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Re: New Charity Organization - BLOOM
« Reply #15 on: January 28, 2018, 10:36:31 PM »
Rob,

I based my $16000 on the price of 2.8 mil coins with our current new average price. I will also have you notice that we have now a nice average 24h volume of more than 2-3 btc, if you do it slowly, you won't "crash" the market by selling it now. You would have to wait 24h+ to sell everything which doesn't seem to be that difficult.

Explain your calculations if you don't agree with that because I think it is pretty straightforward. Look at the price of bitcoin, look at the price of BBP, look our average 24h trading volume.  So no, what I said is not "hogwash".

I said that IT integration the way you want is not necessary. A charity could have volunteers work with us on a personal level (which I think would be more beneficial for us). Bloom said that they have or could have a Bio page, photos and everything . It would just not be integrated with your pool.

My assumption, and I think what you also said to 616, is that what you are thinking of may expensive and costly (creating an API). We either have charities develop something for us or us develop something for the charity. I'm sure we both agree that it is expensive in both cases. I think you already expressed your point of view on having us develop something for charities.

My point is that small-medium charity will never work with us because they just don't have that kind of resource to develop an API for us. But they all do have a website with bio, pictures, etc so what I said in previous post is we can work with them in other ways that the "IT Integration" you're thinking of.

Edit: Also forgot to add that I didn't say to split the 2.8mil coin charity budget. I said that if there is "leftover coins" in the superblock (from other budgets such as PR, etc), that it could be good to redirect them to the charity budget and use that for Compassion, Bloom or any other charity proposal that may pop up.

Edit2: I also want to add (in case there was confusion on that part), that's the $16000 are for the superblock coming up, not past. I said that number after accounting for our new price and volume, we didn't have an exchange "working" for nearly 2 months.
« Last Edit: January 29, 2018, 02:35:40 AM by Alex »


Re: New Charity Organization - BLOOM
« Reply #16 on: January 28, 2018, 11:34:10 PM »
I realize parts 2 & 3 of the IT integration may not be possible (the letter writing interface).  But - I need a person who says Yes, meaning that someone will find a way to accept a typed letter in the mail, and we can have you and 616 mail them out personally once per month.

I'd be more than happy to set up a PO Box to allow for physical mailings.  I've got a pair of MFP machines, can print in color or B/W and would be honored to be the physical point of contact for such items.


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Re: New Charity Organization - BLOOM
« Reply #17 on: January 29, 2018, 07:34:23 AM »
Rob,

I based my $16000 on the price of 2.8 mil coins with our current new average price. I will also have you notice that we have now a nice average 24h volume of more than 2-3 btc, if you do it slowly, you won't "crash" the market by selling it now. You would have to wait 24h+ to sell everything which doesn't seem to be that difficult.

Explain your calculations if you don't agree with that because I think it is pretty straightforward. Look at the price of bitcoin, look at the price of BBP, look our average 24h trading volume.  So no, what I said is not "hogwash".

I said that IT integration the way you want is not necessary. A charity could have volunteers work with us on a personal level (which I think would be more beneficial for us). Bloom said that they have or could have a Bio page, photos and everything . It would just not be integrated with your pool.

My assumption, and I think what you also said to 616, is that what you are thinking of may expensive and costly (creating an API). We either have charities develop something for us or us develop something for the charity. I'm sure we both agree that it is expensive in both cases. I think you already expressed your point of view on having us develop something for charities.

My point is that small-medium charity will never work with us because they just don't have that kind of resource to develop an API for us. But they all do have a website with bio, pictures, etc so what I said in previous post is we can work with them in other ways that the "IT Integration" you're thinking of.

Edit: Also forgot to add that I didn't say to split the 2.8mil coin charity budget. I said that if there is "leftover coins" in the superblock (from other budgets such as PR, etc), that it could be good to redirect them to the charity budget and use that for Compassion, Bloom or any other charity proposal that may pop up.

Edit2: I also want to add (in case there was confusion on that part), that's the $16000 are for the superblock coming up, not past. I said that number after accounting for our new price and volume, we didn't have an exchange "working" for nearly 2 months.


