latest trend. Somebody has to be there to lead and have the vision.
Other cryptocurrencies pay for things like that with their own coins. I think people are coming up with problems that should be resolvable. The biggest problem I see is timing. This wont work if there isn't a slick platform that offers a viable alternative to the present sites. There isn't anything I've seen out there yet that makes me think now is the right time. Hopefully I will be surprised.
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I had a good talk with Mike on hangouts. I'm quite optimistic about this idea and will help the team if I can. It wont be easy and I'm sure it will take a lot of time but hopefully they will come up with something that will be worth getting involved in.
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I had a good talk with Mike on hangouts. I'm quite optimistic about this idea and will help the team if I can. It wont be easy and I'm sure it will take a lot of time but hopefully they will come up with something that will be worth getting involved in.
I can only guess that he fleshed out the idea a lot more than he did here, because targeting On Demand images at the cheap end of the market dosen't seem to be much of a plan to be optomistic about.
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I think the idea is to let people set their own prices, like Pond5 have done successfully with video. So if you don't want to sell cheap, then you don't need to.
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I think the idea is to let people set their own prices, like Pond5 have done successfully with video. So if you don't want to sell cheap, then you don't need to.
Not for me then I don't sell video, on a positive note I did sell an image on Pond5 once.
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if there is no middleman there some VAT problems in the EU.
A marketplace with contracts direct between buyers and contributors will not work in the EU.
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I think the idea is to let people set their own prices, like Pond5 have done successfully with video. So if you don't want to sell cheap, then you don't need to.
Setting your own prices always interests me. I'm not sure about the weird internet currency stuff. That's not really a selling point at all for me. Although, I'm not sure I'm invited to the party at all as an illustrator anyway.
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if there is no middleman there some VAT problems in the EU.
A marketplace with contracts direct between buyers and contributors will not work in the EU.
Plenty of people in the EU sell stuff on line peer to peer even photos on their own sites ???
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if there is no middleman there some VAT problems in the EU.
A marketplace with contracts direct between buyers and contributors will not work in the EU.
Plenty of people in the EU sell stuff on line peer to peer even photos on their own sites ???
of course its possible.
But you have to pay the VAT from buyers (with homeland inside the EU) in the buyers home country.
That means you have to check everytime an image is sold where to pay the VAT. The administrative effort is high i dont think that is profitable with microstock prices.
For example:
If i sold my images from EU via an agency that is outside the EU i have to pay 0 VAT and no administrative effort. :o
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if there is no middleman there some VAT problems in the EU.
A marketplace with contracts direct between buyers and contributors will not work in the EU.
Plenty of people in the EU sell stuff on line peer to peer even photos on their own sites ???
of course its possible.
But you have to pay the VAT from buyers (with homeland inside the EU) in the buyers home country.
That means you have to check everytime an image is sold where to pay the VAT. The administrative effort is high i dont think that is profitable with microstock prices.
For example:
If i sold my images from EU via an agency that is outside the EU i have to pay 0 VAT and no administrative effort. :o
It isn't so much the effort it is that you have to be VAT registered which would be an absolute nightmare for me.
License sales count as being done in the country of the buyer so my income doesn't count towards my VAT threshold. If I even sold one license on my own site suddenly I would have to be VAT registered anyway because of that ridiculous EU directive. It would end up costing me a fortune from other work which at the moment I don't have to charge VAT on.
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StockChain will act as a mediator and will charge 5-10% which will also be used to cover legal and accounting costs. However, we will not be involved in price setting. Contributors will set their on prices and charge buyers based on the terms they set, similar to ebay or other p2p platforms.
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StockChain will act as a mediator and will charge 5-10% which will also be used to cover legal and accounting costs. However, we will not be involved in price setting. Contributors will set their on prices and charge buyers based on the terms they set, similar to ebay or other p2p platforms.
That's great that you're doing all this work for free!
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StockChain will act as a mediator and will charge 5-10% which will also be used to cover legal and accounting costs. However, we will not be involved in price setting. Contributors will set their on prices and charge buyers based on the terms they set, similar to ebay or other p2p platforms.
if you dont have a european VAT solution Stockchain is not interessting for 98% of the EU contributors.
If i want to sell direct i only need a website, CMS, licensetext, and Paypal.
For what do i need Stockchain?
Do you make marketing?
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The sole reason why agencies pay peanuts and many treat their contributors like sheit is because they know the score. They know that we need them no matter what! I personally sell lots more through the traditional agencies but on the whole we need the agencies.
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Are you hitting a single pain point? I am just not sure how using a cryptocurrency or peer-to-peer ungoverned network can help in favor of either buyer or seller/creator.
PicturEngine lets photographers set their pricing and keep 100% of the sale, using direct peer-to-peer payments via PayPal. We stay out of the licensing transaction and provide our platform, a time-tested enterprise level agency platform, opened to individual creators. Instead of a commission or fee, we ask the sellers to help us pay for our platform and marketing upfront, keeping the participation fees as low as possible. Charging a fee upfront cuts down everyone using it merely for the fact that it is free.
I found that by using PayPal, this helps to verify BOTH the buyer and the seller. It is already too easy for a seller to upload another photographer's work and sell it as their own, especially on a free to use system. Agencies do a lot of work and also take a lot of the risks upfront; hence the large percentage taken from licenses. Take a look at the Zazzle case and more recently Flickr's movement away from print and liability. Free to use systems simply cannot take on the risk these days.
Using an anonymous cryptocurrency and peer-to-peer selling without a centralized platform IMO would enable more fraudsters, and make it harder to police infringements. Therefore you lose the trust of buyers and in the end, are not be very helpful for creators.
When enforcing copyright, it is important to track everything, and we help photographers do just that. Sure, we could write that licensing information to the blockchain, but why, the blockchain is public. For now, most agencies hide this transaction information, masking the buyer's details sometimes displaying usage for RM images, making it impossible for individual creators to monitor infringements. The agencies want to be the sole enforcer, but many are not doing it because it is cost prohibitive. I am all for transparency, but it comes at a cost.
One last thing. Where are you storing these images and who pays for that? How reliable is it? Most importantly how secure is it? Who holds the keys?
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Justin, how many times have the sites allowed a thief to sell our images for a long time until one of us spots it? I bet that a lot of them are in, or have been in, your search engine. It can take a long time to get the images removed when they are reported as well. Hopefully a site that's not run by people that are only interested in increasing profits for their shareholders would be able to put in place something that makes it harder for image thieves, not easier. I think it might be a good idea to wait and see what this platform is all about before making assumptions.
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Justin, how many times have the sites allowed a thief to sell our images for a long time until one of us spots it? I bet that a lot of them are in, or have been in, your search engine. It can take a long time to get the images removed when they are reported as well. Hopefully a site that's not run by people that are only interested in increasing profits for their shareholders would be able to put in place something that makes it harder for image thieves, not easier. I think it might be a good idea to wait and see what this platform is all about before making assumptions.
I agree with the last sentence until something appears the debate is really getting circular...the concerns have been raised. Although why do you think the site is being set up if its not to generate profits for its owners? The same commercial considerations apply....sadly its uneconomic to chase down all but the most flagrant breaches. Every business you can think of on the Internet is riddled with some kind of piratical behaviour. If the technology solves it then great.
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watch a few big corporations take over everything and keep finding ways to make more money from us. Was that really the way the internet was supposed to function?
No, it wasn't intended to be a business opportunity, it was intended to be a method of sharing information for the common good.
Quite. I read about it in the 1980s when I was thinking of going online (before Windows made it easy). There was a lot written about "Netiqette" (a word I haven't seen in a couple of decades), and how to avoid clogging up the limited Web bandwidth. One point (made rather naively, perhaps) was that even though it would theoretically be easy to make money online it would be bad netiquette to do so and would bring down derision and contempt on your head if you attempted it.
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watch a few big corporations take over everything and keep finding ways to make more money from us. Was that really the way the internet was supposed to function?
No, it wasn't intended to be a business opportunity, it was intended to be a method of sharing information for the common good.
Quite. I read about it in the 1980s when I was thinking of going online (before Windows made it easy). There was a lot written about "Netiqette" (a word I haven't seen in a couple of decades), and how to avoid clogging up the limited Web bandwidth. One point (made rather naively, perhaps) was that even though it would theoretically be easy to make money online it would be bad netiquette to do so and would bring down derision and contempt on your head if you attempted it.
Trying to think of one thing done for the common good that someone hasn't made money from ;-)
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My goal is to find the copyright owner and point the buyer to them.
I am a photographer and have been funding PicturEngine for years on my own, and no we are not making a profit. Hopefully, one day we will. We only started accepting money last November, anyone before then was and on a free trial. I have not received a paycheck or compensation since before I shut my agencies down in 2014, and pushing all of my photographers onto the PicturEngine platform to receive 100% of the sale. I built PicturEngine for all of us because it is the right thing to do, and I believe I have the team to do it. The only shareholders in PicturEngine are friends, family, and dedicated developers. Our passion and mission is to help photographers from the grassroots up. Together, we will succeed.
Now with that out of the way. We are deduping (removing exact duplicates) as fast as we can, always looking for fraudsters in violation of copyright. If you recall, several years ago we were seeing images listed on PicturEngine as both RM and RF from stock photo sites, we worked with photographers and agencies to clean these up. Agencies do not have the data to reach across the industry of a billion images to do what we are doing, much less work together to find an amicable solution to the problem. I decided it was best to work with agencies not against them. Verifying identity is critical. We are always looking for mismatches in identity in our search results and when in doubt we don't show the image in our search results (or remove it as soon as we can.) Our system is not perfect, but I believe PicturEngine is the best shot we've got in the industry for sustainability. It would be so much easier if all agencies required the copyright owner to use a real name and not a pseudonym.
I was not trying to be critical of any new players in the industry, just sincerely wanted to know the answers to my questions. If they have a better way, GREAT! We can work together to find the answers and solve the problems as they come.
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My goal is to find the copyright owner and point the buyer to them.
I am a photographer and have been funding PicturEngine for years on my own, and no we are not making a profit. Hopefully, one day we will. We only started accepting money last November, anyone before then was and on a free trial. I have not received a paycheck or compensation since before I shut my agencies down in 2014, and pushing all of my photographers onto the PicturEngine platform to receive 100% of the sale. I built PicturEngine for all of us because it is the right thing to do, and I believe I have the team to do it. The only shareholders in PicturEngine are friends, family, and dedicated developers. Our passion and mission is to help photographers from the grassroots up. Together, we will succeed.
Now with that out of the way. We are deduping (removing exact duplicates) as fast as we can, always looking for fraudsters in violation of copyright. If you recall, several years ago we were seeing images listed on PicturEngine as both RM and RF from stock photo sites, we worked with photographers and agencies to clean these up. Agencies do not have the data to reach across the industry of a billion images to do what we are doing, much less work together to find an amicable solution to the problem. I decided it was best to work with agencies not against them. Verifying identity is critical. We are always looking for mismatches in identity in our search results and when in doubt we don't show the image in our search results (or remove it as soon as we can.) Our system is not perfect, but I believe PicturEngine is the best shot we've got in the industry for sustainability. It would be so much easier if all agencies required the copyright owner to use a real name and not a pseudonym.
I was not trying to be critical of any new players in the industry, just sincerely wanted to know the answers to my questions. If they have a better way, GREAT! We can work together to find the answers and solve the problems as they come.
btw I'm not saying theres anything wrong with making a profit...that's what drives innovation.
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watch a few big corporations take over everything and keep finding ways to make more money from us. Was that really the way the internet was supposed to function?
No, it wasn't intended to be a business opportunity, it was intended to be a method of sharing information for the common good.
Quite. I read about it in the 1980s when I was thinking of going online (before Windows made it easy). There was a lot written about "Netiqette" (a word I haven't seen in a couple of decades), and how to avoid clogging up the limited Web bandwidth. One point (made rather naively, perhaps) was that even though it would theoretically be easy to make money online it would be bad netiquette to do so and would bring down derision and contempt on your head if you attempted it.
Trying to think of one thing done for the common good that someone hasn't made money from ;-)
Our local campaign to stop a coal-fired power station. It cost us money, but was worth it.
Oh, I'm wrong of course. The web host made money, as did local printers.
Anyone else?
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watch a few big corporations take over everything and keep finding ways to make more money from us. Was that really the way the internet was supposed to function?
No, it wasn't intended to be a business opportunity, it was intended to be a method of sharing information for the common good.
Quite. I read about it in the 1980s when I was thinking of going online (before Windows made it easy). There was a lot written about "Netiqette" (a word I haven't seen in a couple of decades), and how to avoid clogging up the limited Web bandwidth. One point (made rather naively, perhaps) was that even though it would theoretically be easy to make money online it would be bad netiquette to do so and would bring down derision and contempt on your head if you attempted it.
Trying to think of one thing done for the common good that someone hasn't made money from ;-)
Our local campaign to stop a coal-fired power station. It cost us money, but was worth it.
Oh, I'm wrong of course. The web host made money, as did local printers.
Anyone else?
I believe Starbucks make great profits from anti-capitalist protesters;-). But yep I never really thought about those kind of activities. But any inventions are always turned to a profit...or better ways of killing people.
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I think the idea isn't to stop making money, its to spread the money around people that are actually using the platform. Now, most of the money from the sites goes to investors that don't have to have anything to do with contributing images or buying image licenses.
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My goal is to find the copyright owner and point the buyer to them.
I am a photographer and have been funding PicturEngine for years on my own, and no we are not making a profit. Hopefully, one day we will. We only started accepting money last November, anyone before then was and on a free trial. I have not received a paycheck or compensation since before I shut my agencies down in 2014, and pushing all of my photographers onto the PicturEngine platform to receive 100% of the sale. I built PicturEngine for all of us because it is the right thing to do, and I believe I have the team to do it. The only shareholders in PicturEngine are friends, family, and dedicated developers. Our passion and mission is to help photographers from the grassroots up. Together, we will succeed.
Now with that out of the way. We are deduping (removing exact duplicates) as fast as we can, always looking for fraudsters in violation of copyright. If you recall, several years ago we were seeing images listed on PicturEngine as both RM and RF from stock photo sites, we worked with photographers and agencies to clean these up. Agencies do not have the data to reach across the industry of a billion images to do what we are doing, much less work together to find an amicable solution to the problem. I decided it was best to work with agencies not against them. Verifying identity is critical. We are always looking for mismatches in identity in our search results and when in doubt we don't show the image in our search results (or remove it as soon as we can.) Our system is not perfect, but I believe PicturEngine is the best shot we've got in the industry for sustainability. It would be so much easier if all agencies required the copyright owner to use a real name and not a pseudonym.
