FreiCoin (FRC) discussion (was FreiCoin (FRC) for TRC, PPC, LTC or BTC)

[galambo]

Political money.

I feel the freicoin website spells that out pretty well. Do you see that as a problem, or just different than bitcoin?

I see that as a big big problem. Many people like bitcoin because it is not designed to be handed to those that some politicians deem too big to fail aka important. Freicoin does just the same thing by handing free money to those organisations or individuals that some politicians inside freicoin deem more important than their respective competition. Happily distorting the market if it was worth anything.

That this can also happen with a huge amount of corruption and scamming only adds to why I absolutely can not support it at all. Not with 80%, not with 8%, not with 8 Freicoin reserved for a political purpose.

You may see that as a problem but there's nothing I can do to convince you otherwise.

But in Bitcoin, the mining subsidy is called that for a reason. Bitcoin is a very "political" coin, as well, if you consider the behavior of Freicoin to be political. These are all design decisions meant to encourage or discourage specific behavior. We'd like to encourage behavior that most people outside of this community would consider to be more fair.

[1714691852]

1714691852

[grondilu]

I just read this sentence again:

« In fact, the unfair economic advantages of simply being wealthy are diminished with Freicoin »

That's so awesome.  Isn't that a great pleonasm?  I mean, doesn't "being wealthy" consist, by definition, of having an economic advantage?   And what  exactly is unfair with this?

[galambo]

I see that as a big big problem. Many people like bitcoin because it is not designed to be handed to those that some politicians deem too big to fail aka important. Freicoin does just the same thing by handing free money to those organisations or individuals that some politicians inside freicoin deem more important than their respective competition. Happily distorting the market if it was worth anything.

That this can also happen with a huge amount of corruption and scamming only adds to why I absolutely can not support it at all. Not with 80%, not with 8%, not with 8 Freicoin reserved for a political purpose.

Sure, but in a way we should be happy about this thing.  Because Freicoin is the answer to most of the ranting we've been hearing ever since the beginning of bitcoin.  Instead of trying to convince them on how wrong they are, we can just tell them:  "well you can just use freicoin, then".

As a bitcoin user I still have to use fiat currencies everyday, anyway.  Between USD/EUR/Whatever and Freicoin, I'd rather use freicoin.

Exactly. This is the most adult rejection of the Freicoin I have read yet and I'm perfectly okay with it.

The audience for freicoin and the audience for bitcoin are completely different. We serve different markets which shares very little in common.

[galambo]

I just read this sentence again:

« In fact, the unfair economic advantages of simply being wealthy are diminished with Freicoin »

That's so awesome.  Isn't that a great pleonasm?  I mean, doesn't "being wealthy" consist, by definition, of having an economic advantage?   And what  exactly is unfair with this?

Economics exists to solve a resource allocation problem. Because someone has an extraordinary amount of currency, does that necessarily mean they should have an insurmountable advantage over people who have better ideas of how to use some resources? Of course not. Thats a pretty perverted consequence of the "fiat" system, and the system that Bitcoin promotes. We didn't want this in our currency, so we tried to design it out. That is the entire point of the demurrage.

[Impaler]

If you would have found a way to give every person on earth its equal share and redistribute 50% of all Freicoin to exactly all people on earth every year without withholding 80% due to be distributed at will of some interest group I would get interested but 5% is no demurrage worth talking about as it is about the weekly volatility of bitcoin.

This is the first commentary I've heard arguing for very high demurrage, 50% is far higher then even the failed Occupy currency (a non-cryptographic currency totally unrelated to Freicoin).  We consider that level of demurrage to be little more then confiscation and to be worse then the 0% demurrage of bitcoin or standard currency.  Demurrage is not like sugar on corn-flakes, more is not always better.  Like anything in economics their is a socially optimum rate that will result in the most good&services being transacted.  The liquidity premium has never been so high as to justify that level of demurrage, it would just destroy capitol formation and enrich producers at the expense of savers.

