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

[Jorgeminator]

Another daily hashrate chart:

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[jtimon]

- The addresses will have to start with rather "b","f" or something: anything other than "1" (more stylish also)

https://github.com/freicoin/freicoin/issues/17

I thought that same thing at first, but it seems it would be worse.

- The demurrage has to start way higher than 5%, lets say 65% which is then reduced to 5% in 3 years (as a part of the initial distribution)

There's several discussions on the freicoin forums about this, but I'll post here again the chapter where Gesell justifies the 5% value:

http://www.community-exchange.org/docs/Gesell/en/neo/part5/8.htm

[jtimon]

Sorry, didn't see this.

How is basic interest rate related to demurrage rate in Gesell's theory?

Demurrage is supposed to suppress the basic interest.

Assuming there is no competing currencies, what's the basic interest rate (a rough estimate would be okay) for:

1% annual demurrage rate

It would be 4%.

5% annual demurrage rate

0%

10% annual demurrage rate
90% annual demurrage rate

0% but...
With this high rates, you're doing more than suppressing the basic interest. You would be pushing rates below zero.
What would happen? Of course, we don't know, but let me speculate...
We're assuming stable price. So you would be pushing for lower than zero REAL interest rates. I don't think any rational lender would lend at negative real rates. He would prefer to invest himself or to purchase some commodity suitable for hoarding (gold, wine?). So in this case, your hurting the financial market too (as the basic interest does).

With basic interest, the borrower won't take the money if he doesn't expect yields over or equivalent to the basic interest.
With these demurrage rates...borrowers will still offer zero rates if they can achieve zero yields on their investments, but maybe lenders would be willing to take more risks.
I don't know, it's hard to tell what would happen with this high rates, but if the history-based measure of the basic interest is correct, putting more demurrage will intuitively lead to something that's not good. And, as said, my intuition is that less investments would be made as savers prefer to buy goods to hoard over lending/investing OR the economy as a whole would make "more risky investments than it should"

Can anyone answer that? Then it would be easier for us to grasp the claim here.

Not sure if this answer will satisfy you, but I hope you can get a clearer idea of Gesell's free-money theory of interest.

[Jorgeminator]

Almost at 100 Gigahashes/s already 

[Impaler]

Were also past 10 million coins issues, though naturally demurrage has decreased this slightly by now.  Due to the exponentially increasing hash rate and faster then target block times the accumulated demurrage on the earliest coins issued should exceed 1% already.

[galambo]

A new system of accounting was popularized in response to new risks and crisis which appeared in the 15 Century, an era dominated by the Venetian trade empire.

As we are faced by new risks and crisis our goal is to promote the use of cryptocurrency. We want to do this in appropriate places to help the global economy overcome all obstacles.

I think Freicoin is the best vehicle to do that.

How about you?

[crazy_rabbit]

A new system of accounting was popularized in response to new risks and crisis which appeared in the 15 Century, an era dominated by the Venetian trade empire.

As we are faced by new risks and crisis our goal is to promote the use of cryptocurrency. We want to do this in appropriate places to help the global economy overcome all obstacles.

I think Freicoin is the best vehicle to do that.

How about you?

No. It seems like an oxymoron. From the Freico.in website:

"Freicoin's parameters are carefully chosen to eliminate the basic interest component of investments, called the liquidity premium by economists. Usurious non-zero basic interest distorts the free market, incentivises poisonous greed, excess, and short-term thinking, and perpetuates a vicious cycle of boom/bust recessions."

Besides the obtuse nature of the explanation, several obvious points pop out at me.

1) boom/bust recessions - is this not the natural order of things? Are there ever any true eternally lasting equilibrium's? Forest fires reset the forest just as Ice Age's reset the planet. I'm not aware of any natural process that is fixed for all time. Why should the economy?

2) Money serves greed, does it not? If there was no greed, we wouldn't need money as we would all just share everything equally- no? So if you create a system of money that has eliminated the incentives toward greed- you have essentially eliminated the need for collecting money itself.

