Bitcoin Forum

Not sure if this has been discussed before, so feel free to point me in the right direction if this is the case.

I'm sure many of us are aware that local currencies exist, however from what I've seen most, if not all, have been paper currencies. So far these haven't proven to be too problematic, but what if a community wanted to stimulate their local economy with a digital currency as a different approach? This would be assuming that people and small businesses within said community were willing to accept it.

I'm aware it would have to be taxable to be legal (which I personally hate), but all the legal issues aside, could a community actually do things like restrict mining to their area? Would it be advantageous to do so, or simply stick with paper currencies? I ask this mainly because local currencies have been beneficial in some sense (like the Ithaca Hour), yet such paper currencies are always at risk of being subject to counterfeiting, much more so than a cyptocurrency. Also, theres always the ability for a cryptocurrency to be scarce, whereas paper can be easily created from a central authority out of a printing press as we all know.

Sure, just set up some PKI and require that blocks be valid, and signed by a key that was signed by the central CA.

First off the scarcity or plentifulness of a large crypto-swap-derivative Medium of Labour Exchange "currency" is irrelevant, especially if it is exchange-valued by a central authority. Moreover since it's value is backed by the values of the labours done for it, it need not represent nor also be something or anything else in particular that it is not. That said, it still must have some "pegged to the value something else" currency-exchange stability against other currencies in the outside world.

In today's world the most likely fairly stable and widely demanded candidate for pegging it's value against would be the value of oil, or of some other renewable portable energy products or baskets of them. I specify "renewable" because to peg an economic communities' Medium of Labour Exchange currency exchange value to the value of some other commodity of monopolizable rarity is a recipe for certain eventual debt slavery to the Pharaohs of that monopoly.

Bitcoin Over the Counter (OTC) Funded Swap Derivatives are exchange-valued the way a penny stock is valued. The exchange valu of a Bitcoin is determined solely by the mischievous stock speculator antics of it's deregulated penny-stock markets (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Commodity_Futures_Modernization_Act_of_2000) who pose as currency exchanges.  Their exchange value inflation or deflation has zero to do with the supply of them or with any increase in it.

The "mining operation" merely funds the transaction network that supports them.

One that was run by a public communities' central authority could be "reserved" like any other Medium of Labour Exchange token (greenback) system is thus making taxes obsolete, as the profit from the state loaning it would be the public income of those who used it. Just like Julius Caesar, Henry 1st, Washington and Lincoln did, and JFK might have.

Never make the mistake of confusing a wealth (the values of gold, oil or other such squat)  with a money (the values of all labours)

Yes, but it's kinda useless.
If communities (goverments) wanted a useful way to pay electronically they could simpl built a copycat of visa and it's done. Mining is a necessarity, not a benefit. It's needed for crypto, but not for goverment money.


Dafuq?
As long they are freely exchangeable there is no practical difference. Money is far more than just values of labours since I can exchange gold for money and gold for labour. Is this just a definition or is there more to your statement?

This is a great idea. Local currencies make communities stronger. If people hold local currency more, they shop at walmart less. Screw walmart! Communities might even get to the point where they can almost feed themselves. Screw food that is shipped 1500 miles to your plate on average!

It's open source so you can do what you need for your locality. Mine only based on geographic location if you want, it can be done. Centrally issue or tailor new coin production like you need to. Issue physical tokens for them. Peg their value against the dollar, if you want. Set up an exchange with other cryptocoins, if you can do it safely, so people can easily exchange them to buy shit on the interwebs. I'm just spouting out shit, these may not be good ideas. It's open source so you can do pretty much whatever you need to do.

I'd look at successful, beneficial ones like Ithaca Hours and maybe see how you can leverage the software to make it easier or improve it.

Do it! It could be the future.

Glad to see someone who would agree with me xD I've been interested in doing something for my community for a while, and particularly fascinated by having choices in money. I see the possible strengths that could come about using a local currency, and I've been bouncing ideas for a local cryptocurrency on and off for a couple months. Some of them include:

• Use of Scrypt-Jane, allowing for the average, not-so-tech savy or wealthy folk to mine it with CPUs.
• Setting the hard limit based on the population of the city (I was thinking some constant N * Population)
• 1-Minute confirmation times, preferably shorter (though that's debatable due to the number of confirmations necessary to make transactions reliably secure)
• Block Reward would largely depend on the constant N and the confirmation times

There are a few districts in my city that are rather run-down and have seen many small businesses shut down over the years, so I'm hoping a local currency could make that bounce back over time. However, the problem lies in selling the idea to people and where to start. Also, this list will take time to develop and grow, so it'd be very tentative as of now.

I think about this a lot. I think there is a lot of potential here.

People converting their labor into local cryptocurrency.

That might sound sensible, but there's a key problem: who/what will be the CA? Would people really trust me/a small group of techy people more than their local government? In the case of the govt being the CA, then that kinda defeats the whole purpose of making a cryptographic local currency; it may as well be a paper local currency. Although to localize it I'd see why that d make sense. Maybe there would be a different way to ensure the mining of said currency would only occur within a specific geographic area. I still have lots to learn about network infrastructure seeing as I'm more of a hardware guy, but I'm sure if this ends up being more discussed then more savvy people could contribute ideas.


Well in that case, perhaps you, me, and a couple other people aren't the only ones considering this idea. We should probably raise more discussion about this idea to see if there's a practical way of making it specific to an area while keeping its minting decentralized (like anyone being able to download a mining application for this "coin", but shares being only accepted within a certain geographic area; it should deincentivise outside parties from trying to mine said "coin").