Freicoin: bitcoin with demurrage

[RarsMover11]

I don't think many people like to see their amount of money getting less. (with the USD if they print more money, people don't see their money decreasing)

Any thoughts on a different timeframe for the demurrage?

[jtimon]

Any thoughts on a different timeframe for the demurrage?

We discussed starting with lower demurrage rates before launch and we choose to have it constant from the beginning:

http://freicoin.freeforums.org/initial-proposals-f2.html

Now it would be a very polemic hard-fork and the plan is to only have one more with merged mining and freimarkets, once it is developed.

[cczarek123]

The transaction fees will trend downward, which will drive down the hash/s, which will drive down the difficulty, until they are in balance. It will all take care of itself.

[jtimon]

thanks bud tho that's only the PPC(price per coin) chart~\//\~
====>ya what i'm looking for a historical chart that shows the demurrage coin-kill rate in relation to friedcoins' PPC! tia!

There's no charts because that's a constant: 2^(-20)% per block or a little bit less than annual 5%.
The demurrage FEE is constant over time.
What is "destroyed" increases with the total supply, until the equlibrium is reached at 100 Million FRC.

~20 year shelf life then?  
/\not that bad lol

No, (2^-20) % each 10 minutes is around 5% yearly demurrage.
So if you have 100 FRC today and don't use them in 20 years, in 20 years you will approximately have:

100 * (0.95^20) = 35.8485922409

For them to completely disappear...I don't know, with 2 decimals is more than 175 years, with 8 decimals...I don't want to calculate.
I'm not even doing the real calculations, just approximations, but your math was terribly bad.

[bitcoinerik]

Hi there,

Am I right, that when I buy 1000 FRC and keeps it in my offline wallet, it will be ~600 FRC after 10 years?

[jtimon]

Hi there,

Am I right, that when I buy 1000 FRC and keeps it in my offline wallet, it will be ~600 FRC after 10 years?

Yes, approximately.

[maaku]

Because it's cheaper to spend/invest than the exchange to get rid of it (exchange fees can be months of demurrage). This has been covered in depth: please read the thread.

[indiguy]

We decide to add Freicoin in our wiki. And now has it's own page on http://coinwik.org. This is a wikipedia listing all the alt coins to help everyone quickly find facts and links about thier favorite coin.

http://coinwik.org/Freicoin

If you know of other facts and links that can be added to the page, please feel free to update the page.

[BitcoinNational]

Demurrage

It will not work - because there are another currencies without demurrage.
One can just switch to another currency for saving and then back for spending

+1 (says time)

still it 'demurrage' is a noble idea and the game is not up quiet yet.

[ElectricMucus]

Freicoin is about to drop out of the top-100 cryptocurrencies list.

May it stay out.

[go1111111]

Is there a good explanation somewhere of why we should prefer demurrage over inflation?

The demurrage wikipedi article says

"However, inflation, compared to fixed demurrage fees, is more variable, creates uncertainty, and is not usually uniform in its effect across the holders of the currency.[citation needed] Due to this uncertainty, rational economic action becomes more difficult under inflation than under demurrage.[citation needed] The non-uniform distribution of costs and benefits in inflation across the economy meanwhile undermines an aggregate analysis of its effects.[citation needed]."

This is unsourced and unclear.

To me it seems that demurrage is just a kludgey way of approximating inflation. Inflation is relatively continuous and predictable (if it's done in a fixed way in a cryptocurrency), whereas demurrage appears to achieve the same thing but in a less clean way. What am I missing?

[orsotheysaid]

There's no good explaination. Trying to force people into spending their coins is always a bad idea. No one wants a deprecating asset.

[NotLambchop]

Is there a good explanation somewhere of why we should prefer demurrage over inflation?

The demurrage wikipedi article says

"However, inflation, compared to fixed demurrage fees, is more variable, creates uncertainty, and is not usually uniform in its effect across the holders of the currency.[citation needed] Due to this uncertainty, rational economic action becomes more difficult under inflation than under demurrage.[citation needed] The non-uniform distribution of costs and benefits in inflation across the economy meanwhile undermines an aggregate analysis of its effects.[citation needed]."

This is unsourced and unclear.

To me it seems that demurrage is just a kludgey way of approximating inflation. Inflation is relatively continuous and predictable (if it's done in a fixed way in a cryptocurrency), whereas demurrage appears to achieve the same thing but in a less clean way. What am I missing?

