Change the payout system?

1

i for one have no interest in changing the payment system… i think it’s fine…
GAS prices have been unstable and high… so what… that will go down as the world adapts, besides i doubt its really possible to transfer money much cheaper than the banks have been doing for years… there will be a certain overhead and with crypto that overhead might be 10 or 100 times higher.

but as always technology advances and the requirements of crypto will change the world, sure one can make faster systems… and maybe thats the future… but going from something that is one of the most popular used branches of crypto and to something brand new would be a mistake…

90% of new stuff fails… sure if one want to spend the time researching and doing a little gambling then one might find and successfully pick a surviving project… but even the best ideas often fail in their first iterations… usually takes a few tries before all the factors that make something a success falls in to place.

sure it would be nice with live payouts whatever that means… i mean i can have an etherium creditcard and i can do a transaction and thus a exchange in 15 sec to 5 minutes and then after that it would be spendable from my CC … how much faster do you really need it to be… even if it took 15 minutes i don’t really see an issue with it… and if GAS prices are to high… well maybe to many people are moving to small amounts of money around…

not saying that there isn’t a need for micro transactions, but there is still on empire that rules micro transactions… and have all the infrastructure for it… maybe somebody heard of them… they are called banks… :smiley: i’m sure crypto will make banks near obsolete but most likely they will just pivot into something a bit different…

now that i say that i duno exactly how small transaction will be on banks before its not worthwhile… i’m sure thats also very different geographically… but like in the past… it never did make sense to send something near no value to anyone… thats why everything has buffers or caches… hell i even use caching in my every day work, to save time from moving tools back to their correct locating… it i was to move them one at a time i would never get anything else done.

in truth i don’t really see the appeal of micro transactions… just sounds wildly inefficient to me

2

Micro-transactions are very useful in paying for content production on social media platforms such as Steemit, Hive, and Dtube.

Hive is a fork of Steem. Dtube runs on the Steem blockchain.

The Steem blockchain and the Hive fork are Proof of Stake (POS) chains. A POS blockchain has a uniform and unchanging transaction fee. In Hive/Steem this fee is something like 0.00001 HIVE/STEEM

Today Hive is running about $0.24 USD per coin. So… a transaction costs:

0.24 * 0.00001 = $0.0000024

Hive/Steem are fast blockchains with a uniform block generation of one block every 3 seconds.

One of the problems with POS Consensus blockchains was demonstrated earlier this year when the Steem blockchain was effectively taken over by several centralized exchanges…

However… Ethereum 2.0 is slated to be a POS blockchain in around 2022 or so… It’s unlikely that Ethereum will have the same issues as Steem/Hive because it’s base of Staking nodes is much larger.

The problem with Ethereum 1.0 is that it is Proof of Work. The gas price varies with how many transactions want to fit into a block of uniform size. Eth 2.0 removes that problem with minimal risk to the blockchain security… And apparently switching over is much more complicated than Vitalik Buterin originally thought…

Eventually, gas price discussions will no longer be necessary and micro-transactions on Ethereum 2.0 will probably be quite normal across much of the Internet… probably including forums.

1 Like
3

I think the delusion that Crypto currencies would have low transaction fees compared to credit card and traditional banking systems has now been fully debunked.

It would be cheaper to offer SNOs other methods like stripe.
I would gladly opt into reducing my payout amount by the less than $0.50 to be paid directly in USD rather than this inefficient multi-currency conversion each with an exorbitant fee and delay.

I’ve been around for a while, so this change won’t affect a monthly payout for me. It is very nice to be paid monthly, it helps to cost average with a highly volatile currency.

2 Likes
4

XRP begs to differ:

https://xrpcharts.ripple.com/#/metrics

1 Like
5

Based on speculative highly volatile assets. Even Storj seems to become volatile and speculative now.

If you really think about it, it is totally absurd.

6

why is that absurd… imagine a megacorp wanting to use the storj service and they say to themselves… well we pay based on the token price, we can easily predict when more tokens will be released into the supply… and we want to test this over a period of 3 years…

so lets buy 20% or however many we can get our hands off of all the tokens…which will raise their value and thus make our purchasing power worth more when buying services…

sure there maybe a little risk involved… but if you know you are going to use the storj service for years and the coin seems undervalued… you can barely loose…
ofc now the question is different…

whats to high and whats to low… when it was grossly undervalued there was no risk involved in buying all of them… but now they could essentially drop like a stone… especially if the corp that bought them decides they want their money back and sells off lets say 20% of the supply they bought at 5x prices thus putting them with 80% of the same supply and 100% of their money earned back…

its not a bad plan…

volatile markets are good, because one can get a high ROI over short time periods… ofc one can also loose just as fast… but thats a matter of knowing whats going on… and not just working the market based on gut feeling.

