Initiative Q - Money from nowhere?
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@e4tmyl33t There's a huge bubble of cryptocurrencies. People buy them even if they offer nothing new at all. And 80% of those people don't understand the "crypto" part of cryptocurrencies anyway, so this should have the same effect.
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@anonymous234 Yeah but cryptocurrencies, at least the headlining ones like Bitcoin, Ethereum, etc. actually have a new technology behind them that hadn't been seen before. Bitcoin had the blockchain, Ethereum has "smart contracts", etc.
This Q company has jack shit.
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@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
The problem is not competition, but how silly it is that we identify our accounts with a large piece of plastic.
Credit cards really suck. But not because they are plastic. Smartcards are actually a very good way to store proof of identity and it's a shame they never caught on with home computers.
They suck because of extreme regulatory capture leading to lack of competition in the payments industry, leading to high fees, unnecessary middlemen, bad security models and other stuff I'm too lazy to repeat again.
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@anonymous234 said in Money from nowhere?:
They suck because of extreme regulatory capture leading to lack of competition in the payments industry, leading to high fees, unnecessary middlemen, bad security models and other stuff I'm too lazy to repeat again.
Fine; they suck, but does Q have anything better?
You can't show us the first half of the infomercial, showing how bad all current products are, without showing us the second half when you show how much better your product is.
@initiativeq I have a proposal for you: I will legit sell you all my 48,569 Qs at 50 cents on the dollar.
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@blakeyrat I'm not defending Q here, I'm just responding to some of the stuff I see.
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My wallet contains 6 payment cards.
It also contains 2 forms of government ID (the one that lets me drive and the one that lets me use land borders), a corporate ID, 3 different membership cards for getting healthcare, a payment card for healthcare, a membership card for a gym so I don't die of terminal fatness, my racing license, a gasoline fleet payment card, 3 fucking "let me buy groceries at sticker price instead of with a 30% extra markup" cards and no fewer than 7 stupid assed loyalty cards.
General purpose payment cards are not the problem.
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@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
@boomzilla said in Money from nowhere?:
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
The problem is not competition, but how silly it is that we identify our accounts with a large piece of plastic.
What's silly about it? Have you noticed that we use pieces of plastic to identify ourselves? Also, I think we have vastly different definitions of "large."
Why carry anything other than my smartphone?
Why use my smartphone to buy stuff in the first place? This is something that I actively do not want. A card does not need to be charged. Neither does cash. Either can be used when connections are down (though many people today have probably never seen an offline purchase with a card and carbon paper).
Remember how you ridiculed cryptocurrency as a solution to a non-problem? That's how I see smartphones WRT paying for stuff.
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
Actually, there is very little use of advanced fraud prevention algorithms in today's payment networks.
Maybe that's a hint?
Nope. It's due to technical limitations.
Like what? Or are you simply defining "advanced" in a some retarded way to win a semantic argument? If there was a lot of money to prevent being lost the existing players would certainly be doing this sort of stuff (that's the hint). And we know that they already are doing a lot of things like that (well, technically, who knows what definition you're using, so maybe you're "right" in a useless way).
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^.^
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@boomzilla said in Money from nowhere?:
though many people today have probably never seen an offline purchase with a card and carbon paper
Visa apologises for network crash which sparked payment chaos but insist there was no hack
VISA’s meltdown left Britain raging yesterday as cashless customers fumed about missed trains, traffic chaos and getting rejected at KFC and McDonalds. The card giant apologised for a crash that sp…
Though granted, it would probably also require the peon behind the desk to know about, and how to use, the noisy plastic thing that's been gathering dust under the till for a couple of decades...
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@blakeyrat said in Money from nowhere?:
Here use my link
Done, waiting on a verification, then I'll post my own link.
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@pjh said in Money from nowhere?:
Though granted, it would probably also require the peon behind the desk to know about, and how to use, the noisy plastic thing that's been gathering dust under the till for a couple of decades...
Providing the store even HAS one of those still laying around. There's probably plenty of relatively new stores that rely on Square or some other payment processor middleman that don't have a carbon-copy machine.
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@blakeyrat said in Money from nowhere?:
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
Hi Everyone,
Ben from Initiative Q here.Awesome. You got a pair of extremely yellow boxing gloves by chance?
whoosh
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
You are basically agreeing with us: To innovate in payments you must overcome the enormous advantage old technologies have due to network effects.
Is innovation in payments really something we need?
Of course. At the very minimum, just to reduce costs from 2% per transaction.
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
The problem is not competition, but how silly it is that we identify our accounts with a large piece of plastic.
