Bitcoin Forum

http://blog.inbitbox.com/post/56450714292/detroitcoin-bitcoin-is-the-new-vehicle-currency-why
Join the conversation: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6104757

The same crossed my mind a few days ago. The piece is well written.

I've always stated that I could go to Detroit flat broke and emerge two years later with a million dollars in my pocket--and it's still possible.

Done correctly, Detroit could be a world-class laissez faire city within ten years.

DetroitCoin, for every coin you mine you will be 2 coins in debt.

May I propose Freicoin as the right coin to build up a new local economy in Detroit?

Doesn't seem realistic to you? Well, here are some interesting reads:

Stamp Scrip (1993)
Irving Fisher about demurrage experiments in the US:
http://www.freicoin.org/irving-fisher-stamp-scrip-1933-t532.html

Stamp Scrip in the Great Depression: Lessons for Community Currency for Today? (2010)
Jonathan Warner about the same subject
http://www.freicoin.org/stamp-scrip-experiments-in-the-great-depression-t530.html

Stamp Scrip: Money People Paid to Use (2008 (!))
Bruce Champ, Advisor of the FED Cleveland about stamp scrip
http://www.freicoin.org/bruce-champ-advisor-of-the-fed-cleveland-about-stamp-scrip-t528.html

Freicoin has 80% seigniorage towards a central foundation. It makes for an interesting demurrage test case, but any city should be using a coin that's 100% peer to peer. That means equal rules for all participants, not an unelected cabal spending most of the coins on their own pet charities.

Interesting topic. I'm going down to Comerica Park tonight for the Tiger's game.

detroit blows and needs to be bulldozed

lol! good one.

demurrage experiments have worked many times before in such cases

but that will never happen because debt based, compound interest fiat money serves a few people very well  >:(

Today it is Detroit, tomorrow the whole world  :-*

This one in particular is hilarious.  I'll summarize it for you:  "Americans fucking HATE demurrage currency"

lets make detroit the bitcoin city

Nice article.

The plight of Detroit is certainly a sad one going from shining beacon of industry to a run down crime-ridden cesspool, unfortunately likely just one of the first high profile failures at the hands of the built-to-fail fractional reserve model. I wonder how bad the fallout will truly be once the financial sector eats all that debt, combined with the resulting job loss and additional exodus from the city by people with nothing left to stay for. This unprecedented failure is hopefully waking America up to the simple fact our entire country and society is tearing apart at the seems, left wondering why the US Government did nothing but watch it burn despite Obama's previous statements in 2012 that the city would not be allowed to come to insolvency. Other cities are teetering on the edge as well. The true reality of our dire economic situation is beginning to hit home now.

Bitcoin has a unique property in it is very easy to generate a macro-economy as demonstrated by the 20 or so new blockchains around now since only about 2-3 months ago all interacting with each other in trade. That got me thinking about the future of cryptographic digital currency in a similar fashion to postulating "What if Detroit switched to Bitcoin?". Obviously the city is now a dead husk of its former self that has finally thrown in the towel, crushed under the weight of crooked politics and banking cartels, it would have nothing to lose by acting out in pure defiance to the FED with such a move.

Thinking further into the future, could we exist in a world someday where each country, city, and possibly even large business entities of sufficient market cap trade in their own unique currencies?

Though at a fundamental level, digital currency knows no borders or boundaries as we know them. The freedom to create a new currency with publicly available tools could have a much different economic effect very contrary to how we perceive currency today. With borderless currencies that bow to no governmental master, there is no saying how this will all play out. It will not be a simple matter of every country just creating its own, as every person on Earth could start a new chain and make it popular enough for adoption, rendering borders of countries to be meaningless when it comes to economic activity since that country could be using several digital currencies. Such a macro-economic system where every person, business, and market sector has all manor of choices on what currencies(s) it prefers to deal in would likely be incredibly stable. The death of a currency, or even a whole macro-economy would certainly cause other markets to fluctuate, but with easy access to other alternatives the damage would be contained to that area and able to heal itself naturally when the markets/currencies absorb the aftermath. Possibly the dawn of the first truly free market system?

Well, hopefully someone runs with that idea to create DTC and start pushing it, or just help Detroit adopt cryptocurrencies of any kind to start healing the city and bring fire back to its face-punched economy.

Should call it TechnoCoin, as it's probably the only profitable thing coming out of Detroit at this stage.

Of course people hate demurrage, It's like a bag filled with corn, but it has holes in it... nevertheless some experiments indicated, that it might(!) be a remedy especially in times of depression and crisis.

Why would you want to segment currencies like that? It is much more convinient and useful to have a single currency used across wide areas.

The more crypto-currencies there are, the more the Crypto Barons will trade in and out of them.

"Grandpa, did you build this castle during the Crypto Wars?"

---re demurrage currencies: They make sense but only for local/regional currencies, because they encourage circulation of the local currency instead of the "global", giving a boost to local business over "global". Another reason is it's harder to make monetary politics without demurrage, because it's detrimental for small currencies when someone's hoarding too much at one place for too long.

---

Apparently there are some anarchist / agorist initiatives in Detroit now.

http://thestateweekly.com/with-detroits-bankruptcy-anarchists-have-begun-project-free-detroit-starting-a-community-2/

Time for Bitcoin?

Detroit could be the first bank-less city. No banks to rob. No muggings. No identity theft. Crowdfunding instead of credit. It could be a good thing.

Although they don't talk about bitcoins in the article, I found that:

http://www.meetup.com/MichiganBitcoiners/members/3607523/

And the article mentions a Katie, too... This smells better and better!

EDIT : She's actually the same person as in the article, and is working together with the OP author, I'm kinda slow... But there's a lot of great reading!

Done correctly, Detroit could be a world-class robbery free city 8)

I thought this was Devcoin.  Does Freicoin also have this?

That is true and for convenience's sake would be best, though it may become that way naturally, I only posit this as a possible scenario. More the point was simply that bitcoin and its many offshoots won't be decided by the borders of countries, but respective industries and societies. We really don't know what happens next, only that it will probably be spectacular.

still waitin' for new york coin

Yes. They don't advertise this feature very prominently, but they're going to spend 80% of the initial supply on charity. All other participants are allowed to compete over the remaining 20% as mining subsidy. They added this right before the official launch, but so far they haven't decided which charities will receive it.

So... should the economy of Detroit depend on the security of a single cold wallet, or the authority of an unelected private foundation?  ;)

New York Coin, you can only sell/buy up to 0.5 NYC each time!

Glad to see all of this discussion. Is anyone in Detroit? Will anyone be there this fall?