7

The system is absurd. To convert USD into speculative and volatile token and moving this token requires another speculative and highly volatile 3rd party token.

What you describe is not how a megacorp normally thinks. A megacorp interesting in Tardigrade service would talk to Storj and request a huge longterm discount and not gamble with tokens.

8

but isn’t that the whole point that one has to use the tokens to get the discounts…
i mean if people can just go around that… that just makes a semi unless token even more useless…

megacorps think about to bottom line… that doesn’t mean they cannot have smart people… and if something is a sure fire deal i don’t see why not…

sure i will agree that most of them will not act like that… but there are a lot of very innovative and weirdly structured / run tech corporations… and ofc it doesn’t have to be a “mega” corp just a corp with enough cash flow… or some ceo that put it together that it was a surefire deal.

the system is brilliant… storj creates a token and then pays people with it… it’s basically like printing your own money, i would say if anything its us being absurd for accepting it… but then again we kinda burned that bridge around the crusades… so no going back really…

1 Like
9

But gambling is not smart. Corps normally don’t do that. Furthermore corps are regulated and losing money with dumb speculations could even put managers into the position to be held liable for losses. So larger companies will always pay in USD and negotiate discounts with Storj directly.
I mean let’s pretend Storj could seal a deal with NASA, do you really believe NASA would pay with Storj tokens? :partying_face: :joy_cat: :joy:
Maybe when hell freezes…

This nailed it down perfectly and is probably the main reason for most of the tokens out there. Of course SNOs are the dummies as they get paid with tokens of unknown value for running their services.

2 Likes
10

okay so maybe the use of definition of megacorp was wrong… but even that will have super high paided administrator which could affect the prices if they wanted… essentially it doesn’t have to be the corp funds directly being used for this… like say somebody working for NASA’s IT department with a nice few stacks of millions of $ in allowance or liquidity for “gambling”
such purchases could and would most likely greatly affect the storj prices…

and really… isn’t everything to some degree gambling, like like i’m saying somebody is risking their wealth or corporation on buying storj… just that if you worked for NASA and knew they where going to move to storj for some huge storage project… then one could almost with 100% assurance know that the token price would go up…
atleast if one assumed they would use the token system… i suppose it would depend on storj discount policy, which i’m pretty unfamiliar with.

or maybe simply know that when they made it official the token prices would go up without a doubt… so many options :smiley:

11

Let’s talk about beef:

If I held onto my STORJ tokens, the price of beef would have dropped over the course of the six months in relation to my pay. If SNOs were paid in fiat or stable coins pegged to fiat, the price of beef would have risen in relation to the pay.

So… who’s the dummy? The one who wants to get paid in an imaginary State issued token of future unknown relative value… or the one who doesn’t mind getting paid in an imaginary utility token of future unknown relative value.

2 Likes
12

Seems like beef is the middle-ground, can we get paid in beef then :stuck_out_tongue:?

An imaginary State issued token comes with the promise that it will stay relatively stable over time and loose only ~2% of it’s purchasing power a year. While this is not guaranteed, I wouldn’t call it future unknown relative value, it’s probably best available stable medium of exchange for most people (It is generally not a good investment though). Worth noting the State usually has significant will, power and history of keeping up with the promise. There’s obviously many exceptions and depends on the State.

On the other hand Storj token promise is unclear to me. Is it going to loose or gain value in the coming years? Is there a party with any will, power and history of regulating it? I can only think of Storj company but they don’t want to comment on this (why?). Storj token is not much of a medium of exchange and a pure gamble of investment (Token price doesn’t represent how well the network/company is doing by design). For me personally it’s fine as long as I can convert it at fair rates and get what I earned. It’s been good so far but I wouldn’t hold it for long.

I would really like to be able to consider storj tokens as investment, but seems there’s too many unanswered questions. I don’t fully understand the locked tokens and releasing conditions and would need to catch up on this too. If I buy one token today, how much of the storj service will I be able to get in 1 year? 5 years? How much fiat? inflation adjusted? Is Storj company actively regulating the token price (they can)? What strategy are they trying to follow?