I was not trying to be critical of any new players in the industry, just sincerely wanted to know the answers to my questions. If they have a better way, GREAT! We can work together to find the answers and solve the problems as they come.
I might take you more seriously if your site wasn't pushing Getty, DepositPhotos and similar sites that are treating their contributors so badly. Your words say one thing but so far your actions seem to go in the opposite direction. I know we could all pay you to promote our images but then what''s to stop you selling out like many others before you? I admire the way you keep pushing Picturengine but it still doesn't do it for me. I'm still looking for something completely different that can't go the same way most of the sites have gone, being for the benefit of a few large investors.
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I think the idea isn't to stop making money, its to spread the money around people that are actually using the platform. Now, most of the money from the sites goes to investors that don't have to have anything to do with contributing images or buying image licenses.
Is this new venture solely at the expense of the creators or do they have financial backing? Most of the money in existing sites goes to contributors marketing, operational expenses, and Tax. The model being proposed seems to assume that operational costs and marketing costs can be slashed. My reservation is that you can't do that with Marketing and expect to impact the market...unless maybe the onus on marketing is on the contributors which is a hidden cost and shifts even more risk to contributors.
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JHopefully a site that's not run by people that are only interested in increasing profits for their
Obviously we need government-run stock agencies.
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JHopefully a site that's not run by people that are only interested in increasing profits for their
Obviously we need government-run stock agencies.
So you think everything has to either be owned by a few wealthy people that usually have nothing to do with the business or the government? There's lots of better options. Have you seen what Stocksy are doing for example
"Our co-op approach
We are an artist-owned cooperative founded on the principles of equality, respect, and fair distribution of profits. Our contributing artists receive 50% of a Standard License Purchase and 75% of an Extended License Purchase – and every single co-op member receives a share of the company." https://www.stocksy.com/service/about/ (https://www.stocksy.com/service/about/)
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JHopefully a site that's not run by people that are only interested in increasing profits for their
Obviously we need government-run stock agencies.
Ha. C'mon, I'm drinking coffee here :)
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I don't think looking at the agencies as some kind of evil is particularly productive. We all want the same thing, that is more money for ourselves. If there was a hypothetical forum where agencies could share their stories and concerns, I'm sure the common anti-contributor theme would be, "we work around the clock moving tons of their sub-par unprofessionally done garbage, and all they do is complaining and bad-mouthing. Where could we find contributors that do a superb job, don't complain, appreciate our hard work and don't cost us as much as they cost us now?"
If there is a good technological way to screw them, there may be a good technological way to screw us.
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I don't think looking at the agencies as some kind of evil is particularly productive. We all want the same thing, that is more money for ourselves. If there was a hypothetical forum where agencies could share their stories and concerns, I'm sure the common anti-contributor theme would be, "we work around the clock moving tons of their sub-par unprofessionally done garbage, and all they do is complaining and bad-mouthing. Where could we find contributors that do a superb job, don't complain, appreciate our hard work and don't cost us as much as they cost us now?"
If there is a good technological way to screw them, there may be a good technological way to screw us.
Yes its a business unless they are doing something immoral I don't think the idea they are somehow evil has much of a place.
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Yes its a business unless they are doing something immoral I don't think the idea they are somehow evil has much of a place.
I dunno... Moral is such a poorly defined word, particularly when large groups of people are involved. People who are breaking boiled eggs on the larger end seem immoral to people who do it on the smaller end. If they are not doing anything illegal, I'm fine with it. The rules of the game.
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So you think everything has to either be owned by a few wealthy people that usually have nothing to do with the business or the government? https://www.stocksy.com/service/about/ (https://www.stocksy.com/service/about/)
[/quote]
That isn't how much of the world's businesses are actually owned. Pension funds own enormous chunks of business on behalf of ordinary people.
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Yes its a business unless they are doing something immoral I don't think the idea they are somehow evil has much of a place.
I dunno... Moral is such a poorly defined word, particularly when large groups of people are involved. People who are breaking boiled eggs on the larger end seem immoral to people who do it on the smaller end. If they are not doing anything illegal, I'm fine with it. The rules of the game.
Yes it is subjective so if you think that are acting immorally then don't work with them while I might quibble with their rates I don't think its immoral.
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JHopefully a site that's not run by people that are only interested in increasing profits for their
Obviously we need government-run stock agencies.
So you think everything has to either be owned by a few wealthy people that usually have nothing to do with the business or the government? There's lots of better options. Have you seen what Stocksy are doing for example
"Our co-op approach
We are an artist-owned cooperative founded on the principles of equality, respect, and fair distribution of profits. Our contributing artists receive 50% of a Standard License Purchase and 75% of an Extended License Purchase – and every single co-op member receives a share of the company." https://www.stocksy.com/service/about/ (https://www.stocksy.com/service/about/)
I see, so every member of the co-op is a stockholder. Aren't those the people you say ruin it? Of course in the real world, stockholders enable growth, expansion, advertising, and loan money at their own risk, hoping there will be more profits. If the stockholders of agencies make the same grow and more profitable, then aren't we more profitable because our sales will also grow?
Stocksy co-op, where do I sign up? ::) Oh that's right, it's a private club.
I'd say the answer is start your own co-op which I'd be glad to see and join. Now about expenses, hosting, promotions, IT, accounting and management?
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JHopefully a site that's not run by people that are only interested in increasing profits for their
Obviously we need government-run stock agencies.
So you think everything has to either be owned by a few wealthy people that usually have nothing to do with the business or the government? There's lots of better options. Have you seen what Stocksy are doing for example
"Our co-op approach
We are an artist-owned cooperative founded on the principles of equality, respect, and fair distribution of profits. Our contributing artists receive 50% of a Standard License Purchase and 75% of an Extended License Purchase – and every single co-op member receives a share of the company." https://www.stocksy.com/service/about/ (https://www.stocksy.com/service/about/)
I see, so every member of the co-op is a stockholder. Aren't those the people you say ruin it? Of course in the real world, stockholders enable growth, expansion, advertising, and loan money at their own risk, hoping there will be more profits. If the stockholders of agencies make the same grow and more profitable, then aren't we more profitable because our sales will also grow?
Stocksy co-op, where do I sign up? ::) Oh that's right, it's a private club.
I'd say the answer is start your own co-op which I'd be glad to see and join. Now about expenses, hosting, promotions, IT, accounting and management?
I think there's a huge difference between stockholders that are involved with the site, supplying or buying from it and those that have nothing to do with it, only wanting their investment to grow every year. Has Shutterstock improved for us since their IPO? Has Getty improved for us since being taken over by a hedge fund? Do you really think they aren't much more focused on keeping their investors happy than their contributors?
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I'm not so sure I measure any agency on what they can do for me not on their financial funding structures. But isn't whats being offered simply a platform not sure I'd have a stake in it.
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I might take you more seriously if your site wasn't pushing Getty, DepositPhotos and similar sites that are treating their contributors so badly. Your words say one thing but so far your actions seem to go in the opposite direction. I know we could all pay you to promote our images but then what''s to stop you selling out like many others before you? I admire the way you keep pushing Picturengine but it still doesn't do it for me. I'm still looking for something completely different that can't go the same way most of the sites have gone, being for the benefit of a few large investors.
Organic images (not paid advertising) on PicturEngine, make up 98% of our search results. That draws in image buyers with less advertising; we have just about all of the images, so why as an image buyer start your search anywhere else. Pooling advertising dollars for everyone is the goal; most underestimate advertising dollars needed to compete. When advertising a marketplace, it takes a lot of work and money upfront; the advertising happens before the sales. Most need an outside investor, PicturEngine has me and my dedicated team.
About the search results, Images that get hovered over, clicked on, added to lightboxes, etc. rise in the search results organically using our algorithms per their particular keyword. The paid results are shuffled into the organic results. (this is a very simplified description) If every time you come to PicturEngine you click on the best images you see, and those happen to be Getty or Depositphotos... Then you are making your own search results happen, and those images come to the top. We are always making adjustments to make the search as unbiased as possible. I do not want to put a mechanical weight system in place to skew results for or against any particular artist or entity, that does not help anyone.
I had considered a co-op and nonprofit status early on. However, any way you look at it, when control is lost, the vision to help photographers and image buyers and protect copyright is lost to chasing big profits and ROI. This as you can see clearly through our industry usually means paying the contributor less of the sales commissions.
I am personally listening and working for all of us, weighing each and every decision pros and cons, asking both buyers and photographers for input. If you have not figured out by now, that I am working for you, building PicturEngine for the future sustainability of the industry (that I thought was needed since 2011,) I don't think you ever will.
Sharpshot or anyone if you have a doubt let's set up a time to open the hood and see for yourself. I am very proud of what we have built.
If you think we need to implement changes to make it better, I am listening. Let's discuss. (I don't think you would ever hear that from an agency.)
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I just don't think it helps promoting sites that are making this unsustainable while having no images from sites like Alamy. If you change that, I might be more interested.
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An opinion on the investment, use, and user traction of blockchain type technology. So who is actually going to pay for stock photos using it? Perhaps a few large comp[anies or something. I doubt the small companies, individual newsletter buyers. I doubt the churches. I doubt most any mid-size organization in the near future. I think the buying power per unit is too unstable to be of value. https://gizmodo.com/survey-most-americans-remain-blissfully-unaware-of-the-1820027828
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An opinion on the investment, use, and user traction of blockchain type technology. So who is actually going to pay for stock photos using it? Perhaps a few large comp[anies or something. I doubt the small companies, individual newsletter buyers. I doubt the churches. I doubt most any mid-size organization in the near future. I think the buying power per unit is too unstable to be of value. https://gizmodo.com/survey-most-americans-remain-blissfully-unaware-of-the-1820027828
If just the people getting involved with blockchain technology use it, that's an already big and rapidly growing market. I already see lots of stock images from the sites being used. As for churches, they just need to exchange their BiblePay coins https://biblepay.org/
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An opinion on the investment, use, and user traction of blockchain type technology. So who is actually going to pay for stock photos using it? Perhaps a few large comp[anies or something. I doubt the small companies, individual newsletter buyers. I doubt the churches. I doubt most any mid-size organization in the near future. I think the buying power per unit is too unstable to be of value. https://gizmodo.com/survey-most-americans-remain-blissfully-unaware-of-the-1820027828
If just the people getting involved with blockchain technology use it, that's an already big and rapidly growing market. I already see lots of stock images from the sites being used. As for churches, they just need to exchange their BiblePay coins https://biblepay.org/
Rapidly growing maybe....big really? What percentage of Cryptocurrency users buy stock I wonder?
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After hand holding a new client through PayPal today I was thinking of this thread and just shaking my head at the idea of trying to walk a potential buyer through crypto currency issues. I just see it as another obstacle to user friendliness and more time spent on customer support which is the absolute last thing I need.
I've been generally pretty adventurous with new ideas and independent selling platforms over the years and willing to jump in and spend time and money to test different things, but nothing here sounds remotely realistic or tempting to me.
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My numbers may be slightly off, and I'll admit there's a lot more to it than this which would probably lean more in cryptos favour, but still important nevetheless....
There are $163 Billion cryptocoins floating around. $114 Billion of those are Bitcoin. StockCoin or whatever it's going to be called is not going to be bigger than bitcoin. Out of the remaining $49 Billion, we'll say StockCoin will amount to one tenth of that, which is extremely optimistic. So, there's $5 Billion in StockCoin, versus $5 Trillion in regular money floating around. So if you make $1000 a month on Shutterstock... you'll make $1 a month on StockCoinSite or whatever it's called.
Yes, these people can just buy a bunch of StockCoin with real money, so it's not exactly a limitation, but it gives you an idea of the amount of crypto money that's doing the rounds, compared to non-crypto money.
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The total Cryptocurrency market cap hit 200 billion today. Still relatively small but the growth is rapid. Possibly not sustainable but who knows? I do think people should start taking it more seriously. It wouldn't be the first time a new technology has been laughed at. I remember thinking what a stupid name Google was when I first saw it. I laughed when I heard someone say they had Googled something for the first time. They haven't done too badly :)
https://coinmarketcap.com/charts/
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It wouldn't be the first time a new technology has been laughed at.
Wouldn't be the first time a new technology was grossly over-hyped in what it can deliver either.
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It wouldn't be the first time a new technology has been laughed at.
Like digital cameras - I never though those would amount to much.
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Hey Guys,
My name is Mike and I am new to the community. I am a fan of photography and been involved with numerous art/photo tech projects in the past. Currently, I and my friend are thinking about creating a new peer-to-peer stock platform where artists will have the ability to sell images/videos directly to buyers with very low transaction fees (5-10%). We are doing research in the space and would really appreciate your feedback. Would you be kind to fill out the short survey below:
https://goo.gl/forms/Ev00fvEjzN4MoHXS2
good luck and let us know the name of the project :-)
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Hey Guys,
My name is Mike and I am new to the community. I am a fan of photography and been involved with numerous art/photo tech projects in the past. Currently, I and my friend are thinking about creating a new peer-to-peer stock platform where artists will have the ability to sell images/videos directly to buyers with very low transaction fees (5-10%). We are doing research in the space and would really appreciate your feedback. Would you be kind to fill out the short survey below:
https://goo.gl/forms/Ev00fvEjzN4MoHXS2
good luck and let us know the name of the project :-)
We sure will, thank you!
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Want to share this piece about our project and upcoming plans. Hope it will make our vision more clear for everyone.
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a blockchain can replace a agency thats good and i think WiredStock can be a gamechanger. If i save most of the agency costs i can invest more in my tax accounting... But it is a long way to explain the stock industry (buyers and contributors) why blockchain can save both of them much money.
Hopefully your blockchain will kill all this greedy agencies. I will give WiredStock a try.
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Something new like this I would have to see inaction for me to understand it, but I am open- minded enough to give a new venture a try
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Buyers would need to be confident of the way the currency works and their security. https://thehackernews.com/2017/07/bitcoin-ethereum-cryptocurrency-exchange.html
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To a child with a toy hammer, everything looks like a nail.
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Will there be a full document at some point? One that gives an idea of how you plan to market the site and seek this concept to current buyers of stock, and potential new buyers?