Well no, the account is an account number and a routing number. The card is just a handy window into it.
What's your idea for a way to "solve" this problem? Do you tattoo it on my arm?
There are dozens of better identification methods you can run on your smartphone.
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
Again, you are agreeing with us: Credit cards are suboptimal, causing sellers to resort to technology that is thousands of years old (cash).
Old != bad.
Are you trying to claim moving coins around is the best way to transfer value?
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
Just an example. The point is that if you were free to design a payment system from scratch, without worrying about critical mass, you would come up with much smaller and more secure ways to identify an account.
Yeah; but I guess the question is: have you? Or is this all just mouth-farting attached to a pyramid scheme?
In a pyramid scheme people pay those who brought them in. Initiative Q is free. The value to early users is from the collective trust in Q - no one pays for it.
It seems to me that if you have any solutions you should actually write about those on the FAQ.
We do offer some solutions, and you can find them in the site. But you're missing the point. Since you do claim to have good ideas, Initiative Q will simply hire you and you will design the solutions. Critical mass first, technology later.
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
Actually, there is very little use of advanced fraud prevention algorithms in today's payment networks. Interestingly, many of the innovations in the field were made by Initiative Q's founder, Saar Wilf (founded Fraud Sciences, acquired by PayPal).
Ok, first of all, that is totally a made-up name. Sincerely, Daar Tyger.
Secondly, do you have better fraud prevention AI than, say, Bank of America's? Again, maybe that should be the thing you talk about in the FAQ. That's something you could sell.
We currently have nothing. But companies like Forter and Riskified definitely have technology superior to BofA. We will use them.
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
True for some, but not for all. Do you really think that if we were free to reinvent payments, people will be walking around with round pieces of metal in their pockets?
People of the past weren't stupid. If you were free to reinvent payments in 1800, damn straight you'd be walking around with pantaloons full of round pieces of metal.
Now you are right that 2018 technology allows for better ways of carrying value, that's pretty obvious. What we don't know is what you have that's better than what VISA has.
Already answered above.
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
Yep, you definitely got us. There is no payment system yet. The idea of Initiative Q is "critical mass first, technology later" - for the reasons explained above.
So right now you only have the pyramid scheme part. Great.
Other than misunderstanding what a pyramid scheme is, you seem to be getting the point.
I want my fucking $52,000, you bastard. Gimme my moneys!
One day, hopefully...
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
Don't follow your point. Do you disagree that a hypothetical superior network with wide adoption would process trillions of dollars a year?
It probably would! If you had one. Which you don't. You just said you don't. You just have the pyramid scheme.
Other than misunderstanding what a pyramid scheme is, you seem to be getting the point.
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
Very good point. Actually, we agree with you, so we are copying the working monetary model of governments. To quote from our economic model page:
"To meet this need, Initiative Q will feature a monetary committee that is independent of the Initiative Q corporate entity, to be appointed via voting by all stakeholders in the Q payment network"Which is funny, because the majority of people who are into alternative currencies are interested in them because they think the government's going to fall any day now and all your cash-dollars will be worthless! Also fractional lending is evil Jewish magic, etc!
We're trying to appeal to a larger audience than just crypto-anarchists.
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
How do we get there?
Get a critical mass of users, who join only for the free Qs.
Then you can build a superior payment network without worrying about adoption.
Everyone prefer to use it because it's cheaper, faster, safer.
Qs have value ("the equation of exchange")Fuck your Q's, gimme my money.
I will relay this to management, and I'm sure they'll make an effort to meet both your requests.
- Get a critical mass of users, who join only for the free Qs
- ???
- Profit!
(:
Not a lot of South Park fans at your company I assume.
don't assume anything.
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
Note that all users in Initiative Q must be invited and verified by an existing user. In the future, all users will undergo additional verification, and people who approved fake users will lose their rewards. This reduces the ability to claim multiple incentives - not to zero, but close to it.
So you put in weasel words so you don't have you give me my moneys.
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
When you design a payment system correctly, you can reduce transaction costs to a fraction of what they are today.
How?
Seriously how.
Bitcoin came up with a really shitty one that doesn't, for example, have any way whatsoever to reverse transactions, and they still have far higher transaction fees than VISA or Mastercard will give you.
There are better cryptos, but none have demonstrated the ability to scale to VISA or Mastercard quantities of transactions while keeping the fees lower than the VISA or Mastercard fees, plus the vast majority of them don't even have the features those companies provide. (Like, for example, the ability to charge-back fraudulent transactions.)
So far everybody in this space has given us less features, less capacity, for more transaction fees.
