Phoenix Coin interest

[opticbit]

I have been in contact with some people in Phoenix who would like to set up a local currency in Phoenix, AZ and create a fork of Bitcoin to support it. 

What should we do on how the currency is set up... 21m coins, block time, reward per block and all that goes into it.

Geting it started- editing the code, and launch?

Getting more supports?

Local Business Suport?

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[markm]

First make sure you will be able to provide it with enough mining power to secure it, otherwise it will simply become a victim of 51% attacks.

-MarkM-

[Mousepotato]

Who all is in Phoenix?  Me, wallet.dat, OgNasty, who else?

[Rubberduckie]

First make sure you will be able to provide it with enough mining power to secure it, otherwise it will simply become a victim of 51% attacks.

-MarkM-

Very true, don't want to let a certain redneck bible basher destroy it without the permission of miners at his pool

[unclescrooge]

I have been in contact with some people in Phoenix who would like to set up a local currency in Phoenix, AZ and create a fork of Bitcoin to support it. 

What should we do on how the currency is set up... 21m coins, block time, reward per block and all that goes into it.

Geting it started- editing the code, and launch?

Getting more supports?

Local Business Suport?

Sorry for the stupid question but... why the fork? What's the point?

[caston]

He wants a local currency. I have often wondered how you might try to attempt this. Possibly it would have to be with licensed mining. IP ranges would be subject to hacking, botnetting, proxying etc.

[sd]

I have been in contact with some people in Phoenix who would like to set up a local currency in Phoenix, AZ and create a fork of Bitcoin to support it. 

What should we do on how the currency is set up... 21m coins, block time, reward per block and all that goes into it.

Geting it started- editing the code, and launch?

Getting more supports?

Local Business Suport?

peer2peer crypto-currencies are global. You can't not limit them to a geographic region because crypto cares nothing for human drawn lines on a map. This is a feature.

Don't think you can limit it by IP address either as you would need some form of central control updating valid IPs whenever they change thus breaking the whole peer2peer model.

[sd]

He wants a local currency. I have often wondered how you might try to attempt this. Possibly it would have to be with licensed mining. IP ranges would be subject to hacking, botnetting, proxying etc.

Licensed mining breaks the peer2peer model.

IP ranges are pretty much useless to work out who is and isn't in a region. They get moved about often, some ranges are global or cover multiple areas. A corruptible central authority would be needed to list acceptable IP ranges.

BitCoin isn't a way to create a local currency. This guy wants paper money.

[unclescrooge]

He wants a local currency. I have often wondered how you might try to attempt this. Possibly it would have to be with licensed mining. IP ranges would be subject to hacking, botnetting, proxying etc.

He could emit his own currency, let's say the poenix coins (a traditional centralized one), backed by bitcoins.


Because as SD said, a p2p currency is global by design; internet has no borders.


I really don't understand this need for local things, local currencies, local production,...

[caston]

He wants a local currency. I have often wondered how you might try to attempt this. Possibly it would have to be with licensed mining. IP ranges would be subject to hacking, botnetting, proxying etc.

He could emit his own currency, let's say the poenix coins (a traditional centralized one), backed by bitcoins.


Because as SD said, a p2p currency is global by design; internet has no borders.


I really don't understand this need for local things, local currencies, local production,...

What about private blockchains?

[drakahn]

for a local currency perhaps a centralised version would be better, premine all the coins and don't have "miners" in the traditional sense, just a few computers around phoenix that distribute the blockchain to clients (or only use thin clients) and 'mine' transactions

[cunicula]

Proof of stake offers high security without significant mining overhead. but anyway a local digital currency is asinine.

[Stephen Gornick]

I have been in contact with some people in Phoenix who would like to set up a local currency in Phoenix, AZ and create a fork of Bitcoin to support it.  

What should we do on how the currency is set up... 21m coins, block time, reward per block and all that goes into it.

Geting it started- editing the code, and launch?

Getting more supports?

Local Business Suport?

The benefit of using Bitcoin itself is that the entire ecosystem already exists.  There is a variety of clients including lite clients, there are exchanges and a large marketplace of goods and services where bitcoins are accepted, etc.

If the reason you want a local currency is to encourage businesses and consumers to buy local, then there are a number of ways Bitcoin can work for that.

One way I'ld like to see tried is to use a bunch of Casascius physical coins or Bitcoin Giftcards:
 - https://www.giftcoin.net/card
Merchants can offer their 5% discount or whatever for payments using these, just if it were a local-only currency where there is a discount offered.  