3) "Usurious non-zero basic interest distorts the free market" - I would argue that this is a primary functioning component of the free market.

[Impaler]

1) boom/bust recessions - is this not the natural order of things? Are there ever any true eternally lasting equilibrium's? Forest fires reset the forest just as Ice Age's reset the planet. I'm not aware of any natural process that is fixed for all time. Why should the economy?

Obviously natural disasters and physical socks are going to effect economic activity, but virtually all economists agree their is something called "The business cycle" which is characterized by cyclical expansion and contraction of the economy and that this cycle is being generated internally not being imposed from the outside.  Their is huge disagreement between economic schools as to what that cause is, Gesell blames the economic distortions of basic interest.  

2) Money serves greed, does it not? If there was no greed, we wouldn't need money as we would all just share everything equally- no? So if you create a system of money that has eliminated the incentives toward greed- you have essentially eliminated the need for collecting money itself.

No, Greed is no more the point of money then Gluttony is the point of food (Did you learn your economics from Gordan Gecko?)  The purpose of an economy is to allow consumers and producers to conduct exchange and achieve maximum utility by doing so as efficiently as possible, we believe Demurrage helps to serve that purpose.  Demurrage may make greed harder to execute by eliminating an avenue through which greed is commonly executed (usury), but because greed is a moral defect in the individual no law or social structure can eliminate it entirely.

3) "Usurious non-zero basic interest distorts the free market" - I would argue that this is a primary functioning component of the free market.

A free market is process for finding a price.  Free-markets simply mean that the rates are set by an open process of bidding, rather then being set by some arbitrary authority figure.  But Gesell has clearly demonstrated that the nature of the money used in a free-market will inevitably determine the rate of interest (essentially the rent value of money) that is arrives at, in modern terminology we would say its a Nash Equilibrium, decide the RULES (nature of money) of a free market and you decide the outcome even when you don't control anything else.  

Now when anyone say something is 'distorting' a market we are implicitly saying their is a natural undistorted state/price that a market would or should be achieving, Gesell takes that undistorted state to be one in which the medium of exchange (money) is on equal footing with the broad marketplace of physical assets.  Thus to have an undistorted market the money must be destructible like the rest of the physical world.

[Jorgeminator]

Boom...

[jtimon]

This graphs are cool. It would be nice to see one comparing various chain coins...

[Jorgeminator]

This graphs are cool. It would be nice to see one comparing various chain coins...

Here you go  

[jtimon]

This graphs are cool. It would be nice to see one comparing various chain coins...

Here you go  

Thank you!
I wonder what those huge peaks on PPcoin are...

[FuzzyBear]

This graphs are cool. It would be nice to see one comparing various chain coins...

Here you go  

Thank you!
I wonder what those huge peaks on PPcoin are...

Most likely the points when.... First people with serious hashing power discovered PPC and got it setup... Second when Bitparking added a pool and an exchange.... 3rd when the BTC block reward halved for BTC... just my guesses so don't hold me to it!!

[Jorgeminator]

This graphs are cool. It would be nice to see one comparing various chain coins...

Here you go  

Thank you!
I wonder what those huge peaks on PPcoin are...

Most likely the points when.... First people with serious hashing power discovered PPC and got it setup... Second when Bitparking added a pool and an exchange.... 3rd when the BTC block reward halved for BTC... just my guesses so don't hold me to it!!

You're most likely right about the third one, that value is from November 29th, right when the BTC block reward was halved.

[FuzzyBear]

OK i just had a thought...

So everyone jumped on the FRC wagon and is mining their little hearts out to get these coins as early adopters while the difficulty low...

Now the difficulty has jumped again to 9772.0

Everyone getting less coins for their hashrate at mining....

I heard someone saying that they are mining with their little GFX card (~20MHash) just to keep the coins in their wallet....