I'm sorry for sounding rushed, but Im working on a proposal whitepaper and proof of concept for a new relationship and dont want to lose this new value add for biblepay - The value I am referring to is "missed opportunity value".  We have a very valuable opportunity right now that I dont want to see pass us by.  This opportunity is probably worth more than 70 million market cap, which could help over 50,000 orphans.  So I need to keep this at a high level so we dont miss the forest from the trees.

The reality is we dont have a trader who is going to sit in front of our only exchange and sell at 24 hour peaks.  Sure, OK, I will cave and sell the 2.8MM compassion coins a little slower, but again, your asking me to do more work.  Maybe we can set up a system to have a volunteer run the trade desk, its possible, but my plan is actually to work with the other group and get on the big exchange, so that problem actually solves itself.  I raise payroll on bittrex, and it doesnt move a cent when I pay my guys.  CCEX moves about 50%.  If we sold 20% for 5 days it would move 25% and backfill each day, I know that.  Ill give that a shot during the next budget.

Either way I want to make my point.  Last month I was able to raise .87 BTC for 1.7MM coins.  Yes, that is a huge improvement.  As you can see our price dropped 35% this morning.  Lets ground ourselves in reality boys.  We can not guarantee .87 is going to happen every time, even if you are the chincienst of the cincy.  So that means we most likely will raise about .87 for 1.7MM, and even if we did, I was under the impression we wanted to pre-pay the orphanage sponsorships for 6 months before taking on new risk?  Where is the money coming from.

(I based my scathing reply at the top primarily because of that understanding - prepaying our current 187 for 6 months first and opening the door slightly, a crack, slightly for competing vendors, sure the crack can be wider if the org works with us - in some way shape and form).

But, Its reckless to try to blow 1 million out of our 2.8M charity when we have not paid one month up front for any orphans yet.  That is my main point.  Its not that we cant squeeze more out of the market.  The other thing to take into consideration is our 40 day superblock average due to slow block times.  That adds up to a 25% delay in compassion payments.  25% is a big number!  Why do you think I error on the conservative side? That is equivalent to missing a payment once every 4 months.



So yes, its possible we have an extra 500K budget, but I would rather get a lock on my vendor caving on at the very least - Partial IT integration - Orphan Bios, and the ability to receive mailed letters.

As West just said he would hand mail a letter.  (Thanks West, thats great!)
   That would make me happy, then the investors could click on the links like any other link and we could have a column for Charity populated (actually we have that already).




« Last Edit: January 29, 2018, 07:36:31 AM by Rob A. »


Re: New Charity Organization - BLOOM
« Reply #18 on: January 29, 2018, 07:44:35 AM »
Hey Rob,

I think there is some communication issue happening.

I was not saying we should split the 2.8 mil coins charity budget. I was only talking about unused coins (from other budgets) when close to the superblock that could be used to fund charity proposals (Compassion, Bloom or others).

I know about the volatility of prices as I said in my first post but I think the prices are actually much higher in the morning (for me) than they are in the evening (now) so we will see if the pattern is confirmed. I understand about it being more work for you and that's why I asked Bloom (for example) if they would accept payment directly in BBP, as it would lift up that burden from you.

Concerning the risk you're talking about, I think it was talked about not sponsoring more orphans through Compassion and instead prepaying for the ones already sponsored. I don't think this was excluding looking at other charity proposals (while still making sure to pay Compassion).

I'm personally waiting on numbers from Bloom to make my own personal decision.

Edit: To make it clear, I would like the 2.8 mil to go to Compassion first and if we have leftover coin from other budgets, to possibly use it towards Bloom.
« Last Edit: January 29, 2018, 08:13:21 AM by Alex »


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Re: New Charity Organization - BLOOM
« Reply #19 on: January 30, 2018, 08:35:29 AM »
Thanks Alex, well why didnt you say so, LOL, just kidding.

