The point of this essay is not to provide a plan for Gridcoin to gain market value, but to stress the importance of developing such a plan by the Gridcoin community. Obviously, Gridcoin needs tech developers, but increasing the value of the coin itself requires financial expertise as well. The community needs to develop leaders in increasing the utility and thus the value of the coin.
We need finance gurus, salesmen, social media wizards, economists, and evangelists.
As I begin, I have to make the caveat that I do not have an economics background beyond one semester of micro-ec in my undergrad studies. I was successful in building my retirement fund (when I had one) by dealing in stocks that had dividends, or were undervalued, but mostly in trading stock options on those kinds of stocks. I added 8% per year over market growth in the two years before I I pulled to account to finance my own business. That business itself failed. Please keep that in mind as I continue.
The basics of economics are supply and demand. The developers that build the wallet and support mining tech sustain the means of mining. The miners then create the supply of coin. What Gridcoin needs to succeed as an altcoin is demand for it's use. Our community needs to build a team of financial minds to create that demand as surely as it needs the skills of our developers. That team of leaders will need to build a plan, assign responsibility for each part of the plan, and organize the community for assistance to the plan.
I will add some suggestions for such a plan.
First, objectives for the plan should be defined by roles, not jobs. Roles can be split up by teams of responsibility, or several roles may possibly held by one individual.
Second, the community has to recognize that the "financial team" will most likely be comprised of volunteers. If volunteers do not already hold stake in Gridcoin, there must be incentive for them to put their time in. (At this time, I must state I am probably not a good candidate for leadership on this team, as I lack focus in my dotage)
Third, the "finance team" should not make promises that the devs cannot fulfill, nor should the aims of Gridoin be driven by the "Finance team". Thus the "finace team" needs to stay in coordination with the devs.
Finally, I will make specific suggestions:
On the supply side, we need to alert those that are already helping science by contributing to BOINC that there is a reward mechanism in place for them.
Also on the supply side, we need to recruit crypto-miners from all over the altcoin community. We have two strong selling points in commitment to aiding science and in the access to mining technology.
There are several areas to consider on the demand side; starting with the major selling point of Gridcoin. Gridcoin is created by scientific contribution. There is an intrinsic value in the creation of Gridcoin ( this is also a reason for getting the majority of the BOINC community to participate in Gridcoin, to increase the validity of this major selling point).
The next area of focus in creating demand would be to have the United States government accept Gridcoin as legitimate payment for taxes. Because we can point to the creation of Gridcoin via scientific research, we have a moral standard for this argument.
A progression of logic would be to work on having universities accept Gridcoin for tuition. The initial sales targets of this approach should be those universities whose programs benefit from BOINC computing.
By having state institutions accept Gridcoin, we set a floor value on the coin which matches the social contributions of it's generation.
Other related industries to sell the idea of accepting Gridcoin should be textbook publishers and scientific suppliers.
We need not attempt to emulate the rise in market value of Bitcoin. Bitcoin's semi-anonymous nature made it an attractive use of currency for illicit venture. The nature of this commerce made governments leery of it's use ( and the rent-seekers within governments resentful of the lost tax revenues). Government pressure on banks led to hesitation in the use of Bitcoins for legitmate commerce, and to a rather ignorant media portrayal of Bitcoin. An overview of these concerns can be found in Singh's "The New Wild West: Preventing Money Laundering in the Bitcoin Network" (2015).
I wish to note that individuals within the community are already working on making Gridcoin viable on the market. One example is this MPA: http://www.cryptofresh.com/a/GRIDCOIN
In conclusion, I make the following arguments: One, that volunteers within the community organize as a team to promote the value of Gridcoin; Two, that this "finance team" put together a plan of defined objections for this increase of value; Three, that roles be assigned to each objective, and individuals asked to be responsible for achieving each objective; Four, that the BOINC community needs to be enveloped in the Gridcoin fold as a reward for thier current efforts; 5th, that state instituitions need to be sold on the idea of accepting Gridcoin.
I would ask two things of commenters on this post:
First, harsh criticism is needed as I frankly am not expert in the areas I am discussing
Second, links to current projects along these lines be posted here for all our edification.
Good Mining!