Why I chose Flipstarter to fundraise my projects
There's a lot of thought that has to go into planning any project. You look at it like a business, consider the logistics, scrutinize the expenses to get the best value for your money, and of course present it to your investors (or contributors in the case of Flipstarter) with all the information you have, as clearly as you can, so that they can decide if it's worthwhile to support.
That's what I've been doing. I run a channel called The Nudge, where I travel around the world to document real-world crypto merchant adoption. Without a doubt, Bitcoin Cash is the most successful of all cryptos in getting both businesses and customers excited about using electronic cash. For my job, I am constantly following the news, on Twitter, Reddit, Read, Cointelegraph... really any place where I can gauge not only what's developing, but also how the public is responding to it, and then I plan projects to visit and document these places. As a researcher, I want to understand the sentiment around cryptocurrency to realize how it has the potential to transform how we transact money.
I've been doing this since Spring of 2021. I've travelled to countries like Colombia, El Salvador, Turkey, Lebanon, and most recently The Philippines to talk with the people and discover why they are replacing their fiat money - censorable, inflatable, difficult to send cheaply or anonymously, with Bitcoin.
In Colombia, I lived three days on crypto, booking my hotel, dining at restaurants, and going to the supermarket armed only with Bitcoin Cash. In El Salvador, my first crowdfunded project, I used a combination of QR tips and chaintips to put together enough money to travel around the country for a few weeks to find out how Salvadorans really felt about the new Bitcoin law, making BTC legal tender. In Turkey and Lebanon, though inflation was rampant, I only found a few exchange offices and no real merchants, so I didn't run a fundraiser or publish videos.
But now in the Philippines, I am embracing decentralized crowdfunding. I finally decided to try Flipstarter. Not only is it safer and easier to use than traditional bank transfers or fiat alternatives like Kickstarter, GoFundMe, or Patreon, but there also isn't a middle-man in the platform or the credit card companies taking a chunk of the money raised! It's also great because now with the IPFS supported fork of Flipstarter, you can create a campaign without even needing to buy a domain. This adds a level of security, too, since often buying domains means using a credit card and revealing your identity. And mobile wallets can now pledge! Electron Cash is great, but it's not beginner friendly, and to have anyone with a Bitcoin Cash wallet be able to contribute to projects they support is a significant development.
But it's much more than that. Flipstarter has a mechanism where donors can pledge an amount towards the project goal. Their Bitcoin Cash tip only gets sent to the recipient of the fundraiser if it is successfully funded. This All-or-nothing model is not unique to Flipstarter, but it's an important guard. And with issues of people hosting projects in the past and abandoning what they had promised (even just disappearing entirely), I think that more accountability is a good thing. This is why the inclusion of a link to where people can follow up is important. In my Flipstarter, I provided an abundance of information of my involvement in the Bitcoin Cash community, the gravitas of the project, and also how people can easily find me to follow up. There's even a release schedule, so donors aren't left waiting months without result. My campaign is Documenting Bitcoin Cash adoption in the Philippines.
So why did I choose Bitcoin Cash and Flipstarter specifically? Well after having surveyed the scene among other crypto projects and alternative funding solutions, it just made the most sense. Some other coins have solutions, but in my view they are half-baked and the community just isn't there to support them. Dash doesn't do community funded projects directly, but rather relies on the Dash Core Group to appeal to and have projects approved or not. This could become a popularity contest, and it also isn't very public because a lot of the funding happens behind the scenes. Also, regular users don't contribute Dash to projects that they want to see. And they also don't get to vote.
BTC has also had several different projects for fundraising. Two of the main issues plaguing this community however are that 1. Bitcoin maxis typically don't seem to want to actually spend their sats 2. Some rely on Lightning Network, which relinquishes custody and introduces the potential for censorship, as we saw several years ago with Roger Ver's Lightning node. A third note is that you can't just post an address. You have to use services that create invoices for you. Imagine instead of someone sending you a gift, they asked you to submit an invoice to receive it. What a weird system!
If we look to Monero, which is considered by many to be the best privacy coin, you have the CCS, another community consensus platform that leans largely towards funding blockchain development, and less on creating media. As for the real-world usage of XMR, I've had issues on several occasions receiving or sending payments with my mobile wallet, leading to embarrassing situations. Add to this long confirmation times, and the fact that the wallet is locked for ~20 minutes before it can send again. Imagine if you were at a busy supermarket checkout, and you just realized that you need to buy one more thing!