Maybe I'm slightly stupid, and everyone else jost gets it, but I think people need one of those comparison charts.... your site in one column, existing stock sites in the next, rows of features and benefits and then green check marks and crosses to indicate what has what.
I don't think buzzwords alone sell this concept... break it down for potential buyers and explain why they should not only try a different site, but try different site which means they have to adopt a new form of currency.
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I still don't get why anyone would invest in a speculative currency as a small buyer for just a few dollars and that Corporates would get into this territory when agencies offer predictability and simplicity. Marketing still seems a huge gap.
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at Fotolia you have to buy speculative currency (credits) too.
I think the main problem of Wiredstock is to currate the images. Only a double content protection is not enough. You need a good search engine that give buyers what rhey search and you have to sort out the garbage and keyword spam.
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at Fotolia you have to buy speculative currency (credits) too.
I think the main problem of Wiredstock is to currate the images. Only a double content protection is not enough. You need a good search engine that give buyers what rhey search and you have to sort out the garbage and keyword spam.
In 7 years though I don't think their "exchange rate" has changed so they have a similar risk profile to fiat currencies.....Cryptocurrencies are far more risky. I think the creative department would find it hard to persuade accounts to dabble in them...especially an un-proven one.
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at Fotolia you have to buy speculative currency (credits) too.
I think the main problem of Wiredstock is to currate the images. Only a double content protection is not enough. You need a good search engine that give buyers what rhey search and you have to sort out the garbage and keyword spam.
In 7 years though I don't think their "exchange rate" has changed so they have a similar risk profile to fiat currencies.....Cryptocurrencies are far more risky. I think the creative department would find it hard to persuade accounts to dabble in them...especially an un-proven one.
yes. WiredStock only have his own Credit called Stocken it is the same like Fotolia do.
But you have to understand how a blockchain works.
Wiredstock ist not mainly cryptocurrency ist is an content management system that can work alone for free. It almost controlls itself. Large parts of an agency would then be superfluous.
That saves money as we know some agencies get 80%.
If we save maybe 50% administrative costs that would be the USP of WiredStock.
I think Blockchain can facilitate payment processes manage licenses, and the image libraries.
It can sort out automatically duplicate content.
BUT it can not:
rate pictures by aesthetics for that you need humans. And if you dont currate the buyer will not find images he is looking for.
Searchengine and currating will be the main challenge for WiredStock.
Difficult but worth a try :o
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rate pictures by aesthetics for that you need humans. And if you dont currate the buyer will not find images he is looking for.
Searchengine and currating will be the main challenge for WiredStock.
which turns them into another agency. taking decisions on what to sell away from sellers defeats the purpose of p2p. What the main challenge will be is maintaining the prices even at those levels they are today.
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at Fotolia you have to buy speculative currency (credits) too.
I think the main problem of Wiredstock is to currate the images. Only a double content protection is not enough. You need a good search engine that give buyers what rhey search and you have to sort out the garbage and keyword spam.
In 7 years though I don't think their "exchange rate" has changed so they have a similar risk profile to fiat currencies.....Cryptocurrencies are far more risky. I think the creative department would find it hard to persuade accounts to dabble in them...especially an un-proven one.
yes. WiredStock only have his own Credit called Stocken it is the same like Fotolia do.
But you have to understand how a blockchain works.
Wiredstock ist not mainly cryptocurrency ist is an content management system that can work alone for free. It almost controlls itself. Large parts of an agency would then be superfluous.
That saves money as we know some agencies get 80%.
If we save maybe 50% administrative costs that would be the USP of WiredStock.
I think Blockchain can facilitate payment processes manage licenses, and the image libraries.
It can sort out automatically duplicate content.
BUT it can not:
rate pictures by aesthetics for that you need humans. And if you dont currate the buyer will not find images he is looking for.
Searchengine and currating will be the main challenge for WiredStock.
Difficult but worth a try :o
You can't trade fotolia credits afaik so to me its completely different....agencies typically spend 30% on marketing...they don't do that because they like giving money away (as we well know). But I do basically agree search engine is key.
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rate pictures by aesthetics for that you need humans. And if you dont currate the buyer will not find images he is looking for.
Searchengine and currating will be the main challenge for WiredStock.
which turns them into another agency. taking decisions on what to sell away from sellers defeats the purpose of p2p. What the main challenge will be is maintaining the prices even at those levels they are today.
We would see but fact is that blockchain can reduce the administrative costs drastically. And if we contributors use that weapon before the angencies do that strongest our market position.
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You can't trade fotolia credits afaik so to me its completely different....agencies typically spend 30% on marketing...they don't do that because they like giving money away (as we well know). But I do basically agree search engine is key.
On top of that fotolia is an established agency. Who is Mike Kay? What are his credentials? I have no idea. Google says, he is a sports broadcaster. I bet it's a different Mike Kay.
People a just gonna rush in to exchange dollars and euros for Stockens. Why not exchange them for Niktolens? I promise they will grow in value with time. Just keep buying.
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rate pictures by aesthetics for that you need humans. And if you dont currate the buyer will not find images he is looking for.
Searchengine and currating will be the main challenge for WiredStock.
which turns them into another agency. taking decisions on what to sell away from sellers defeats the purpose of p2p. What the main challenge will be is maintaining the prices even at those levels they are today.
We would see but fact is that blockchain can reduce the administrative costs drastically. And if we contributors use that weapon before the angencies do that strongest our market position.
your own site can reduce administrative costs drastically. Administrative costs aren't the problem.
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at Fotolia you have to buy speculative currency (credits) too.
I think the main problem of Wiredstock is to currate the images. Only a double content protection is not enough. You need a good search engine that give buyers what rhey search and you have to sort out the garbage and keyword spam.
In 7 years though I don't think their "exchange rate" has changed so they have a similar risk profile to fiat currencies.....Cryptocurrencies are far more risky. I think the creative department would find it hard to persuade accounts to dabble in them...especially an un-proven one.
yes. WiredStock only have his own Credit called Stocken it is the same like Fotolia do.
But you have to understand how a blockchain works.
Wiredstock ist not mainly cryptocurrency ist is an content management system that can work alone for free. It almost controlls itself. Large parts of an agency would then be superfluous.
That saves money as we know some agencies get 80%.
If we save maybe 50% administrative costs that would be the USP of WiredStock.
I think Blockchain can facilitate payment processes manage licenses, and the image libraries.
It can sort out automatically duplicate content.
BUT it can not:
rate pictures by aesthetics for that you need humans. And if you dont currate the buyer will not find images he is looking for.
Searchengine and currating will be the main challenge for WiredStock.
Difficult but worth a try :o
You can't trade fotolia credits afaik so to me its completely different....agencies typically spend 30% on marketing...they don't do that because they like giving money away (as we well know). But I do basically agree search engine is key.
yes you can not trade them but you have no control what FT/Adobe do with the values. If you can trade a Credit the Market controls the credit value not a single company.
Anyway you can buy FT Credits or Stoken with €, $ bitcoin or any other currency.
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rate pictures by aesthetics for that you need humans. And if you dont currate the buyer will not find images he is looking for.
Searchengine and currating will be the main challenge for WiredStock.
which turns them into another agency. taking decisions on what to sell away from sellers defeats the purpose of p2p. What the main challenge will be is maintaining the prices even at those levels they are today.
We would see but fact is that blockchain can reduce the administrative costs drastically. And if we contributors use that weapon before the angencies do that strongest our market position.
your own site can reduce administrative costs drastically. Administrative costs isn't the problem.
but iam then alone and i have costs for licenses payment webspace etc.... If you have Wiredstock with a global landingpage an standardized payment/license/searchengine etc. that would be a better buyer experience.
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yes but iam then alone and i have costs for licenses payment webspace etc.... If you have Wiredstock with a global landingpage an standardized payment/license/searchengine etc. that would be a better buyer experience.
we'll see, but there is more than one thing that makes me extremely skeptical. Right now I think this is the only thing that all this is about (from the wirestock manifesto)
"Initial Token Crowdsale: April 2018
Main Crowdsale Event: May 2018"
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but iam then alone and i have costs for licenses payment webspace etc.... If you have Wiredstock with a global landingpage an standardized payment/license/searchengine etc. that would be a better buyer experience.
I'm sorry. Doesn't the buzzword p2p mean you are alone? Dealing directly with others? So you bear your own costs? Otherwise where is all this content hosted? Because if it's just a global landing page with payment, license, search engine, that makes it an agency. With a made up currency.
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but iam then alone and i have costs for licenses payment webspace etc.... If you have Wiredstock with a global landingpage an standardized payment/license/searchengine etc. that would be a better buyer experience.
I'm sorry. Doesn't the buzzword p2p mean you are alone? Dealing directly with others? So you bear your own costs? Otherwise where is all this content hosted? Because if it's just a global landing page with payment, license, search engine, that makes it an agency. With a made up currency.
You can call as you want.
Important is that this blockchain-platform is not so expensive like the agencies today are.
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Well, that depends on how you define 'expensive'. Maybe the 'cost price', but cost prices can be the same with very different prices for users or customers. Like how Pond5 can give you two and a half times more than iStock... are iStock's running costs really two and a half times more than Pond5?
Even ignoring the costs for a similar setup, what about the costs for a very different setup. Zero expense passed on to buyers and contributors is great, but zero marketing is not great.
It's still too early to be excited about this idea. Maybe it's a bit too early to be anti-excited about this idea... but still. If these magical beans are $10 for a few thousand then I might pick up a few dozen and see what happens.
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but iam then alone and i have costs for licenses payment webspace etc.... If you have Wiredstock with a global landingpage an standardized payment/license/searchengine etc. that would be a better buyer experience.
I'm sorry. Doesn't the buzzword p2p mean you are alone? Dealing directly with others? So you bear your own costs? Otherwise where is all this content hosted? Because if it's just a global landing page with payment, license, search engine, that makes it an agency. With a made up currency.
You can call as you want.
Important is that this blockchain-platform is not so expensive like the agencies today are.
Why not?
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If these magical beans are $10 for a few thousand then I might pick up a few dozen and see what happens.
Only if paid for with cash. I'd think twice before using a credit card to buy magic beans.
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Two words. Mar. Keting. Finding a platform isn't a problem, the aforementioned two words are.
The next words, who reviews submissions? If you don't have standards, you are just creating a cesspool instead of a photo pool. Somebody here also created his own site, a very good effort. He only took well established people to start. For some reason that shut down. I don't know if it was expense or lack of sales income to support the costs of running a site. Jo Ann was one on there I think?
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If these magical beans are $10 for a few thousand then I might pick up a few dozen and see what happens.
Only if paid for with cash. I'd think twice before using a credit card to buy magic beans.
I'll trade in my Bhagavad Gita Coins for some.
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If these magical beans are $10 for a few thousand then I might pick up a few dozen and see what happens.
Only if paid for with cash. I'd think twice before using a credit card to buy magic beans.
I'll trade in my Bhagavad Gita Coins for some.
That's a very good idea :). I should have spiritual trinkets of my own production stashed away somewhere.
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Two words. Mar. Keting. Finding a platform isn't a problem, the aforementioned two words are.
The next words, who reviews submissions? If you don't have standards, you are just creating a cesspool instead of a photo pool. Somebody here also created his own site, a very good effort. He only took well established people to start. For some reason that shut down. I don't know if it was expense or lack of sales income to support the costs of running a site. Jo Ann was one on there I think?
Was it Symbiostock that was mentioned earlier?
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but iam then alone and i have costs for licenses payment webspace etc.... If you have Wiredstock with a global landingpage an standardized payment/license/searchengine etc. that would be a better buyer experience.
I'm sorry. Doesn't the buzzword p2p mean you are alone? Dealing directly with others? So you bear your own costs? Otherwise where is all this content hosted? Because if it's just a global landing page with payment, license, search engine, that makes it an agency. With a made up currency.
You can call as you want.
Important is that this blockchain-platform is not so expensive like the agencies today are.
Why not?
I don't think its the platform that makes agencies "expensive" :o.
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Maybe I haven't spotted it but is there anything about what advantage there is to buyers in using this "service" ?
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but iam then alone and i have costs for licenses payment webspace etc.... If you have Wiredstock with a global landingpage an standardized payment/license/searchengine etc. that would be a better buyer experience.
I'm sorry. Doesn't the buzzword p2p mean you are alone? Dealing directly with others? So you bear your own costs? Otherwise where is all this content hosted? Because if it's just a global landing page with payment, license, search engine, that makes it an agency. With a made up currency.
You can call as you want.
Important is that this blockchain-platform is not so expensive like the agencies today are.
Why not?
i want more than 15-35% from the sale price.
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Well, that depends on how you define 'expensive'. Maybe the 'cost price', but cost prices can be the same with very different prices for users or customers. Like how Pond5 can give you two and a half times more than iStock... are iStock's running costs really two and a half times more than Pond5?
Even ignoring the costs for a similar setup, what about the costs for a very different setup. Zero expense passed on to buyers and contributors is great, but zero marketing is not great.
It's still too early to be excited about this idea. Maybe it's a bit too early to be anti-excited about this idea... but still. If these magical beans are $10 for a few thousand then I might pick up a few dozen and see what happens.
for me as contributor a agencie is expensive if i eran less than 50% from sales price.
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Yeah, but you can't go on the percentage cut alone. I'll take 1% even if I only get one HD sale a month but it's priced at $1m, and I'll take 10% of a $1 HD clip if I sell 100k of them a month... but I'm not that interested in getting 90% of a $100 clip if I only get one sale a month.
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i want more than 15-35% from the sale price.
I'd like a unicorn. But I realize that a real agency requires money to market, host, etc. I'm not seeing where's there's any benefit here, aside from the cool buzzword blockchain.
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Well, that depends on how you define 'expensive'. Maybe the 'cost price', but cost prices can be the same with very different prices for users or customers. Like how Pond5 can give you two and a half times more than iStock... are iStock's running costs really two and a half times more than Pond5?
Even ignoring the costs for a similar setup, what about the costs for a very different setup. Zero expense passed on to buyers and contributors is great, but zero marketing is not great.
It's still too early to be excited about this idea. Maybe it's a bit too early to be anti-excited about this idea... but still. If these magical beans are $10 for a few thousand then I might pick up a few dozen and see what happens.
for me as contributor a agencie is expensive if i eran less than 50% from sales price.
Lots of sites offer more...trouble is not many buyers have heard of them
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i want more than 15-35% from the sale price.
