A Plea to Large Peercoin Holders to Help us Purchase Peercoin.org

I have been in contact with the owner of Peercoin.org over the past several weeks and have talked it over with some members of the community about the possibility of using funds from dead projects on Peer4commit in order to purchase the domain name for the community. After some debate on this issue, it seems that it might be best to leave these limited funds available for use in Peercoin related project development instead.

But instead of giving up, some of us want to see if any large Peercoin holders will be able to come to our aid and help the community with purchasing this domain name. It’s not worth it to spend our limited development funds on it, but if we have outside help from a whale or two looking to help the community, (and their investment as a result) that is a different story.

The reason why the Peercoin community should value the .org isn’t about current traffic associated with the domain. Traffic is one of the reasons the name is worth it to the current owner, as it generates passive revenue, but it’s not representative of what the domain is worth to US. The Peercoin name is our identity. It’s how our customer base perceives us. It’s a lifetime asset that will contribute towards our failure or success.

The .org extension is heavily identified with open source projects, and people expect successful projects to own their brands in the .org namespace. This ‘link’ has been continuously forged over the decades, with multiple projects picking the .org and not the .com, just like business favored using the .com since the dawn of the Internet.

There is also always the possibility of someone purchasing peercoin.org in the future for malicious purposes. What will prevent the new owner from creating a fake Peercoin website with a trojan, offering an altered wallet that steals deposited funds or using Peercoin’s name for offering services and scamming people. This is a very real possibility in the future if Peercoin were to gain any kind of traction and it would throw our name in the mud. We have already had a taste of this when Peercoin.com was redirected to Litecoin’s website for a short period of time in the past, but it could be much worse.

Right now may be the best time possible to purchase the domain. Peercoin has been suffering over the last couple years, but is in the beginning of a turn around phase. A year from now after we start releasing projects like PeerAssets or PeerKeeper, this domain could be much more expensive than it is now and we will have lost our window of opportunity to buy it.

While small donations from regular community members are encouraged, there most likely won’t be enough to fully fund the purchase of the domain. That’s why I’m asking if large Peercoin holders can help with the purchase of this domain name. If you are a Peercoin whale or even know one, please alert them to this thread.

1. The owner of the domain will most likely be reading this thread, so I’ll leave info about the full price of the domain out of this thread in order to prevent negative talk about the owner.
2. If you are a large Peercoin whale and would like to know the full cost of the domain for donation purposes, please PM or email me at Sentinelrv[at]Gmail.com and I can supply that info.
3. In the event the goal is not reached and we don’t receive enough to fully fund the purchase, all donations will be redirected toward Peercoin related development, except in the case where you provide a refund address.

All donations can go to the following Peercoin address…

Withdrawn due to discussion below.

Remember, if larger holders would like info about the full cost of the domain, please PM or email me at Sentinelrv[at]Gmail.com. If you know any large holders, please let them know about this thread so they can help, thanks!

How much does this individual want for the domain?

Last time we went through this, the domain owner wanted $15k (this was during bubble times in January 2014) and people on the forum were bad mouthing him, which upset him. I would like to prevent that from happening this time, so I’ll only disclose the total cost to any large holders who ask me via PM.

I will say that it is less than $10k now, but still a significant sum that small donations won’t be able to fulfill. That is why I ask for help from whales, who could easily help us and not see much impact to their overall holdings. I imagine you can most likely find them on btc-e chat.

With all do respect, I think he can keep the domain. 10k would be better spent elsewhere. If he wants to hold the domain hostage, fine. What is wrong with peercoin.net?

I wouldn’t be preoccupied with the site turning into a conspiracy against us.

I’d say 2-3k and we would still be being very very generous. I won’t donate at 10k, and wont donate until a price under 3k is secured.

[quote=“SLKRD, post:4, topic:4035”]With all do respect, I think he can keep the domain. 10k would be better spent elsewhere. If he wants to hold the domain hostage, fine. What is wrong with peercoin.net?

I wouldn’t be preoccupied with the site turning into a conspiracy against us.

I’d say 2-3k and we would still be being very very generous. I won’t donate at 10k, and wont donate until a price under 3k is secured.[/quote]

This is what we offered last time ($3,000) and he refused, so we dropped the issue. The owner believes the true value is higher than $3k. Multiple people in our community have suggested the $3k price now, but I just don’t think he’s going to accept it based on my correspondence with him.

