Pegging the coin price..

[spartacusrex]

Hello,

I was wondering something..

What would happen, in a hypothetical setting, if you had a new coin, you pre-mined 1 Billion coins, then you sold those coins at a 'known' rate ?

The 2 options I mean are

1) You sell them for $1 each. All the way to 1 Billion coins.

2) You sell the first 100 million for 0.1cents, the next 100 million for 1cent, the next 100 million for 0.1$ (10 cents).. etc.. x10 every 100 million. (or some other predetermined geometric rate)

I was thinking this would 'somehow' peg the value of the currency to a known amount?

I think I like (1), all the coins are sold at $1, and once all the coins are sold, THEN, the exchanges would take over. Not that you could stop them of course, but who would pay more than $1 when you could buy it for that.

Option (2) seems very similar to the mining concept as the early adopters would get their coins cheaper.

The reason I like it is that the coins can be introduced at whatever speed is required, as the economy grows AND a price for the coins would be much easier to determine. Especially in option (1). Psychologically you would be able to price things much better if you thought 1BTC = 1USD (or whatever).

In general, I would hope this would lead to economic stability while the coin matures and grows past the Billion dollar mark.. ?

There would be no mining rewards for miners, just a 0.1% txn fee or some other established amount.. and there may/may not be inflation in the coin.

Economically, is this viable/stupid/interesting/bollox ?

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[Impaler]

Pegging is done by BUYING at the peg price, your idea is fail, it dose nothing  

[spartacusrex]

Err.. So in Option 1) is $1 not the Peg Price ?

[bb999]

Err.. So in Option 1) is $1 not the Peg Price ?

The problem with your idea is there is no mechanism for "pegging" it to $1.  Setting the initial price at $1 is just the initial price (in your scenario of a total of 1 billion coins, once the last coin has been sold for $1 you lose control over setting the price and it's up to the secondary market to discover the price then which could vary significantly from $1.)

[spartacusrex]

Yes, that is what i expected would happen.

But, for a Billion coins to be bought, the ecosystem would have to be pretty established. That would take years.. maybe even decades..

At that stage, I totally agree that the exchanges would then dictate the price of the currency, but the whole system would have 'bootstrapped' into a viable economy by then.

Then, once the ecosystem is already up and running, it would revert to the same mechanisms as every other currency.

You peg the first billion only.. Then everyone would know what the currency is worth in its initial stages.

People, hopefully, would not need to switch back and forth between this coin and other FIAT/CRYPTO coins at this stage. They would simply stay only in the coin. It never really matters to me what the exchange rate of USD/GBP is.. I know what a cup of coffee costs in GBP, and that's what I pay (if I think it is reasonable).

In general, is it not possible to peg your currency to the USD for a limited period of time, and then to detach, once your economy is stable ?

( In fact, thinking about it, you could almost not put a limit on the amount of initial coins. If there was a demand for them, you would sell them, at $1. At some point there would be a large enough Money Supply in the system to keep the whole thing rolling, and no-one would buy new coins. No? )

[bb999]

Yes, that is what i expected would happen.

But, for a Billion coins to be bought, the ecosystem would have to be pretty established. That would take years.. maybe even decades..

At that stage, I totally agree that the exchanges would then dictate the price of the currency, but the whole system would have 'bootstrapped' into a viable economy by then.

Then, once the ecosystem is already up and running, it would revert to the same mechanisms as every other currency.

You peg the first billion only.. Then everyone would know what the currency is worth in its initial stages.

People, hopefully, would not need to switch back and forth between this coin and other FIAT/CRYPTO coins at this stage. They would simply stay only in the coin. It never really matters to me what the exchange rate of USD/GBP is.. I know what a cup of coffee costs in GBP, and that's what I pay (if I think it is reasonable).

In general, is it not possible to peg your currency to the USD for a limited period of time, and then to detach, once your economy is stable ?