OK, I see where you are coming from.  I had a strong consternation against taking away from the 2.8M from compassion originally, as I knew that real danger of not prepaying in advance, but this comment above paints it in a different light.

We are basically saying lets consider this proposal for payment outside of the charity budget - at the expense of some of the other categories.  Since we are a compassionate organization, well then Yes, I say Yes to that in Jesus name.

April said the following in summary:

880,000 BBP ($2640) to cover 10 children in emergency status for 3 months in Rakai, Uganda (ideally to continue in 3 month increments for same 10 kids)
108,000 BBP ($324) to feed 3 children at the Sierra Leone orphanage for 3 months (ideally to continue in 3 month increments for same 3 kids, and possibly add more kids each time a superblock is reached)
Total Request: 988,000 BBP

She wants us to sponsor 10 children in emergency status for 3 months, and feed 3 children in Sierra Leone for 3 months.

So if you want to bend my arm, I still have 4 small issues Id like to take care of- if we can knock these out I would vote YES:

1)
   From an IT perspective, what I would like to do is :  See a bio for these 10 children from an HTTP link, so that I can enter these 10 children in our database if this proposal passes.  All I need is a public HTTP page with 10 links for these 10 children. 
2) I would like an address where we can mail physical letters to - one concentrated address, so that our online letter system may dump this to paper, and Ill ensure the letters are mailed to  Aprils letter address.
3) I would like bio links for the 3 children in Sierra Leone we are feeding, but in this case, I will modify our system so investors can see the category desgination  (something like MEALS_PROGRAM) or something -   In summary for #3, just the ability to click Bios of these 3 kids also.
4) April will handle the liquidation of the BBP from her organization, and spend it for us, Rob will not need to convert BBP -> BTC for BLOOM :).

April, would you be able to make these 4 things happen?  If so Ill vote Yes on this proposal.



Re: New Charity Organization - BLOOM
« Reply #20 on: January 31, 2018, 04:03:15 PM »
    Hi Rob and Alex, thanks for helping hash this out so we could come to an understanding. We have the same goals, just very different ways of achieving them as we all have different expertise and experience in serving the children. There's bound to be growing pains both ways:

    1)
       From an IT perspective, what I would like to do is :  See a bio for these 10 children from an HTTP link, so that I can enter these 10 children in our database if this proposal passes.  All I need is a public HTTP page with 10 links for these 10 children. 
**Give me a couple days to work with the volunteer who does our website and with our Sponsorships Director. I think it's do-able, but I'm not a website guru so I want to make sure we can set those up, even if on hidden pages.
2) I would like an address where we can mail physical letters to - one concentrated address, so that our online letter system may dump this to paper, and Ill ensure the letters are mailed to  Aprils letter address.
**We can take electronic letters (that would be easier) but just not sure how that could work. Can your online system dump to an email address? If so, [email protected] and she will forward those to our orphanage partners. We rarely get mail to them since they're rural and customs is far from them. If you want a physical address though, we can scan and send them to the kids:
Jennifer Borsh
PO Box 319
Villa Rica, GA 30180
Just to make sure on expectations though, how often do you need letters back? Usually we can get them once a month for Uganda, sometimes twice a month for Sierra Leone.

3) I would like bio links for the 3 children in Sierra Leone we are feeding, but in this case, I will modify our system so investors can see the category desgination  (something like MEALS_PROGRAM) or something -   In summary for #3, just the ability to click Bios of these 3 kids also.
**OK, awesome, let me work on that.

4) April will handle the liquidation of the BBP from her organization, and spend it for us, Rob will not need to convert BBP -> BTC for BLOOM :).
**Sounds like I'll need to create BLOOM a c-cex account and then a coinbase account to then convert to $$? Give me a few days to look into that as well, or let me know if you know of an easier way?

Thanks again for bending a bit to help make this happen! I really do appreciate the consideration. :)

**Adding another few thoughts that I just had after posting this initially:

1. What happens if BBP tanks (knock on wood) and we end up with a huge gap in the cost for sponsorship in the middle of when the proposal was requested or funded, or before I could transfer the funds out of BBP and into USD$? Maybe you guys have addressed this before, but if so, would you please briefly re-explain what we would do in that case? Would the proposal amount be reconsidered?