And just to be clear, I am not proposing that we all strap ourselves in order to purchase this, because as you say our money can be better spent elsewhere, such as emerging projects like PeerAssets. Instead, I am making a direct appeal to large holders of Peercoin, not small holders. Large holders can easily afford this without breaking a sweat. It should only be done if we can find a couple large holders that are willing to help fund the majority of the purchase. If none are interested in helping, then we shouldn’t do it.

Also, I said it is less than $10k, not $10k.

[quote=“Sentinelrv, post:5, topic:4035”][quote=“SLKRD, post:4, topic:4035”]With all do respect, I think he can keep the domain. 10k would be better spent elsewhere. If he wants to hold the domain hostage, fine. What is wrong with peercoin.net?

I wouldn’t be preoccupied with the site turning into a conspiracy against us.

I’d say 2-3k and we would still be being very very generous. I won’t donate at 10k, and wont donate until a price under 3k is secured.[/quote]

This is what we offered last time ($3,000) and he refused, so we dropped the issue. The owner believes the true value is higher than $3k. Multiple people in our community have suggested the $3k price now, but I just don’t think he’s going to accept it based on my correspondence with him.

And just to be clear, I am not proposing that we all strap ourselves in order to purchase this, because as you say our money can be better spent elsewhere, such as emerging projects like PeerAssets. Instead, I am making a direct appeal to large holders of Peercoin, not small holders. Large holders can easily afford this without breaking a sweat. It should only be done if we can find a couple large holders that are willing to help fund the majority of the purchase. If none are interested in helping, then we shouldn’t do it.

Also, I said it is less than $10k, not $10k.[/quote]

Last time market cap for PPC was a lot higher, i think 3k $ is actually too much and i suggest the community not to pay more then that.
Can you also provide a BTC address for BTC donations?

I have only ever used exchange addresses for Bitcoin. What would be a good easy to use lightweight client for Bitcoin donations? If someone can suggest a wallet, then I’ll offer a Bitcoin address as well.

I have only ever used exchange addresses for Bitcoin. What would be a good easy to use lightweight client for Bitcoin donations? If someone can suggest a wallet, then I’ll offer a Bitcoin address as well.[/quote]

I suggest we do not raise funds in Peercoin. The seller of the domain is surely going to dump that money which would end up in a large sell wall for Peercoin.

If the seller of the domain truly cared about our project, he wouldn’t be holding it ransom this way. In life there is other ways to gain value, and karma is one of them.

I don’t mean to insult the guy. But he should know that even just raising $3,000 USD worth of crypto is hard for our community based on our history.

Fundraising should be done with Bitcoin only. Then if he wants to convert it to fiat to go spend it on himself, he could.

I would like the name. However should we not get it, and it be used for anti-peercoin reasons, I hate to say it, but the domain may end up being worthless.

There are massive bot owners that would redirect their attention to peercoin.org if it were used for illegitimate purposes and totally plow that domain into non-existence via DDoS, hacking, whatever.

Let’s be reasonable people.

So my advice is:

  1. Really encourage the owner to bite the bullet, and take $3,000

  2. Only raise funds with Bitcoin

  3. Owner of the domain: Please find it in your heart to be reasonable here. Really. If you really want to make money… buy some peercoin (or more peercoin) hold. Give the domain back to the community for cheap. We need it as part of our plan to get peercoin to where it belongs.

Good luck to everyone. Sigh…

I am not convinced that having peercoin.org running loose in the wild represents much of a problem or threat. A decade ago this might have been a reasonable concern, but my understanding is that the significant majority of first-time website visits originate on the search engines, primarily Google. Google is adept at filtering out the junk and that’s why people trust it and use it. Peercoin.net is highly unlikely to get dislodged from its top ranking on Google and that’s infinitely more important than owning other variants or suffixes, particularly a dot-org.

I don’t think he cares about Peercoin or believes in it. This seems to be what he does for a living, so I highly doubt he’s going to go easy on us.

I can do this, but like I said above, I need someone to suggest a lightweight and easy to use Bitcoin wallet, as I’ve never used one before and I’m not sure which one would be good to use.