( In fact, thinking about it, you could almost not put a limit on the amount of initial coins. If there was a demand for them, you would sell them, at $1. At some point there would be a large enough Money Supply in the system to keep the whole thing rolling, and no-one would buy new coins. No? )

One question I have is how would you determine how quickly to sell the billion.  I think what you're trying to accomplish is to lower the volatility in the currency so people invest and it builds a transaction based infrastructure and then you feel confident 'letting it float' so to speak.

The problem with any pegging mechanism that has been implemented is that once a system becomes dependent on low volatility or a pegged exchange rate it is very hard to wean it off.  Look at the Chinese peg to the dollar, anytime it moves very far away Chinese exporters start screaming bloody murder and Chinese central bank intervenes.

I like your idea but unfortunately part of the birth pains of such a revolutionary concept like Bitcoin is the volatility brought about by all of the different interested parties rushing into it.  I hope this addresses what you were asking, it's an interesting conversation to have.

[spartacusrex]

One question I have is how would you determine how quickly to sell the billion.

I would not decide, the market would.

If there is a demand, they would come to the 'Coin Shop' and buy them, in as large or small a quantity as they like. Always at $1.

You have a job, and it pays you in these 'newcoins', then you go to your local coffee house and spend your coins, and then they spend the money they just made at your workplace, and the circle is complete..

You would not need to put more coins into the system for this transaction cycle to function.

As more people join the economy, there may not be enough Money in the system, so at that stage, they would go and buy some more coins from the Coin Shop.

That's what I like about it. The Money Supply would grow exactly as the economy requires it to.

Has a currency ever temporarily pegged itself to the USD ? And detached itself without disastrous consequences..?

[bb999]

One question I have is how would you determine how quickly to sell the billion.

I would not decide, the market would.

If there is a demand, they would come to the 'Coin Shop' and buy them, in as large or small a quantity as they like. Always at $1.

You have a job, and it pays you in these 'newcoins', then you go to your local coffee house and spend your coins, and then they spend the money they just made at your workplace, and the circle is complete..

You would not need to put more coins into the system for this transaction cycle to function.

As more people join the economy, there may not be enough Money in the system, so at that stage, they would go and buy some more coins from the Coin Shop.

That's what I like about it. The Money Supply would grow exactly as the economy requires it to.

Has a currency ever temporarily pegged itself to the USD ? And detached itself without disastrous consequences..?

There have been instances, such as the Zimbabwe hyperinflation in 2009, where locals give up their currency and start using dollars or Euros or others, and then transition onto a different national currency. 

From the end of WWII until the 1970s USD was also exchangeable for gold so it was effectively "pegged" and any currency pegging to the dollar was also effectively pegging to gold.  1970 to today is basically uncharted waters, we will see how this global experiment plays out over the coming decade.

Addressing your example above, if I knew this was how the system operated and I were a speculator, what would prevent me from buying a large percentage of the coins and sitting on them until the billion has been sold and then make money from the rising price associated with growing demand and fixed supply?

[spartacusrex]

Addressing your example above, if I knew this was how the system operated and I were a speculator, what would prevent me from buying a large percentage of the coins and sitting on them until the billion has been sold and then make money from the rising price associated with growing demand and fixed supply?

Well, here-in lies the deflationary question.. 

I do not think a totally fixed supply of coins would work.. The Money Supply has to grow as the economy grows, in my opinion. (For me, brilliant beautiful Bitcoin is digital Gold. Not a digital version of the USD..)

Basically you could premine a Trillion coins.. Or an amount so large that there would always be coins available.

And If/When a trillion coins were in the system, i doubt any single entity could hold the currency to ransom in any meaningful way. There would simply be too many coins.

You could maybe put a time limit on the coin shop.. say 10 or even 20 years.. rather than a limit on the amount of coins.

At that stage another mechanism, which I do have in mind (based on the price of Gold/Bitcoins in 'newcoins'), could be used to decide whether to inject more/less money into the system. This system would of course have to be in place at the launch of the coin.. Not something you could crowbar in 10/20 years into the coins life.. difficult but certainly not impossible.. me thinks.
 