2. Alex, I just saw what you meant by "numbers". Thank you for asking. We have one very part time employee - her salary is more of a "thank you" and she puts in so many hours she maybe makes $5-7/hr when all is said and done? That is Jennifer, our sponsorships director. Then there is myself who is paid part time salary but I actually work full time on BLOOM. After the hours spent once our hosting programs are taken into consideration, I make between $5-10/hr any given month. I'm basically a glorified program manager for that program, but it's my heart. I also do all our marketing and PR. I occasionally pay a contract grant writer hourly to help us obtain grants to cover our bigger projects such as sustainable farming, and the teacher training program (not yet public), and also sponsorships and hosting. Our accounting is usually done by me and the board treasurer, but I am actually hoping to contract a bookkeeper asap as the hosting programs get complicated financially. I'm going to ask one of our major donors if they'll consider covering this cost for us. That may be more info than you needed, but I do like to point that out because we both really care about the organization and the kids served, and are willing to volunteer hours above and beyond what we're paid according to market value.

We do have between 5-8 volunteers any given month as well that help us run the programs (excluding the board). Our board volunteers regularly though, and we have one regular volunteer who helps Jennifer with Sponsorships and the farming project. We have one volunteer who helps me with the website and sometimes hosting program admin. We don't currently have an actual IT volunteer (so if someone wants to apply..... ;) ) Then there are between 5-8 "hosting" volunteers each orphan hosting program which happens twice per year. They recruit host families from their churches and mentor the host families who bring orphans over to live with their family for 4-8 weeks during summer or Christmas. They probably volunteer 5-15 hours per WEEK on this program! I thank God for them every day because without them, we couldn't run this program. Hosting is our "reverse mission trip" and our biggest/most admin-intense program. http://www.bloomworldwide.org/hosting/



As for other numbers, here's a brief summary of our impact from 2017:
--We served orphans 53,655 meals among all the sponsorships programs
--76 sets of school supplies were provided to kids in Uganda and Sierra Leone
--76 children received schooling in Uganda and Sierra Leone
--89 children's lives were changed through the orphan hosting program[/li][/list]

Praise Jesus for all His provisions and blessings in 2017!


3. Rob, it just occurred to me that we could do a PR plug for you if BBP sponsors such a large chunk of orphans. We always give a shoutout in our newsletter and social media to sponsors who are OK with being recognized. I am happy to give a shout out to BBP as well. But, could I just please talk to you separately about some of the verbiage used on the site first? I really think just some rephrasing of a few things will come across better to several audiences.
« Last Edit: January 31, 2018, 05:48:07 PM by orphandefender »


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Re: New Charity Organization - BLOOM
« Reply #21 on: February 01, 2018, 07:07:59 PM »
Dear April,
Please see my responses in Blue:

    Hi Rob and Alex, thanks for helping hash this out so we could come to an understanding. We have the same goals, just very different ways of achieving them as we all have different expertise and experience in serving the children. There's bound to be growing pains both ways:

    1)

    Regarding links for children:
    "**Give me a couple days to work with the volunteer who does our website and with our Sponsorships Director. I think it's do-able, but I'm not a website guru "

-> Thanks, awesome.


If you can do it, we will make sure its clickable so our investors have faith in us as we sponsor more children.



2) I would like an address where we can mail physical letters to - one concentrated address

". Can your online system dump to an email address? If so,
[email protected] and she will forward those to our orphanage partners. "  Alternative:
Jennifer Borsh
PO Box 319
Villa Rica, GA 30180

->  Yes, I think this SMTP option is doable.  We can modify the letter sender to send to an e-mail address.


Thanks for working on that feature.


"Just to make sure on expectations though, how often do you need letters back? Usually we can get them once a month for Uganda, sometimes twice a month for Sierra Leone."
-> We dont have specific requirements, but 30 days would be nice.  I currently run the job once per month on the 3rd friday of the month.  This job sents outgoing letters and pays a reward to the users who wrote the letters.