I'd like a unicorn. But I realize that a real agency requires money to market, host, etc. I'm not seeing where's there's any benefit here, aside from the cool buzzword blockchain.
i think blockchain is more than a soundword. This technology has potential to change the whole it/banking sector.
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Maybe, but what benefits does it offer buyers?
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Holy *. Greed is greed. Block chain, blockhead, who cares. If this were to take off it would HAVE TO BE RUN AS A CO OP in addition the being able to attract customers, in addition to having a differentiation for UE and enough content that attracts demand without having to sift through a billion similars, some of which is trash.....so how do you curate a blockchain site that offers content worth switching to for a customer, and how do you attract contributors and keep them happy by attracting business? Technology alone is only one small part of a successful model. If ss were to engage in blockchain do you think they would magically raise their commissions because they cut their costs? Not only no but fk no. So the only way to win is what i pointed out above and that is a lot to ask for.
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Two words. Mar. Keting. Finding a platform isn't a problem, the aforementioned two words are.
The next words, who reviews submissions? If you don't have standards, you are just creating a cesspool instead of a photo pool. Somebody here also created his own site, a very good effort. He only took well established people to start. For some reason that shut down. I don't know if it was expense or lack of sales income to support the costs of running a site. Jo Ann was one on there I think?
Was it Symbiostock that was mentioned earlier?
Found it, no it was apparently Ktools site. I want to say right off, he did try and had good people with proven records in Microstock. It was called warmpics. I don't know why the site failed. Maybe it didn't and he just shut down because it was too much work? But we see these threads over and over about how someone should start a site or how we could do this or that, and by the way, my answer is a co-op, which is what Stocksy did but with much more backing and business smarts.
Well it depends on the definition you choose for coop. Are there 40+ owners? No, but that is by choice. I offered anyone who wanted to have a role running the site (SEO, blogging, graphic design, management, etc) a commission of 90%, which after credit card transaction costs would essentially be 100% of all their sales. At one point I also talked with the members about co-ownership, and profit sharing.One person took me up on the offer to help me with management/promotion.
So yes, I pay all the bills and run a few ads out of pocket too. But no major decision gets made without the rest of the members approving. For instance, we changed price tiers and licensing terms several times and always talked about it in the members forum. We implemented a pseudo subscription plan too, and that was also talked about. Technically it is my site, but I do everything with "coop" in mind. I'm still waiting to see a true coop, and ours could become one if people showed the interest.
From what I read on the forum, I wasn't a member, there were some people that did well. I suspect one was Lisafx or Karen or Jo Ann? There was somewhat of a problem of animosity because some people got in and others wanted to but had to be accepted by the already in members. Maybe not a bad idea? :) This goes back to who's going to do the reviews question, and the answer there was, self review, established artists. Also not a bad idea. He said that originally people were accepted based on sales history.
I think djpadavona had a good plan and avoided many of the pitfalls of starting a new little agency. He hasn't been here to visit in a few years.
Read here Feb 2013: http://www.microstockgroup.com/selling-direct/warmpicture-project-finished/msg299913/#msg299913 (http://www.microstockgroup.com/selling-direct/warmpicture-project-finished/msg299913/#msg299913)
As I have been getting a lot of interest from contributors wanting to join Warmpicture lately, I wanted to announce that unfortunately I will be closing the site down in the near future.
The last 2 years have been extremely frustrating, culminating with the Google Images reorganization from last month which took away over 70% of our organic traffic. Ultimately there are no excuses. I did my best, but I was in over my head trying to run an agency on my own. We made a little money for contributors but in the end it just wasn't enough to be worthwhile.
My goal was to establish a solid sales base, and then open the doors to more contributors. Unfortunately I never achieved that goal. I wish everyone luck in their own ventures. I truly hoped to make a difference for all of us, but the project fell way short of expectations.
dpstockphoto's symbiostock site and the warmpictures.com are both gone. Yes after closing warmpics he went hard at making symbiostock work.
I'd say if we're looking for the person to ask about starting a small co-op or members only site he would be the one. He didn't write ideas on the forum, he did it! That means utmost respect for someone who actually did what most of us just talk about. Maybe he'll come back some day and explain what happened and how to make a better attempt.
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i participated in warmpictures too - biggest problem was no sales and Dan eventually had to close it down -- today the problem would be even harder - with google images it's near impossible to get any individual noticed, so most potential users would never even be aware a co-op site existed! what google doesnt capture would be swamped by the agencies. the market is now mature, and a new site is not going to bee able to survive without a radical new thinking -
s
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The next words, who reviews submissions? If you don't have standards, you are just creating a cesspool instead of a photo pool.
Best line I've read all day.
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Just stumbled across this thing...
https://mcfly.aero/token/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=sido_10per&utm_content=carusel_1&utm_campaign=pre_lounge
...which made me think of this thread. Cryptos... fair enough. Flying taxis... sure. But I'm still not quite getting how cryptos combined with flying cars will be so much better than either on their own. And I think they're being a bit optimistic on the market value for flying taxis. It says $1.2 trillion. That may be true many, many years in the future, but that's 8 times more than the current market for taxis... including Uber and all those type of things. It's not much less than the global market for cars!
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Just stumbled across this thing...
https://mcfly.aero/token/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=sido_10per&utm_content=carusel_1&utm_campaign=pre_lounge (https://mcfly.aero/token/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=sido_10per&utm_content=carusel_1&utm_campaign=pre_lounge)
...which made me think of this thread. Cryptos... fair enough. Flying taxis... sure. But I'm still not quite getting how cryptos combined with flying cars will be so much better than either on their own. And I think they're being a bit optimistic on the market value for flying taxis. It says $1.2 trillion. That may be true many, many years in the future, but that's 8 times more than the current market for taxis... including Uber and all those type of things. It's not much less than the global market for cars!
Just watch your investment Fly away.......I'm old enough to remember when the year 2000 was the distant future that we'd all be using Jet Packs. I'd be wanting Uber to be in partnership with this to even consider it seriously. https://www.lonelyplanet.com/news/2017/11/14/uber-flying-taxis-la-dallas-dubai/ (https://www.lonelyplanet.com/news/2017/11/14/uber-flying-taxis-la-dallas-dubai/)
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Just stumbled across this thing...
https://mcfly.aero/token/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=sido_10per&utm_content=carusel_1&utm_campaign=pre_lounge (https://mcfly.aero/token/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=cpc&utm_term=sido_10per&utm_content=carusel_1&utm_campaign=pre_lounge)
...which made me think of this thread. Cryptos... fair enough. Flying taxis... sure. But I'm still not quite getting how cryptos combined with flying cars will be so much better than either on their own. And I think they're being a bit optimistic on the market value for flying taxis. It says $1.2 trillion. That may be true many, many years in the future, but that's 8 times more than the current market for taxis... including Uber and all those type of things. It's not much less than the global market for cars!
Just watch your investment Fly away.......I'm old enough to remember when the year 2000 was the distant future that we'd all be using Jet Packs. I'd be wanting Uber to be in partnership with this to even consider it seriously. https://www.lonelyplanet.com/news/2017/11/14/uber-flying-taxis-la-dallas-dubai/ (https://www.lonelyplanet.com/news/2017/11/14/uber-flying-taxis-la-dallas-dubai/)
HAHAHA AMEN!. Party like it's 1999.....when I heard that I was like, wow, that is forever away...
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I am just glad that we narrowly escaped an almost sure death from the Millennium bug...Phew...I hate technology...
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I am just glad that we narrowly escaped an almost sure death from the Millennium bug...Phew...I hate technology...
Yep that made so much money for all my IT chums! Now I have to be worried about being hit on the head by a flying taxi!
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i participated in warmpictures too - biggest problem was no sales and Dan eventually had to close it down -- today the problem would be even harder - with google images it's near impossible to get any individual noticed, so most potential users would never even be aware a co-op site existed! what google doesnt capture would be swamped by the agencies. the market is now mature, and a new site is not going to bee able to survive without a radical new thinking -
s
That's not my experience of warmpictures. There was a surprising amount of sales, considering how small the site was. I'm sure Dan could of kept it going but he found he was spending too much time on it and symbiostock came along, so there was another option.
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i participated in warmpictures too - biggest problem was no sales and Dan eventually had to close it down -- today the problem would be even harder - with google images it's near impossible to get any individual noticed, so most potential users would never even be aware a co-op site existed! what google doesnt capture would be swamped by the agencies. the market is now mature, and a new site is not going to bee able to survive without a radical new thinking -
s
That's not my experience of warmpictures. There was a surprising amount of sales, considering how small the site was. I'm sure Dan could of kept it going but he found he was spending too much time on it and symbiostock came along, so there was another option.
I was a part of warmpicture as well, and that is what I remember too. Dan only had so much time and money, but it did ok for a new venture. Everybody thought symbiostock was going to be great, but it had its own problems.
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So I've been getting a lot of emails and targeted ads recently going on about all these token pre-sales and ICO's (Initial Coin Offering or something) and all that jazz... and they all seem to be going for some kind of niche. One was for flying taxis, the other for online gambling and the like. Not sure when these ICO things started but back in the day you'd just create the coin, start mining it, people would buy it off you and then they'd start buying and selling and so on and so forth.
So whereas Bitcoin was like 1 cent a coin or something back in the day, people are now selling off these coins at a higher rate, giving them some kind of artificial value in the hope that they'll increase considerably in the future much like Bitcoin... rather than just getting them out there and seeing what value they generate themselves. So although buying a coin for 10 cents or a dollar might mean you get ten dollars or a hundred dollars after a few months... if it doesn't catch on or nobody is buying, then your 10 cent coin might be worth 1 cent or one tenth of a cent.
What they do with the money from the ICO is unclear to me at the moment. Maybe they use it to improve and expand the network, to promote and run the business, or just have a massive party on a yacht somewhere... I'm not too sure at the moment.
So now, I can't help but feel that the OP decided to get one of these ICO things on the go and had to come up with some kind of niche to compete, much like all the other places are doing... and he settled on stock footage/images somehow.
I might give it a try myself. All I need is a bit of marketing, some coin which are pretty easy to set up from what I hear, tie it to some kind of industry and then have a massive coin sale that will hopefully net me tens of thousands of dollars or more. Then I can ride off into the sunset and sit on a beach sipping cocktails. If they can do one for flying taxis, then I'm sure they could do one for commercial trips to space, which are a bit more established at this point. Space Coins. Roll up people, roll up!
It'll be much better than normal money as it will reduce the cost to the buyer and the seller, it will reduce regulations and decentralise the process helping to streamline and optimise the logistical practicalities of the blockchain-enabled space exploration mission. Or some nonsense like that.
I mean who needs regulations anyway?! If we can do away with all the pesky health and safety regulations, then we can save a lot of money by ditching the seatbelts, secondary parachutes, safety checks and emergency oxygen supplies.
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There's one thing about crytos that I can't get my head round. One way they are supposed to be better than fiat is because governments keep printing more fiat without the corresponding real growth in productivity devaluing the money. Then why is it okay for cryptos to hard fork every so often creating more currency out of thin air? It potentially doubles the amount of currency in circulation every time it happens.
This is a genuine question I am struggling to work out the answer to.
With cryptos it seems like the people holding most of the currency can just decide to vote themselves shed loads of free money out of thin air whenever they feel like it by forking and selling off the new currency. How is this any different to fiat (or even worse as the people doing it are less well informed and have more to gain in the short term)?
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There's one thing about crytos that I can't get my head round. One way they are supposed to be better than fiat is because governments keep printing more fiat without the corresponding real growth in productivity devaluing the money. Then why is it okay for cryptos to hard fork every so often creating more currency out of thin air? It potentially doubles the amount of currency in circulation every time it happens.
This is a genuine question I am struggling to work out the answer to.
With cryptos it seems like the people holding most of the currency can just decide to vote themselves shed loads of free money out of thin air whenever they feel like it by forking and selling off the new currency. How is this any different to fiat (or even worse as the people doing it are less well informed and have more to gain in the short term)?
I think you are right there is a potential infinite supply of crypto currency some people will be making a lot of money but many more will lose out sooner or later. I expect some of these "me too" currencies will shortly be worthless (if they are not already). They only get free money if someone wants to buy it ;-).
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I think you are right there is a potential infinite supply of crypto currency some people will be making a lot of money but many more will lose out sooner or later. I expect some of these "me too" currencies will shortly be worthless (if they are not already). They only get free money if someone wants to buy it ;-).
Exactly. I don't get it. Hey, I'm crypto-ing SJCoins, who wants in? Sure, they're imaginary, and sure, nobody will actually let you buy anything with them, but come on, buy them from me!
Sure, there's nothing wrong there. Makes no sense to me.
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So I've been getting a lot of emails and targeted ads recently going on about all these token pre-sales and ICO's (Initial Coin Offering or something) and all that jazz... and they all seem to be going for some kind of niche. One was for flying taxis, the other for online gambling and the like. Not sure when these ICO things started but back in the day you'd just create the coin, start mining it, people would buy it off you and then they'd start buying and selling and so on and so forth.
So whereas Bitcoin was like 1 cent a coin or something back in the day, people are now selling off these coins at a higher rate, giving them some kind of artificial value in the hope that they'll increase considerably in the future much like Bitcoin... rather than just getting them out there and seeing what value they generate themselves. So although buying a coin for 10 cents or a dollar might mean you get ten dollars or a hundred dollars after a few months... if it doesn't catch on or nobody is buying, then your 10 cent coin might be worth 1 cent or one tenth of a cent.
...
An ICO is basically the new Kickstarter/crowdfunding. One major difference is that the backers have a chance of following the company's success, if it happens. So more like an IPO, but with little to no regulation.
There are 1,300 cyptocurrencies/tokens today, with more coming as I type. It is widely agreed on that 90-95% of these are just pump-n-dumps so the owners get some quick cash.
It is very much like the IT boom of the late 90's. Most won't survive, but the ones that do become very big, and very successful.
There are already a number of successful altcoins, like Ethereum and Ripple. Ripple is used by many major banks in the world.
They are not just "coins", they are more like shares, backing new technology. Substratum is another very interesting one, a company working on decentralizing web hosting.
So, to sum up, where Bitcoin was meant as a currency only, (but is currently more used like gold, a store of value), you can think of most of the other coins as shares in companies.