The problem is, these weren't meant to circulate as coin or similar offline trading like this.  In using them in this manner, that may introduce a security vulnerability -- like maybe some special xray scan of the coin yields the private key printed on the label under the hologram?  If there were tens of thousands of dollars worth of coins circulating, this type of incident becomes not entirely unlikely.

Instead, what about simply taking advantage of the blockchain.  Forget about physical coins and use the normal Bitcoin.org client and mobile apps.  Coins purchased from the community money system's cashier would have the opposite of taint -- they would be special bitcoins.  So if the exchange rate were $5 for instance, $5 buy the consumer one bitcoin issued from the cashier's known bitcoin address.   When used to purchase locally, the merchant accepts the coin at a premium, say 5% over spot because it can be proven the coins came from the cashier.  So the consumer gets $5.25 worth of goods when purchasing using the bitcoins bought from the community money cashier.  If the merchant uses those coins to purchase outside the community or uses an exchange for the coins (e.g., at Mt. Gox), then that's possible but the merchant gets just spot value (e.g., $5) worth for the bitcoin.  If instead the merchant spends the coins locally with other merchants, the coin has a pedigree back to the community money cashier and thus still are worth 5% over spot, and thus giving the first customer that 5% premium didn't cost the merchant anything when using the proceeds for local purchases as well.

The problem with all that is that Bitcoins are useful outside of the community so the coins will become impure.  As transactions mix bitcoins originating from those that didn't descend from the community money cashier, how might that be handled?  I suppose the premium offered could be proportional (e.g.., if only 60% of funds on the coin descended from the original cashier, the a 60% X 5% premium = only a 3% premium for the bitcoin payment).

That would probably confuse and frustrate the locals more than anything though, so I don't know -- maybe this approach wouldn't work whatsoever.

Really, though, this is forcing bitcoin technology to solve a problem that has already been solved:

 - http://project.cyclos.org/mobile-banking
 - http://sourceforge.net/projects/cyclos/files/Cyclos3/3.6.1/

[Bitcoin Oz]

He wants a local currency. I have often wondered how you might try to attempt this. Possibly it would have to be with licensed mining. IP ranges would be subject to hacking, botnetting, proxying etc.

He could emit his own currency, let's say the poenix coins (a traditional centralized one), backed by bitcoins.


Because as SD said, a p2p currency is global by design; internet has no borders.


I really don't understand this need for local things, local currencies, local production,...

When peak oil exists there will be no transporting goods from overseas or even interstate. Its only viable now as a consequence of cheap oil. Once this resource runs out you need a strong self sufficient local community.

http://communityforge.net/ something like this is better for local communities. A LETTS style system.

[steelhouse]

I think a local currency is a wonderful idea it brings back the spirit of free banking.   What I would do is go to a copper minter and print say 1 million phoenix copper coin bars.  You might back up each digital coin with 1 pound of copper bar (go to ebay to see what a 1 lb copper bar looks like).  Thus your coin might always have 1 million, then issue a digital coin for each copper bar.  Display the bars at city hall.  Thus local commerce would take place in a uniform centralized client where it could advertise local businesses and Arizona.

You might allow 1000 new copper bars to be minted every year.  But the government would control the address and back each coin with a lb of copper.  They might make 50% on each bar sold.

The client would be loaded with advertisements and travel destinations.  And maybe even an classified system where people can buy mechandise online and pick it up somewhere in the city.

Canada is planning to make a similar digital currency too.

Thus when someone trades in the digital coin for copper.  The government might either hold the digital coin, or re-back it with another lb of copper.  Thus you might have both copper bars and digital coins in the system, that exceed 1 million total.  Maybe 1.1 million digital and 2 million copper might exist.

Maybe if the coin also stretched into Nevada, it could be used as a universal gambling coin too.  Throw a bar of copper in a poker pot would be fun.  At least until someone gets mad an uses it as a weapon.

Maybe someone wants a paper bar.  So a private bank issues their own currency backed with bars.  But a word to the wise, don't let the bank make loans (fractional reserve lending).

Also unused digital coins for 2 years might become property of the city.  Another revenue stream.

[unclescrooge]

He wants a local currency. I have often wondered how you might try to attempt this. Possibly it would have to be with licensed mining. IP ranges would be subject to hacking, botnetting, proxying etc.

He could emit his own currency, let's say the poenix coins (a traditional centralized one), backed by bitcoins.