This principle of optimum rates and non-one-exploiting-anyone is why Gesell and Freicoin can not be called 'Communist' in any stretch of the imagination (Socialist perhapse, but that's a distinction over the head of most people today).  Gesell embraced private ownership of property, deriving profit from property & prices set by markets.  These were all factors that made Communists of the day despise Gesell and label him a "Capitalist Stooge".  At the same time Gesell denounced the earning of interest which is the basis of Capitalism (don't confuse Capitalism with the 'Free Markets' which are completely different), thus he was called a Communist by the Capitalists of his day.  Both sides suppressed this 3rd Way and today Gesell is tragically unknown.

The truth is that Gesell was a Free-marketer anti-Capitalist anti-Communist, and we at Freicoin follow the same ideology.

[galambo]

But in Bitcoin, the mining subsidy is called that for a reason. Bitcoin is a very "political" coin, as well, if you consider the behavior of Freicoin to be political. These are all design decisions meant to encourage or discourage specific behavior. We'd like to encourage behavior that most people outside of this community would consider to be more fair.

Bitcoin is agnostic about who receives the subsidy. Freicoin has 80% of its reserve ready to be handed out based on opinion.

Sure every *thing* can be a tool for an agenda but with bitcoin I can guess the agenda. It's gold-bugs for nerds. With Freicoin I might end up subsidizing armed forces and high security houses to defend the core developers? You really can't tell today what later these funds might be deemed worthy being spent on and 80% is just too much to just ignore the fact when opting to buy into Freicoin.

Again, 5% inflation is a joke and effectively will not make it any different than Bitcoin for the first 20 years of existence except for the excessive mining costs but what will definitely hold me from even mentioning you as an alternative to anybody no matter how well aligned with demurrage and bitcoin his preferences might be is this 80% unpredictability.

You seem pretty jaded here by past failures in the Bitcoin economy. Running off with all the Freicoin to buy private armies and high security houses? We're trying to be above the board, not be the next pirateat40. Everything we do will be disclosed and corroborate with what is observed in the blockchain. Maybe you will believe it later when the grants process actually starts.

If you don't want cryptocurrency to remain the realm of "gold-bug nerds" then you should at least recognize that something like the Freicoin will eventually have to happen.

[galambo]

I guess real demurrage can only work if you force this money on your people like in Wörgl. As soon as people can opt out for their savings, it will only be some good-will shoppers that put some toy money into it but keep their savings in other currencies. Will BitPay offer some product for web shops to accept Freicoin and instantly convert it to real Bitcoin? I don't see the point.

Lastly if people speculate on Freicoin gaining value what they do already, they totally contradict the concept of demurrage as clearly the value of Freicoin gets deflationary and not inflationary as claimed by the project.

Ok. Now you're just trying to be funny, or mean.  Sorry you don't like the Freicoin.

[ArticMine]

Stopped reading here:

« In fact, the unfair economic advantages of simply being wealthy are diminished with Freicoin. In the current system of money, including the U.S. Dollar, Euro, and other national currencies, money is and always has been used to store value–money seen from the point of view of the holders, the wealthy. Freicoin emphasizes instead the view to that of the producer, the proletariat, the 99%: money as a means of buying the goods and services necessary to sustain life, and the capital required to create improved living conditions. »

It's clearly a currency designed for communists or communist-friendly people.  Not sure they even try to hide it.   They should call it "redcoin".

Well, communists have the right to exist so I guess it would be a good thing if they had their own money.  But as far as I'm concerned, I don't want any part of this.

It is actually "richcoin" masquerading as "redcoin". The irony of Freicoin is that demurrage in a manner similar to inflation actually favors the rich over the poor. The theory that the rate of interest for a very low risk loan will essentially offset the demurrage rate is in fact correct if we assume the currency itself does not have deflation or inflation. The problem is that, as in the case of inflation, this form of low risk wealth preservation is only available to the rich. Why because the typical transaction costs make lending not cost effective for the poor. With Bitcoin on the other hand the poor can preserve their meager wealth by simply doing nothing and consequently not incurring any transaction costs.

So if you if you are a billionaire in CAD, USD or EUR terms sure Freicoin is the currency for you since you will be able to lend it out with minimal risk to offset the demurrage and preserve your wealth. On the other hand the remaining 99% are way better off with Bitcoin where wealth preservation does not require the payment of fees to the 1%.

By the way the poor are far more likely to using CAD, USD or EUR cash than the rich. If fact I would not be surprised if many members of the occupy movement actually have more cash than many billionaires.