This all well and good.... but what about electircity costs??

And when the difficulty gets so high that only fractions of FRC make it to each miner.... would these people who are early adopters be able to mine the coins to keep their supply?? i think not... agreed they only loose 5% of their coins... but all this means is that the people with massive mining rigs will ALWAYS have all the coins, buy some off them.... pay say in BTC..... wait a few years.... and they will mostly have worked their way back to the original miner... (not only does this screw over the smaller miner, but also devalues BTC, right?)

Also what if one of these alt coins was just setup by some big Bank as an attack on BTC in a way to aquire BTC wealth without much effort (cept the programming) and launched their own Pump and Dump scheme to just trade for BTC.... also don't forget that all these alt coin mining rigs that are not pointing at BTC will leave the BTC network more open to a 51% attack..... realistically yes there are a few people with massive hash rates so would require a serious investment to build up the needed hashrate, but with ASIC's round the corner it not too much of a wild statement....

Just be careful with ur coins, and read read read all u can to find out more if you are serious about cryptocurrencies, learn from lessons others had to learn in the past at a cost... and never play with money u can't afford to write off 100% as a loss. 

anyways just my thoughts feel free to chip in where i may have missed something...

[crazy_rabbit]

2) Money serves greed, does it not? If there was no greed, we wouldn't need money as we would all just share everything equally- no? So if you create a system of money that has eliminated the incentives toward greed- you have essentially eliminated the need for collecting money itself.

No, Greed is no more the point of money then Gluttony is the point of food (Did you learn your economics from Gordan Gecko?)  The purpose of an economy is to allow consumers and producers to conduct exchange and achieve maximum utility by doing so as efficiently as possible, we believe Demurrage helps to serve that purpose.  Demurrage may make greed harder to execute by eliminating an avenue through which greed is commonly executed (usury), but because greed is a moral defect in the individual no law or social structure can eliminate it entirely.

[/quote]

I disagree. Most mammals I am familiar with personally consume to the point of gluttony (myself included). Bears don't eat till they feel pleasantly satiated, they eat as much as they possibly can. Greed and gluttony are products of our pseudo awareness of an uncertain future. We hoard money/food because it's abundant today and we are unsure of the future. Anyone who thinks they "have all they need" and are "satisfied" are simply outsourcing the job of worrying about the future to someone else (Often Society). I don't go to the super-market and take every can of beans because I am making an assumption that the super market will be there tomorrow and I can get more tomorrow. Likewise I save (hoard) money because I know what I don't spend today, I will need to spend tomorrow. And thus most people are reasonable.

In the face of a Zombie apocalypse however- things would be different. I don't know if the supermarket will be here tomorrow, so I will take every last can of beans I can possible handle. Even if it's more then I require. If we live in a truly free market with no government support or intervention I will also work tirelessly to accumulate as much money as possible because, well, who knows what might happen.

So yes, Greed is the point of money just as Gluttony is the point of Food. If you weren't physically limited by the size of your stomach and the physical limits of your body you would gorge yourself forever. If you had to physically hold your money you might limit yourself to how much you try to hold because it's a physical object and thus has physical limits. However when it's just a matter of Zeros (like bitcoin!) you're goal is to hoard as many as possible because there is no limit to how many you have.

FRC I understand is trying to stem this behavior, but I'm not convinced you're doing it the right way. People will invest and thus circulate money when they feel like the risk of lending it out (investing it) balances potential gain in rewards. It's a more sophisticated system of hoarding. Demurrage is like food with expiration dates: People will still hoard. FRC doesn't go 'bad' fast enough to give people a sense of urgency with it.

If Demurrage actually IS a good idea, it would have been smarter to start later on- not at the beginning. Now all you have done is create an incentive for pump and dumpers. Why? Because the FRC supermarket probably 'aint gonna' be open tomorrow, and this food gonna spoil in the heat.
 

