A cap on credit transfers, say, 1000 credits per week max.

OR

A tax on transfers. Say, 10ec tax every time you transfer to a non-linked account.

I prefer the second one.

the latter but only if combined with a reduction in the Ad Tax

Ditto what NYC said.

coincidentally, it is the transfer cap that would effect less than 1% of users, but fully restore the value of the currency

The Tax please, but don't take our freedom away (Freedom is a Must for Capitalism)

Graham said: "coincidentally, it is the transfer cap that would effect less than 1% of users, but fully restore the value of the currency"

That may well be, Graham, but it also restricts us from buying or selling ec in any quantity through anyone other than you! Not a good move for a lot of reasons, imo.

Why bury this topic in a thread no one will find?

Anyhoo, a 10ec tax will fully restore the EC economy? Says who? Alan Greenspan? Can't imagine how that could be the case.

"Graham says: coincidentally, it is the transfer cap that would effect less than 1% of users, but fully restore the value of the currency"

That 1% would be the 110 people that drive the EC engine. They are the ones that have probably added the most value to the site and community overall. Don't forget <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle"> Pareto principle.</a>

I'd just like to know why tax us at all for the transfer of ec's to a non-linked account?

I mean I have earned those ec's by spending a lot of my own time and effort, I should be allowed to do as I please with them. Why do you need to take another chunk when entrecard already take 75% in advertisements?

I say we launch a tea party. This is beginning to be too much. Bad enough we lose 75% of our ad sales to "taxes" but now to restrict EC exchanges in this way ...

I really wouldn't like to see a transfer restriction. Instead of a 10EC tax, why not have a progressive tax?

Uh... why do either one?

Just link your accounts and never see the tax. I'd prefer the 1000 limit though. People are still operating under the false belief their credit farms won't be cleaned up.

first, this is just a hypothetical

second, you'd still be able to sell credits, you would just have to do it through us, under this hypothetical situation, and you would be able to sell all you could handle, and you would earn double what you are currently getting on ebay.

why is anyone upset at this notion?

I'm confused. you're all crying fowl that you would be making twice as much money?

My accounts are already linked. I just bought 3000 ECs for $9. As far as restoring the value of ECs ... ECs are only worth what people are willing to pay and that's all I'm willing to pay. With these new rules in place, either I wouldn't be able to have these transferred to my account or Entrecard would take a chunk out of something I bought. I don't like monopolies and it sounds like you are now trying to have a EC sale monopoly ... only transactions through EC. I remember not too long ago you all "encouraged" the entrepreneurship of people buying and selling ...

@ Graham: I don't know about everyone else, but let me give you some perspective why I strongly oppose this tax on ec transfers to a non-linked account.

Each month at Vivid Lamp we give away between 500 - 1200ec's (on the quiet) to say thank you to those ec community members who have either regularly visited our site for the month, supported or helped us in some way or who are nice people who help other people out in the forums. We do this not to score points, rather to help build a strong relationships within the EC community and with our visitors to our site. Giving people positive reinforcement goes a long way.

Therefore, to put a tax on ec transfers, in my opinion you are discouraging me from forming good relationships with my fellow ec members and in turn punishing me for helping to build a strong community here at entrecard.

no, you're misunderstanding.

first, let's forget I said anything about a transfer tax, because it would have to be put in proper context, and that context would most likely include lowering the ad tax. but anyway,

if the only option for you, or anyone else, was to earn the credits, or purchase them through the entrecard exchange, (which has a seller on the other end of every purchase) by the nature of the economy, it would dictate that those 3000 credits you just bought are worth $30 instead of $9. if this was the case across the board, advertising prices would sink by 50% - 75% so you could buy 3x as much advertising for the 3000 credits, and you paid 3x as much for them, so it all balances out.

@vivid

I agree, which is why I doubt we would ever implement a tax. I just like to get discussion going, I wasn't trying to imply that we were going to do it. Just trying to talk.

Here's a 3rd solution you won't like. If credits are sold and the seller was found to be a scripter, all buyers forfit the amount purchased, even if it puts their account into the negative.

that wouldn't be an issue and wouldn't happen.

stop trying to confuse people turnip!

The issue seems to be once Entrecard profits in any way off the sale of credits, anything seen as causing people to spend more credits, or lose credits, is a "money making conspiracy".

