WingedKagouti on 17/1/2018 at 15:15
I read something about it earlier today. I'm initially very sceptic partially due to the two factors you highlight. And there are already a ton of cryptocurrencies and new ones seem to pop up every week, making the IRON currency even less appealing unless the store gives access to a massive library of good games. And that takes a bunch of big publishers jumping in on it. Granted, the "Publishers get 70% of the resale value" bit may help attract publishers, but overall it seems like the true winners if this takes off will be Robot Cache. I wouldn't be surprised to find out that whichever client you need to use for their store also silently mines IRON for Robot Cache and that the EULA specifices that you have to allow this.
N'Al on 17/1/2018 at 15:55
Quote Posted by WingedKagouti
I wouldn't be surprised to find out that whichever client you need to use for their store also silently mines IRON for Robot Cache and that the EULA specifices that you have to allow this.
Eh, I doubt that. At the moment, afaik e-currency mining generally isn't viable in the 'Western' world since the electricity costs in doing so far outweigh the actually value of the coins mined in a given timeframe. They would just cut off a huge potential customer base if they enforced mining as per EULA (plus, I'm sure there'd be huge legal ramifications if they did).
WingedKagouti on 17/1/2018 at 16:22
Quote Posted by N'Al
Eh, I doubt that. At the moment, afaik e-currency mining generally isn't viable in the 'Western' world since the electricity costs in doing so far outweigh the actually value of the coins mined in a given timeframe. They would just cut off a huge potential customer base if they enforced mining as per EULA (plus, I'm sure there'd be huge legal ramifications if they did).
Depends on the cryptocurrency, each currency has their own chain structure and thus different value/energy spent mining ratios. While Bitcoin is the big one, it's not the core of Robot Cache. And given the people involved in this scheme I would not be surprised to find if they actually are trying to pull off enforced mining and/or are just going to run off with any money put into the company without giving anything real back.
N'Al on 17/1/2018 at 16:27
Quote Posted by WingedKagouti
Depends on the cryptocurrency
Sure. I'm not aware of
any cryptocurrency that's worth mining here, though, but that doesn't mean there aren't any. FWIW, IRON's based on Ethereum from what I can tell.
Sulphur on 17/1/2018 at 17:40
The only way I see this taking off is if IRON becomes a successful alternative to the current CCs du jour and there's enough liquidity in the market to cash IRON in for local fiat currency on a regular basis. I also assume that resold games can't be re-resold for the same amount, because that way lies a cute way to scupper the market with rotating games across users with a time-share model.
Anyhow, the idea of reselling digital game licenses is tantalising: as a person who'd like to get rid of some of the games from his Steam library, when I read about it this morning, I was like 'all right, finally!'. But then I read the details, and the first blow is that you get 25% of your initial purchase back; the second is that it's in a form of currency locked into its own ecosystem, which is a 1-2 punch that pretty much KO's the idea for me as a consumer.
As long as consoles exist that allow for ownership of physical hard copies that can be traded in or sold, I'd continue to point myself in that direction instead because there remains better value there in comparison.
demagogue on 17/1/2018 at 23:29
Why can't we have a cryptocurrency that is mined by solving problems that actually help people, like figuring out protein folding or reviewing astronomy data or LHC data or economic data?
Anyway, this looks like one of those things where it's the next thing made by another team inspired by this that takes off, but not the original thing itself. That's my first impression.
Renzatic on 17/1/2018 at 23:35
Quote Posted by demagogue
Anyway, this looks like one of those things where it's the next thing made by another team inspired by this that takes off, but not the original thing itself. That's my first impression.
...which is pretty much my opinion of cryptocurrency in general.