[bb999]

Addressing your example above, if I knew this was how the system operated and I were a speculator, what would prevent me from buying a large percentage of the coins and sitting on them until the billion has been sold and then make money from the rising price associated with growing demand and fixed supply?

Well, here-in lies the deflationary question.. 

I do not think a totally fixed supply of coins would work.. The Money Supply has to grow as the economy grows, in my opinion. (For me, brilliant beautiful Bitcoin is digital Gold. Not a digital version of the USD..)

Basically you could premine a Trillion coins.. Or an amount so large that there would always be coins available.

And If/When a trillion coins were in the system, i doubt any single entity could hold the currency to ransom in any meaningful way. There would simply be too many coins.

You could maybe put a time limit on the coin shop.. say 10 or even 20 years.. rather than a limit on the amount of coins.

At that stage another mechanism, which I do have in mind (based on the price of Gold/Bitcoins in 'newcoins'), could be used to decide whether to inject more/less money into the system. This system would of course have to be in place at the launch of the coin.. Not something you could crowbar in 10/20 years into the coins life.. difficult but certainly not impossible.. me thinks.
 

The problem is whoever is making the decision about injecting more or less money into the system is playing the exact role the Federal Reserve is doing right now.  That group or individual has the ability to manipulate the system and now you are back to the same problem fiat has.

Also I don't agree you need to add money to the system as the economy grows, Bitcoin's beauty is in its ability to be divided down to 8 decimal places.  As a Bitcoin becomes more valuable you have to use smaller and smaller amounts for daily activity, all without the risk of inserting someone into the system that can manipulate it.

[spartacusrex]

The problem is whoever is making the decision about injecting more or less money into the system is playing the exact role the Federal Reserve is doing right now.  That group or individual has the ability to manipulate the system and now you are back to the same problem fiat has.

Not if, as I said, the mechanism to inject Money into the system was built into the coin. In a completely mathematical way. No humans would be used.. utterly beyond repute and corrupt manipulation. ( We can worry about THAT system at a later date..  )

Also I don't agree you need to add money to the system as the economy grows, Bitcoin's beauty is in its ability to be divided down to 8 decimal places.  As a Bitcoin becomes more valuable you have to use smaller and smaller amounts for daily activity, all without the risk of inserting someone into the system that can manipulate it.

This still does not address the inherent deflationary nature of Bitcoin. As anyone who is currently hoarding their coins knows, there's very little that could tempt you to spend them, as they go up in price, and basically, always will. This has it's own set of economic problems.

In my, admittedly short, economics education, as I am mainly a mathematician and programmer, it has come to my attention that deflationary currencies have just as many problems as inflationary ones ?

Bitcoins are, if they survive, an excellent Store of Wealth. A currency for day-to-day use, as a medium of exchange, seems to require quite different properties and more importantly service a different niche in the market. I'm not sure it is possible to do BOTH things well.

[bb999]

The problem is whoever is making the decision about injecting more or less money into the system is playing the exact role the Federal Reserve is doing right now.  That group or individual has the ability to manipulate the system and now you are back to the same problem fiat has.

Not if, as I said, the mechanism to inject Money into the system was built into the coin. In a completely mathematical way. No humans would be used.. utterly beyond repute and corrupt manipulation. ( We can worry about THAT system at a later date..  )

Also I don't agree you need to add money to the system as the economy grows, Bitcoin's beauty is in its ability to be divided down to 8 decimal places.  As a Bitcoin becomes more valuable you have to use smaller and smaller amounts for daily activity, all without the risk of inserting someone into the system that can manipulate it.

This still does not address the inherent deflationary nature of Bitcoin. As anyone who is currently hoarding their coins knows, there's very little that could tempt you to spend them, as they go up in price, and basically, always will. This has it's own set of economic problems.