4) April will handle the liquidation of the BBP from her organization, and spend it for us, Rob will not need to convert BBP -> BTC for BLOOM :).
**Sounds like I'll need to create BLOOM a c-cex account and then a coinbase account to then convert to $$? Give me a few days to look into that as well, or let me know if you know of an easier way?

-> Praise God, today we are now on SouthXChange also.  Since CCEX is not accepting new users, you could now create and sell from there.

https://www.southxchange.com/Balance/Index/BBP


**Adding another few thoughts that I just had after posting this initially:

1. What happens if BBP tanks (knock on wood) and we end up with a huge gap in the cost for sponsorship in the middle of when the proposal was requested or funded, or before I could transfer the funds out of BBP and into USD$? Maybe you guys have addressed this before, but if so, would you please briefly re-explain what we would do in that case? Would the proposal amount be reconsidered?

->  If it tanks, I suppose it is OK if you add a follow up proposal for the difference one month later.  Since you had received some to get started, it should not be a problem to vote in the remaining balance.






As for other numbers, here's a brief summary of our impact from 2017:
--We served orphans 53,655 meals among all the sponsorships programs
--76 sets of school supplies were provided to kids in Uganda and Sierra Leone
--76 children received schooling in Uganda and Sierra Leone
--89 children's lives were changed through the orphan hosting program[/li][/list]



-> Praise Jesus, Amen.



3. Rob, it just occurred to me that we could do a PR plug for you if BBP sponsors such a large chunk of orphans. We always give a shoutout in our newsletter and social media to sponsors who are OK with being recognized. I am happy to give a shout out to BBP as well. But, could I just please talk to you separately about some of the verbiage used on the site first? I really think just some rephrasing of a few things will come across better to several audiences.
-> Thats great! Actually Tom (zthomasz) is working on a new website for us (beta.biblepay.org) using the more modern bootstrap site.  I think you could PM him with the changes and he will accomodate.


Thanks a lot for being flexible and I look forward to an extremely bright future with more concurrent children around the globe!




« Last Edit: February 01, 2018, 07:10:48 PM by Rob A. »


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Re: New Charity Organization - BLOOM
« Reply #22 on: February 03, 2018, 05:26:33 AM »
I just wanted to drop in and say that I really like the vibe of the last few posts. I'm hoping for a bright future for everyone involved :)


Re: New Charity Organization - BLOOM
« Reply #23 on: February 05, 2018, 05:32:16 PM »
Rob- I think it may take Jennifer and our web person a bit of time to set up the individual links, and I don't want to leave your investors without bios/photos if you were to send funds right away. Right now they are prepping the website for the Poland orphan hosting program launch, as I'm traveling to Poland tomorrow for a week and will be uploading kids' photos for that. Would it throw a wrench in things if we wait to launch this starting in March? I hate to make the kids in Uganda wait for school, but I can pull some basic food funding from our emergency funds to cover them outside school for this month from a recent private donation. The problem is, I haven't had a chance to set up a BLOOM account on any of the exchanges yet to convert the BBP over to USD, and I know it's already the 5th, so it's technically past the enrollment time frame for the kids to start school this month anyway. Also, I should hear back from the grant application I sent in to support the 10 kids in Uganda another 3 months by end of Feb, and I'm hesitant to move forward without an additional 3 months covered as backup just in case something happens and BBP can't cover them. What do you think? March gives us both more time to gear up, and seems the timing works out better for other things as well, if that's ok with you? And I think we still have to wait for a positive vote to go through anyway, right?
« Last Edit: February 05, 2018, 06:38:16 PM by orphandefender »


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Re: New Charity Organization - BLOOM
« Reply #24 on: February 13, 2018, 10:18:07 AM »
I hope that more sanctuary-owners pitch in in the future in terms of discussion (instead of only voting), because it appears that the original proposal for BLOOM will be included in the next superblock, which is good news for BLOOM, but I'm wondering how the distribution of those coins shall be in terms of charity, seeing that a lot of angles were discussed, but the amount of BBP is based on the original proposal. (Also - of course - the value has changed in the mean time.)