Variable monetary inflation--increasing the money supply--is nontrivial, and requires a trusted issuer (central bank).  Many here don't like that.
Algorithmically controlled monetary inflation  (e.g. Bitcoin inflation, ~10%/yr now, tapering as more blocks are found) is, by definition, as inflexible as demurrage.

[go1111111]

There's no good explaination. Trying to force people into spending their coins is always a bad idea. No one wants a deprecating asset.

There's value in an inflating currency if the inflation pays for the network security, allowing cheap transactions on a secure network. A sidechain like freicoin which people occasionally moved small amounts of coins to would be useful.

Variable monetary inflation--increasing the money supply--is nontrivial, and requires a trusted issuer (central bank).  Many here don't like that.
Algorithmically controlled monetary inflation  (e.g. Bitcoin inflation, ~10%/yr now, tapering as more blocks are found) is, by definition, as inflexible as demurrage.

You've described one way in which demurrage is no worse than inflation. My question is why people think demurrage is BETTER than inflation.

Obviously they're equally inflexible. It seems the following is true:

(1) The actual monetary effects demurrage vs. a constant fixed inflation rate are identical.
(2) Most people understand inflation, but are unfamiliar with demurrage.
(3) It's harder to know your exact purchasing power with demurrage, because to find that out you need to do a calculation using the age of all your coins. (Obviously wallet software would do this automatically).

The only potential benefit I can think of is that maybe demurrage is somehow easier to implement technically on a side-chain. Maybe not.

Can anyone point to any advantage of demurrage over inflation?

[NotLambchop]

...
Can anyone point to any advantage of demurrage over inflation?

Variable monetary inflation [...] requires a trusted issuer (central bank).  Many here don't like that.

Demurrage does not require a central issuer.  Without a central issuer, variable monetary inflation is difficult, if not impossible, to implement.

[go1111111]

Demurrage does not require a central issuer.  Without a central issuer, variable monetary inflation is difficult, if not impossible, to implement.

Are you talking about some sort of "variable demurrage"? Obviously inflation as it happens with USD requires a central issuer, but no fixed inflation rule (like 5% inflation per year forever) requires a central issuer. My understanding of freicoin is that the demurrage rule is fixed, and roughly equivalent to 5% per year. So neither fixed inflation nor fixed demurrage require a central issuer.

Are you claiming that demmurage can be more variable than inflation, without needing a central organization? If so, how? If not, then what is the point of demurrage as opposed to inflation?

[MoonShadow]

...
Can anyone point to any advantage of demurrage over inflation?

Variable monetary inflation [...] requires a trusted issuer (central bank).  Many here don't like that.

Demurrage does not require a central issuer.  Without a central issuer, variable monetary inflation is difficult, if not impossible, to implement.

Is that so?  You did know that Bitcoin is currently in it's inflationary stage, right?  We've been over this before boys, demurrage cannot be implimented in a secure fashion without reintroducing a trust or identity model, and even if we could, no rational & self-interested investor is going to willing participate in demurrage if an alternative exists.  Which, obviously, it does.  This has always been a futile debate.

[MoonShadow]

If so, how? If not, then what is the point of demurrage as opposed to inflation?

The point of demurrage is to impose a 'storage fee' on holding value in the currency, as if you were keeping gold inside a rented vault.  Inflation functions more like a tax.  The difference being is that demurrage is supposed to be something that can be avoided within the context of the currency regime that demurrage applies to.  For example, while a gold owner can rent a vault, he can also buy one.  Proper demurrage in a cryptocurrency context would be like losing some small portion of your savings value for not moving your cold storage funds around the blockchain; but this fee could be avoided if the funds were moved periodicly (invoking a transaction fee) or by sponsoring a mining rig (owning your own vault).  However, inflation effects all user relative to the numerical value that they possess, and is practically unavoidable no matter the actions of the user.  If demurrage is set up so that it's unavoidable, then there is no practical difference between inflation and demurrage as measured in the purchasing power of the user's holdings.

[NotLambchop]

...
Can anyone point to any advantage of demurrage over inflation?

Variable monetary inflation [...] requires a trusted issuer (central bank).  Many here don't like that.

Demurrage does not require a central issuer.  Without a central issuer, variable monetary inflation is difficult, if not impossible, to implement.

Is that so?  You did know that Bitcoin is currently in it's inflationary stage, right? 

It is.  I'll repeat:

...
Algorithmically controlled monetary inflation  (e.g. Bitcoin inflation, ~10%/yr now, tapering as more blocks are found) is, by definition, as inflexible as demurrage.

[ivanovasmd]

It's Freicoin dead by now, along with the rest of altcoins? I mean no disrespect but just being realistic.