So the question is: how exactly are you going to do it? Fine; you have this network-effect head-start of dozens of suckers who think they have $50,000 coming to them because they're idiot suckers (which, BTW, I doubt it even remotely as valuable as you think-- it didn't work out very well for Klout), how do you translate that into solving this problem?
No one thinks they have $50,000. They think there's a very small chance this could work out, in which case they may get $50,000 - and it's free so why not. If enough people believe in this very small chance, it will no longer be very small.
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
Definitely possible that we will have competitors. We'll just have to try to be the best.
Competition in... pyramid schemes? Because that's all you got right now.
(And yeah, Herbalife's got you beat.)
Simpsons - Trapezoid Scheme – 00:29
— Concretecanvas1
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@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
@blakeyrat said in Money from nowhere?:
Awesome. You got a pair of extremely yellow boxing gloves by chance?
whoosh
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@boomzilla said in Money from nowhere?:
Why use my smartphone to buy stuff in the first place? This is something that I actively do not want. A card does not need to be charged. Neither does cash. Either can be used when connections are down
Lots of people prefer paying with smartphones. And there is zero reason why both shouldn't work exactly the same! A card (the modern kind) is a chip with a private certificate in it that communicates with the reader with some protocol. A phone, as far as the reader is concerned, is exactly the same. Contactless removes the problem of needing a physical connector in a certain shape.
Heck, you could embed a passive RFID chip in your phone, with the exact same kind of technology credit cards use to run without battery, but some more commands so the phone's processor can update the data in it. Now you can pay with no battery! Neither will work when the connection is down though.
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@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
Why carry anything other than my smartphone?
Because the damned thing may run out of power when I need to pay for something? Other than that, see my posts, I can technically already do that, in technological utopia that is... ex-Yugoslavia!
Actually, here, have a screenshot of my phone, trying to scan an example code from the banking app:
Modern enough for ya?
@pjh said in Money from nowhere?:
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
whoosh
Goddamnit! Ok, who's trolling?
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@mrl said in Money from nowhere?:
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
Why carry anything other than my smartphone?
No product or even an idea of what it would be, but high level of hipstery delusions. I foresee great future ahead of you.
I'm just going to leave this here then:
No Loose Change? Chinese Beggars Are Now Accepting Mobile Payments
Beggars in China have started using mobile payment options like scannable QR codes to make it easier for people to make donations.
With all this mobile shizzle I'm mostly concerned what happens when your phone gets stolen, root-kitted or if you manage to get thrown off the payment network for any reason (FYI: one Chinese payment system is part of a private thing called WeChat, so I wonder what happens if you're banned for trolling on the eponymous chat part).
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@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
Of course. At the very minimum, just to reduce costs from 2% per transaction.
So why not just do that? You'd have a much greater chance of success, for one.
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
We currently have nothing. But companies like Forter and Riskified definitely have technology superior to BofA. We will use them.
IOW, I was right? It is being used? And also you're just using stuff that's already being used. Your value proposition seems to be plummeting now.
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
In a pyramid scheme people pay those who brought them in. Initiative Q is free. The value to early users is from the collective trust in Q - no one pays for it.
Where's the trust? I think you're skipping some steps here. Your "verification" stuff is just that people are...people. A new payment system I could believe in. A new currency that's backed by nothing? Not even close. The USD has a whole economy and giant military behind it. You have...what?
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@anonymous234 said in Money from nowhere?:
@boomzilla said in Money from nowhere?:
Why use my smartphone to buy stuff in the first place? This is something that I actively do not want. A card does not need to be charged. Neither does cash. Either can be used when connections are down
Lots of people prefer paying with smartphones. And there is zero reason why both shouldn't work exactly the same! A card (the modern kind) is a chip with a private certificate in it that communicates with the reader with some protocol. A phone, as far as the reader is concerned, is exactly the same. Contactless removes the problem of needing a physical connector in a certain shape.
I don't disagree with any of that. But the idea that you have to pay with a smartphone is ludicrous.
Heck, you could embed a passive RFID chip in your phone, with the exact same kind of technology credit cards use to run without battery, but some more commands so the phone's processor can update the data in it. Now you can pay with no battery! Neither will work when the connection is down though.
You're assuming that I want RFID chips at all. I don't. Also, I can already pay with no battery. You guys are terrible salesmen.
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Came into the thread expecting more Dire Straits. Was disappointed.
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@rhywden said in Money from nowhere?:
Came into the thread expecting more Dire Straits. Was disappointed.
Does Blakey's post quoted below also fail to load for you? ("Copyright not assured in your country rah rah")
@blakeyrat said in Money from nowhere?:
@twelvebaud Once the pyramid is complete, then we all sell great diet milkshakes.