Storjlings say they can’t comment and I’m not sure why exactly. Because they are interested party? They have the most influence on token price anyway so if anything, openly declaring the strategy they are going for long term with token price would make things more transparent and increase trust. Maybe there’s just no strategy yet?

2 Likes
13

Comparing 6 months is not really an argument. I guess you don’t own any fiat then? I consider USD much more relicable and safe than Storj token. But that is just my opinion and you can have yours.

Best comment ever.
:joy: Roastbeef for me please. :rofl:

14

In the USA, inflation of consumer products isn’t really listed in the inflation index. Strange… but true. The inflation index is a rolled up number based on a “basket of goods” within the overall economy. The idea that USD fiat or any other sovereign fiat maintains its value over time is an accounting trick, nothing more.

In the last 10 years, my household’s spending for nearly everything has increased dramatically while also decreasing the quantity of items purchased…

Grocery bill this week was at least $50 more than it was 2 years ago.

The product producers also play tricks with the packaging size and weights… trimming just a little from a packaged product saves the company millions and the consumer hardly notices the difference… We’re still all getting fat… right?

However, the combination of Fed accounting tricks along with product packaging changes result in significantly higher fiat required to purchase the same quantity of any item… let alone quality of that item.

Any sovereign fiat is printed at whims of the government. The central bank determines the quantity of fiat flowing and pretends to ensure that inflation is a somewhat constant low level value. Only one of these two things is actually true… and it’s not inflation.

According to the calculation…

Inflation for 2020 is so far sitting at 1%

…

I don’t know where these people shop – but it’s no where near where I shop.

Some may argue that I “just don’t understand the numbers” … OK. But then what are we talking about here anyway? Aren’t we talking about the purchasing power of the payment for SNOs?

Since we are talking about the purchasing power of SNOs… than all SNOs paid in STORJ who held onto those payments in a “savings” account saw their purchasing power rise by 300% in the last few weeks. If we were all paid in fiat to a CC, and transferred those funds to a bank savings account, we would have seen our purchasing power decrease by a lot. This would also be true for fiat payments over the last 30 years.

Over the last 120 years, most middle class wealth was concentrated in real estate… not in USD.

So, who wants to get paid in purposefully devalued fiat which is demonstrably manipulated by banking systems and governments… and whose rated purchasing power doesn’t even matched the experience of a typical citizen using that currency?

I don’t.

15

Many employees of startups get paid low in USD but significant in stock options. If the startup becomes successful they all become rich. If it doesn’t then they have worked for something close to nothing. Funny enough they all want to become rich in fiat like USD or EURO. So maybe fiat is not at all that bad.

16

Me

Say you can freely choose any currency for your entire household income and expenses, provided your main income is monthly (common situation) and all your regular bills and expenses are in fiat. What currency would you choose?

As much as I don’t like fiat I don’t see a better option because it has predictable short-term value, liquidity and lowest risk. I know I can pay my bills next month and If I want to save it’s value long term I’d convert it to some investment that outperforms inflation. Any such investment would be worse then fiat in either liquidity and/or risk which is ok for long term.

17

Addressing @jammerdan :

Getting paid in stock and selling that stock for fiat is only necessary so that the stock recipient can buy the products that are desired for living… house, car, food, taxes.

As @greener indicates those items are usually purchasable with fiat.

However, there’s no material difference between getting paid in Euro if I live in the USA and getting paid in STORJ if I live in the world of fiat.

Instant exchange of value is not only possible between all currencies… including ERC-20 tokens… but is a normal day to day operation.

If something is priced in USD, and the merchant requires payment in USD… I don’t need to go to a bank and withdraw physical dollars. I can simply exchange whatever currency I have that is denoted in some digital account somewhere for a digital representation of supposed physical dollars.

STORJ can be nearly instantly exchanged for fiat via the purchase of digital gift cards on various online locations. It’s also possible to instantly exchange STORJ for fiat pegged tokens and send that value to a bank via a centralized exchange. The difference in getting paid in stock and crypto is that crypto can be spent to purchase goods and services easier than stock. In fact, one can use it to buy decentralized storage that’s fast and secure.

There are very few downsides to getting paid in crypto… except for the Ethereum blockchain gas fee issue which is temporary and variable.

I would choose ETH … synapse response, no further thought required.

