Burger King launches WhopperCoin crypto-cash in Russia
bbc.com
bbc.com
Maybe I just don't get it but I found this article unintentionally hilarious.
First, the idea of running a distributed ledger to keep track of burger points. This is the tech equivalent of using a bazooka to address an ant problem.
Second, the idea of money laundering and ransom ware...imagining Colombian drug lords cleaning narco dollars into Russian burger points, and my hard drive ending up infected...you can have your files back in exchange for 100 Whoppers in St. Petersburg.
is this what a block chain bubble looks like?
Your first point is a little funny, until you remember all those people who also kept saying that BTC isn't the only thing and replacing fiat currency isn't the only goal. I don't see a problem with it, other than being somewhat wasteful.
I don't think this was ever actually a thing, some people just speculated about the possibility.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/peterjreilly/2014/03/26/bitcoin...
I've got a decent amount of experience with this, and I'm certain there's never been any large scale money laundering activity using Linden dollars. The idea is simply ridiculous, the economy isn't large enough to support it.
I'm not sure what the definition of "large scale money laundering" is in this situation.
There's also one entirely speculative post (again from a videogame cheating forum) proposing a completely unrealistic, and ridiculously expensive approach to money laundering by buying and reselling videogame money.
The paper seems to have been written by mostly clueless people with little understanding of these communities or money laundering.
Bitcoin mixing is also pretty expensive but people still do it, and prior to bitcoin or bitcoin mixing existing presumably people were using a more expensive alternative.
It's hard to prove a negative, there's simply no evidence at all that anyone has ever used videogame money to launder the proceeds of unrelated crimes.
The idea also sounds fundamentally unlikely as videogame currency markets are pretty small¹ and actually getting the currency sold is a long and risky process.
>I've heard for many years that money laundering is common with online currencies
It is. But when people have purpose built solutions like Liberty Reserve and Perfect Money, nobody chooses to waste their time and money on messing with videogame currencies.
>Bitcoin mixing is also pretty expensive but people still do it, and prior to bitcoin or bitcoin mixing existing presumably people were using a more expensive alternative.
Bitcoin mixing has historically been very cheap, right now it still is below 1% cost if you're mixing more than a couple of coins at a time.
¹even for WoW, I used to sell gold
I read everything I could find on the platform though and couldn't find anything but marketing speak.
They do link to their github, but that's a bit deeper dive than I have interest for at the moment.
I mean maybe thats marketing speak if you don't understand it.
The cool thing about waves is that its fun, and that you can lease to people that want to be pools and earn fun stuff. The questionable thing is if the leasing has resulted (or will result) in consolidation making it not distributed.
Are Russians really curious enough about blockchains for this to be effective, or did Burger King's marketing team just decide a $10,000 bitcoin proof-of-concept is more effective than spending an equal amount on traditional advertising?
The devs get to put down on their resume "real" block chain experience.
I write this, because, if you look up block chain on indeed, you'll see some insane requirements.
5 years+ "blockchain experience."
Ok, yeah, that's going to be real common. Five years ago most people weren't aware of block chain.
Now, distributed database, "maybe."
BK is a very sophisticated logistics operation - they probably employ some smart techs. This is just them having some fun, and why not?
[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/assholedesign/comments/6mevf4/kfc_g...
https://www.vrroom.buzz/vr-news/games/kfcs-training-game-sic...
https://www.vrroom.buzz/vr-news/games/kfcs-training-game-sic...
That computer would be the greatest Wonder of the Ancient World, if it could be transported back in time, and powered (solar?) The computational power we all waste each day is almost beyond comprehension.
I read a novel where it was illegal to not spend your spare CPU cycles modelling hurricanes.
[1] "Most Starbucks, Evolution Fresh and Teavana stores in North America including Puerto Rico accept your Starbucks Card. Certain Starbucks-branded locations may not permit you to use the Starbucks Card for payment, including some airport, grocery and bookstore locations, or stores in Guam and others located outside continental North America." https://www.starbucks.com/about-us/company-information/onlin...
[2] "La Starbucks Card activada en Argentina no podrá ser utilizada en tiendas Starbucks ubicadas fuera de Argentina. La Starbucks Card activada fuera de Argentina no será válida en Argentina.", which Google translates as "The Starbucks Card activated in Argentina can not be used in Starbucks stores located outside Argentina. The Starbucks Card activated outside Argentina will not be valid in Argentina." https://starbucksrewards.com.ar/tos/card
That is exactly what happens. Prepaid debit cards and gift cards were and maybe still are both major tools for cross-border money laundering of drug proceeds because they have not been treated with the same scrutiny by customs and border guards as cash. With gift cards, you would buy them in one country, take them to another (typically US), and sell them (on Craigslist, eBay, etc) for $0.98 on the dollar. So it is a very inexpensive and low risk way of international money laundering.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-regulations-moneylaun...