Maybe step 2 is we get the chicks for free:
Dire Straits - Money For Nothing music video (Good quality, all countries) – 04:04
— mzq88
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@chaostheeternal Oop sorry for slowness, I was driving.
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@rhywden said in Money from nowhere?:
Came into the thread expecting more Dire Straits. Was disappointed.
I think most of us here are convinced Q will be in dire straits soon enough...
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@pjh said in Money from nowhere?:
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
whoosh
Goddamnit! Ok, who's trolling?
No-one. I just found it amusing that the newbie who hasn't lurked enough to get the meme Blakey was alluding to, was accusing Blakey of
, when that's exactly what they were doing.
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@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
Of course. At the very minimum, just to reduce costs from 2% per transaction.
If you have a solid plan to do that, and you don't I'm just speaking hypothetically, you'd be better off taking it to VISA and getting them to sign up. Then you could skip the pyramid scheme.
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
There are dozens of better identification methods you can run on your smartphone.
Right; but also tons of times and places I can't use my smartphone where I could have easily used a card.
People who own a smartphone without a fingerprint reader, what's the attitude there? Just "fuck you"?
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
Are you trying to claim moving coins around is the best way to transfer value?
Nope; I'm simply saying that it's a fallacy to claim that just because something is old, it is therefore bad.
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
The value to early users is from the collective trust in Q - no one pays for it.
What about my $48,000! You bastards!
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
Since you do claim to have good ideas, Initiative Q will simply hire you and you will design the solutions. Critical mass first, technology later.
Sure. Hurry up and give me the moneyzzz.
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
LMGTFYThat was a joke.
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
One day, hopefully...
Why not pay me right now.
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
No one thinks they have $50,000. They think there's a very small chance this could work out, in which case they may get $50,000 - and it's free so why not. If enough people believe in this very small chance, it will no longer be very small.
I'm sorry so how does the "belief" get converted into hard currency exactly? Gonna need you to connect the dots here.
I don't see how having 40,000 people "believe" they have $50,000 gets me any closer to my $50,000.
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@rhywden said in Money from nowhere?:
Came into the thread expecting more Dire Straits.
I posted the video, how much "more" could you get?
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And here's my link: https://initiativeq.com/invite/SxvqfiUW7
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So in this thread everyone accuses Q of being a scam, but joins in just in case it isn't? Do I have that right?
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@mott555 Yah. I did the same with Bitcoin, and it kind of worked out.
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@mott555 Honestly, I joined so I could see how the sign-up method and "reservation" work (possibly just so I could remark on it here).
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@onyx said in Money from nowhere?:
@sockpuppet7 said in Money from nowhere?:
give your full name and email to some suspicious people promising free things
Hello, my name is Realname 'Onestguvn'a.
What? I'm from Nigeria, that's a common name there!
Hello My name is Robert O';Drop Table Users;--
What? It's a very common Irish name.
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@blakeyrat said in Money from nowhere?:
And if you're on the ground floor like Raam Lyon up there is saying, maybe we'll be able to cash out before the whole thing collapses. But don't bet on it.
Thank you for the virtual internet money
I have a link of my own now, make me virtually rich people!
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FYI if you "finish" your 5 invites, they just reset the timer and give you 10 more invites.
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@blakeyrat Do the extra invites get you more Qs? I still have 3 unused ones from my first batch.
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@blakeyrat said in Money from nowhere?:
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
Of course. At the very minimum, just to reduce costs from 2% per transaction.
If you have a solid plan to do that, and you don't I'm just speaking hypothetically, you'd be better off taking it to VISA and getting them to sign up. Then you could skip the pyramid scheme.
VISA don't need us to tell them about it. They already know how to do it, but they can't, because it requires building a new network from scratch, and they don't know how to get everyone to move to the new payment network.
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
There are dozens of better identification methods you can run on your smartphone.
Right; but also tons of times and places I can't use my smartphone where I could have easily used a card.
People who own a smartphone without a fingerprint reader, what's the attitude there? Just "fuck you"?
face recognition, voice recognition, PIN code.
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
Are you trying to claim moving coins around is the best way to transfer value?
Nope; I'm simply saying that it's a fallacy to claim that just because something is old, it is therefore bad.
Agreed.
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
The value to early users is from the collective trust in Q - no one pays for it.
What about my $48,000! You bastards!
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
Since you do claim to have good ideas, Initiative Q will simply hire you and you will design the solutions. Critical mass first, technology later.
Sure. Hurry up and give me the moneyzzz.
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
LMGTFYThat was a joke.
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
One day, hopefully...
