Maidsafe Merchants

Marketing
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What is the value of a Safecoin? If you ever wondered, it’s whatever you make it. Let’s talk about the real value here, most cryptocurrencies are a JOKE. Here is where the real key lies, you can’t buy anything in the real world with them except other cryptocurrencies on exchanges.

If we really want to give Safecoin “value” we should start here:
http://www.shoppingcart.com/ecommerce-providers

This is a whole list of shoppingcart WE SHOULD START MAKING SHOPPINGCART PLUGIN ASAP, because with shoppingcarts comes merchants, merchants can sometimes have influence on which payment methods customers use. If we create plugins for merchants, totally free of charge, with 0% transaction fee. WOW the value of Safecoins just skyrocket. Imagine how many merchants would use Safecoin if they have ZEROTRANSACTION FEE. Bitpay and Coinbase are growing like crazy, but they have costs and transactionfees, yes I know Coinbase offer merchants $1million of free transaction if they keep their money in Bitcoins, but after that they get a transactionfee.

Think about how many shoppingcarts are on that list, now think about how many merchants are on those platforms. If we can let merchants accept payment with zerocost, we could make a big impact. Realise that Safecoin is totally not important to your avarage consumer, they just want to buy their stuff and be done with it. Merchants also don’t want anything to do with the complexity of cryptocurrency, they just want to receive money for the products they sold. Our merchants should never have to worry about fluctuating prices. Only with merchants using your cryptocurrency will it have any value in the real world. We need to get out the mindstate, to try to know the fiatprice of Safecoin, because that absolutely not important. Ordinary people don’t care about the price of a Safecoin, they care about the price of their product. We don’t want to build up a culture/community based upon ‘SPECULATION’, because it only brings out the bad in people. If we make it possible for every merchant using a shoppingcart to accept payment, not worry about transactionfee or the price, than we are really on to something.

Like Ripple’s Gateway
Ripple makes it easy to send and receive money of any kind. Maybe we should also have gateways/bridges. Bridges would receive the Safecoins and send the fiat currency to the customer/merchant.

(this is explained from a fantasy land where this actually works)
Let’s say i’m a merchant, Alice just send me 2100 Safecoin, but i want 100% fiat.
Bob is set up as a bridge, lives in the same country like me, got the available fiat and got the same bank as me. Bob receive a message (sms,email or what have you) he received 2100 Safecoin in escrow, in the message is my bankaccountnumber, name, bankname, country and a transactionID, he transfers the fiat from his bank to my bank within an hour.

I receive the money and confirm it through the transactionID, the 2100Safecoin is released to Bob.

Because Bob is set up as a bridge he receives €0,50 per processed transaction from the Maidsafe system. Ofcourse there would also be a scenario of a few bridges working together and the money being split up accordingly.

IMAGINE IF MERCHANTS HAVE NO TRANSACTION FEE AND RECEIVE THEIR MONEY ON THE SAME DAY.

what I describe above is kind of, how transferwise works.

Yeah I know it’s a little bit weird, to have ordinary people sending money to consumers/merchants and would they be a money transferer in sucha case? Sorry I’m to lazy to dig deeper

Maybe also fun to watch

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In summary: A way for merchants to be able to get fiat when the consumer pays with safecoin.

There are centralized payment processors for this with bitcoin:
-bitpay

I propose a decentralized approach where the consumer pays the amount in safecoin, it then gets transferred to digital FIAT which is redeemable for safecoin. The safecoin redeemed would be worth the equivalent amount in digital FIAT. And would be exchanged for FIAT through exchanging. The fiat then ends up in the merchants bank account.

What is this digital FIAT?
Think of it in terms of fractional reserve banking but instead this bank is decentralized.

Lets say you have 100 Safecoins, you put it in the bank, bank gives you 100 safebankcoins, safecoin value drops from $1 to $0.50, you then withdraw your safecoins, you end up with 200safecoins. safebankcoins are what you would use for day to day transactions as there is no volatility.

This way you have the option too:

  1. Hold safecoins, in order to speculate on the price and make money
  2. hold safebankcoins for stability and use for merchant purchases

There is a bitshares project aiming to do this with bitcoin and other currencies: http://bitshares.org/banking-learn-more/

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Doesn’t “fractional reserve banking” mean, giving out money that you don’t have? You don’t want to take this responsibility and they will give you a hard time with a banklicence. Ripple could be seen as an decentralized bank, but it’s not, because it still needs external companies to bring in fiat. What I suggest is that instead of companies, you have ordinary citizens sending fiat to people who want to change from Safecoins to fiat. I get what you mean with the Safebankcoins, but that’s creating another middle man and a cryptocurrency that’s pegged to a fiat. If ordinary citizens can become the changing stations, it would be far more disruptive. Ideally they could accept the Safecoin and sell it immediately again and not hold on it to speculate. People changing Safecoin to fiat, should not be speculator, cause eventually besides making it, they could also end up loosing money.

Safecoin got escrow builtin so we might not need an exchange and can have people exchanging currency p2p.

I admit that we would need a lot of people signing up for this to work, but if we start taking the first steps it might. Basically all we need is:
-Somebody with the same currency
-With the same bank (this is really the fastest way to send money)
-Preferably living in the same country

This way we get rid of exchanges and exchange fees, now that I think about it, I’m also describing how localbitcoin.com works

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You wouldn’t need a banking licence for this just like bitcoin doesn’t need one. Remember its decentralized. Also about lending money it doesn’t have; this is true but there are ways to make sure the bank does have enough safecoins, for example safecoins can be recycled into the bank, if the value of safecoins rises then the bank could even be in a surplus. The bank doesn’t really need to have all the safecoins that it owes because not everyone withdraws at the same time. There should be more other ways to ensure the bank has enough safecoins.

Your idea is good but i don’t know how practical is would be, it would be more inefficient than the method I suggested.

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The problem with the whole idea of a bank is that banks are now casino’s. If the value of Safecoins rises, yeah sure you got a little more fiat then you started with. The thing is, the prices could also fall, it’s @ times like that that people want their money and want to sell. What your suggesting is another Mt Gox. I deal with reality, I will never sell you something that I don’t got, that just goes against all principles of doing business.

(LOCALBITCOINS.COM) is the proof of work, that what I suggest can be done BY THE PEOPLE, not only that with Safecoins escrow, i don’t think somebody will trust you with their Safecoin unless they are new to the game. The world is moving more and more towards a reputation economy, if you build up a bad rep, you will only make it impossible for somebody to work with you.

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Ok just wait and see how the bitshares decentralized bank turns out and then you can see if its realistic to implement. This is already in the works and i don’t have a clue what you mean by “I deal with reality”

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Hi hamiltino
I’m not saying that a decentralized bank could not exist, I absolutely wellcome it. The thing is, “decentralized” has become the new buzzword and everybody is now using it for everything. That you put up a website, with a webhost from the old internet doesn’t mean that your “decentralized”. Your “decentralized” when they can take down your site (Namecoin address + your website data on Maidsafe (I hope that you can host your website on Maidsafe, like dropbox).

I just don’t see a future where you have fiat currency on a decentralized bank, what could happen, is a cryptocurreny pegged to a fiat currency. Banks & Governments will never allow it, because they will totally loose control.

BTW thanks for sharing the Bitshares link