They aren't running it. They are using the Waves platform, which has very easy 1-click asset creation. Waves is also Proof of Stake, so there's no mining involved.
This gives the transparency benefits and distribution benefits, without any of the overhead.
Regarding distribution, waves platform has a culture of airdrops in it.
I find Waves fun. Between leasing, the decentralized exchanges, the airdrops, the dividends, and finding out about the assets that got airdropped or dividended to you, I find myself in the app quite often unintentionally. The airdropped assets are mostly worthless, but the descriptions of the assets are interesting. I would say the fun aspect is different than other cryptocurrencies. Its like finding random stuff in Skyrim, keeps me coming back.
For reference, I buy Waves and purchase Waves Community Tokens (WCT) on the decentralized exchange. Most airdrops go to WCT holders, they just take a record of the blockchain and send to all address with WCT balances.
I lease my remaining Waves to the pools FountainPerpetua and WavesGo. There are plenty of other pools to lease to.
Pools give payments in the form of Waves, because thats what they earn, but they also have the option of giving payments in other assets too, they just need to remain competitive.
So I typically earn Waves, Waves Community Tokens and Miners Rewards tokens.
The WavesGo pool gives WavesGo tokens which are actual shares and actual securities.
WavesGo pools distributes more of its own earnings to all WavesGo holders. You can buy and sell more WavesGo shares on the decentralized exchange.
[0] https://www.computerworld.com/article/2470702/cybercrime-hac...
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2012/03/why-are...
Maybe, but if it was a "tulip coin" then definitely
>The tech company will run the blockchain ledger for the coin to keep track of who has coins and what has been done with them.
>Customers will be able to claim their coins by scanning a receipt with a smartphone.
>[...]the company would be able to shut the system down if it found it was being abused.
So... BK has a database tracking loyalty rewards and they decided to brand it "crypto-cash" for marketing? I mean, if they effectively own the ledger, the coin supply and fix the conversion rate, what's the point?
"I keep hearing about all this Blockchain hype, how do we leverage that?"
Some high-level details: http://www.waveswiki.org/index.php?title=Features#Custom_App...
Whitepaper: https://blog.wavesplatform.com/waves-whitepaper-164dd6ca6a23
I don't own any WAVES: this isn't an endorsement, just figured you guys might want to know how this works "under the hood". Honestly, it seems pretty sketchy. The whitepaper doesn't cite anything other than some github repos and the ethereum whitepaper. There's so many platforms out there that promise they're the best thing since sliced bread: I'd stay away if I were you...
Who could have seen that coming?
In super simplified (edit: and inaccurate) terms, a bunch of WAVES have been specially flagged as WhopperCoins. Any client that receives these specially marked WAVES know that they are WhopperCoins. Even if you could mine WAVES with your GPU (they're PoS not PoW) you wouldn't generate WhopperCoins, because your WAVES won't be specially marked.
This is the basis for how colored coins work [1] and a lot of other token platforms work on similar principles.
Burger King initially controls all 1 billion of the tokens, and is distributing them as part of a rewards program. The only way to get them is to buy food at BK, or to buy it from someone who has some.
[1] https://en.bitcoin.it/wiki/Colored_Coins
Edit: the user below me says that WAVES doesn't work like colored coins, but you still aren't able to mine them. I'd delete my post but I made a slick pun and I can't bear to take it down.
Thanks for the clarification, I guess I shouldn't trust wikis. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
> What is Waves’ advantage over traditional crowdfunding platforms? Waves is a coloured coins blockchain platform with an integrated decentralised exchange. Our unique selling point...
http://www.waveswiki.org/index.php?title=FAQ
Someone needs to consolidate data about these cryptocurrencies in a wiki with the same standards/format as Wikipedia...
This doesn't make sense to me. The whole "innovation" of cryptocurrency is that you don't centralize trust in one party. In this case you already need to trust BK to redeem the coin, so what does an untrusted mechanism of exchange actually give you?
This just seems like cashing in on crypto hype.
A that they are having a lot of success i'd say, we are all talking about their little rewards program and discussing whoppers. Brilliant. Bloomberg going to give them a bunch of free advertising with this.
Of course it is. This is a publicity stunt (and hilarious I might add), as Burger King has been known to do in the past. They've had a brilliant marketing team for a long time.
That way, your customers can transfer points with eachother, etc -- then spend them at your restaurant. It does in fact decentralize trust -- the key here is that it's the restaurant trusting the customer, not the other way around.
Each point only gets spent once, and there's a built-in automated mechanism for "cashing in" those points.