Would it be more profitable for EC to sell actual advertising space that delivers traffic than selling the medium used to swap advertising? What if someone could buy advertising for the blogs listed under the marketing section and every 20 page loads their ad would be shown. Then the people in the marketing section could either opt in or out of the open advertising and receive a fixed rate of return for ads shown or clicked on, whatever... That way regardless of the fluctuation of credits in the system or their value EC is dealing in tangible advertising spaces instead.

Entrecard already profits vis a vis the advertising, of which they take an enormous chunk, and the price of which we have no control over.

I for one am not willing to pay $9.50 per 1k ec. If I wanted to spend that much money on advertising, I could easily get a decent sized banner on a blog outside of EC with a high PR and Alexa, for a full week at the rate of $75.

It isn't like Graham and Phirate are not going to benefit financially from EC.

Turnip, I have a lot of respect for your opinions, but in this case, I very much disagree.

Hold on, let's not get ahead of ourselves here.

We don't take an enormous chunk of the advertising, we delete it. Those credits don't go into our account to sell, they get wiped off the face of the earth, and we do it to create a system that is stable.

Phirate and myself are committed to creating a way in which we profit along with our members. A win-win. That's why we figure paying you 7.50 per 1000 credits, and pocketing 2.00 per thousand is a pretty good deal.

But Graham, most of us don't hoard credits to sell! THat's why we buy them. And, I would have to guess that most of us would prefer to be allowed to choose to pay $9.50 or find ec for less. Choice. It's a beautiful thing. :)

can't argue with that...

Graham, see I drop 300 times a day, and an average 250-300 people drop on me a day. The average price of my AD is 512.

And I have only one blog since blogging is not my main business. Bottom line is I need to purchase EC credits to advertize, so I am definitely NOT a potential seller of credits, but a dedicated buyer, who buys an average of 10,000 credits every 10 days or so.

While I truly love EC, I would prefer to see your efforts directed toward increasing the value of our community, and that is enabling each of use to get quality traffic.

If you can achieve that, the value of the credits will follow naturally. Again, I am not willing to pay 95 dollars for 10,000 credits with the current system. But, if we find a way to increase the true traffic, then I am willing to pay much more

Graham wrote:

That's why we figure paying you 7.50 per 1000 credits, and pocketing 2.00 per thousand is a pretty good deal.

If you apply that now, nobody will sell their credits under $7.50 per 1k. The sellers will have two choices: sell the credits to their regular customers for $7.50 per 1k OR sell them to you at $7.50 per 1k.

The buyers will have two choices: buy the credits from you at $9.50 per 1k OR buy from their regular suppliers at $7.50 per 1k.

I'd say 1, but up it to 2500 or perhaps 5000 per "week". Or 500 or 1000 per day. A daily limit makes more sense than a weekly limit imho.

A 10ec tax would mean you can't really give out 20-30 credits for digg, stumble or small contests etc anymore. This would affect a LOT of people and cut down on random community donations or contests. So, i think this would be very a bad idea.

Option 1 seems the best idea, the only people affected by that are the ones selling credits. You'd just need to find a value that's acceptable.

Personally i don't care to make any money out of this, though money is never a bad thing. You don't want to strangle it down too much, as you'd just create a black market.

People could create 10 accounts, and put credits on each of those. Then if a customer orders 10000 credits, they could get 1000 credits from each of those accounts and be set for a while.

Software Outsourcing wrote:

I am not willing to pay 95 dollars for 10,000 credits with the current system. But, if we find a way to increase the true traffic, then I am willing to pay much more.

Alternatively, Graham can reduce his selling price to say $6.00 per 1k, and the sellers sell their credits to Graham (or directly to advertisers) at $4.00 per 1k. Graham still makes the same profit of $2.00 per 1k.

Graham,

I don't won't either.

Instead, do it this way. If you prefer people to trade within EC then ban all transfers outside of linked accounts.

If people want to sell then they do it through EC. You take a very small commission on trades. Let's say 1%.

You get everything you want from that. No private trades. The price settles at the market price within the confines of EC. You make a little on the side for EC.

It's how the stockmarket works.

There are ways around your ideas. I can think of a few right now. Think hard and you can too.