[Ignore@YourPeril]

So if you if you are a billionaire in CAD, USD or EUR terms sure Freicoin is the currency for you since you will be able to lend it out with minimal risk to offset the demurrage and preserve your wealth.

And who would you then lend it to? Whom other than the ordinary working guy who is today paying half of his net income in various forms of interest? And now gets his loans from the very same former USD billionaire for 0%.

By the way the poor are far more likely to using CAD, USD or EUR cash than the rich.

Yes, this is naturally when living from hand to mouth. And then a yearly FRC demurrage of 5% would not even be noticed.

[grondilu]

Economics exists to solve a resource allocation problem. Because someone has an extraordinary amount of currency, does that necessarily mean they should have an insurmountable advantage over people who have better ideas of how to use some resources?

Well, yes it does.

Economics solves the resource allocation problem by giving a price to resources.  So people who have more money have bigger a weight in the resource allocation process, because they are capable of paying a higher price.  Rich people weight more in the market, and that makes sense.  Rich people are supposed to be people who have shown in the past that they are more capable of producing wealth or of evaluating the real value of things.  They are more efficient economic agents than poor people.  So it's totally logic that they have more influence in the price mechanism.

[ArticMine]

So if you if you are a billionaire in CAD, USD or EUR terms sure Freicoin is the currency for you since you will be able to lend it out with minimal risk to offset the demurrage and preserve your wealth.

And who would you then lend it to? Whom other than the ordinary working guy who is today paying half of his net income in various forms of interest? And now gets his loans from the very same former USD billionaire for 0%.

By the way the poor are far more likely to using CAD, USD or EUR cash than the rich.

Yes, this is naturally when living from hand to mouth. And then a yearly FRC demurrage of 5% would not even be noticed.

The profit made by the former USD billionaire is the spread between his cost say 0-1% and the retail rate which can be as high as 30% or more. However this spread has nothing to do with whether the underlying currency is inflationary or deflationary or has demurrage or not. The key is that by doing nothing namely not participating in the first place the "ordinary working guy" can avoid the transfer of wealth to the rich person since a lot of the borrowing  by the "ordinary working guy" is to finance discretionary consumptive spending. The key difference here between Bitcoin and Freicoin is that Bitcoin encourages inaction on the part of "ordinary working guy" thereby preserving his wealth, while Freicoin encourages action on the part of the "ordinary working guy" that results in a transfer of wealth to the top 1%

The point that the yearly FRC demurrage of 5% would not even be noticed is in fact very true. What is critical here is that this kind of thing is precisely how the top 1% engineers the transfer of wealth from the remaining 99%. The top 1% literally nickels and dimes the remaining 99% in order to accumulate wealth.

When one takes the time to actually figure out how the top 1% accumulates wealth at the expense of the remaining 99% it becomes very clear why Bitcoin is a far better deal for the "ordinary working guy" than Freicoin.

[Nolo]

I just don't understand the need for the 80%.  Why not just focus on the demurrage aspect?   Seems the 80% is what is scaring off more adopters.

If any number were to be used, I believe 10% is more reasonable.  The solution to reduce the excess amount that has already been taken is easy (atleast in my mind).  Simply "lose" the remaining outstanding coins. 

[bushstar]

You better do as instructed above or I myself will hard fork Freicon and release it without 80% bullshit coded into it, with faucets, social site
pages, Kickstarter-like website and so much more put in place before client is released to public.

Do it. I would love to see this exact same coin without the 80%.

I can help with coding, hosting and hashpower. All initial coins mined would go into a faucet.

I think we should call it, BushCoin.

[bushstar]

No initial coins, no pre-mining, no special addresses, no ownership of anything by anyone, no secret launch date. Cryptocoin with demurrage
and no bullshits attached. All generated coins and demurrage and later just demurrage go to those who are coin true foundation = miners. What
will miners do with their coins, will they hold them or invest, and what will they invest into if they chose to invest, is up to them to decide.

I wonder if a Freicoin fork is the sort of thing that the Freicoin Foundation would donate to?

[jtimon]

You already earned over 7.5 millions FRC!

No, I've mined nothing and I bought only 12000 frc for now.

What have you done by now, except a lot of talking? Nothing.

