Bad Voltage Coin

There is a podcast, Let’s Talk Bitcoin who have recently instituted what amounts to a loyalty card scheme. (Many thanks to @moreati for sleeting me to this.) Listening to the podcast gets you points (if you identify the secret words therein) as do other things. So far, so gamified. What’s interesting is that instead of awarding points to people in some central Database Of Gamification, they give out said points as units of an actual proper crypto currency, “LTBCoin”, which they made up. So: is this a good idea? It automatically means that there’s a tradeable market in loyalty to the podcast. It’s basically gamification reified; gamification with a real currency. I’d be interested in hearing thoughts on this. Maybe we need BVCoins.

No. Please, no. Random non-Bitcoin cryptocurrencies are like under construction GIFs, webrings, planking, ice bucket challenges … things that seem amusing at the time, but will be forgotten about in a few months/years, with the added awful part being that some actual value and/or assets may have been lost along the way.

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Maybe just BadCoins :slight_smile:
But I agree with neuro
It maybe sounds nice for now but in the end it will fade away
There is also the chance that new members will feel a bit left out if they would join say after 2 years because they would be poor compared to the long time listeners

I don’t think actual value will be lost because there won’t be any: read http://letstalkbitcoin.com/blog/post/introducing-ltbcoin-our-new-crypto-rewards-program-for-ltb-creators-and-community in which it becomes clear that there aren’t miners for this.

I think badges are really good enough.

I’ve got it. Every two weeks, loyal consumers are rewarded with “a value token”. We shall arbitrarily name this value token as “a show”. Every time a loyal consumer consumes part of “a show”, their “enjoyment quotient” will be increased or decreased by a fully proportionate dopamine and endorphine response that tracks and resolves the relationship dynamic between show presenter performance and consumer engagement propensity.

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I’m looking forward to the SQL injection attack that makes it look like I have listened to 1 million shows already :smile:

I was thinking the same thing. I wonder whether badges are a better way of doing this.

The other thing, being a great Bad Voltage community member is more than just listening to the show - it is being here on the forum, and contributing in other ways too.

I am not against the idea of BadCoins, but I just don’t know how it would work. Also, it seems very gamable…someone could pretend they heard the show when they didn’t.

I agree with @parzzix and @jonobacon. Badges are cool, and easier to manage. Seems like a lot of work to monitor when every member of the community listen to the show, whether it is via a quiz with the secret words that @sil mentioned, or in an automatic manner. I don’t know if the last one would be possible, and if it is, its implementation would serve only as a coding and development exercise.

I was thinking in exchanging my BadCoins for prizes, like the ones of the mashup contest. How many BadCoins would cost one of those SUSE plushies in @bryanlunduke’s office?

One. Million. BadCoins.

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At one BadCoin per show, one show every 2 weeks, 26 shows per year, that would take about 38,461.5 years to accumulate that amount. I guess I should stop eating bacon if I want to live that long.

Don’t do stop eating bacon. Don’t do that. I couldn’t live with myself if you did that.

Tell you what… you enter the the Mashed Voltage competition and win? I’ll send you a little Geeko Plushie along with the actual prize.

That goes for anyone else too. The winner of that competition (which there are, at present, zero entries for) wins two prizes from me. Bangarang.