Why not pay me right now.
Because Qs are worth near zero now.
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
No one thinks they have $50,000. They think there's a very small chance this could work out, in which case they may get $50,000 - and it's free so why not. If enough people believe in this very small chance, it will no longer be very small.
I'm sorry so how does the "belief" get converted into hard currency exactly? Gonna need you to connect the dots here.
I don't see how having 40,000 people "believe" they have $50,000 gets me any closer to my $50,000.
40,000 won't. 40,000,000 might. That's how money works.
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@e4tmyl33t said in Money from nowhere?:
@blakeyrat Do the extra invites get you more Qs? I still have 3 unused ones from my first batch.
Congratulations! You have unlocked another 10 invites, and the opportunity to reserve an additional Q114284 - that’s Q11428 for each verified friend.
Mega-Q's. I can pay off my mortgage with all these Q's.
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@blakeyrat said in Money from nowhere?:
- Get a critical mass of users, who join only for the free Qs
- ???
- Profit!
I'm guessing step two is 'show outside investors a large number of 'live' users to secure investment and pay salaries'.
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Okay so how much is a Q worth now since the thread started?
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@stillwater One good Star Trek episode.
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@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
VISA don't need us to tell them about it. They already know how to do it, but they can't, because it requires building a new network from scratch, and they don't know how to get everyone to move to the new payment network.
But you think you can? What makes you think that?
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
face recognition, voice recognition, PIN code.
And if I don't own a smartphone? Or don't own a phone at all?
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
Because Qs are worth near zero now.
Well if you paid me $0.50 for each of my Q's you'd instantly raise the value of a Q to 50 cents, so you see there's really no reason not to do it. It's a win-win.
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
40,000 won't. 40,000,000 might.
"might" meaning 80% chance, or "might" meaning 0.0005% chance?
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
That's how money works.
Not... really?
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@blakeyrat said in Money from nowhere?:
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
VISA don't need us to tell them about it. They already know how to do it, but they can't, because it requires building a new network from scratch, and they don't know how to get everyone to move to the new payment network.
But you think you can? What makes you think that?
Again, the technologies are well known. It's getting people to adopt them that is hard.
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
face recognition, voice recognition, PIN code.
And if I don't own a smartphone? Or don't own a phone at all?
RFID tag?
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
Because Qs are worth near zero now.
Well if you paid me $0.50 for each of my Q's you'd instantly raise the value of a Q to 50 cents, so you see there's really no reason not to do it. It's a win-win.
Let me get back to you on that.
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
40,000 won't. 40,000,000 might.
"might" meaning 80% chance, or "might" meaning 0.0005% chance?
Somewhere between those two numbers.
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
That's how money works.
Not... really?
Yes.
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@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
RFID tag?
Maybe on a plastic card? Good idea. I could slide it in my wallet.
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
Yes.
Ok well let me put it this way: millions of people think they're an elven sorceress fighting orcs, but that hasn't made actual orcs appear here in real life somehow.
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@blakeyrat said in Money from nowhere?:
Ok well let me put it this way: millions of people think they're an elven sorceress fighting orcs, but that hasn't made actual orcs appear here in real life somehow.
No, but we do see a surprising number of trolls.
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@pjh said in Money from nowhere?:
@pjh said in Money from nowhere?:
@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
whoosh
Goddamnit! Ok, who's trolling?
No-one. I just found it amusing that the newbie who hasn't lurked enough to get the meme Blakey was alluding to, was accusing Blakey of
, when that's exactly what they were doing.That's why I was asking, I thought it may be a forum dweller messing with us.
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BTW, I'm still waiting either of my posts about the actual stuff I can use right now to be addressed.
To be clear, I'm no fan of banks, but I don't see what problem is being solved that I have today.
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@initiativeq said in Money from nowhere?:
Somewhere between those two numbers.
Dumb and Dumber- So you're telling me there's a chance – 00:11
— FullMovieJacket
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@initiativeq how will Q ensure scarcity? Whats would stop them from issuing infinite Qs?
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@sockpuppet7 said in Money from nowhere?:
@initiativeq how will Q ensure scarcity? Whats would stop them from issuing infinite Qs?
We all know there's only one real Q
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@onyx said in Money from nowhere?:
We all know there's only one real Q
Nuh-uh, there's an entire Continuum of Q!
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@e4tmyl33t said in Money from nowhere?:
@onyx said in Money from nowhere?:
We all know there's only one real Q
Nuh-uh, there's an entire Continuum of Q!
They mean nothing to me! I only have eyes for the one!
LMGTFY - Let Me Google That For You
Quahl
