Repraps on Indiegogo

K. For. Cool.

For a number of reasons.

1) I like Indiegogo. Why?

a) It isn’t US-only.
b) It doesn’t have a “if you don’t reach your goal, you get nothing” model. Kindof a risk for the investors maybe… but it favours conversation between investors and inventors.

2) People get a really cool little reprap for like $500. If I’d known this was going on, I would have bought one. I think. I still might – though I’m really more interested in a laser-cutter.

3) It really fucking worked – they got more than double what they were asking for – and they’re only 1/2 way through the alloted time.

4) Open-Source hardware is looking likely to be A LOT more lucrative than open-source software. Just so long as (dear god) we can keep the greed-head “IP” people out.

5) I’m not sure if this is good or bad: Indiegogo (in this instance) is being used for straight retail, rather than crowd-sourced investment.

So um… does that mean that Nike can “crowd-fund” a new shoe? That kindof fucks the idea of Indiegogo if they can. It’s basically being used as an advertising channel for existing businesses – which is not in the spirit of the thing.

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I wonder if there would be any traction in a bitcoin version of this… could be interesting, given the massive volatility of bitcoins at the moment. If you’d d.onated $100 in bitcoins yesterday, it would be worth $150 today, and by “yesterday” and “today”, I mean yesterday and today. Literally.

Bitcoins crashed over the weekend… lost about 70% of its value… probably because you can’t get money into the system on the weekend… so the only money in Mt Gox (the main exchange) is from people who “had some lying about” or who have just panic-sold. It went from $30 down to about $10… and is now back up to $20. Usually Mt Gox turns over about 1 million $ a day. The rally yesterday saw it turn over 2 million $ – and that’s with people not being able to get money into the system.

It’s seriously volatile. I’ve got a couple of thousand $ in there – which is about 10 times what I originally invested (almost all of which is from Golden Mean Caliper sales)… but for me it’s more of a donation. I just want to see the thing work – as an exchange currency, not as a storage-currency.