I mean, I agree it's probably dumb for hamburger loyalty points. But it makes a ton of sense for hotel/airline points if you build the wallet into your mobile app and allow consumers to transfer points with each other offline. If it's transparent to the user, there's no reason it couldn't work.
All that said, loyalty points have a lot in common with crypto currencies simply from a functional perspective. It's a pretty natural application. You just merge the points back into the blockchain via an app or something. But this way it's secure, auditable and likely costs the company less to operate.
How many other reward systems allow you to transfer points to other people?
Edit; I bought one whopper coin 3 days ago via WAVES. I paid $0.50USD (majorly overpaid for it!)
This means the company would be able to shut the system down if it found it was being abused."""
Sounds like it's some kind of centrally controlled ledger where no technical purpose is served by a blockchain (if there is even one). So not a "cryptocurrency", then.
They may think this is easier or more fun (probably just more fun) to setup than all reporting to corporate, and no one getting to redeem or trade if their internet to corporate goes down.
Why not implement it on a centralised Burger King server ? Why bother with a distributed p2p network, mining, apps, when a simple mysql database plus a php file can achieve the same thing ?
Am I missing something ? If they want crypto so much, just let people withdraw their points in bitcoin..
I can see the point of a generic "FoodCoin", where each restaurant is a miner and the coins can be used to buy food in any other restaurant in the network.. Or is that their ultimate purpose ?
But then it's not truly decentralised, I guess the model would be BurgerKing and a bunch of satellite restaurants using the same coin somehow...
Anyway, don't really see the point of a block chain, beyond hype..
There is exactly 0 reasons why BK needs a coin of their own. It's all about generating hype and trying to cash in on a fad. The worst part is this is the story that will make headlines and will drive up other bullcrap alt-coins and ICOs because "if BK is doing it then surely there are riches to be made!".
It's gross.
On the other hand I expect BK will drop this sometime between 3 months and 5 years from now, and your BK coins will be worthless. 3 months is all the longer they can sustain the hype, 5 years is longest before the costs of maintaining all their mining machines will budget cut. I won't speculate on if there will be a transition plan for whatever replaces it: if you get these coins turn them in quickly.
On the other hand if it is real its interesting because it has a value pegged to a physical good... though it seems unlikely that BK understands cryptocurrency well enough to deal with "unauthorized miners".
1 Ruble spent generates 1 WhopperCoin
1700 WhopperCoin may be redeemed for 1 Whopper
It seems the 1700 will need to change with currency / pricing fluctuations.
Why not structure it as:
1 Whopper purchased generates .25 WhopperCoin
1 Order of Fries purchased is equivalent to purchasing .3 Whopper (.075 Whopper Coin)
etc.
1 WhopperCoin may be redeemed for 1 Whopper
They would need to adjust the reward generation rates of non-Whopper items occasionally to accommodate price disparities between various menu options in relation to the Whopper, but they would not need to alter the redeemable value of the WhopperCoin. This would essentially create a currency backed by food, which is interesting.
Against this backdrop we have poor Teddy who only ever wanted Nandos but his family are die hard Maccabies to the end. And then his favorite player is traded to Liverpool and the dreaded Chippy Skipper's fry up fish and chips chain.
It did so well that the FB team actually got involved. I always wondered why apps don't do this to each other. "Delete UBER get 1 Free Lyft Ride!"
http://geekologie.com/2009/01/the-burger-king-whopper-sacrif...
corporations have been doing equivalent gift card/promo "pseudo-currency" stuff for a long time, and a bad court decision over this could upend that entire practice.
maybe this is a harbinger of the US being left behind in an economic paradigm shift.
> "There are at present no legal acts that specifically regulate the use of bitcoins in the Russian Federation," but a Russian law firm thinks that using it to buy things there could be illegal given that the Russian ruble is the exclusive means of payment in the Russian Federation per the law. [1]
[1]: https://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2014/01/31/bitcoins...
Well, if somebody gets wind of somebody having 1m+ of what is effectively cash, that person will likely get raided by somebody anyways. Happens all the time
Of course, this gets started in Russia. Next, we'll see Western Union start a 419 coin in Nigeria.
It would be fun if you could mine WhopperCoins and such too.
What a time to be alive
A few months ago I happened to walk by some start-up-themed blockchain event and I stopped to listen to the talk that was going on, and later also listened to part of the next talk. It was fabulous. They must have read "blockchain is just a sequence of blocks with info in them" and went wild from there.
It's a lost cause because the good people in Russia are killed and eliminated with impunity by thugocracy.
You can't have a future when everyone in power is stealing from their own people.
рыба гниет с головы
Drive-through: I'll take a Whopper with... BOOM. Sniper takes out the civilian for ordering the wrong menu item.