Turning to Nano, a unique crypto which uses block lattice architecture, there are no fees and near instant settlement like Bitcoin Cash, but it lacks both the merchant network and a software like Flipstarter to raise money towards a campaign. Yes you can receive tips like BCH, but having the project information presented in one place gives contributors more confidence, and the lack of a mechanism to hold funds from being sent until the project is successfully funded again means that the host receives a fraction of what they need to do a project, and ultimately can't complete it, or easily refund people.
Merchants (or lack there of) are an overwhelming theme. Bitcoin Cash is the only community that has focused so strongly on getting local businesses to accept their payments. Yes, Bitcoin maxis have made a few pseudo "Bitcoin Beaches" or "Bitcoin Cities", but they all rely on a Layer 2, or even worse, proprietary, closed-source KYC-ed, permissioned ecosystems like Strike.
Bitcoin Cash and Flipstarter are both public. No middlemen. No hidden code. No fake reserves. No stuck payments. No getting your grandma to understand how to set up her Lightning node. It just works, and it can be modified to become better because it's open source.
If we look at Dash, they had a small merchant network in Latin America that largely evaporated, and they have been focusing all their marketing effort on fiat bridges like DashDirect (which can be convenient, but doesn't help to educate businesses about customers' preference to pay with crypto), and the Dash Platform, which years later has no definite timeline for release. It's unclear where things are headed, leaders have fled, and I wish that I had gotten out of Dash much earlier than I did when I was using it.
I think that building relationships is the most powerful tool for changing minds, so the multitude of independent teams promoting Bitcoin Cash around the world where they live is going to do a lot more to move towards rejecting fiat than any sticker bomb campaign (looking at you Monero) or gaslighting (again looking at BTC maxis) with closed systems can accomplish. I don't think that we need Michael Saylor or Max Kaiser to show up and talk down to people or showboat with the president while the locals oppose. I also frequently see accounts shilling altcoins on Twitter, or even being official ambassadors, but not really producing anything of value to grow an ecosystem.
Zcash has their Community Grants program to award people developing the chain, or even producing videos or podcasts. Their slogan is #PrivacyisNormal, yet they require all grant recipients to KYC and be sent tax documents along with their shielded ZEC. The structure of Zcash and Electronic Coin Co also means that they are beholden to the whims of vengeful central governments who do not want fiat money to be replaced.
I just think that what Satoshi envisioned for an electronic cash system in the Bitcoin white paper exists today as Bitcoin Cash. It's been said often, but they got the BTC ticker, and we got the fast, low-fee, permissionless money. I also appreciate that there are so many kind faces of fans and builders with BCH, and they're all working towards a decentralized future, not petitioning SEC regulators to send competing coins towards bankruptcy.
So I've been impressed with the myriad of incredible projects that have already gotten funded through the history of Flipstarter, and I'm excited to see how it adapts and expands to welcome even more individuals and groups that just want to raise money honestly without strings and censors and middlemen.
It is because of all of these reasons that I am exclusively funding my projects with Flipstarter. I'll be traveling to 8 different countries over the next 6 months to document Bitcoin Cash merchant adoption and community meetups. Currently running until the 4th of January, I am still seeking donations for Documenting Bitcoin Cash Adoption in the Phillipines. Several prominent contributors have already pitched in for 66% of the project goal (Thank You!), but with only 7 days remaining, I need to get the rest of the way there so these videos can get edited and published. You can find all the details of my Flipstarter campaign here and of course please donate whatever you can afford. The minimum pledge right now is just $17!
As I've said, my plate is full for the next six months. I have back-to-back trips planned discovering and documenting the incredible Bitcoin Cash community in 8 countries. Next after the Philippines, I'll be traveling to Bitcoin Cash City (Townsville, Australia) to meet Bitcoin Jason and merchants, followed by sharing the hard work of the BCH Argentina team. Between these two fervent economies, there are more than 500 businesses that accept Bitcoin Cash! I'll spend a week in Australia, and then hop on a plane to South America to spend three weeks traveling around the country of Argentina spending BCH at a multitude of merchants and of course attending community meetups. Argentina is also a beautiful country, so I would be remiss without sharing the famous and jaw dropping landscapes of places like Patagonia, and the plans to bring Bitcoin Cash to the farthest reaches of the South American continent. The Nudge is really all about bringing people together; nudging them away from central banking and fiat money that will rob them of their liberty and their life savings if we don't share it with those people that we care about. I believe that Bitcoin Cash is the best solution and I hope that you'll follow and support my endeavors. You'll find links to my subreddit, my twitter, and my Youtube on my profile. Just one more time, please help me raise the remaining 14.5 Bitcoin Cash for my Philippines Flipstarter campaign. Thanks for reading.
— The Nudge
p.s. If you're seeing this article after January 4th, 2023, and just want to tip, you can do so at the bottom of the article, or by visiting tipb.ch/nudge