Yes, sorry for giving away my own time in ways you don't like. I guess I just have a big mouth.
Some people call that lot of talking analysis and design. But now I'm focusing on economic education, since most of the people that are calling me lazy won't bother to read a short book, they seem to prefer my posts.

Stopped reading here:

« In fact, the unfair economic advantages of simply being wealthy are diminished with Freicoin. In the current system of money, including the U.S. Dollar, Euro, and other national currencies, money is and always has been used to store value–money seen from the point of view of the holders, the wealthy. Freicoin emphasizes instead the view to that of the producer, the proletariat, the 99%: money as a means of buying the goods and services necessary to sustain life, and the capital required to create improved living conditions. »

I haven't wrote that part, but I don't see where you think is being "communist" defending the producers? Maybe you're just alergic to the word proletariat? How's suppressing unfair privileges goes against the free market?

It's clearly a currency designed for communists or communist-friendly people.  Not sure they even try to hide it.   They should call it "redcoin".

Well, communists have the right to exist so I guess it would be a good thing if they had their own money.  But as far as I'm concerned, I don't want any part of this.

Please, read my previous answer here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=133020.msg1422106#msg1422106

Also, this chapter contains the core economic reasoning under the claim "the basic interest and capital yields represent economic rents", which I think is the underlaying concept you disagree more with:
http://www.community-exchange.org/docs/Gesell/en/neo/part5/4.htm

Of course it would be better if you read the whole book (or the 3 parts on interest), but I think that's a good start if you want to discuss Gesell.

Bitcoin is agnostic about who receives the subsidy.

No, it's not agnostic: it gives it to miners. When creating money, you have to give it to someone. You just think that giving it to people with mining equipment so that can later made huge profits by selling after the price have risen is more fair. That's YOUR OPINION. I used to have the same opinion, but it's still an opinion.

Freicoin has 80% of its reserve ready to be handed out based on opinion.

Your own opinion could influence too, since we want people to comment on the proposals and participate in general.

With Freicoin I might end up subsidizing armed forces and high security houses to defend the core developers?

Please, this is ridiculous.

Again, 5% inflation is a joke and effectively will not make it any different than Bitcoin for the first 20 years of existence except for the excessive mining costs but...

Please, stop calling demurrage inflation, they're different things. Demurrage is not monetary inflation nor price inflation.
Many people claim monetary inflation is equivalent to demurrage and so timecoin/expocoin would be equivalent to freicoin, but they don't undesrtand that the effect on interest rates is pretty different. If you're one of them, I suggest you search the web for "inflation premium component of interest" or something like that. Or just ask here, but please stop saying something false as it was an obvious tautology.
Simply put...

What would be the risk-free interest on expocoin ?
I would say something close 10%, in any case, surely over 5%

What would be the risk-free interest on freicoin ?

I would say something close to 0%, surely under 5%.

[crazy_rabbit]

You better do as instructed above or I myself will hard fork Freicon and release it without 80% bullshit coded into it, with faucets, social site
pages, Kickstarter-like website and so much more put in place before client is released to public.

I can help with coding, hosting and hashpower. All initial coins mined would go into a faucet.

No initial coins, no pre-mining, no special addresses, no ownership of anything by anyone, no secret launch date. Cryptocoin with demurrage
and no bullshits attached. All generated coins and demurrage and later just demurrage go to those who are coin true foundation = miners. What
will miners do with their coins, will they hold them or invest, and what will they invest into if they chose to invest, is up to them to decide. I
really don't care if they'll go and invest in World War 3 or feed the starving of the world.

I or anyone else behind it get no coins for doing it.

I think we should call it, BushCoin.

No, we must be up-to-date, so ObamaCoin. 

I'd vote for the coin! :-) ObamaCoin! :-) Love it.

[xxjs]

I suppose we want the cost of keeping money (demurrage) as well as the cost of making money exchanges as low as possible, like we do with all production. It is called improvement, and is the reason we all live in relative abundance.

[grondilu]

Stopped reading here:

« In fact, the unfair economic advantages of simply being wealthy are diminished with Freicoin. In the current system of money, including the U.S. Dollar, Euro, and other national currencies, money is and always has been used to store value–money seen from the point of view of the holders, the wealthy. Freicoin emphasizes instead the view to that of the producer, the proletariat, the 99%: money as a means of buying the goods and services necessary to sustain life, and the capital required to create improved living conditions. »

I haven't wrote that part, but I don't see where you think is being "communist" defending the producers? Maybe you're just alergic to the word proletariat? How's suppressing unfair privileges goes against the free market?