In my, admittedly short, economics education, as I am mainly a mathematician and programmer, it has come to my attention that deflationary currencies have just as many problems as inflationary ones ?

Bitcoins are, if they survive, an excellent Store of Wealth. A currency for day-to-day use, as a medium of exchange, seems to require quite different properties and more importantly service a different niche in the market. I'm not sure it is possible to do BOTH things well.

But even if it mathematical, it still has to be programmed in by humans, intervention via an algorithm is still intervention.

You cannot hoard bitcoins, or any currency indefinitely, you would have to spend on day to day items, and investments that came along would get you to spend them as well.

Inflationary currencies punish saving, and it is only through saving and investment that new innovations and products come about.  You are correct both kinds have problems, but intervention is not the solution otherwise central planning style systems should work, but in practice they don't.

[spartacusrex]

Inflationary currencies punish saving, and it is only through saving and investment..

Inflationary currencies promote investment, since as you say, they punish savers.

..otherwise central planning style systems should work, but in practice they don't.

There has never been a FULLY COMPUTER CONTROLLED monetary system.. They don't work in practice because squishy, and sometimes corrupt, humans always get in the way.

If the algorithm was well though out, and fully transparent at launch, so that people could see exactly how it works, I think we may have a currency that just might work.

I think consistency is a cornerstone. If you knew that the government or bankers had no say in the money expansion policy, and that it was basically dictated by the market (state of the economy) and a computer algorithm, things may work out differently.. and work, for a change.

[nameface]

I had an idea with some things in common to yours. Instead of your top-down vision, mine comes from a bottom-up approach of considering what could benefit specific communities.

I'm working on a paper called "The Artist's Currency". The idea is a new currency which gradually increases the money supply at a fixed rate, and perpetually releases new coins on a schedule. It has unique characteristics aside from this.

I'm trying to find a new way to compensate artists for non-commercial work. Of course, the idea of niche currencies suited to specific communities is much further reaching. (I need a technical partner, PM me if anyone is interested in the idea).

The problem I see with a "pegging the price" coin is that it's vision for a one-world currency. It would need to be 100X or 1000X more impactful than Bitcoin. This won't happen because it's utility is not revolutionary enough, and it would have too many detractors.

The world is just now wrapping it's head around Bitcoin. Simultaneously, there are tons of new ideas in the currency/payment space being developed all around the world. IOW there are already many types of money, credits, stores of value, and payments systems, and in the future there will probably be many more (although it will all flow together more efficiently).

Some currencies are inflationary, some are deflationary, but since they can all be exchanged with each other, what we have today is a primordial soup consisting of a mix of deprecating economic theories and the forward momentum of technical visionaries (like Satoshi). I see the future as being perpetually handed over to the most purposeful currencies and stores of value, just as language evolves and becomes more complex based on usefulness.

[kodo]

hmm good question im not sure about this one

[TheGovernedSelf]

Hello,

I was wondering something..

What would happen, in a hypothetical setting, if you had a new coin, you pre-mined 1 Billion coins, then you sold those coins at a 'known' rate ?

The 2 options I mean are

1) You sell them for $1 each. All the way to 1 Billion coins.

2) You sell the first 100 million for 0.1cents, the next 100 million for 1cent, the next 100 million for 0.1$ (10 cents).. etc.. x10 every 100 million. (or some other predetermined geometric rate)

I was thinking this would 'somehow' peg the value of the currency to a known amount?

I think I like (1), all the coins are sold at $1, and once all the coins are sold, THEN, the exchanges would take over. Not that you could stop them of course, but who would pay more than $1 when you could buy it for that.

Option (2) seems very similar to the mining concept as the early adopters would get their coins cheaper.

The reason I like it is that the coins can be introduced at whatever speed is required, as the economy grows AND a price for the coins would be much easier to determine. Especially in option (1). Psychologically you would be able to price things much better if you thought 1BTC = 1USD (or whatever).