So the consensus seems to be the following…

1. The asking price is just way too much and the community can’t afford it without outside help from a whale.

2. Multiple people have suggested that a price of $3k is more reasonable and can possibly be achieved by the community.

3. While .org would be nice to have, it’s just not completely necessary as search engines like Google will point people toward the correct website and filter out the junk.

4. We should be raising money in BTC instead, to prevent sell pressure on exchanges.

I can change it to a BTC address if somebody suggests a wallet to use and then we can just let this sit and see if somebody comes around and helps us. If somebody does help fund the purchase, great. If nobody helps, then I will need to let the owner know that we just don’t have the fundraising power necessary to give him what he’s asking for and maybe he will realize the only way he’s going to get paid for the domain is if he lowers the asking price to something we can afford.

I’ll re-state my contention that owning peercoin.org is completely unnecessary. I have been managing domains and various websites since 1999. This causes me to get solicitations from domain name squatters, offering a .net, .org, .biz, or some variation with hyphens or plurals. At this point, I wouldn’t even take them for free because there is still the recurring annual cost and headache of renewal. You will have to include extra costs if you desire privacy/anonymity.

Go to a site like namedroppers.com and note how many different versions of peercoin domain names have been registered. You can be certain that the majority have been acquired by squatters and are parked. Who knows where the other names point? Yet Google filters out all of these and delivers searchers to the correct landing point. Google’s business model depends on their ability to do exactly this.

Note the suffixes on two of the largest open-source repositories:

sourceforge.net

and the official homepages of the biggest open-source project out there:

I can do this, but like I said above, I need someone to suggest a lightweight and easy to use Bitcoin wallet, as I’ve never used one before and I’m not sure which one would be good to use.[/quote]

what about a paper wallet? Doesn’t get more lightweight. Spending can be done with any client later.

However i agree with [member=30870]sportscliche[/member] that it is not worth it.

[quote=“sportscliche, post:13, topic:4035”]Note the suffixes on two of the largest open-source repositories:

sourceforge.net

and the official homepages of the biggest open-source project out there:


ubuntu.com
linuxmint.com[/quote]

Point taken.

Just a note, that quoted text of mine is actually something the domain owner wrote in one of his emails. It fit in the OP, so I included it.

So how about this instead? Is there anyone out there that would like me to leave up a BTC donation address just in case we get lucky? Or should we just drop the issue once again and move on with more important things? Sportscliche has show that it’s not very important. If anyone feels we should leave up a donation address though just in case, then speak up so I know, otherwise this will most likely be my last post in this thread.

Sure why not?
If we get lucky, we buy, otherwise we don’t.
Shall we generate a multisig address?
If some trusted community members leave their addresses, I’ll create a multisig address.

[quote=“hrobeers, post:17, topic:4035”]Sure why not?
If we get lucky, we buy, otherwise we don’t.
Shall we generate a multisig address?
If some trusted community members leave their addresses, I’ll create a multisig address.[/quote]

I agree with hrobeers generating the bitcoin address. I’d even agree for hrobeers for managing it too… He’s proven he’s trustworthy and technically adept.

We’re looking to raise 6 BTC minimum for the offer, but would prefer to raise 20 BTC

Who knows. There’s some really rich whales out there that might just fill it up. Especially if there was a hacker that stole some btc and doesn’t mind filling it with coins. I really don’t care where the donations seed from, it would just be nice to see it.

(I know that sounds awful. What I mean by it is… once a public BTC address is advertised for a purpose, where the money comes from, could literally be from anyone and anything. The money would go to a good cause).

As time goes on though, it’s true, peercoin.org is losing value. Look at all the TLD’s now:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Internet_top-level_domains

1/2 way down the page shows all the new ones like:

peercoin.coffee
peercoin.gives
peercoin.gold
peercoin.love

As time goes on eventually .com, .net, .org won’t matter. The domain squatter that has .org is losing his bargaining power daily. He should hurry up and agree to the 3K

Thanks by the way Sentinel for bringing this up. We can’t say the community didn’t have a chance.

I’ll do a multisig test soon. We need trusted members to participate so we know they only hold one key.
So if I’d die tomorrow, the funds are still in the hands of the community.

I like this experiment, it’s simple but there is too little of these done in practice.

It may be better to register a top-level domain .peercoin ?