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Show HN: Swapidy: Trade up your old stuff for new stuff

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Re: Show HN: Swapidy: Trade up your old stuff for new stuff

#31

Post by ktsmith »

theswapdaddy wrote: post #12
RaphiePS wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also curious about the choice of virtual currency. From perusing their FAQ, it seems like you can buy Honey with real money, but it doesn't look like you can get your money back out. Ick.

At the moment, we're not offering redemption of Honey but we may consider it in the future. The value you're getting of selling your product over market value and buying under wouldn't require you to ever take out money anyway. Also, if your product is worth as much as a product we're selling, you won't have to pay a single dime. -Adam

> The value you're getting of selling your product over market value and buying under wouldn't require you to ever take out money anyway.

This is only true if the difference between the sold item and bought item(s) is small. If the seller is looking to offload a macbook but only to buy an iPad a cash transaction would make significantly more sense. In this system the difference in values is tied up in honey which has no value outside of the system. With cash the seller can apply their remaining funds to anything they want.

I would imagine that even though the "value" of honey supplied to sellers is more than what they might be able to obtain in a cash transaction that extra honey is actually worth next to nothing as it sits in the sellers account unused.

Re: Show HN: Swapidy: Trade up your old stuff for new stuff

#32

Post by contingencies »

Thanks, I just had a serious philosophical chuckle. :)

From one perspective, 'Swapidy: Trade your old stuff for new stuff' is a such an impossibly elegant example of Web2.0 startup culture and American consumer-materialism.

You guys should enter in to some kind of poetry award as a free marketing gimmick.

Re: Show HN: Swapidy: Trade up your old stuff for new stuff

#33

Post by AnthonyMouse »

argumentum wrote: post #26
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do understand that would be a pyramid scheme, right? You can't sustainably create currency out of nothing like that. At best what you're doing is the same as what the Fed does when they print money, i.e. causing inflation, so that at least there is no big crash at the end where everyone left holding your currency loses everything (though that is exactly what would happen if your site ever experiences a significan…

You do understand that would be a pyramid scheme, right? I think this would be true if there is no value added, as in the case of the Fed. But in this case, the model creates a market restriction which can theoretically benefit both parties. Consider the following case: 1. Consumer A has an Apple and wants an Orange 2. Consumer B has an Orange and wants an Apple Trading the Apple for the Orange directly (bartering) i…

>Trading the Apple for the Orange directly (bartering) is clearly more efficient than A and B both trading for dollars and then trading their dollars for the good they want.

This is theoretically true, but it wrongly assumes that the inefficiency is meaningful. We're talking about computers here. It all gets automated anyway. And if the efficiency is utterly trivial then it can't balance any nontrivial amount of currency manipulation.

Re: Show HN: Swapidy: Trade up your old stuff for new stuff

#34

Post by illumin8 »

mrchess wrote: post #25

I'd suggest not calling it Honey. It is too similar to the word money, and can cause confusion. Imagine in conversation... "so you go to this website and trade your stuff in for honey." "wait you mean money?" "no honey. but honey is like money, you can use honey to buy stuff just like money..." etc. EDIT: I just looked the pricing model and it is evokes weird feelings. Any reason why you don't just do a 1:1 ratio? Wh…

Because they don't want you to do normal math and realize how much you are being ripped off...

Re: Show HN: Swapidy: Trade up your old stuff for new stuff

#36

Post by RaphiePS »

ktsmith wrote: post #31
theswapdaddy wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the moment, we're not offering redemption of Honey but we may consider it in the future. The value you're getting of selling your product over market value and buying under wouldn't require you to ever take out money anyway. Also, if your product is worth as much as a product we're selling, you won't have to pay a single dime. -Adam

> The value you're getting of selling your product over market value and buying under wouldn't require you to ever take out money anyway. This is only true if the difference between the sold item and bought item(s) is small. If the seller is looking to offload a macbook but only to buy an iPad a cash transaction would make significantly more sense. In this system the difference in values is tied up in honey which has…

Another downside is that your money is tied up in a company that could fail.

In the event that Swapidy goes under, there's no guarantee that you could get all your money out safely.

I think Swapidy is a great idea -- a dynamically-priced, peer-driven marketplace sounds awesome. But the currency lock-in seems very sketchy.

Re: Show HN: Swapidy: Trade up your old stuff for new stuff

#38

Post by argumentum »

AnthonyMouse wrote: post #33
argumentum wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do understand that would be a pyramid scheme, right? I think this would be true if there is no value added, as in the case of the Fed. But in this case, the model creates a market restriction which can theoretically benefit both parties. Consider the following case: 1. Consumer A has an Apple and wants an Orange 2. Consumer B has an Orange and wants an Apple Trading the Apple for the Orange directly (bartering) i…

>Trading the Apple for the Orange directly (bartering) is clearly more efficient than A and B both trading for dollars and then trading their dollars for the good they want. This is theoretically true, but it wrongly assumes that the inefficiency is meaningful. We're talking about computers here. It all gets automated anyway. And if the efficiency is utterly trivial then it can't balance any nontrivial amount of curr…

Sure, that's why I used the word theoretical myself, but my hunch is that it's not trivial for the reason that it's a really tiny basket of goods we're talking about.

I even think it's not trivial if your market is restricted to say, 25% of the general market. But in this case the restriction is to a tiny percentage of the complete basket of goods, so (as an amateur) my guess is it's significant.

Re: Show HN: Swapidy: Trade up your old stuff for new stuff

#39

Post by AnthonyMouse »

timmyd wrote: post #28
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do understand that would be a pyramid scheme, right? You can't sustainably create currency out of nothing like that. At best what you're doing is the same as what the Fed does when they print money, i.e. causing inflation, so that at least there is no big crash at the end where everyone left holding your currency loses everything (though that is exactly what would happen if your site ever experiences a significan…

Have you read the sites context ? It's not a pyramid scheme. Lets recall what a pyramid scheme is expressly defined as "A pyramid scheme is a non-sustainable business model that involves promising participants payment or services, primarily for enrolling other people into the scheme, rather than supplying any real investment or sale of products or services to the public" Now lets read what the site does "We buy your…

>You sell your product, they will give you virtual currency in order to lock you into their ecosystem and then you buy a new product based on that honey value. Please explain to me, in lay terms, how that explanation is equal to the definition of pyramid scheme above ?

Thank you for pointing out that you don't use their currency to buy the products they purchased from their other customers (though it makes me wonder what they're doing with them then).

But let me put it this way: There are three ways they can offer you more for your products in fake currency than in real currency. 1) They expect users to hold an ever-increasing amount of their currency in their accounts and not spend it immediately. If too many users tried to spend their currency all at once they would go out of business and you would lose your money; it's a pyramid scheme. 2) They give you $440 instead of $400 for your iPhone, but then a new product that would cost $400 on Amazon costs $440 in their currency. It's not a real discount. 3) They take less as profit than Amazon, even on top of Amazon's economies of scale, which is almost certainly not sustainable.

Re: Show HN: Swapidy: Trade up your old stuff for new stuff

#40

Post by theswapdaddy »

zhobbs wrote: post #30

Wanted to let you know that your nav is too wide for my browser window, and one of the nav items is cut off: http://i.imgur.com/3dORK0Y.jpg Probably a good idea to consider 960 min width.

Thanks for sharing this with us. We are looking into it now and will resolve the issue ASAP.

-Adam

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