A token to fuel an accelerator isn't a bad idea at all. Most accelerators would have loved to do the same, but don't have a blockchain they verify on. This project is the first of a kind in terms of the tech.

Back in the 90s this was a wet dream to many people. Like the article mentioned, this could have been done on a native token (btc/eth) but best of luck with the experiment.

Bitcoin was never intended to reduce the cost of Banks, but rather supply an alternative.

Banks are an excellent piece of infrastructure, as it stands. If you don't need to use Bitcoin, or you actually care about what happens to your money, just use a bank.

> "Banks are an excellent piece of infrastructure, as it stands."

Not very excellent if you ever need to get money to/from the States and a foreign country.

...which is where you use Bitcoin, as these crooks figured out.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2016/09/money-mule-gangs-turn-to...

Again, Bitcoin is a great alternative to banks where banks fail. Just, you know, I wouldn't advise using it as your first choice.

The number of people saying BTC is cheaper than Paypal continues to be huge.

If you are able to receive BTC and pay for your costs with BTC, it's cheaper by quite a bit. The last transaction I sent using BTC cost me $.09.

If you have to exchange BTC to USD to pay for your costs, then sure, it's going to cost more than PayPal.

> The last transaction I sent using BTC cost me $.09.

And you denominated that in $$ instead of BTC why?

Because the value of BTC fluctuates so much that its worthless to denominate goods in terms of BTC. Only USD is stable enough to actually denominate the value of goods with.

And its not like USD is rock solid: we've got an inflation-based government pushing the value of USD down ~2% each year. But that's a lot more stable than BTC.

As long as BTC remains more volatile than my freaking stock portfolio, it is worthless to trade goods with it directly. Everything will need to be converted to and from USD if I'm actually to run a business. BTC could double in price (or half in price) in the next year and no one would be surprised.

Another plausible reason why he used the USD amount instead of 0.15 mBits, is because the Hacker News readership has had years to associate an internal "feeling" for what $0.09 is worth.

The Swiss Franc is also very stable and has similar qualities to USD. Would you not have complained if he cited the figure in Swiss Francs?

Hands up everyone here with a memory longer than that of a goldfish who remembers the Bitcoin promise "no fees!" The one they don't seem to make any more.

BTC always had a fee for the miners otherwise the whole system doesn't work.

It doesn't need to reduce costs. If it performs so poorly that it's not a viable alternative, there's no alternative.

Banks are alternatives of each other.

Don't like Paypal? Use Dwolla. Don't like Dwolla? Use Bank of America for direct transfers. Don't like BoA? Use Venmo.

>> My dream: This new Ethereum based token system eventually would replace the CHF (Swiss Franc). Let us transform UTOPIA into REALITY. >>

Well...

>> allow developers to have their wallets bound to profiles >> strange this isn't a native function..

>>> Porn is a billion dollar industry and sooner or later some one will probably make a decentralised cam site. >>>

I think there's a new Bitcoin based site that does just what the proposal stand for..

>> erase technical barriers by creating a virtual, map based infrastructure for easy deployment and management of mesh-networks (smart contract based) - enabling anyone to act as an ISP.

The anti-thesis to Monsanto will come through a Blockchain

Also Meni Rosenfeld who's one of the first people involved with Bitcoin and Bitcoin mining research. Also the founder of the Israeli Bitcoin Association.

Alex Shelkovnikov, corporate venturing and blockchain lead at Deloitte, and Meni Rosenfeld, founder of Cluster, a hub for disruptive technologies, will both join Lubin on the panel of judges. Each judge will have a portion of votes to award to the camps they favour.

This is why taking part could be more important than 'winning'- If I'm trying to create a peer to peer application, which after all is part of the promise of Blockchain tech, than Jaan Tallinn is a pretty important guy to be aware of your team...

"Jaan Tallinn is an Estonian programmer widely celebrated for writing the peer-to-peer engines of Kazaa and Skype."

Thanks, Stephen_T I created a proposal about a week ago (after the announcement of Jaan Taallin as a judge). I will join the Slack discussion and am looking forward to #find-a-teammember. Thanks

That's great to hear compil3r - were super excited about getting Jaan Tallinn as a judge I'm glad he's inspired you to join us :) We've been fortunate that most of the judges we've invited to take part have accepted. There's a lot of experience and talent to help mentor the teams so I hope you take advantage of it. Good luck with your project. Thanks for posting the video lamalama

re posting the video, totally my pleasure. it was a great event and i hope to be able to make it to the next (not sure when that is...)

I'm hoping to give another quick presentation at next weeks London Coinscrum - Tuesday 30th. At the same venue. Please come and introduce yourself and I'll buy you a pint :)