It's not just the word "proletariat", although it is indeed a very good hint:  generally whoever pronounce this word is either a communist, or a capitalist mocking communists.

First:  "unfair economic advantage of simply being wealthy".  Why is this "unfair"?   Being wealthy is not a privilege: it's the result of an open competition.  In the past (and still nowadays in some countries), some people could not practice some professions or own certain things, whatever they do.  You had to be born in a certain way.   That was what one might call privileges.  But it is not the case anymore in most countries.

Second:  your idea of money is just wrong.  People do not just work to survive.  Most of them, and especially people who work A LOT (like chinese people working to build the stuff we use all around the world), work in order to save money SO THAT THEY DON'T HAVE TO WORK ANYMORE IN THE FUTURE.   Sorry for using high caps but I really wanted to stress this.

Storing value is a perfectly normal and economically sane use case for money.   Storing money is really a mean of buying and exchanging stuff, it's just being done with a much longer time scale.

Third:  nowadays most people don't work anyway.   At least because of the high unemployment rate.   So talking about the 99% of "producing" people is just weird.

Please, read my previous answer here:
https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=133020.msg1422106#msg1422106

There are way too many economic assumption I don't agree with in this reasoning.  I just can't debate it.  I disagree with pretty much every single sentence.

[jtimon]

Everybody can do mining without exception. Not everybody can receive your funds. This initial distribution of coins is necessary in both coins and also freicoin needs the miners to protect it. My opinion? We'll see.

This is not exactly true. Many people don't have access to the necessary equipment or just lack the technical capabilities to mine.

I didn't ask to influence it. I want nobody to influence it. I want to know up-front what will happen to 80% of the freicoin economy.

Ok. Then you would have preferred that everything went to miners. That we had only made one experiment instead of two at the same time.
My bet (after a couple of years advocating for bitcoin and explaining it to very different people) is that more people will prefer our solution, some may even be skeptic about that 20% and require an explanation. But as you say, we'll see.

With Freicoin I might end up subsidizing armed forces and high security houses to defend the core developers?

Please, this is ridiculous.

Yet if the majority thinks it makes sense to fund a moon expedition, a moon expedition it will be, right? Oh yes, not right. The veto lies in the hands of one person, so if he finds it ridiculous, ridiculous it is.

Ok, sorry, I wasn't getting your point.
Yes, this is complicated. We will try to define some rules first. The more objective and clear we can, so that the "veto" doesn't seem arbitrary.

What would be the risk-free interest on expocoin ?
I would say something close 10%, in any case, surely over 5%

What would be the risk-free interest on freicoin ?

I would say something close to 0%, surely under 5%.

It is the same. I hold a diploma in maths, so I couldn't care less about the balance of my wallet as long as my share of the scarce commodity is the same and that's the case no matter if you use inflation or demurrage. Freicoin for me is just a fancy hype kind of thing that doesn't change the economics of bitcoin the way it promises except for 80% being held by one individual upfront.

Good to have mathematicians around. So tell me, if they're equivalent what will it be more like? 10% or 0% interest rates?
What's your prediction for both equivalent schemes?

It's not just the word "proletariat", although it is indeed a very good hint:  generally whoever pronounce this word is either a communist, or a capitalist mocking communists.

Well, Silvio Gesell was neither of those. He just defined that word as: "Proletariat: workmen deprived of their own means of production."

First:  "unfair economic advantage of simply being wealthy".  Why is this "unfair"?   Being wealthy is not a privilege: it's the result of an open competition.  In the past (and still nowadays in some countries), some people could not practice some professions or own certain things, whatever they do.  You had to be born in a certain way.   That was what one might call privileges.  But it is not the case anymore in most countries.

He means unfair in the same sense cartels and government subsidies are unfair. In the "economic rent" sense. We believe gold-like monetary systems give an economic rent to both money lenders and "real capital" owners.

Second:  your idea of money is just wrong.  People do not just work to survive.  Most of them, and especially people who work A LOT (like chinese people working to build the stuff we use all around the world), work in order to save money SO THAT THEY DON'T HAVE TO WORK ANYMORE IN THE FUTURE.   Sorry for using high caps but I really wanted to stress this.

