Startup

[Andre Amorim]

Hi all

I was thinking about starting up a small business related to crypto currency / blockchain etc.

and take advantage of the government Kickstart Scheme but at this stage the positions I was thinking about are less than 30.

According to Brent Council website  "SMEs and employers taking less than 30 placements are required to pool their applications together into one bid, managed by an intermediary"

All the best,

Andre

[John Lewis]

What positions were you considering 

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[Ralph]

I always thought about investing more effort in enabling small businesses and shops nearby of how they can accept crypto as payment and its advantages against regular cards.

This seems a nice incentive. What kind of business do you have in mind?

[Amitava Roy]

Hello Andre,

Great to hear your plan. 

I also need another SME for a joint bid to satisfy the minimum 30-placements limit.

I will soon send a direct email to you with more details.

Kind regards,

Amit

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[Adrian Godwin]

Are you aware of the heavy pushback proof-of-work cryptocoin is getting at the moment for its power consumption ? 

Or do you have a good argument why that shouldn't matter ?

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[Amitava Roy]

JUst to clarify, Adrian. My work will be a slightly different s/w app; more traditional and in retail.

- Amit

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[Amitava Roy]

Hello Andre,

"From 3 February 2021, employers will be able to apply to the Kickstart Scheme without a minimum threshold of 30 jobs." This statement is from  the following link:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/kickstart-moves-up-a-gear-with-over-120-000-jobs-created-so-far-and-government-making-it-even-simpler-for-employers-to-join

[Andre Amorim]

Hi all,

Ok let me talk a bit about myself to put things in a context.

I learnt about bitcoin back in 2011-2012 (btw that MIT site is the best 17 minutes to learn Bitcoin 101). Well, at that time I used to play poker online and to improve my game, I used to visit a poker forum called twoplustwo. Back then I guy offered bitcoin to me (was about five pounds each)

I did not know what bitcoin was about, but I ended up at bitcointalk.org. I mined on my laptop a few Satoshis, then I made a GPU rig, FPGA and I invested some spare money in one of the first ASIC models. ASIC mining business is much more complicated (check out How much does it cost to have a custom ASIC made?

As professional miners got involved, my hobbyist mining got obsolete and electricity bills in London for end users are too expensive. Then I had to switch off my miners, but I have made some ROI that helped me to pay my council tax bill etc. then sold all my mined bitcoins and in the end of the day I was happy.

I confess that I thought that Bitcoin was just a toy money of cryptologists or some sort of GCHQ/NSA experiment to explore the deep web economics since anonymous digital money is an old dream of cryptologists [here , Also cited at 25 years old Book Applied Cryptography ]

Few years later I started to pay more attention to the economic side of a predictable and controlled money supplier. If I had paid attention to it, I would never have sold my bitcoins so cheap and now I think people are more aware of how monetary policy affects their day to day lives.

The Bitcoin community is awesome! I have had so much fun, like.. the term hodl never gets old.

So, what do I have in mind for Business? My tutors at Open University suggested to me to learn about Business Model Canvas to better communicate my business Ideas .. but I think I can share my start point.

I would like to be a reseller of crypto currency hardware wallets, I have contacted some manufacturers and many of them have already got affiliate/reseller programs. 

for instance, Safepal But the list is huge

[BIG LIST] Hardware wallets (80+)

@John Lewis, answering your question I was thinking about:

1 - Ecommerce website (so positions for full stack web developers)

2 - Businesses buy/sell logistics

3 – Marketing (Social networking moderators, Youtubers, etc.)

In the second stage I was thinking about development of our own inhouse Crypto Hardware Wallet.

 

@Adrian Godwin … 

Indeed PoW always had that energy consuming criticism, but after all those years I still think that all that energy is well used to keep the bitcoin network safe. Since energy is not free, thanks to the laws of thermodynamics. If I am not mistaken anyone willing to perform a 51% attack on Bitcoin Blockchain to “double spend” a bitcoin will need about 15 billion dollars plus the risk to be discovered 10 minutes later. There are lots of problems also with PoS.. (Fake Stake attack, nothing at stake, hidden stake, etc) and other methods of consensus mechanisms can also lead to a centralization.

Regards to Bitcoin In any case a second layer on top of the main chain called Lightning Network is considered by many as just a form of PoS with ridiculous cheap transaction fees and you can run on your raspberry pi .

Bitcoin is only a problem to the greenhouse if the source of energy comes from thermal coal energy suppliers instead a wind farm in Scotland or hydroelectric power plant with cheap energy subsidized by the government in China.

[Andre Amorim]

Thanks Amitava I will have a look at it..

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