[jtimon]

@ FuzzyBear
Thank you for your explanations on ppcoin hashrates, they make sense to me.

Now your last comment.

Sure, when more efficient miners (including taxes on electricity) jump in, others stop ming at a profit. Profits tend to zero anyway, so the mining costs tend to equal the reward for any currency. Yes, the small miner eventually gets screwed.

Now, eventually (probably long before the competition for hashing power represents any kind of thread to Bitcoin) Freicoin will be merged mined, ending that competition for resources forever. There's no reason not to do it: is more efficient and better for everyone.

After that, all Bitcoin miners should mine Freicoin too, since the marginal costs of validating Freicoin transactions will be probably lower than the reward. You were paying the expensive costs (hashing) anyway, mining only bitcoin or also freicoin.
Well, I don't know the current btc/nmc hashing ratio. It should be 1:1 but human stupidity can always defy any logical prediction.

For merged mined currencies, the total costs of mining tend to equal the value of the total merged reward.

They compete with each other for users and value, but that's not exclusive to chain currencies. For example, a barter club makes the usd, bitcoin and freicoin less valuable since it competes with them as another medium of exchange.
Should bitcoiners sabotage freicoin so that bitcoin remains more valuable?
For anyone who would answer yes to this...please, answer this too:
Should the US prohibit barter clubs, LETS, Ripple, Bitcoin, Freicoin, gold, miles and linden dollars to postpone the inevitable collapse of the usd?

[jtimon]

People will invest and thus circulate money when they feel like the risk of lending it out (investing it) balances potential gain in rewards. It's a more sophisticated system of hoarding saving.

Exactly, but you've just misspelled a word.

Demurrage is like food with expiration dates: People will still hoard save. FRC doesn't go 'bad' fast enough to give people a sense of urgency with it.

We're all for savings, just not in a way that suppresses other people's ability to exchange and work (to prosper). Not in a way that obstructs competition.
Sorry if I'm repetitive, but costless hoarding (the source of time preference/basic interest) is a barrier to competition as positive capital yields (a form of profit) show. The more competition, the less profit. Until costs equal prices.

If Demurrage actually IS a good idea, it would have been smarter to start later on- not at the beginning. Now all you have done is create an incentive for pump and dumpers. Why? Because the FRC supermarket probably 'aint gonna' be open tomorrow, and this food gonna spoil in the heat.

Since we believe that a currency with demurrage can be competitive, it should be competitive having demurrage from the beginning. I believe I'll make profits from buying the early coins even after paying the demurrage fees, why complicate things with time ranges and different demurrage rates?
This same thing you're saying has been proposed on our forum, on the initial proposals (sorry, quite messy) section. I'll let you know if I find it.

[crazy_rabbit]

People will invest and thus circulate money when they feel like the risk of lending it out (investing it) balances potential gain in rewards. It's a more sophisticated system of hoarding saving.

Exactly, but you've just misspelled a word.

perhaps....

Demurrage is like food with expiration dates: People will still hoard save. FRC doesn't go 'bad' fast enough to give people a sense of urgency with it.


We're all for savings, just not in a way that suppresses other people's ability to exchange and work (to prosper). Not in a way that obstructs competition.
Sorry if I'm repetitive, but costless hoarding (the source of time preference/basic interest) is a barrier to competition as positive capital yields (a form of profit) show. The more competition, the less profit. Until costs equal prices.

What is wrong with costless hoarding? I'm not convinced there is any problem with it. Some people will hoard and some will invest, it all depends on the person and their incentives. If there is money to be made through investing- people will invest. If not they won't. People won't hoard if they dont' have some better alternative. Currently hoarding is the status-quo among cryptocoins because there just isn't very much of value to do with the coins themselves.