Cryptocurrencies/tokens are here to stay, but which ones will be here in 10 years, who knows? And by the way, all money today is imaginary. :) Go to Japan to see widespread use of Bitcoin as a payment solution.
I'm investing, doing my research, and time will tell. So far, so good.
Major banks with institutional money are moving in at the end of the year, offering futures etc. This will increase the value of Bitcoin even more, and put many billions of dollars more into the crypto space.
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They only get free money if someone wants to buy it ;-).
They aren't exactly free. Mining and maintenance requires power and time. Quite a bit I heard.
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So a stock agency using Blockchain still requires all of the back office file handling, search, and delivery. Today, the blockchain payment technology must be bolted on top of those back-office functions. Here is an IT related article, not photo related, discussing the use of Blockchain as a Service and trying to figure out how to make it work and keep it secure. https://www.computerworld.com/article/3237465/enterprise-applications/blockchain-as-a-service-allows-enterprises-test-distributed-ledger-technology.html (https://www.computerworld.com/article/3237465/enterprise-applications/blockchain-as-a-service-allows-enterprises-test-distributed-ledger-technology.html)
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So a stock agency using Blockchain still requires all of the back office file handling, search, and delivery. Today, the blockchain payment technology must be bolted on top of those back-office functions. Here is an IT related article, not photo related, discussing the use of Blockchain as a Service and trying to figure out how to make it work and keep it secure. https://www.computerworld.com/article/3237465/enterprise-applications/blockchain-as-a-service-allows-enterprises-test-distributed-ledger-technology.html (https://www.computerworld.com/article/3237465/enterprise-applications/blockchain-as-a-service-allows-enterprises-test-distributed-ledger-technology.html)
Well, it is possible to decentralize storage, search cpu usage etc. So there will be no single company (i.e. Amazon) owning/renting all the servers where images are stored.
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They only get free money if someone wants to buy it ;-).
They aren't exactly free. Mining and maintenance requires power and time. Quite a bit I heard.
So if no one wants it they lose all of that cost! Like me spending thousands on a photoshoot ;-).
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They only get free money if someone wants to buy it ;-).
They aren't exactly free. Mining and maintenance requires power and time. Quite a bit I heard.
So if no one wants it they lose all of that cost! Like me spending thousands on a photoshoot ;-).
We can laugh :), but I overheard bitcoin miners discussing it as a serious limiting issue. Apparently there is a non-zero equilibrium point, when it's no longer profitable, even if purely theoretical. Talking about outsourcing resource extraction businesses to cheaper countries :).
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They only get free money if someone wants to buy it ;-).
They aren't exactly free. Mining and maintenance requires power and time. Quite a bit I heard.
So if no one wants it they lose all of that cost! Like me spending thousands on a photoshoot ;-).
We can laugh :), but I overheard bitcoin miners discussing it as a serious limiting issue. Apparently there is a non-zero equilibrium point, when it's no longer profitable, even if purely theoretical. Talking about outsourcing resource extraction businesses to cheaper countries :).
Its much simpler really if no one wants to buy your magic beans or black tulips they are worthless whatever they cost to produce.
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I don't even want virtual dollars on my virtual bank account. I want a personal island and a private chef. Unfortunately I have to settle 8).
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I don't even want virtual dollars on my virtual bank account. I want a personal island and a private chef. Unfortunately I have to settle 8).
Well, if you had invested $1,000 into Bitcoin in 2011 you could have had that. ;) Depending on the size of the island of course...
Now the challenge is just to find an ICO that's at least 1% as promising...
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Well, if you had invested $1,000 into Bitcoin in 2011 you could have had that. ;) Depending on the size of the island of course...
Now the challenge is just to find an ICO that's at least 1% as promising...
True..The hel I was doing back then?!!! 8) I am in a desperate need of the Grays Sports Almanac 2000-2050...
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I got paid half a Bitcoin for almost two days freelance work on December the 6th, 2013 I think it was... on that day it was the highest it had ever been. The day after, it started going down and didn't really recover until 2017. I converted them to real money as quickly as I could, losing a good 20% along the way from fees and a drop in the price.
Would have been worth over $4000 now... but you win some you lose some. Not bad for a couple of days work.
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I got paid half a Bitcoin for almost two days freelance work on December the 6th, 2013 I think it was... on that day it was the highest it had ever been. The day after, it started going down and didn't really recover until 2017. I converted them to real money as quickly as I could, losing a good 20% along the way from fees and a drop in the price.
Would have been worth over $4000 now... but you win some you lose some. Not bad for a couple of days work.
Yes, it's always easy to be smart in hindsight. Even if we had bought Bitcoin as early as 2009 or 2010, I doubt many of us would have kept much, if any, of it until today. It's very hard to hold something going from $30 to $2 in a short period of time. And it's almost as hard holding something that increases in value rapidly.
But the ones who do benefit to the point of being wealthy from these things are the risk-takers and the early adopters. The good news is that I (and many others) believe it is still very early in the world of crypto, and anyone starting today is still an early adopter.
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May break $10,000 or has? Here' are some world views of the crypto currency. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-26/what-the-world-s-central-banks-are-saying-about-cryptocurrencies (https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-11-26/what-the-world-s-central-banks-are-saying-about-cryptocurrencies)
Called it tulips and Ponzi interesting variety of plus and minus viewpoints.
Let me add Enron and Worldcom were great investments... ;)
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It's close to $10,000 now, and it will probably break it within a week. Big banks are moving in, offering futures and other financial instruments, bringing in more capital.
Of course it's impossible to know what will happen in the future. Amazon was a great investment in 1997. Many other "promising" companies weren't. :)
Anyway - something that is relatively rare that people want = valuable.
Remember, gold was used because it was pretty, hard to find and durable. Not because it was usable. In later years we've found use for it in technology, but it gets its value from being shiny.
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It's close to $10,000 now, and it will probably break it within a week. Big banks are moving in, offering futures and other financial instruments, bringing in more capital.
Of course it's impossible to know what will happen in the future. Amazon was a great investment in 1997. Many other "promising" companies weren't. :)
Anyway - something that is relatively rare that people want = valuable.
Remember, gold was used because it was pretty, hard to find and durable. Not because it was usable. In later years we've found use for it in technology, but it gets its value from being shiny.
I'm not sure Gold is a particularly valid comparison a lump of gold can survive wars and has a physical existence and is even valued by those without a computer. Cyrpto currencies are not hard to find, durable or shiny.
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I'm not sure Gold is a particularly valid comparison a lump of gold can survive wars and has a physical existence and is even valued by those without a computer. Cyrpto currencies are not hard to find, durable or shiny.
It's a very valid comparison as Bitcoin is used exactly like gold today - as a store of value.
Bitcoin is very hard to mine, extremely durable (as long as humans use math), limited supply. But not shiny, that one you got right.
Gold is not hard to find either. I can walk 10 minutes to the nearest jewellery store and I will find some. But NEW gold is hard to find. NEW Bitcoin is very hard to mine/find, and in a few years it won't be possible at all.
You don't need a computer to hold Bitcoin. At the very least you need a brain (yes, you can store a Bitcoin wallet only in your memory, but risky if you're forgetful).
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There are a potentially infinite number of crypto currencies ...you really think Bitcoins as used now will exist in say 50 years let alone the 5,000 or so years that Gold has been used by humans? Gold is normally a hedge against riskier investments Bitcoin is about the riskiest investment out there which also means of course there will be high returns.....maybe. I'm intrigued by your comment about not needing a computer....how do you validate any random number string?
"The number of cryptocurrencies available over the internet as of 27 November 2017 is over 1324 and growing.[1] A new cryptocurrency can be created at any time"
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And that's the thing... all these comparisons are to Bitcoin, which is all fine and dandy, but we're on about a coin that doesn't even exist yet. If there's 1324, and we say that this new coin is better than 99% of the other coins, coming in at the 13th best cryptocurrency... it'll be worth about $105, almost 100 times less than Bitcoin. If it comes in the top 10% which is a lot more likely, but still very optimistic... it'll be worth less than one tenth of a cent. You'll need thousands of them just to buy one image.
And how many coins have come and gone since everyone rushed to make new cryptocurrencies as soon as Bitcoin rocketed to over $1000? I'm guessing there's quite a few.
I'm not doubting that cryptocurrencies might be the future, but I've no reason to believe that this Stocken is the future. Making the comparison between the two is like using Manchester United to justify starting a football team or Apple to justify making mobile phones. There's a lot that goes into getting to the top spot.
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I'm not sure Gold is a particularly valid comparison a lump of gold can survive wars and has a physical existence and is even valued by those without a computer. Cyrpto currencies are not hard to find, durable or shiny.
It's a very valid comparison as Bitcoin is used exactly like gold today - as a store of value.
Bitcoin is very hard to mine, extremely durable (as long as humans use math), limited supply. But not shiny, that one you got right.
Gold is not hard to find either. I can walk 10 minutes to the nearest jewellery store and I will find some. But NEW gold is hard to find. NEW Bitcoin is very hard to mine/find, and in a few years it won't be possible at all.
You don't need a computer to hold Bitcoin. At the very least you need a brain (yes, you can store a Bitcoin wallet only in your memory, but risky if you're forgetful).
I still think gold is more reliable after, say, an EMP attack.
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I still think gold is more reliable after, say, an EMP attack.
To destroy Bitcoin, you would need an attack that destroys every computer, harddrive, USB memory, etc. etc. in world. Even the Internet can go down if there is just one full node left.
If every computer in the world is destroyed, all banking, and also ownership proof of gold is destroyed. Do you think people that put their money in gold have a pile of gold sitting in their basement? No, they own certificates, and it has been this way for over 100 years.
If something bad enough happens to destroy every computer, harddrive, USB memory, flash drive, etc. in existence in the world, I believe humans would be more worried about finding food for the day instead of store of value.
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I still think gold is more reliable after, say, an EMP attack.
To destroy Bitcoin, you would need an attack that destroys every computer, harddrive, USB memory, etc. etc. in world. Even the Internet can go down if there is just one full node left.
If every computer in the world is destroyed, all banking, and also ownership proof of gold is destroyed. Do you think people that put their money in gold have a pile of gold sitting in their basement? No, they own certificates, and it has been this way for over 100 years.
If something bad enough happens to destroy every computer, harddrive, USB memory, flash drive, etc. in existence in the world, I believe humans would be more worried about finding food for the day instead of store of value.
Actually a lot of people and communities wear and keep a lot of Gold jewelry as they don't trust banks or governments and governments themselves of course have a lot of gold locked away. Gold is not the same as certificates of ownership that's the point really. If I had a gold watch I could probably exchange it for a meal and bed for a night almost anywhere in the world.
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There are a potentially infinite number of crypto currencies ...you really think Bitcoins as used now will exist in say 50 years let alone the 5,000 or so years that Gold has been used by humans? Gold is normally a hedge against riskier investments Bitcoin is about the riskiest investment out there which also means of course there will be high returns.....maybe. I'm intrigued by your comment about not needing a computer....how do you validate any random number string?
"The number of cryptocurrencies available over the internet as of 27 November 2017 is over 1324 and growing.[1] A new cryptocurrency can be created at any time"
There are many different metals and you can make new alloys. We're comparing Bitcoin to gold now. Not Ethereum to Cobalt.
No one knows what people will use in 50 years, and I don't think you'll see many people running around with gold coins, paying for horses, right?
All forms of money is imaginary, it's a language. A language that enables humans to trade outside their village. All it takes is consensus, an agreement.
Right now, the crypto market is worth $300 billion dollars, which means quite a lot of people agree.
"Gold is normally a hedge". If you put a million dollars in savings in gold in 1980, it was worth $169,000, adjusted for inflation, in 2001. Would you be happy about that?
Nothing just "is".
You need to read up on economic history.
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Regarding the "not needing a computer". You don't need a computer to store Bitcoin. To make a transaction, you would need one (or a phone, any other device).
I don't think you can go to the grocery store today and pay with a grain of gold. Or, for that matter, with a gold certificate which is what 99% of people who use gold actually own.
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And that's the thing... all these comparisons are to Bitcoin, which is all fine and dandy, but we're on about a coin that doesn't even exist yet. If there's 1324, and we say that this new coin is better than 99% of the other coins, coming in at the 13th best cryptocurrency... it'll be worth about $105, almost 100 times less than Bitcoin. If it comes in the top 10% which is a lot more likely, but still very optimistic... it'll be worth less than one tenth of a cent. You'll need thousands of them just to buy one image.
Just a comment here. The value of one coin is not what's important, you need to look at market cap.
Just like the value of one share in a company doesn't say much without the number of shares (i.e. market cap). When it reaches high values a split is often performed.
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As you are an expert on economic history you would know that all investments have ups and downs Gold tends becomes more valuable in times of economic instability hence its use as a hedge.
https://goldsilver.com/blog/if-the-stock-market-crashes-what-happens-to-gold-and-silver-jeff-clark-senior-precious-metals-analyst/ (https://goldsilver.com/blog/if-the-stock-market-crashes-what-happens-to-gold-and-silver-jeff-clark-senior-precious-metals-analyst/)
We could all learn from economic history obviously but it always sounds rather condescending when someone who knows nothing about you tells you that.
https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/062315/five-largest-asset-bubbles-history.asp (https://www.investopedia.com/articles/personal-finance/062315/five-largest-asset-bubbles-history.asp)
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Keep investing in gold and don't put a single dollar into crypto - problem solved.
There isn't a war between gold and Bitcoin. I said that today, Bitcoin is used like gold. A store of value. As opposed to a currency, which was the original intent.
Bitcoin has been traded at 50-80% premiums in Zimbabwe. There is a Bitcoin rush there because of the disastrous economic situation.
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Keep investing in gold and don't put a single dollar into crypto - problem solved.
There isn't a war between gold and Bitcoin. I said that today, Bitcoin is used like gold. A store of value. As opposed to a currency, which was the original intent.
I agree with that I just don't agree that Bitcoin is "like" gold. The only similarity is that some people use it as a "store" of value. The differences are bigger in my view in particular Gold is a physical thing.
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I agree with that I just don't agree that Bitcoin is "like" gold. The only similarity is that some people use it as a "store" of value. The differences are bigger in my view in particular Gold is a physical thing.
Gold is physical because the technology we have today wasn't invented thousands of years ago. Do you still write letters? Do you still start up your projector and load a roll of film to watch a movie?
Gold only has value because enough people say it has value. Just like Bitcoin. Just like money. Just like a gemstone. Just like a piece of art.