@Outsourcing to china

In terms of the quality of traffic, I have you so covered you don't even know. Just wait till our next big announcement. Reading your message, it's almost like you read my mind and the future.

You can't force people to appreciate your blog.

Both those options could make it harder for people who have been using Entrecards in contests, with large numbers up for grabs as prizes.

Large contests would simply switch to cash prizes instead.

Small contests would die, which is bad for the community.

I support neither position. I understand the reason why Graham and Phirate would like to implement a tax transfer or a transfer cap, but I think there are other ways of addressing the same problem.

I've been running a poll on one of my blogs that surveys how much folks are willing to pay for 1000 ECs, and while I only have about 10 responses so far, the top price is $5 and most would pay only $1 or nothing at all. Back in the day, when Turnip and others were able to sell 1000 ECs for $15 or more, there were far fewer Entrecarders and only a handful of people were selling ECs. While it's great that Entrecard has been able to sell some ECs at $9.50/1000, we still don't really know if that price will hold when a huge supply of ECs hits the market, which is what will likely happen with Phase II.

I've been a fan of the EC as currency idea since January and yet I'm wondering if the time has come to ban all sales or transfers of ECs other than for ad purchases, and those which are sold by Entrecard. Entrecard could set the price at $3/1000 and pocket all of it as revenue (less Paypal fees). The community is so large that selling a couple of hundred thousand ECs a day from what was received via ad taxes wouldn't creak too much havoc. I just don't see that many people repeatedly spending $9.50/1000.

Sure, contests would have to change, as would the Shop and other aspects of the Entrecard experience, most of which are secondary to the primary purpose of Entrecard. I guess I see this whole EC as currency thing becoming more and more convoluted and not necessarily critical to fostering better blogging.

Just my 2.8 ECs worth.

I don't see a tax on transfers as being a big problembut then I don't buy EC, I only use it for ads or giving away in promos. As regards giving aay credits and paying an extra % to do so, its a non-issue for me. But capping the transfer at 1000EC, that is a problem and seems to me it would be anti-competitive on Entrecard's part.

@ fantast - true, but we can help bridge the gap between desire to get involved, and effort required to get invovled

The Entrecarder wrote:

The community is so large that selling a couple of hundred thousand ECs a day from what was received via ad taxes wouldn't creak too much havoc.

I remember Graham said that the system deletes the ad taxes. Those credits don't go into Entrecard's account to sell.

Here it is:

We don't take an enormous chunk of the advertising, we delete it. Those credits don't go into our account to sell, they get wiped off the face of the earth, and we do it to create a system that is stable.

(To find the original statement easily, use Ctrl+F earth)

yep, those just get deleted.

If rates hold at Buy $9.50 & Sell $7.50, then I would be happy to see a limit of 1000ec per transfer. The idea of being able to sell your credits any time to the house at a reasonable price appeals to me.

I don't enjoy the idea of having to advertise that you have credits for sale and then having to sit back and wait to make the sale, plus all of the communication back and forth that's involved. For the conveninence, I'd be happy to give up a portion of my control that way.

But of course you'd need to limit linked accounts also. Say I had 10 accounts, sending 1000 from each would be rather simple.

Also you'd need some kind of mechanism for competitions where the prize is over 1000. Lets imagine some kind of Entre-Escro where the competition holder deposits the credits in, then supplies the email address of the winner and they are released. Then we could create a central point for running competitions, feel safe to know that they are fully funded and be more likely to enter.

Of course that doesn't stop people announcing a "winner" where they control the account, but then again that could happen now already.

In short, if it maintains a high value for the EC, reduces the "tax" and ensures I can be paid in a timely manner without having to directly sell my credits, I'm all for it with both thumbs up!

Hmmm, what was the original intention for the suggestion again?

This whole debate is pretty intrinsically tied to our ability to come up with more things for people to spend credits on, other than just advertising.

But I don't see how it is related to that?

This is a very very confusing thread. It started with a simple enough question ... of which I have the same question as the singular eye above me:

I don't get why any tax/max transfer in the first place is needed.

What purpose does taxing people serve? Until that is made clear (instead of being another hidden agenda to spring on us by surprise again), I don't see how we can have a productive discussion on why any tax or max transfer should be imposed at all.

I think the idea would be served better by the scheme wherein there would be transfers but no external sales, with the price set naturally by the selling.