FRC is obviously a very idealistic experiment, but it's difficult to see how it addresses a real world need. If Bitcoin had demurrage, do you think it would be farther along then it already is? The problem FRC seems to be addressing seems to be a theoretical problem "hoarding", which is not a 'real' problem. Hoarding in CryptoCurrency land isn't (in my opinion) because it's free to hoard/save coins, it's because there is nothing reliable/worthwhile to spend it on. As we are without any government that would enforce our Bitcoin contracts with Violence, we are left with securing investments between people who don't know each other and who identify each other.

My proof for this? Most people transacting anything over a small amount of BTC insist to use escrow for transactions (or work in small increments to build trust), the popularity of SatoshiDice and other "provably fair" games (really high transaction volume), and the exchanges which give the sense of limited risk by allowing users to convert BTC to liquid fiat quickly in the event of panic.

Other transactions: Loans/lending with a set interest rate, investment into companies, ponzi schemes: while collapsing triumphantly- don't actually consume much of the overal total transaction volume.

I'm tempted to think FRC is solving the wrong problem. Think again of some natural disaster, like Katrina for example. For some amount of time, Cash is less valuable then real possessions like food, guns or security. It's possible in some situations of natural disasters that cash is worthless (King Richard III: "A Horse! A Horse! My Kingdom for a horse!") however if the government is expected to return at some point in time, it would be worthwhile durring an emergency to take advantage of the relative 'cheapness' of cash to accumulate (hoard) cash. Not because it's free to hold, but because there isn't anything worth purchasing with it (because it has such little value versus other things). However hoarders are acutely aware that in the future it will have a greater purchase power, and thus hold onto it and try to accumulate as much as possible.

See what I'm saying? People aren't hoarding Coins because they are free to hoard, they are hoarding because there isn't anything worth spending them on right now. Which in my opinion is the case with Crypto. There are some things you can buy with the coin, but compared to what people think the value should be, there isn't much you're willing to spend a large amount of crypto on.

If Demurrage actually IS a good idea, it would have been smarter to start later on- not at the beginning. Now all you have done is create an incentive for pump and dumpers. Why? Because the FRC supermarket probably 'aint gonna' be open tomorrow, and this food gonna spoil in the heat.

Since we believe that a currency with demurrage can be competitive, it should be competitive having demurrage from the beginning. I believe I'll make profits from buying the early coins even after paying the demurrage fees, why complicate things with time ranges and different demurrage rates?
This same thing you're saying has been proposed on our forum, on the initial proposals (sorry, quite messy) section. I'll let you know if I find it.
[/quote]

[Impaler]

What is wrong with costless hoarding? I'm not convinced there is any problem with it. Some people will hoard and some will invest, it all depends on the person and their incentives. If there is money to be made through investing- people will invest. If not they won't. People won't hoard if they dont' have some better alternative. Currently hoarding is the status-quo among cryptocoins because there just isn't very much of value to do with the coins themselves.

Because costless hoarding is impossible with REAL assets, everything in our world decays, entropy is inevitable.  When you accumulate a surplus of goods to have as a reserve for future consumption that is perfectly natural and good, but their will be an inevitable cost in decay before the reserve is consumed.

Now if we know for sure that costless hoarding is impossible with real physical assets, yet money which is entirely a social construct of man appears to allow that which the laws of physics forbid.  How can that be reconciled?  The laws of physics ALWAYS trump social constructs, their is no costless hoarding even with money, money is simply causing a cost-shifting from the hoarder to the rest of society (which we call usury) which is why we can't ALL hoard at no cost, someone must always lose.

Your last point about "hoarding because their is nothing to do with the coins" is the classic supply-side economic error, the belief that is the fault of a 'supply' for not enticing money to move in the face of it's desire to remain stationary.  It's argued that an increase in supply and a lowering of prices will entice money to move, but if the prescription is for continuing declines in price then how ever tempting it may be to purchase on the first drop in prices the expected future infinity of price declines constitute an even strong incentive to keep hoarding. 

The reality is their is nothing to do with the coins because they are being hoarded, remove the hoarding incentive and the uses will spring up.