ETH as a salary would allow the greatest flexibility in deciding which portion of my income I would like to gamble with (purchase STORJ for example) or would like to submit to a central bank pegged currency such as USDC, Tether, EURS, or numerous other stable coins that track the value of some sovereign fiat.

So far, I’ve earned about $285 USD worth of STORJ… and added about $100 in BAT to the same wallet. At the moment, my wallet is worth about $530 USD…

 (285 + 100) < 530

And I spent some earnings on various other crypto projects as well. Definitely voting for getting paid in crypto.

If the rest of my family’s income was also paid in crypto, the extra 32% to 35% in effective income would have allowed us to pay off the mortgage. Again, definitely voting for getting paid in crypto. The only thing better would be getting paid in 20% real estate and 80% crypto.

Of course, with a salary paid in crypto, there would be a need to have some level of fiat cash on hand in order to purchase day to day items without the variable transaction fees… or even better some XRP:

https://crypto-economy.com/ripple-xrp-price-analysis-visa-to-support-xrp-payments-as-ripple-bulls-aim-at-0-25/

The world is going crypto… might as well embrace it. There are still people who mail physical checks out to pay bills. Those people mistakenly believe that such actions result in a higher level of assurance of both payment and privacy. Meanwhile… all those mailed in checks are immediately read by an electronic reader at high speed and the payments deducted from the bank account via electronic systems connecting across the Internet. Furthermore, the ink on the check is embedded with metallic particles and can be read through the envelope by anyone with the equipment and access to the envelope. Thus, there is no actual difference paying a bill via electronic payment over the Internet and a physical check sent in via regular mail…

And soon…

There won’t be any difference between using crypto for yourself, and using VISA payments systems, except for the huge fee VISA adds onto the low transaction fee of XRP.

18

Why not STORJ? How is this different to getting paid in fiat? You can just as well convert fiat to any crypt/tokens that you need, and keep the rest for regular spending/bills etc. You’d need to pay exchange fees either way.

What if there’s a processing delay of ~10 days for your salary to land onto the wallet with rates fixed on day 1? I’d be concerned especially if I plan to spend most of my earnings fairly soon.

Most crypto is deflationary by design which is nice, but is too unstable at the moment so can go up/down dramatically in a matter of minutes. Historically ETH has done that much more frequently then USD for example. Provided ETH is about as stable as USD I’d be tempted to be paid in ETH or convert my pay to ETH as soon as I get paid but it will take a while to settle down, if ever. Meanwhile it may be a good higher risk investment.

19

This is a false assumption… which was what I was trying to show.

USD is not stable. It’s not a stable store of wealth. In the last 6 months, the actual value of a dollar has decreased by enormous amounts… the real level of inflation for regular humans using the USD as a method of payment and salary is probably somewhere are 10% … the “official” statistic does not translate well to Point of Sale prices for individuals. Therefore, USD is not stable.

Also, since both ETH and USD vary according to purchasing power individually, it’s not really possible to see the actual comparable “worth” of each in a chart that compares the exchange value of one for the other… except if one tries to figure out how much product one can purchase.

A loaf of bread might be $2.99 USD and then rise to $3.50 USD.

Meanwhile, the exchange value of ETH to USD might have fluctuated from $250 to $470 …

Let’s work through an example with a loaf of bread at $2.99 with USD at $250 ETH :

  • Percent change in price:

    (3.50-2.99) / 2.99 = 0.171

  • Original loaf of bread priced in ETH:

    2.99 / 250 = .0119600 ETH

  • Higher priced bread priced in higher exchange rate ETH:

    3.50 / 470 = .007446808510638297 ETH

  • Immediate exchange rate change ETH to USD:

    (470-250) / 250 = 0.88

  • Loaf of bread price drop in ETH:

    (.0119600 - .007446808510638297) / .0119600 = 0.377

So, while the price of the loaf of bread rose 17.1% in USD. That same loaf of bread dropped 37.7% in ETH. This represents a 54.8% increase in purchasing power while ETH itself increased 88% in exchange value with USD.

Everything in always in a state of flux. Stability of currency is an illusion created by those with the power to control the levers of society.

20

:upside_down_face:

To me this is exactly an example of how ETH is less stable then USD, it’s just the positive one. It can loose value just as well, like it did on March 12 this year loosing half it’s value in one day, and quite a few more times before. When was the last time USD lost half of it’s value in one day?

Seems we’re not going to change our minds here so I’d leave it at that. Appreciate your input though and I understand the points you make and can relate to them for sure.