Btw April, I'm absolute pro having a buffer of - as you say - a minimum of three months. I'd rather have it that things grow slow but steady, despite us being in the 'volatile crypto business'.


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Re: New Charity Organization - BLOOM
« Reply #25 on: February 18, 2018, 07:20:57 AM »
Rob- I think it may take Jennifer and our web person a bit of time to set up the individual links, and I don't want to leave your investors without bios/photos if you were to send funds right away. Right now they are prepping the website for the Poland orphan hosting program launch, as I'm traveling to Poland tomorrow for a week and will be uploading kids' photos for that. Would it throw a wrench in things if we wait to launch this starting in March? I hate to make the kids in Uganda wait for school, but I can pull some basic food funding from our emergency funds to cover them outside school for this month from a recent private donation. The problem is, I haven't had a chance to set up a BLOOM account on any of the exchanges yet to convert the BBP over to USD, and I know it's already the 5th, so it's technically past the enrollment time frame for the kids to start school this month anyway. Also, I should hear back from the grant application I sent in to support the 10 kids in Uganda another 3 months by end of Feb, and I'm hesitant to move forward without an additional 3 months covered as backup just in case something happens and BBP can't cover them. What do you think? March gives us both more time to gear up, and seems the timing works out better for other things as well, if that's ok with you? And I think we still have to wait for a positive vote to go through anyway, right?


Hi April,

Awesome, Im glad you are making a difference in Poland!  It looks like your proposal has passed.
SouthXChange.com has been very good lately, even though we are a fledgling small economy, things are getting brighter each day. 
To give you an idea of what I went through with compassion this month, I received 2.8 million coins and raised about .85 BTC.  So Im hoping your experience will be similar on SouthXChange with 1 mil, please, work with Togo if you need any help on that.    Since you have time now, you are free to put in limit orders at higher prices now.

As far as timing, I think its fine with us to wait 30-60 days to get started, but I would like to jump on the URLs as soon as possible.  Could you reach out to someone and have them at least start creating placeholders for the bios, so we have the childrens name and a URL?  We arent asking you all to go out of your way and write a bio for each child, we really just need something the investors can click on from our pool, so we can tie the actual orphan expense sponsorship row back to the orphan record so all of our counts match in the accountability side.

Could you please shoot for end of March for this?  Ill go ahead and make empty bloom placeholders for children and meals over the next 30 days, so our orphan count starts to increase.

Please let us know if you need anything!

Welcome aboard!  Thank you for your patience!




Re: New Charity Organization - BLOOM
« Reply #26 on: February 19, 2018, 09:00:26 AM »
Hi Rob (and everyone)- I'm finally back from Poland and caught up on everything. Wow, just saw the proposal was funded- THANK YOU!!! I have reached out to Jennifer, and asked her to have the urls set up by March 1st. Is that what you mean by placeholders? At that time I will send you what she created (or maybe I'll send you a couple before that so you can tell me if it's what you need). We should have at least short bios on all the kids already, so I hope to have this all set up for you sooner than end of March. What might take longer is selling at the price we want on southxchange (currently setting sell limits now). I may put some on c-cex to help move it along if needed though. It's good to know we have a bit more time.

I appreciate y'alls consideration and "yes" votes for this proposal. I'm so excited to see how we can work together to change these children's lives. I'm encouraged by this partnership already!

I'll get in touch with Tom to start discussing website verbiage. :)


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Re: New Charity Organization - BLOOM
« Reply #27 on: February 22, 2018, 03:08:57 AM »
Congratulations on getting the budget  :D

It's great to see that the growth of our community goes hand in hand with the good we can do.

Maybe in a little while (maybe if/when CameroonOne can also gets some budget and after the introduction of PODC), we can start thinking about PR. It's great to hear that you are also willing to help out with the site.  I think one of our future steps should be to present ourselves in a singular way across our media.