Because as SD said, a p2p currency is global by design; internet has no borders.


I really don't understand this need for local things, local currencies, local production,...

When peak oil exists there will be no transporting goods from overseas or even interstate. Its only viable now as a consequence of cheap oil. Once this resource runs out you need a strong self sufficient local community.

http://communityforge.net/ something like this is better for local communities. A LETTS style system.

If this theory is true, then production will be relocated locally. At every moment there's an ongoing arbitrage between labor costs, division of labor opportunities and transportation costs. If transportation costs rises, people and companies will adapt production (that's the beauty of "'market forces", and that's why I don't believe the peak oils catastrophists which by the way make false predictions of the doom of prosperity and humanity since at least 1970).
Anyway, using a local currency is artificially increasing costs of "extra-community" (or global) trade vs local trade. It's like imposing customs taxes.
So I don't understand why people want to artificially favor local trade vs global trade. Communities are great. But they can be global, they can use the same currency, they can talk the same language, they can be open to each others.

[MoneyIsDebt]

If you just want to issue a currency, use Open Transactions. You won't be subject to 51% attacks, as you would with a fork of bitcoin. And for a local currency, there's always going to be more hashing power outside than inside.
Backing this currency with bitcoin would be very cool...

[sd]

Local currencies can work, see http://thelewespound.org/. However BitCoin isn't the right model for them to follow.

You want paper or coins which can be used by anyone without any technical knowledge or any computing equipment. Anything more complex with be gamed by banksters and/or global not local.

[westkybitcoins]

Anyway, using a local currency is artificially increasing costs of "extra-community" (or global) trade vs local trade. It's like imposing customs taxes.
So I don't understand why people want to artificially favor local trade vs global trade. Communities are great. But they can be global, they can use the same currency, they can talk the same language, they can be open to each others.

There are a number of advantages to using local currencies. I think the disconnect here is that you seem to feel a community would try to ONLY rely on it's local currency. I doubt that would happen, and any community that tried it (short of one as big as NYC or a small European nation) would probably find it infeasible.

Just like nature favors biological diversity in an ecosystem to provide protection from some sort of systemic biological attack/threat, a large, free economy that is healthy should (and naturally would) spontaneously result in some degree of monetary diversity. Local currencies are one way of this occuring.

Now, as to whether a p2p digital currency susceptible to a 51% processing-powered attack is a good idea for a local currency, that's another issue entirely. If something similar is REALLY wanted, a few thoughts come to mind immediately:

(1) Some degree of centralization is probably required to make it work, and keep it local. Maybe create a system with, say 100 licenses (sold or given away to locals, whichever), which are unique keys required to mine valid blocks. Every X blocks, a minimum of Y% of the licensees must come together to produce a new set of 100 "license keys", so that if one or more are stolen/lost, the effect on the system is eventually removed, and so companies can leave/enter the PhoenixCoin mining business without worrying whether a previous miner kept a copy of their license key.

(2) With some degree of centralization in place, and a more local structure, you can probably alter the difficulty function so that initial confirmations occur much faster on average (maybe two minutes?) Even with that, as long as most of the license keys can be kept secure, it shouldn't take very many confirms to have a reasonable degree of confidence in a transaction's irreversibility.

(3) If you could also throw together an automated, open-source p2p exchange client facilitating PhoenixCoin <-> Bitcoin trade and eliminating fraud (by mutually locking the corresponding transactions, or even just through escrow via the PhoenixCoin miners) you'd probably encourage a lot of use in the currency right off.

Hmm. I'm actually quite interested to see if this could be pulled off.

[caston]

When people trade on local exchange trading systems (LETS) some people like to offer their goods and services in a combination of LETS currency and dollars. For example if they exchanged something that cost them money to produce they may want dollars but if they are trading their labor or time they may be happy to accept the LETS currency. What you may want to do is encourage people to use a combination of the LETS currency and a meta-currency like Phoenix coin. You would then have an exchange where people could trade Phoenix coin with bitcoin or USD or NMC or EUR etc. You would encourage people to keep trading a combination of LETS currency and phoenix coin with each other but they could cash out their phoenix coin if they need to pay bills, buy raw materials and so on.

This is something that Hugh Bernard of CClite was thinking about when Bitcoin was just starting.

The other possibility when dealing with trust is of course the ripple project. A combination of ripple pay and meta currency could work wonders. Help get rid of those pesky bankers!

Some of the ideas about licensed mining being more of a trust chain than a centralized model are also quite good. Something like those public key signing events.