In general, I would hope this would lead to economic stability while the coin matures and grows past the Billion dollar mark.. ?

There would be no mining rewards for miners, just a 0.1% txn fee or some other established amount.. and there may/may not be inflation in the coin.

Economically, is this viable/stupid/interesting/bollox ?

Hmmm...

There would be an increase in the money supply, but it would be in line with demand.

Ultimately I think an organic market would pop up for the coin whether you wanted one to or not, and it would mostly trade below the current pegged rate, with the pegged rate creating a price ceiling if demand began to soar.


The question is: Who gets the funds from pre-mined coin sales?

Also: People are unlikely to adopt it if it is guaranteed to not give any return on investment until it reaches a $1,000,000,000+ market cap, especially with bitcoin as an alternative.

[edmundedgar]

If you were also prepared to take coins out of circulation by buying them if the price dropped too low, this might work. You'd effectively be the central bank. The hitch is that people would have to trust you to be honest and not get hacked.

The p2p way to do this is for the network to get information about the value of your coin (this is the hard part) and allow people to create new money when the coins were too weak, and destroy it when coins were too strong. You could incentivize people to destroy coins when they were too weak by giving them a voucher to create coins next time they were too strong. Miners could enforce this: They at wouldn't recognize coin creation operations unless they agreed the currency was too strong, or coin destruction operations unless they agreed the currency was too weak.

[Impaler]

I'll make this very simple, everything is worth what you can SELL IT FOR, not what you BUY IT FOR.  The point of a peg is to establish the value of a currency for every users, in order for that to happen every user must be able to SELL IT back too you the issuer for the peg price.  If the issuer is selling but not buying their is no peg because nothing is establishing a price floor for the user.

Selling coins as you propose is no more pegging the coin then the current cost of mining establishes a peg, the miner must spend X dollars to create coins but their is zero guarantee they can sell them to anyone at any price, thus we accurately say that BTC floats against the dollar.

[laissez]

This still does not address the inherent deflationary nature of Bitcoin. As anyone who is currently hoarding their coins knows, there's very little that could tempt you to spend them, as they go up in price, and basically, always will. This has it's own set of economic problems.

I've recently answered a similar concern in someone else's topic, but it's worth repeating. The thing you're missing is that you're only thinking from the perspective of the spender, but there are two sides to every transaction. As a prospective buyer, yes, you want to hold onto your deflationary currency. By that same token, vendors want to get ahold of that deflationary currency. If a vendor agrees with you about how the value of a bitcoin will go up over time, they have every reason to give you a discounted bitcoin price below the dollar price because they believe they'll be able to make up the difference as the bitcoins they receive go up in value down the line. At that point it's just a matter of whether the discount is big enough to attract your bitcoin spending and that takes us back to the conventional decision-making issue of whether a purchase is worth it to you. Do you want to pay $4 per gallon for gas in US dollars or, let's say, $3 per gallon in bitcoins?

[spartacusrex]

Also: People are unlikely to adopt it if it is guaranteed to not give any return on investment until it reaches a $1,000,000,000+ market cap, especially with bitcoin as an alternative.

This is exactly the situation I am trying to AVOID.. I don't want a currency that is a speculative tool.. Bitcoin does that just fine.. What I am looking for is a currency that has all the OTHER great features of bitcoin, p2p, pseudonymous, decentralised, crypto-dipto, no charge-backs, etc.. but without the constant value change.

I'll make this very simple, everything is worth what you can SELL IT FOR, not what you BUY IT FOR.  The point of a peg is to establish the value of a currency for every users, in order for that to happen every user must be able to SELL IT back too you the issuer for the peg price.

Thanks Impaler. I think I understand.

So - continuing on this line of enquiry..

What if not only could you buy your 'newcoins' for $1, but you could also sell them back to the issuer for $1.. ?

Would that create a more stable economy for the coin to grow in ? And what would be the effects of eventually, finally, decoupling and letting the coin float like other currencies ?