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Gold is physical because it exists independently of human imagination though I guess that's delving into philosophy. The second point is true but it has a pretty impressive track record in that which is why most people consider it a relatively low risk investment.
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Gold is physical because it exists independently of human imagination though I guess that's delving into philosophy. The second point is true but it has a pretty impressive track record in that which is why most people consider it a relatively low risk investment.
The value of gold only exists in human imagination. That is what's important.
Bitcoin is as real as the images you sell every day. There is an awful lot of talk of "valuing yourself" here on this forum, while all images only exist in the digital world...
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H'mm a picasso I project on a screen isn't really the same as a picasso original
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H'mm a picasso I project on a screen isn't really the same as a picasso original
The value of a Picasso original also only exists in human imagination. If you don't know you have a replica on your wall it's as valuable to you as the original.
I assume you also think computer software has zero value? A brush and a piece of paper should cost more than Photoshop.
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Why would you make that assumption? where did I ever say abstract entities have zero value? I just said that they are physically different.
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Why would you make that assumption? where did I ever say abstract entities have zero value? I just said that they are physically different.
Yes, they are physically different. But the difference in value is only created by human imagination. All value is, except food, water, and other things that are directly related to us surviving another day.
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By the way - NASDAQ is up 159% since 2011. Gold is down 21%.
Not everything is as it "always was".
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Why would you make that assumption? where did I ever say abstract entities have zero value? I just said that they are physically different.
Yes, they are physically different. But the difference in value is only created by human imagination. All value is, except food, water, and other things that are directly related to us surviving another day.
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By the way - NASDAQ is up 159% since 2011. Gold is down 21%.
Not everything is as it "always was".
Yes not surprising we are currently in a Bull market that might well reverse when theres a sell off. Lots of overvalued Tech stocks out there like SS for example ;-). I never said Gold was a GOOD investment and I said Bitcoin MIGHT be.....
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Why would you make that assumption? where did I ever say abstract entities have zero value? I just said that they are physically different.
Yes, they are physically different. But the difference in value is only created by human imagination. All value is, except food, water, and other things that are directly related to us surviving another day.
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By the way - NASDAQ is up 159% since 2011. Gold is down 21%.
Not everything is as it "always was".
Kind of math tricks to pick a date that gold is down, based on the year it was at all time high 2011-2012. I'll pick since 2000 when it was $272.65 and now up 390% to $1060. That's an ounce and yes people do hold precious metals, in bars and coins, not all is certificates. Doesn't matter, Bitcoin is a valued way to hold money and it works, it's just another way. Same goes for silver, platinum, gold, dollars, euros and anything else. Crypto currency isn't the end, it's just another source.
Gold has a different value than currency or traded bitcoin because it's also a product that's used and can be consumed or reclaimed. Contacts in computer memory, jewelry, teeth, bling. You can't wear a bitcoin, but being non-physical makes it easy to move around and store. You want something useless look at diamonds, where the market is manipulated and supply controlled, highly inflated for the people who sell them and almost never an increase in value. Now that's a bad investment.
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Now's your time to short Bitcoin. I bought a share of GBTC yesterday for fun, and it's up $225 already today, lol.
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Kind of math tricks to pick a date that gold is down, based on the year it was at all time high 2011-2012. I'll pick since 2000 when it was $272.65 and now up 390% to $1060. That's an ounce and yes people do hold precious metals, in bars and coins, not all is certificates. Doesn't matter, Bitcoin is a valued way to hold money and it works, it's just another way. Same goes for silver, platinum, gold, dollars, euros and anything else. Crypto currency isn't the end, it's just another source.
Gold has a different value than currency or traded bitcoin because it's also a product that's used and can be consumed or reclaimed. Contacts in computer memory, jewelry, teeth, bling. You can't wear a bitcoin, but being non-physical makes it easy to move around and store. You want something useless look at diamonds, where the market is manipulated and supply controlled, highly inflated for the people who sell them and almost never an increase in value. Now that's a bad investment.
Yes, it was to show that gold isn't the water-proof investment people seem to think. It's quite volatile.
Bitcoin is of course even more volatile, but it wasn't around in 2000. Maybe the gold price decline has something to do with people moving money to Bitcoin for store of value?
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Now's your time to short Bitcoin. I bought a share of GBTC yesterday for fun, and it's up $225 already today, lol.
Go ahead. Bitcoin is highly volatile so at some point you could make a lot of money. Or go into debt for the rest of your life.
Shorting is dangerous. Shorting something extremely volatile with an incredible momentum up is unreasonably dangerous.
I wouldn't short Bitcoin. :)
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It's more that anytime I tend to buy something, it drops.
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It's more that anytime I tend to buy something, it drops.
Haha, gotcha.
When I first bought Bitcoin it dropped 26% right after over a few days. It's back up way above that now. I'm in it for the long run.
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Diamonds is quite interesting when you look at the way De Beers basically created a "tradition" of the diamond as an engagement ring and made any man (as it was in those days) feel guilty if he didn't spend a ridiculous portion of his wealth on something totally useless.
Between 1939 and 1979, De Beers's wholesale diamond sales in the United States increased from $23 million to $2.1 billion. Over those four decades, the company's ad budget soared from $200,000 to $10 million a year.
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Diamonds is quite interesting when you look at the way De Beers basically created a "tradition" of the diamond as an engagement ring and made any man (as it was in those days) feel guilty if he didn't spend a ridiculous portion of his wealth on something totally useless.
Between 1939 and 1979, De Beers's wholesale diamond sales in the United States increased from $23 million to $2.1 billion. Over those four decades, the company's ad budget soared from $200,000 to $10 million a year.
Yes, that is very interesting. A lot of things we grow up with and learn that they are "important" or "valuable" are nothing but very successful marketing campaigns.
From "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day", to diamonds, to Valentine's Day (and now Singles Day).
When I was in Japan I happened to be there on "Pocky Day" which happens to be a very, very successful marketing campaign for so called Pocky sticks, a type of candy.
Everyone were talking about Pocky Day and who knows how much they sold. :)
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I agree with that I just don't agree that Bitcoin is "like" gold. The only similarity is that some people use it as a "store" of value. The differences are bigger in my view in particular Gold is a physical thing.
Gold is physical because the technology we have today wasn't invented thousands of years ago. Do you still write letters? Do you still start up your projector and load a roll of film to watch a movie?
Gold only has value because enough people say it has value. Just like Bitcoin. Just like money. Just like a gemstone. Just like a piece of art.
Why do you guys always keep dead threads on trending for so long? Gold and Bitcoin aren't terribly similar ... in event of an EMP disaster hopefully you printed out your wallet info but, unlike gold, bitcoin is quite a high yielding asset, and should continue to be for quite some time. In event of a nuclear holocaust, gold will still be a lump of rock that will be nice to look at from time to time. They're similarly volatile but, I'm sure you'd agree that your gold can't grow at a rate of even 6%-20% as a decent investment portfolio could ... and could possibly just ... ya know, half in value like it did back in 2008 ... Sure wish I'd had invested in a a few bitcoins when I first heard about it .... much better ROI than this Microstock crap. An ounce of gold is back up to ... $1,320 :/ still down ... *.
EDIT: Years wrong, it was 2013 with a 27.6% drop followed by 2 years declining another 12%
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Why do you guys always keep dead threads on trending for so long?
Sorry if we ruined your day.
Do you have a usable list of rules that we can obey to better handle ourselves on the internet?
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Why do you guys always keep dead threads on trending for so long?
Sorry if we ruined your day.
Do you have a usable list of rules that we can obey to better handle ourselves on the internet?
No, shove off ya hoser.
I don't really care :) there was nothing else interesting to comment on today ... it seems the internet is still on holiday vacation.
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From "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day", to diamonds, to Valentine's Day (and now Single's Day).
Gees, singles day? first I've heard of that... maybe a new microstock market ;D
In all seriousness though, I have to agree with the sentiments of the original responders here. Without customers, you've got nothing. Unfortunately, I don't have many ideas beyond really good SEO and a lot of marketing dollars to AdWords, which in and of itself is a risky game.
The blockchain idea I do find interesting and I would add that it's more than just interesting, it would give a new business (and again the right customer base) an edge over existing microstock sites. Bitcoin transactions are much cheaper than credit cards and even paypal. Hell with the price of a stamp they'd be cheaper than a check too. but again as everyone here has said without customers and in this case the RIGHT customer who WANTS to use Bitcoin or any other crypto, it's pointless.
Sure wish I had studied SEO and Adwords better when I was younger, I'm trying to make up for it now but hey... hindsight is 20/20
Speaking of that 20/20 visions... I sold my coins and quite mining years ago. Back then I thought to myself it'll never go high than $300 ... then a year later $1000.... Now I'm kicking myself in the butt... few months ago when the price was like $4k I looked at it and compared prices, I'm scared to look today.
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From "Breakfast is the most important meal of the day", to diamonds, to Valentine's Day (and now Single's Day).
Gees, singles day? first I've heard of that... maybe a new microstock market ;D
They all happen on 11th November (11.11 is supposed to look like single people/Pocky)
China: Singles' Day - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singles%27_Day (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Singles%27_Day)
Japan: Pocky Day - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocky_%26_Pretz_Day (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pocky_%26_Pretz_Day)
Korea: Pepero Day - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepero_Day (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pepero_Day)
(South Korea only, I presume. North is probably "celebrating" hungry thin-people day)
Singles' Day is enormous in China now. Sales are much bigger than Black Friday.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelzakkour/2017/10/31/singles-day-alibabas-vision-for-the-future-of-retail/#5bb5201368e0 (https://www.forbes.com/sites/michaelzakkour/2017/10/31/singles-day-alibabas-vision-for-the-future-of-retail/#5bb5201368e0)
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Why do you guys always keep dead threads on trending for so long? Gold and Bitcoin aren't terribly similar ... in event of an EMP disaster hopefully you printed out your wallet info but, unlike gold, bitcoin is quite a high yielding asset, and should continue to be for quite some time.
Are you sure that you mean "high yielding"? As far as I can see, Bitcoin has even lower yields than cash on deposit.
Perhaps you mean capital appreciation, which is very different.
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Why do you guys always keep dead threads on trending for so long? Gold and Bitcoin aren't terribly similar ... in event of an EMP disaster hopefully you printed out your wallet info but, unlike gold, bitcoin is quite a high yielding asset, and should continue to be for quite some time.
Are you sure that you mean "high yielding"? As far as I can see, Bitcoin has even lower yields than cash on deposit.
Perhaps you mean capital appreciation, which is very different.
Would it not yield quite highly if you for instance invested when the cap was thought to be $100 and cashed at $1,000 ... Seems like a yield to me ... Capital appreciation and likewise, exchange rates aren't something that most people concern themselves with ...but, it quite similar in one thing being worth more or less than another. They are methods of exchange, would your goods be worth $10, or $1,000 ... if it were more desirable would it be worth more than that?
It's the same * cow, it doesn't matter what you label it.
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exchange rates aren't something that most people concern themselves with
I'm going to wildly assume you're American. Exchange rates aren't something that most US citizens concern themselves with.
The rest of the people of the world do. Especially if you do some investing, or, as we all do here, work online to some extent. I get paid in three to four currencies and currency fluctuations can greatly change my spendable income.
I've met a worrying amount of people who didn't even understand currency conversion, especially when the value was reasonably close, like the dollar to the euro or pound. They couldn't grasp that pricing also changed.
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Why do you guys always keep dead threads on trending for so long? Gold and Bitcoin aren't terribly similar ... in event of an EMP disaster hopefully you printed out your wallet info but, unlike gold, bitcoin is quite a high yielding asset, and should continue to be for quite some time.
Are you sure that you mean "high yielding"? As far as I can see, Bitcoin has even lower yields than cash on deposit.
Perhaps you mean capital appreciation, which is very different.
Would it not yield quite highly if you for instance invested when the cap was thought to be $100 and cashed at $1,000 ... Seems like a yield to me ... Capital appreciation and likewise, exchange rates aren't something that most people concern themselves with ...but, it quite similar in one thing being worth more or less than another. They are methods of exchange, would your goods be worth $10, or $1,000 ... if it were more desirable would it be worth more than that?
It's the same * cow, it doesn't matter what you label it.
"Yield" means regular income from an investment, such as interest from a bond or dividend from shares. You receive money without having to cash in the investment.
What you are describing is capital appreciation. Very different.
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I just wish I had bought some more under 5K just 8 weeks ago :)
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I just wish I had bought some more under 5K just 8 weeks ago :)
You need to be more ambitious.
Why wish for that when you could instead wish that you'd bought a million dollars of bitcoin when they were worth a matter of cents back in 2010.
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I just wish I had bought some more under 5K just 8 weeks ago :)
You need to be more ambitious.
Why wish for that when you could instead wish that you'd bought a million dollars of bitcoin when they were worth a matter of cents back in 2010.
why wish for one million dollars, when you could wish for one hundred billion dollars?
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I just wish I had bought some more under 5K just 8 weeks ago :)
You need to be more ambitious.
Why wish for that when you could instead wish that you'd bought a million dollars of bitcoin when they were worth a matter of cents back in 2010.
why wish for one million dollars, when you could wish for one hundred billion dollars?
I like your style.
But we must be realistic in our 20/20 hindsight. There wasn't one hundred billion dollars of bitcoin around then.
Then again, I suppose we could also wish that there had been.
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I like your style.
But we must be realistic in our 20/20 hindsight. There wasn't one hundred billion dollars of bitcoin around then.
Then again, I suppose we could also wish that there had been.
I'd say travelling back in time is even less realistic :)
As for the style, I owe it to Dr. Evil :)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTmXHvGZiSY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jTmXHvGZiSY)
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exchange rates aren't something that most people concern themselves with
I'm going to wildly assume you're American. Exchange rates aren't something that most US citizens concern themselves with.
The rest of the people of the world do. Especially if you do some investing, or, as we all do here, work online to some extent. I get paid in three to four currencies and currency fluctuations can greatly change my spendable income.
I've met a worrying amount of people who didn't even understand currency conversion, especially when the value was reasonably close, like the dollar to the euro or pound. They couldn't grasp that pricing also changed.
Yes yes, sorry ... I do a ton of work online but, it's all converted for me :) so my rates don't need to change at all ... everything is in US dollars because we think we're better than everyone.
