Gems relies on an IPO for initial distribution of the supply. The total amount of Gems in existence is 10'000'000'000 (10 Billion).
Eventual supply is achieved as follows: 4,500 million Gems distributed to stakeholders; 4,500 million Gems distributed as daily Airdrop rewards during ~5 years after launch; 500 million Gems reserved for bonus block rewards, promotion, marketing, bounties; 500 million Gems + IPOs will fund the network R&D and operation costs.
Please please please...no IPO/pre-sell!
Instead, set a release schedule for the tokens and a relative value on each action you wish participants to do. Then with each release period (weekly for example), you calculate each participants share of the new coins based on their contribution. By having a reward schedule that starts higher in the future (e.g. 10,000,000 per week and halves every two years) you can build in the same early adopter incentive as Bitcoin and I could trust it. For an example of this being done correctly now, see LTBcoin.
There's no way I would touch an IPO given how many scams there have been and if you do get people from your current process, they're not going to be the type that stick around. If you wish this to be successful long-term, you'll follow the advice above and if you need to raise money for your initial team, do that via a crowdsale that is for some perks on the network (but not for equity in the new tokens or social network).
We have thought about this for a long time and respect your opinion very much. In the end we think that having a Public Sell is important for Gems success for these reasons:
(1) Development of the Gems app Maintenance of the growing network Flagging fraudulent activity SMS verification during registration Azure service bus Marketing Advertising Public relations and more have a heavy cost. The competition today to get "heard" and "stand out" is stronger than ever. Take for example
chancecoin its a very innovative project with extremely capable devs but they they don't even have the funds to run a small BTT add campaign to get recognition. Selling perks on the network will only be successful if the network is all ready successful.
(2) Public sell helps to build a community with vested interest quickly.
(3) Public sell gives Gems "value" from day one.
(4) I have been "hurt" by scams also so I know how you feel. We will be trust verified by CoinSource, cryptoasian, our public sell escrow and anyone else if needed.
