Quote from: nzt48givesyouwings on April 10, 2013, 05:55 amOk, as you explained your logic farther there are a few things I respectfully disagree with. 3 responses:1) Vendor fees are NOT primarily responsible for funding the site - that's what SR commission is for. I can only guess that vendor fees make up a VERY small percentage of SR gross revenue compared to commissionsI agree with you completely, however when Silk Road first started up and began charging vendor fees there was no SR commission, thus vendor account fees were the only income stream that Silk Road had and it follows that those fees were used for the site's upkeep.Today the situation is very different, and indeed after Silk Road started charging commission, the fees were kept, presumably in order to deter every Tom, Dick and Harry from opening an account and potentially scamming customers without any initial expense on their part; that fee has since been eliminated and Silk Road brought in the bond system to discourage scamming. A higher initial cost to further deter scamming behaviour (after all, previously a scammer only had to make $150 before they broke even with everything on top of that being pure profit), and it is refundable after 30+ transactions worth $1500 in sales and 6 weeks trading, further encouraging good behaviour.Quote from: nzt48givesyouwings on April 10, 2013, 05:55 am2) It doesn't matter what the coins are worth now if they were kept in coins. We'd just be getting the coins back that we paid in, just like the new vendorsAgain, I agree with you; however, it is highly unlikely that all of those bitcoins were kept in Bitcoin. It is more likely that a sizeable proportion were cashed out to pay for the site's security, upkeep and maintenance, and to provide Dread Pirate Roberts with payment. It is entirely possible that they were indeed kept as bitcoins and not cashed out, though as stated I consider it unlikely. The fact remains though that they were paid as a fee - something that vendors agreed to pay in order to ply their wares here - and not as a bond.Quote from: nzt48givesyouwings on April 10, 2013, 05:55 am3) Regarding retroactive contracting and capitalism - generally things cost MORE as time goes on, so the people that were in first get the BETTER end of the deal, not the worse end. Verizon's unlimited data plan is a great example. If you signed up for an unlimited data plan, you get to keep it even though those plans are not available today. It's called getting grandfathered into the new practice. If a policy gets worse for older members as time goes on, (i.e. Verizon charging $10 a month for 500 text messages, and then releasing an unlimited package for $5 a month), you get to switch to the new policy. These are just examples and I can probably think of better ones but they are the first ones that came to mind. It's good customer service, something that I value very highly with my customers :)Some of the points here I must disagree with; you cannot compare something like a Verizon contract whereby you may switch to the new package if it is a better deal to Silk Road fees and bonds. Verizon only offer this in order to keep their customers as those customers would not renew their contracts if they could get a better deal elsewhere. On Silk Road there is no time limit on your contract, or any need to renew as it was a once-off fee.Verizon would not offer the ability to switch to better deals if they worked on a once-off fee model as there is no incentive to keep the customer using Verizon; they have already been paid for the service, and there is no prospect of extra future income from that customer.Silk Road already provides excellent customer service in the form of SR Support and minimal downtime. I think the last reports I saw were Silk Road having 98%+ uptime which is fairly impressive for a marketplace with so many well-funded adversaries.What you are talking about is not 'customer service' though, it is in fact 'customer retention'. In other words, it is Verizon keeping their customers happy so as they do not switch to AT&T or Sprint (I'm not American so please do forgive me if those companies do not offer the same services as Verizon - you understand what I'm getting at though, I'm sure.)Silk Road has neither incentive nor need to do that as there are no meaningful competitors to the Silk Road marketplace, thus no incentive to return the initial vendor fee (nor an obligation to do so), and no need to employ practices that result in customer retention as customers (vendors) are going to continue to do business here regardless.Quote from: CannaKingUK on April 10, 2013, 01:53 pmThis thread is just what I needed to see right now. I have been a vendor for about 5-6 weeks and paid 11.50BTC/$500 bond for my account. I've been kicking myself as those 11.5BTC are worth far now than the total value of my current stock. There is no way I can get back to the level of my original holding, even with these price rises. At least that's what I thought. Now I'm not the smartest cookie in the jar, but am I right in assuming that there IS at least the possibility of me getting 11.5 coins back, instead of a measly $500 worth?You will get back the amount of Bitcoin that you paid in - in your case, 11.5 BTC.Quote from: curiositymatrix on April 10, 2013, 05:26 pmI know this won't be a popular sentiment, but...I think when a transaction takes place, it is for the "value" at that time. You paid $500 for your vendor account - not 11.5 coins. That was the rate at the time, that's how much they were worth, so, you'll get $500 back - not 11.5 coins.This is whining that the price went up and you didn't hold on to coins. If the value plummeted, vendors would be demanding back $500 bonds, not their initial coin investment. Have some perspective...This is incorrect. I presume you are using the purchasing stats system to make your assumption. Purchasing stats are always denominated in USD, with the BTC value changing depending on the current USD/BTC price. The bond system is denominated in Bitcoin.The vendor in question did not pay $500 for their vendor account, they paid $500 in Bitcoin for it; that is, they paid X amount of Bitcoin when each Bitcoin was worth X amount of USD.- grahamgreene