If they had done this long ago and given up on crypto for full fiat this project would have been dead before you became active in this forum. While its very volatile and risky and many traditional companies would consider how they manage finances crazy, it has worked well for them in terms of runway mileage. I suspect it will continue to work well for them because past behavior has shown BTC in the long run to do nothing but increase in value over time. They owe it to those who invested hard earned BTC into the ico long ago to stretch their funding as far as it can possibly go, I think maintaining crypto and selling at around 5x from crash fiat bottoms is a good way to try to play the game and keep this project alive so they can deliver the network.
True they got really lucky in that way…but also if they exited at the top they would have had probably enough, so why did they keep gambling and not exit the casino?
I think if they wana play the crypto game they should hire experienced crypto investors to do it for them at least. Just being like hopefully it will go up enough and we will dump is a very simplistic strategy. Yes crypto seems like it usually works out if your willing to say this is a 5 year investment. Counting on it to work this year cause that’s when you need it is dangerous though. A good investor would be able to shelter them from some of this risk by using more complex strategies.
If they don’t want to be professional about it then really they should just say ok we will pay you a set amount of MAID per hour and all their employees could go do some armature trading (well maybe some are really in to it already and that’s what I am saying… have the pros play the market.)
Hindsight is always 20/20 
, they had no way of knowing 20k was the top, and at that time everyone was so hyped people thought 50k early 2019 was the reality.
There is no fact I can counter here so I will leave it at this-
My opinion: There is no such thing as an “experienced crypto investor”, crypto is still a new asset and anyone that claims they can 100% predict the market is full of s(#*, if someone could do so they would take out 100’s of thousands in loans and multiply that into 100’s of millions with the volatility that crypto has on upswings and downswings. Anyone who has a decent track record of shorting or riding the crypto market has mainly done so with some technical analysis for short term plays but also a lot of luck in my opinion.
I believe MaidSafe already offers Safecoin incentives for their team, meaning that once the network is live and the rewards are coming through getting a piece of that for them all helps offset having to pay crazy high salaries to some of the developers in the event that network launch and success will provide them with a great year to year income for putting in the hard work now at a bit lower pay than they might get in traditional industry. Could be wrong here tho.
Right, that sounds like how I invest cause my goal is infinity money. They just need a certain amount though. Why would they not sell all as soon as that crossed over (or maybe it never did in which case the disparity between assets and costs is larger then I anticipate/hope it is)?
yep that would be like one of those paid group leaders/scamers. No one who is honest would say that they can eliminate all the risk but still get the rewards from crypto trading. Just some people had more practice at the game, and I would tend to think their probability of success is higher.
perfect! That’s what I wana hear! Now how bout at least offering the option to go all in on this. I would think at least some members of the team would be like ok I will take millions in 5 years instead of 100k per year right now. Not everyone, but those with the financial security would take the risk I think. I mean I am not saying force people to at all. Just if they have people ready and willing to absorb some more of the risk of the crypto markets they should take them up on that.
On the topic of “no experienced crypto investor”:
When I was daytrading in all of 2014, my basically-instant-gratification-level of greed/expectation/impatience wasn’t working—I can say this now with hindsight, and/so hopefully it can benefit others (until they want to continue with failure levels of greed/expectation/impatience). I got really excited about all the really high energy coins, and went into them. But I always exited. BTC, Doge, Monero, Ethereum… and a handful of coins that have ultimately failed. The obvious take-away there is the old adage: diversify.
But you don’t want to diversify too much (otherwise, you lose out on the big winners). MAID came along, and I cared about that the most. I’ve stayed in it solely based on the most belief possible. However… I feel, if you really want to make some gains—by forcing yourself to not 10,000% believe in a project that seems to have the most potential beyond anything else (e.g. MAID: based on this team’s and output and innovations)—then you’ll really win out, in terms of pure profit.
If I diversified with only a dozen currencies, i.e. those which I knew had a solid foundation (not based purely on greed, nor even willingly going into scam-coins because of their ideas like XCoin and those Nation-coins lol), I would be holding onto a pretty penny. …And then I could’ve gone into this project with the most potential: MAID, and had gotten even crazier profits over these coming years. So I guess the moral is realize when something is a hell of a lot of work, because that equates to the Most Belief… in my opinion anyway.