That's perfectly possible with free-money. There's many ways to SAVE besides hoarding. It's not even the more common when there's capital yields. Only when capital yields are below the basic interest (or when money issuers manipulate interest rates), money runs to the mattress. The most common way to save is to invest/lend.

Storing value is a perfectly normal and economically sane use case for money.   Storing money is really a mean of buying and exchanging stuff, it's just being done with a much longer time scale.

If having both functions on the same tool causes great waste of resources (unemployment, cycles, destruction of capital...), we need to separate each function on a different tool.

Third:  nowadays most people don't work anyway.   At least because of the high unemployment rate.   So talking about the 99% of "producing" people is just weird.

I don't think that's accurate. I would say that most of the people of the world sell their labor. But anyway I think you just don't like the style how that part is written, because you just don't sympathize with the people that may like it.

There are way too many economic assumption I don't agree with in this reasoning.  I just can't debate it.  I disagree with pretty much every single sentence.

Let me try to summarize it on separate statements. All assuming a free market but for an enforced gold monetary monopoly.

1) nominal interest = real interest + inflation premium = basic interest + risk premium + inflation premium

2) Capital yields naturally tend downward through competition, just like other profits. While they're positive, there's unsatisfied demand for producing goods (real capital) and more could be invested with no loss.

3) Capital yields and the Basic interest/liquidity premium/time preference tend to be equal

4) The basic interest is always positive (obviously we disagree on why) and therefore capital yields can never be zero.

[grondilu]

It's not just the word "proletariat", although it is indeed a very good hint:  generally whoever pronounce this word is either a communist, or a capitalist mocking communists.

Well, Silvio Gesell was neither of those. He just defined that word as: "Proletariat: workmen deprived of their own means of production."

What does he mean by "deprived"?  And "their own means of production"?  Were these means of production their property in the first place? Have they been stolen?  If so, those workmen should ask for justice.  Theft is a crime even in anarcap-land.

First:  "unfair economic advantage of simply being wealthy".  Why is this "unfair"?   Being wealthy is not a privilege: it's the result of an open competition.  In the past (and still nowadays in some countries), some people could not practice some professions or own certain things, whatever they do.  You had to be born in a certain way.   That was what one might call privileges.  But it is not the case anymore in most countries.

He means unfair in the same sense cartels and government subsidies are unfair. In the "economic rent" sense. We believe gold-like monetary systems give an economic rent to both money lenders and "real capital" owners.

Let me ask you.  Is it unfair that an unemployed workmen receiving his weekly unemployment subsidie from government?  Isn't that also a rent?   Why would such a rent be acceptable when the person who benefits it has done nothing to benefit it except gathering in flocks and use political threats and physical bullying in order to get it from force?

Yeah, having and using sound money is a good economic move and it does indeed provide an economic advantage other people using shitty money.   Yes, being smart pays.  I don't understand why you think this is unfair.

Storing value is a perfectly normal and economically sane use case for money.   Storing money is really a mean of buying and exchanging stuff, it's just being done with a much longer time scale.

If having both functions on the same tool causes great waste of resources (unemployment, cycles, destruction of capital...), we need to separate each function on a different tool.

You didn't quite get my point.  To me saving and exchanging are really the same process.  They just happen on different time scale.  So there really is only one function, it just that it is very elastic as far as time is concerned.

There are way too many economic assumption I don't agree with in this reasoning.  I just can't debate it.  I disagree with pretty much every single sentence.

Let me try to summarize it on separate statements. All assuming a free market but for an enforced gold monetary monopoly.

1) nominal interest = real interest + inflation premium = basic interest + risk premium + inflation premium

2) Capital yields naturally tend downward through competition, just like other profits. While they're positive, there's unsatisfied demand for producing goods (real capital) and more could be invested with no loss.

3) Capital yields and the Basic interest/liquidity premium/time preference tend to be equal

4) The basic interest is always positive (obviously we disagree on why) and therefore capital yields can never be zero.

I don't understand why you keep talking about interest rates and capital yield when bitcoin is not about that at all.  Bitcoin is jjust a currency.  It does not say anything about credit and investments.