Also, "The yield is the income return on an investment, such as the interest or dividends received from holding a particular security." If you'd have invested in 2010 with the low value you could have easily yielded whatever percentage you wanted to ... of course at first growth was a bit slower.
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The bubble will probably pop the day that I grab some. I farmed like a quarter once though. lol
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exchange rates aren't something that most people concern themselves with
I'm going to wildly assume you're American. Exchange rates aren't something that most US citizens concern themselves with.
The rest of the people of the world do. Especially if you do some investing, or, as we all do here, work online to some extent. I get paid in three to four currencies and currency fluctuations can greatly change my spendable income.
I've met a worrying amount of people who didn't even understand currency conversion, especially when the value was reasonably close, like the dollar to the euro or pound. They couldn't grasp that pricing also changed.
Yes yes, sorry ... I do a ton of work online but, it's all converted for me :) so my rates don't need to change at all ... everything is in US dollars because we think we're better than everyone.
Also, "The yield is the income return on an investment, such as the interest or dividends received from holding a particular security." If you'd have invested in 2010 with the low value you could have easily yielded whatever percentage you wanted to ... of course at first growth was a bit slower.
This is not a finance site but not really as you are selling part of your investment to get an income which is not the same thing. Thats simply not how yield is defined.
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I decided to create this account so I could reply to this topic, been reading it for awhile so here goes.
The original poster was seeking opinions on a peer to peer type file sharing system for stock footage and photos based on blockchain technology. Not a bad idea because status quo is not working, fraud and theft are rampant,the middlemen are taking larger and larger pieces of the pie to cover their astronomical costs and commitments to shareholders or VC's plus there needs to be some profit left over as businesses are not in business to lose money.
I will try and contact him directly once I figure out how to better navigate this site but I hope he gets a team together, does a startup and gets funding via VC's or an ICO and I'd advise to not share everything here in a public forum as someone else might just get to it and at it before he does.
Blockchain- So many were so quick to shoot down the idea, why?, saying it will never work without doing research, studying or trying it is so old school, I'm sure many of the same people said back in the day that the internet is just a fad. It can't succeed, it will fail and never change how we do business. Come on! your are showing your age by making comments like that.
All those "experienced" stock producers claiming in an nanosecond that this will never work. Well, is status quo working?, sales good?, making a living?, saving for retirement?, healthcare covered?. Yea I didn't think so.
I could have afforded to gamble $100 7 years ago on Bitcoin, I was selling a lot more stock footage then and has the money to play with but I wrote it off as a waste of time, a scam, virtual money?, suuuure!, might as well throw $100 out the window or buy lottery tickets, then the Mt Gox exchange collapsed and I snickered.
Well here we are today and BTC is hitting new records as I type this, will it collapse? will the exchanges collapse if everyone tries to sell at once? maybe but the .com bubble burst and that was not the end of the internet, it came back and stronger than ever for another cycle. Same could happen with crypto, there most likely will be a shakeout.
Now I get why so many were so cranky and outright dismissed the idea of using blockchain, lack of knowledge of what blockchain technology is coupled with many years of being screwed six ways to Sunday by the agencies, lower and lower earnings, stress, add it all up and there aren't many good days.
So what the heck is this blockchain technology anyways?, most people think of the "coins", Bitcoin, Ethererum, Litecoin, Monero and others, so yes there are coins that can be mined using this technology, but there is also the " underlying technology", the underlying technology that this all runs on and it's in it's infancy might like the internet was back when.
I don't know all that much about it either nor do I have the masters degree in mathematics to understand it all but I also don't know the compression ratio of each of the cylinders of my vehicles engine as I'm driving down the road losing money heading from shoot to shoot filming stuff that isn't selling.
Think of it more as a system that runs in the background, like Linux, Windows, IOS, QNX, etc and on top of that we would have a UI (user interface), right now blockchain is not user friendly and there is code involved and command lines involved and so was the case with DOS before Windows95 came out.
So now that we've gotten past "coins", what's wrong with a decentralized technology that allows us to keep our footage and photos on our own drives and servers and cut the middleman out completely? Sorry what's wrong with this idea? oh it's too complicated for buyers (customers) and sellers you say, correct, in it's present form it is too complicated and not user friendly and we still haven't figured out a UI for accepting payments and easy downloading of the files. If you remember peer to peer/torrent there are interfaces that make this all fairly user friendly. So a ton of work needs to be done there.
It needs to be set up in such a way that customers can download a client and using that client search up what they are looking for so we need a search engine like Napster or limewire used to be and search up those titles which reside on our servers or computers and then we need to click download but we need something that pops up and and takes payment for the files selected and directs those funds to the artists accounts.
The backbone of this system though can be blockchain, could be something else that uses AES-256bit encryption but why not use blockchain which is secure?. Everything else out there is being hacked six ways to Sunday.
So what everyone needs to do is some serious reading on what blockchain is, how it works, learn the terminology and study study study until you understand it, not the math itself but how it works in a practical sense and how it can be applied to businesses and how user friendly UI's and clients can be created. The UI's on both ends need to be super simple for the buyers as well as the sellers, that's a challenge with any new technology, the average person doesn't care what's under the hood.
Or as one startup leader said to us in lecture one day, when pitching, DON'T TALK ABOUT THE TECH, investors and customers don't want to know about the tech that runs in the backgroud and don't care, they want to know what this product or service does, why they would want it or need it. It's true, when you buy a software or an app do you ask if it was coded in python or in rust?.
Want to know more about Blockchain? this is your guy! He invented Ethereum, and should you have a viable business idea that could run off Ethereum blockchain from what I've heard is he responds on twitter and email and will talk to people and put them in touch with people.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66SaEDzlmP4 (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66SaEDzlmP4)
I can tell you what won't work, saying everything will be right if the agencies paid us more, not gonna happen, current business model is not working, massive oversupply, our profit margins too thin thanks to the cuts that the agencies need to take, so what gives? decentralized system sounds quite good at this point.
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We will end up being chained to the block and the 1% will make the money, it's always thus.
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We will end up being chained to the block and the 1% will make the money, it's always thus.
Well, there are a few ways to be in the 1%:
• Be born in it.
• Invent the technology.
• Be an early adopter.
The last method is available to most of us.
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I think the general consensus from the nay-sayers is that it's virtually impossible to invent a new stock site in this day and age, that will be successful and give the big guys a run for the money... and that's without using blockchain. So adding something new into the mix on top of that... will it make it less appealing or more? It all sounds kind of promising, and I have no doubt that cryptocurrency and blockchain will be the future... but it's kind of addressing a need that nobody really had, and the average buyer of stock is probably just going to scratch their head and then navigate back to one of the regular stock sites.
Although I'll concede that nobody really had a need for the internet before it was invented... or dishwashers, microwaves, cars etc.
And all the talk of cutting out costs seems to focus on how much the author will get, and not the buyer. I'm assuming cost savings will be passed on to the buyer to make it more appealing? Otherwise, given the choice of an image at price X using a site and process they know... and an image at price X using a site and a process they don't know, they'll probably stick with the original site.
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And if bitcoins don't work out you can always invest in pets
http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42237162 (http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42237162)
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And if bitcoins don't work out you can always invest in pets
[url]http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42237162[/url] ([url]http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42237162[/url])
...or IOTA, which your fridge and your toaster will use.
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And if bitcoins don't work out you can always invest in pets
[url]http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42237162[/url] ([url]http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42237162[/url])
This article drives home the fact that blockchain is still new and it might not be ready for prime time use by businesses yet if a game can slow it down this much. Thanks for posting that.
For the stock video and photo industry perhaps a traditional peer to peer network would be better then, lets call it StockWire for the sake of this discussion, everyone has their content on their own drives, there is this app that allows customers to search for titles and keywords, preview the clip and then add it to the download folder and upon pressing download button this is were you would be stopped and asked for payment, once payment is made the download takes place and payment is sent to the vendor.
Exactly like how Limewire used to work except with a payment option for buyers, the operators of the app would take a small percentage but considering that the files are stored locally on artists own drives we don't have the massive storage costs on AWS or server farms, we don't need expensive offices and all that many staff so there would be a lot less overhead in running the operation decentralized like this.
Key is to have it super easy to search, pay and download for the customers, just like they have it with the current sites and similarly for the content producers. Customers aren't gonna do anything from the command line so this needs to be super easy and simple and work on desktop/laptop and mobile flawlessly or the customers will not like it and not use it.
Peer to Peer just might be the way to go and maybe skip blockchain for now until it's ready or if someone wants to do an ICO and raise millions that might work too but conventional peer to peer would be fine.
This way prices could stay the same but artists could keep more of their hard earned money, right now we give up 50-75% or more of our earnings to the agencies.
As for what prices the buyer would have to pay, depends on the artist, they would set their own prices for various content and the buyers can decide what they want and can afford to pay and the agencies have massive costs but the end result is this is not sustainable as a business any longer for the suppliers.
This might also make things more secure in come cases, there has been ongoing incidents of theft of video and photos from these big agencies with their "IT teams", same with how many other big firms? Equifax anyone?, the average artist would probably have better security on their laptops than these companies and they are smaller harder to find targets for the bad guys.
I haven't been hacked yet or gotten one virus/malware in my life, my secret?, religiously do my operating system updates and my security software updates, I literally check for updates manually twice a day. So now if I do happen to click on something bad it gets blocked real quick, I also turn off things like webRTC, and of course the SMB protocol I have turned off to protect against many of the ransomware variants, there are a few other things but I can't remember but I'm just one person, not a professional security team.
I think a feasibility study is in order.
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"For the stock video and photo industry perhaps a traditional peer to peer network would be better then, lets call it StockWire for the sake of this discussion, everyone has their content on their own drives, there is this app that allows customers to search for titles and keywords, preview the clip"
We already had this (hosted on your own website). It was called symbiostock. Buyers didn't really care. I don't really know if I want the world accessing my computer to download things.
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Read the thread properly and you will see it is not feasable, no quality control, no indemnity and no security, no offence, but why would I trust you?
Limewire worked because the data was on dozens or hundreds of computers and because internet speeds were grindingly slow you lose one node the others took over. You could never guarentee that a bookmarked image would be available on demand with your peer to peer system.
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Read the thread properly and you will see it is not feasable, no quality control, no indemnity and no security, no offence, but why would I trust you?
Limewire worked because the data was on dozens or hundreds of computers and because internet speeds were grindingly slow you lose one node the others took over. You could never guarentee that a bookmarked image would be available on demand with your peer to peer system.
All valid points and good to discuss, on the issue of security I disagree, I mean just look at the massive thefts from shutterstock and other sites, I think some of us have better security on our local drives than these big companies.
The indemnity problem is also a problem with all these free sites and sites selling stolen content, I am pretty sure people who are obtaining content illegally from those sites in the first place aren't too worried about obeying the law.
As for everything else, obviously there it's a lot more involved but one thing is for sure and that is the status quo is not working, sales dropping across the board to new lows every month, every year, cuts in commissions via all these new and exciting ways to make less money.....it's not working. So the question is, what would work?.
What would work?, can it be done?, how do we do it or a potential new player in the industry do it with a different and lower cost technology?. Current business model is broken for us and the agencies as well or they wouldn't be in a race to the bottom but in a race to raise prices as high as the market will bear.
It is very possible that it's game over as far as making a living at this, change is happening so fast these days my head is spinning and many industries are simply going away.
But the time is over for shooting down any and all ideas, we need to figure out what if anything....will work.
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Speaking of security, not two minutes after my last post I saw a lengthy thread in the SS forum about some new fraud outfit called foundstock giving away the entire SS database, apparently due to a bug or hacking of the API that links them to Facebook.
And how many of these sites have these new and exciting partner programs that give us the opportunity to lose more money incrementally by opening up the database to large volume buyers with deep pockets who otherwise couldn't afford to pay regular prices?. Well the hacking has started and entire databases are now wide open and content flowing out for free. I trust the security of my laptop more than any of these big companies these days and not just stock sites.
At this rate we will all be out of business soon, you can't compete with free and these big companies like SS have many millions of files that are now available for free download so why would anyone pay?
In addition to a new business model for this industry a new security protocol is needed but it's not always technology at fault it often humans, when access is given to these global partners and whatever the security of the database ends right there, you don't know know how the partner companies have configured their databases and what security they have in place, they may even say "we take your security seriously" but unless you personally configured everything you don't know.
Recently in the news it was reported that the department of national defense left hundreds of thousands of files on an AWS server.....with no password and there was another private company that was just hacked and same thing, 50 million+ pieces of customer data sitting on a well configured server but with no password.
I'm trusting these companies less my the minute.
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If developers are interested, much of the work has already be done, in the open-source OpenBazaar project.
Maybe some tweaks are needed for stock photography and a search engine.
Payment is always in cryptocurrencies.
I assume eventually someone will do it. Then, in a few years, when clients learn about the search engine and get more accustomed with cryptocurrencies, it will never be the same.
Internet has removed the first generation of intermediaries, peer-to-peer blockchain technology will remove the second generation.
It's not even a matter of if, it's a matter of when.
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A very interesting thread for a newbie like me.
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If developers are interested, much of the work has already be done, in the open-source OpenBazaar project.
Maybe some tweaks are needed for stock photography and a search engine.
Payment is always in cryptocurrencies.
I assume eventually someone will do it. Then, in a few years, when clients learn about the search engine and get more accustomed with cryptocurrencies, it will never be the same.
Internet has removed the first generation of intermediaries, peer-to-peer blockchain technology will remove the second generation.
It's not even a matter of if, it's a matter of when.
I'm reading the features in their site, looks like they only accept crypto money and no Paypal?
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I'm reading the features in their site, looks like they only accept crypto money and no Paypal?
Well, yes, that is kind of the whole point of it. ;)
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Greetings!
Wanted to share some updates about WireStock.
We recently launched our company website and the first version of the white paper ( in depth description of the project). Please check it out at wirestock.org (http://wirestock.org) . We tried to incorporate a lot of your previous feedback and questions into our vision.
Further feedback would be appreciated.
p.s. We also started working on the prototype version and will share with you as soon it is done.
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Greetings!
Wanted to share some updates about WireStock.
We recently launched our company website and the first version of the white paper ( in depth description of the project). Please check it out at [url=http://www.wirestock.org]www.wirestock.org[/url] ([url]http://www.wirestock.org[/url]) . We tried to incorporate a lot of your previous feedback and questions into our vision.
Further feedback would be appreciated.
p.s. We also started working on the prototype version and will share with you as soon it is done.