Of course, this assumes/hopes that you’d have successfully safeguarded your diversified portfolio by keeping them in your own wallets or 2fa-ing them, both of which can be a big pain of work. Anyway I lost my train of thought by now! There won’t be another situation like crypto again, so I don’t know if any newcomers to markets/stocks can still easily make the correct choices based on analyzing history or the words I have just provided. And this doesn’t really related to Maidsafe funding. But the experienced-trader topic was brought up, so I felt like getting this off my mind, which I had come up with on my own recently. Basically be moderately patient, not mildly, if you feel the fervor of trading for a year; and don’t fall into the trap of one basket fits all; that basket will hold the profits from the lesser projects.
that’s a very good point. Like MAID ok I get why they hold a lot of that. It’s their project and they believe in themselves and that’s good shit. Why BTC though? Cause it was the first? I don’t think that has much merit. If they want to invest in blockchain they should be investing in the best ones not just the one newbs go to first.
Just you know Maidsafe have some good advisers too. And so far they have obviously provided some good advice since Maidsafe is still here.
from what I gather their advisers projected a price and walked away. That’s better then nothing but I think they need someone playing the game day to day.
And it might be good you read more and gather less, cause you are wrong. They are not a once only advisor. They are advisers in a true business sense and not some 2 bit crypto project. Remember that Maidsafe is being run as a real business and proper practises.
Bitcoin is crypto gold.
Its a huge gateway to crypto.
Well worth the hodl.
I’d rather see the project die than be compromised in any way.
Could the FOSS community finish it?
Agree. Patent portfolio should never be for sale.
I think Safemaid at least owes the holders of MAID ownership of the patents.
I also wonder why safenet was not split into a core and a higher layer, and higher layer outsourced to FOSS.
A highly pertinent question! I think it splits into two parts…
a) Would those who are part of MaidSafe now be willing to continue the project if the funding run out? (if not, why not?)
b) Has enough of the design been completed to justify/inspire a FLOSS community to emerge and carry the baton? As far as I understand it there is a lot of design work still to be done, not just the implementation and coding up of existing design work.
It’s also worth asking why despite several attempts to kick-start involvement from the FOSS community, Maidsafe have so far had to go alone.
I think it requires particular skills (so a much smaller pool of people who could contribute) and has remained at the stage of needing a small dedicated core team - which makes it hard for people to contribute.
The project is perhaps approaching a time when more outsiders could contribute, but unless Maidsafe are unable to complete it I don’t think outsiders are able to contribute significantly to the core in the short term.
Later I think it will happen regardless.
This is not so simple, we are a company and pay wages for work. Many folk have families, rent and other commitments. Perhaps then look at community, many maidsafe staff are in the community. I have committed to launch the SAFE network and will. Who helps will be up to them, I think there are several folks would do just that.
To be clear, we have more runway that I had for the first many years and way more opportunities for investment. So it’s a hypothetical and that is fine.
Our best and 100% best bet is to launch a feature minimum complete network. so secure, safecoin, data network of individuals computers running the network. This is key and we have some tricks up our sleeve that you will see in the next 2 months that may have folk spinning backwards wondering how we did that. So watch this space and I hope all going well you will see a company moving fast here. Faster than anyone would believe, based on our last 5 years, where we did have to answer big questions. But don’t take my word for it, let the deliverables speak for themselves in the next few months. that is the best approach, but you will see it all happening in the project plan each week as things move around and blocks fall into place to create deliverables.
At the recent podcase @Viv and I did with @fergish we were not kidding almost all of those fundimentals have been shown in various guises, all we do now is pull it all together, so get the RFCs in line (ticking that off right now) , get impl specs and tasks laid out, resource those, move around the bits to find deliverables through the critical path and see what happens.
During that time we will look at funding closer, but with proof points that are current or very recent and a well laid out execution plan to full launch (the day safecoin is live). The proof though will be in the doing and now you will all see us progress all of this every week. So expect some more RFCs, laid out tasks and some deliverables to keep us all happy.
I both love and hate these kind of quotes.
Please elaborate @dirvine -sensei. Don’t keep us in suspense. Maybe give us a little glimpse, will you? 
Every Thursday 
‘RemindMe! 2 months’
I reckon David has got his sheep coding.