I get a blank index page....
Not a good start.
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Greetings!
Wanted to share some updates about WireStock.
We recently launched our company website and the first version of the white paper ( in depth description of the project). Please check it out at [url=http://www.wirestock.org]www.wirestock.org[/url] ([url]http://www.wirestock.org[/url]) . We tried to incorporate a lot of your previous feedback and questions into our vision.
Further feedback would be appreciated.
p.s. We also started working on the prototype version and will share with you as soon it is done.
I get a blank index page....
Not a good start.
Please try the link again or click here wirestock.org (http://wirestock.org). Something went wrong with the formatting on the forum should work now.
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Where is your Team/Company located? Yerevan, Armenia?
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Mike Snaps, not sure about block chain but I will give you an idea that might work. Work on AI and find out what the customer wants before the customer knows what they want. Talk to Facebook I think they are selling this kind of info. Although I think Zuck is in for a ride next week with congress.
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Mike Snaps, not sure about block chain but I will give you an idea that might work. Work on AI and find out what the customer wants before the customer knows what they want. Talk to Facebook I think they are selling this kind of info. Although I think Zuck is in for a ride next week with congress.
We are actually going to use AI and Machine Learning. A lot of our R&D efforts will go into automation of image curation and selection processes using machine learning and computer vision technologies whereas blockchain is necessary for image copyright protection and direct trading/licensing.
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Greetings!
Wanted to share some updates about WireStock.
We recently launched our company website and the first version of the white paper ( in depth description of the project). Please check it out at wirestock.org ([url]http://wirestock.org[/url]) . We tried to incorporate a lot of your previous feedback and questions into our vision.
Further feedback would be appreciated.
p.s. We also started working on the prototype version and will share with you as soon it is done.
Are you creating your own tokens? How is it based on Etherium?
Say ETH was $850 in March and now it's $400, would someone who bought tokens in March be paying a higher price for the same work than someone who bought tokens yesterday. How about the artists. We get paid in tokens with a moving value? How do we turn them back into local currency that we can spend, to avoid value changes?
If we got paid in March and didn't immediately convert the tokens, then we would have lost half our pay.
Can you explain better how STOKEN will hold a value and when you said through Etherium blockchain, will we have MetaMask wallets for example or what?
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Greetings!
Wanted to share some updates about WireStock.
We recently launched our company website and the first version of the white paper ( in depth description of the project). Please check it out at wirestock.org ([url]http://wirestock.org[/url]) . We tried to incorporate a lot of your previous feedback and questions into our vision.
Further feedback would be appreciated.
p.s. We also started working on the prototype version and will share with you as soon it is done.
Are you creating your own tokens? How is it based on Etherium?
Say ETH was $850 in March and now it's $400, would someone who bought tokens in March be paying a higher price for the same work than someone who bought tokens yesterday. How about the artists. We get paid in tokens with a moving value? How do we turn them back into local currency that we can spend, to avoid value changes?
If we got paid in March and didn't immediately convert the tokens, then we would have lost half our pay.
Can you explain better how STOKEN will hold a value and when you said through Etherium blockchain, will we have MetaMask wallets for example or what?
Thanks for your questions!
Yes, STOKEN (STK) is an Ethereum-based utility token and we have solutions for the important questions you have raised.
1. Setting the prices: The prices of images will be set by contributors, with an ability to set the prices in fiat currencies (usd, euro, and etc.) which will be maintained in the system regardless of the fluctuations in the stoken price. This way, the contributor will be able to fix the price in a fiat currency although transactions will be in STK.
2. For registered contributors, withdrawal of STK will be possible at any time directly on our website as well as on third party exchanges. Users will be able to convert their stokens into ethers or bitcoins for any amount and to fiat currencies (usd, eur) in case of large withdrawals given stokens are earned through content licensing/sales. A similar solution will be used when onboarding image buyers who do not have stokens yet.
3. The value of stokens will depend on the demand for images offered through WireStock. Users will be able to use their metmask wallets on WireStock.
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Where is your Team/Company located? Yerevan, Armenia?
Our core team is based in Dubai, UAE.
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Hi Mike, What differentiates you from the current influx of blockchain stock projects like; https://www.wemark.com/ (https://www.wemark.com/) https://bitimage.io/ (https://bitimage.io/) https://photochain.io/ (https://photochain.io/) https://kodakcoin.com/ (https://kodakcoin.com/) http://creativechain.org/ (http://creativechain.org/) https://selfllery.com/ (https://selfllery.com/) https://www.pibble.io/ (https://www.pibble.io/)
While i do believe there will be a disruptive breakthrough in the blockchain stock photo market. The question for me is, which one is going to offer me a return on my time uploading.
Photochain (although a noble project IMO) seems to be struggling to gain investments in its ICO. Although i suspect this to be due to the lack of incentives to investors (token only holds purchasing utility). How will you capture the interest of investors to garner enough funds for dev & mass marketing?
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Congrats for launching Wirestock.org.
Time to kick ass the expensive agencies...
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Hi Mike, What differentiates you from the current influx of blockchain stock projects like; [url]https://www.wemark.com/[/url] ([url]https://www.wemark.com/[/url]) [url]https://bitimage.io/[/url] ([url]https://bitimage.io/[/url]) [url]https://photochain.io/[/url] ([url]https://photochain.io/[/url]) [url]https://kodakcoin.com/[/url] ([url]https://kodakcoin.com/[/url]) [url]http://creativechain.org/[/url] ([url]http://creativechain.org/[/url]) [url]https://selfllery.com/[/url] ([url]https://selfllery.com/[/url]) [url]https://www.pibble.io/[/url] ([url]https://www.pibble.io/[/url])
While i do believe there will be a disruptive breakthrough in the blockchain stock photo market. The question for me is, which one is going to offer me a return on my time uploading.
Photochain (although a noble project IMO) seems to be struggling to gain investments in its ICO. Although i suspect this to be due to the lack of incentives to investors (token only holds purchasing utility). How will you capture the interest of investors to garner enough funds for dev & mass marketing?
While our vision is to decentralize the stock image market and allow content creators to sell their content directly to buyers, we put tremendous focus on having a great product and providing outstanding user experience. We acknowledge the overall difficulty and challenges associated with actual usage of cryptocurrencies and blockchain based products. That is why it has been our goal to build a product where content buyer would enjoy shopping on not only because it is cheaper or more flexible but also because it provides seamless user experience just like on conventional websites. We are planning to achieve this by minimizing the requirements to interact with tokens for users who have not been exposed to crypto wallets and cryptocurrencies in general. We believe that you should not have to go to a cryptocurrency exchange if you just need to buy an image for your blog. The same approach will be used for content creators as mentioned in the above comment.
The other thing that differentiates us is the fact that we want to start with the community of stock photographers first. That is why we try to actively engage with you in this forum and other channels to have your inputs as we are building WireStock. In fact, your feedback so far has been superuseful and we hope to continue this discussion here. For example, we consid having a feature to allow buyers to request custom jobs or modifications from content creators. Would be awesome to hear your thoughts on this.
As the majority of the founding team members are from tech startup space and have experience raising funds for other startups, we are confident that we will be able to raise funds for WireStock. However, we try to talk to investors who are familiar with this space and understand the value of a decentralized marketplace for stock content. We try to stay away from typical speculative ICO investors and are looking for long term commitments.
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Congrats for launching Wirestock.org.
Time to kick ass the expensive agencies...
Thanks r2d2! May the force with us!
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Congrats for launching Wirestock.org.
Time to kick ass the expensive agencies...
Thanks r2d2! May the force with us!
your welcome.
Do you have a plan to challenge the EU-Vat?
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Hi Mike, What differentiates you from the current influx of blockchain stock projects like; [url]https://www.wemark.com/[/url] ([url]https://www.wemark.com/[/url]) [url]https://bitimage.io/[/url] ([url]https://bitimage.io/[/url]) [url]https://photochain.io/[/url] ([url]https://photochain.io/[/url]) [url]https://kodakcoin.com/[/url] ([url]https://kodakcoin.com/[/url]) [url]http://creativechain.org/[/url] ([url]http://creativechain.org/[/url]) [url]https://selfllery.com/[/url] ([url]https://selfllery.com/[/url]) [url]https://www.pibble.io/[/url] ([url]https://www.pibble.io/[/url])
While i do believe there will be a disruptive breakthrough in the blockchain stock photo market. The question for me is, which one is going to offer me a return on my time uploading.
Photochain (although a noble project IMO) seems to be struggling to gain investments in its ICO. Although i suspect this to be due to the lack of incentives to investors (token only holds purchasing utility). How will you capture the interest of investors to garner enough funds for dev & mass marketing?
While our vision is to decentralize the stock image market and allow content creators to sell their content directly to buyers, we put tremendous focus on having a great product and providing outstanding user experience. We acknowledge the overall difficulty and challenges associated with actual usage of cryptocurrencies and blockchain based products. That is why it has been our goal to build a product where content buyer would enjoy shopping on not only because it is cheaper or more flexible but also because it provides seamless user experience just like on conventional websites. We are planning to achieve this by minimizing the requirements to interact with tokens for users who have not been exposed to crypto wallets and cryptocurrencies in general. We believe that you should not have to go to a cryptocurrency exchange if you just need to buy an image for your blog. The same approach will be used for content creators as mentioned in the above comment.
The other thing that differentiates us is the fact that we want to start with the community of stock photographers first. That is why we try to actively engage with you in this forum and other channels to have your inputs as we are building WireStock. In fact, your feedback so far has been superuseful and we hope to continue this discussion here. For example, we consid having a feature to allow buyers to request custom jobs or modifications from content creators. Would be awesome to hear your thoughts on this.
As the majority of the founding team members are from tech startup space and have experience raising funds for other startups, we are confident that we will be able to raise funds for WireStock. However, we try to talk to investors who are familiar with this space and understand the value of a decentralized marketplace for stock content. We try to stay away from typical speculative ICO investors and are looking for long term commitments.
Cheers Mike, appreciate the response.
The industry is in dire need of change.
I will be following your project closely.
Have a good one mate.
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[url]http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42237162[/url] ([url]http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-42237162[/url])
This article drives home the fact that blockchain is still new and it might not be ready for prime time use by businesses yet
(...)
ongoing incidents of theft of video and photos from these big agencies with their "IT teams", same with how many other big firms? Equifax anyone?, the average artist would probably have better security on their laptops than these companies and they are smaller harder to find targets for the bad guys.
Very good points you're making here, this pretty much nails it when it comes to those agencies (as well as all the other 'experts' out there)! Love it.
I haven't been hacked yet or gotten one virus/malware (...)
never fell victim to any successful attack on any of my personal boxes either -- it usually just hits the very dumb ones out there who came to the internet AOL-1992 style... :)
I think a feasibility study is in order.
This post was the only well-written one so far, also apparently by the only one on here actually knowing a bit about blockchain, decentralization, and 'more simple' peer-to-peer specifics.
You're also the only one addressing the real questions and issues, skipping the useless polemics so common here on MSF with all those nay-sayers with their history of hardship and alienation by a cut-throat market and price dumping between conventional stock image agencies (who are not a photographer's friend, indeed)...
Be that as it may, the common hesitation on here against anything smelling of another 'New-Symbiostock' thing may be understandable -- but it's also a mindset that makes it easy for Shutterstock and look-alikes to further corner the market (to the disadvantage of image artists, the main casualties here).
Essentially on the same page as you here, completing the questionnaire and interested to see if it leads to a feasability study. Hopeing for an OpenBazaar-style market for stock photo and video myself. Maybe this will be it???
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And how can we withdraw dollars or euros to Paypal / Payoneer or our bank account?
I think you should enable converting Stocken to dollar / euro directly on your site.
edit: Also, I don't know who on Earth will be willing to buy Stocken. You would need a powerful marketing for that.
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And how can we withdraw dollars or euros to Paypal / Payoneer or our bank account?
I think you should enable converting Stocken to dollar / euro directly on your site.
edit: Also, I don't know who on Earth will be willing to buy Stocken. You would need a powerful marketing for that.
We are leaning towards the option to allow dollar conversions and withdrawals on our website for larger amounts only (e.g. above $100) available at any time. For smaller amounts, we will allow conversions to ethers, bitcoins and other major cryptocurrencies.
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And how can we withdraw dollars or euros to Paypal / Payoneer or our bank account?
I think you should enable converting Stocken to dollar / euro directly on your site.
edit: Also, I don't know who on Earth will be willing to buy Stocken. You would need a powerful marketing for that.
We are leaning towards the option to allow dollar conversions and withdrawals on our website for larger amounts only (e.g. above $100) available at any time. For smaller amounts, we will allow conversions to ethers, bitcoins and other major cryptocurrencies.
You will gain more contributors if you allow conversions and withdrawals for as low amount as possible. That's important, especially for a new site. Canva allows withdrawals from as low as $2.
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And how can we withdraw dollars or euros to Paypal / Payoneer or our bank account?
I think you should enable converting Stocken to dollar / euro directly on your site.
edit: Also, I don't know who on Earth will be willing to buy Stocken. You would need a powerful marketing for that.
We are leaning towards the option to allow dollar conversions and withdrawals on our website for larger amounts only (e.g. above $100) available at any time. For smaller amounts, we will allow conversions to ethers, bitcoins and other major cryptocurrencies.
You will gain more contributors if you allow conversions and withdrawals for as low amount as possible. That's important, especially for a new site. Canva allows withdrawals from as low as $2.
Have they dropped the $2 fee for lower withdrawals?
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And how can we withdraw dollars or euros to Paypal / Payoneer or our bank account?
I think you should enable converting Stocken to dollar / euro directly on your site.
edit: Also, I don't know who on Earth will be willing to buy Stocken. You would need a powerful marketing for that.
We are leaning towards the option to allow dollar conversions and withdrawals on our website for larger amounts only (e.g. above $100) available at any time. For smaller amounts, we will allow conversions to ethers, bitcoins and other major cryptocurrencies.
You will gain more contributors if you allow conversions and withdrawals for as low amount as possible. That's important, especially for a new site. Canva allows withdrawals from as low as $2.
Have they dropped the $2 fee for lower withdrawals?
No they didn't.
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"However, we try to talk to investors who are familiar with this space and understand the value of a decentralized marketplace for stock content."
It is EQUALLY if not MORE important for your investors to understand the value of the images being sold. The value of the platform nothing without great, original, well-curated images.