Marketing idea aimed at Libertarian crowd in USA

Marketing
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I’ve noticed a decent percentage of people interested in safenet tend to be communicating in the Libertarian / Anarcho-Capitalist / Freedom promoting circles of the internet. This is how I became aware of this technology, and while it’s not common knowledge yet, I see huge potential for the safenet being quickly populated by this crowd.

An idea I have that may possibly quicken this migration. A symbolic action that will also provide a necessary utility and service the people world wide. I will use America as an example, but this same idea can be used for any nation or the world population as a whole with some modifications.

  • Firstly, calculate all estimated physical gold and silver held by America (both private and public holdings)
  • Next, divide these total physical quantities by the number of american citizens. (i.e. each citizen is allocated an estimated 2oz digital gold and 20 oz digital silver)
  • Establish a way to add to this digital version of precious metals the total amount added to physical supply by USA mines each year. This additional supply could be distributed in a similar fashion to people as they’re added to the population (immigration and/or births), it could be first used by .gov as a way to provide public services without taxation, or any number appropriate methods.
  • Have each digital weight of gold/silver track the price of the physical metal and promote both physical and digital gold and silver as sound money. This would allow the average person with a way (smartphone app, card linked to the gold/silver app, or actual use of the physical coins in possession) to use sound money without interference from .gov.

If a digital and decentralized gold/silver wallet was offered in the manner stated above and immediately available for use by people as they sign up for the safenet, I have no doubt it would greatly increase subscription. The biggest obstacle to this idea that I’m aware of would be establishing some way to ensure each person only had access to 1 gold/silver account over their lifetime. A formidable issue, but one I’m confident can be solved.

Any thoughts or blind spots in this idea that the safenet community sees?

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I have thought of a metals backed digital currency, but the point of failure is that it depends on trust in a person or entity to actually hold and deliver the gold. There are ETFs and banks around the world that do this and people are having a very hard time getting the delivery of physical assets because the custodians drag their feet, don’t actually have it, or have administrative paperwork that makes it damn near impossible to get your assets.

The only feasible way I can think of is a crowdsourced holding of assets but that would still have trust in others required…if you figure this one out you will be a wealthy person and a target indeed for every bank and currency manipulator on the planet. Godspeed my friend!! :wink:

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I’d like to ask a possibly basic question, but I honestly don’t understand why you would like to back a digital currency with metals if you already can assure that the digital currency can have the same properties.
Isn’t this why Bitcoin is a big thing?, we already had metal backed currency (paper currency backed with gold) and everybody knows the story about it and where we stand now, thus having metal backed digital currency sounds to me like we are going backwards.

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The key to a good currency is having a deliverable of value if needed. To be a valuable currency you need to be able to trade it for something of value. When the dollar was on the gold standard back in the day, you could actually trade it for physical gold. When that option got removed is when people started printing it for kicks and we got into trouble. Bitcoin doesn’t really have a real world deliverable, which is why a gold pegged option would be nice.

SAFE on the other hand CAN offer a deliverable to back their currency (storage space), which is a big deal and puts it ahead of most of the rest of the pack. Other companies offer similar setups with the blockchain, but bitcoin is not linked directly to the value of the storage they offer, so this tends to put them at a disadvantage to SAFE IMHO. :slight_smile:

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The energy necessary to do proof of work is what links bitcoin to something (and something very necessary as it’s pretty safe to say there will always be demand for energy) tangible in the real world, so IMHO bitcoin doesn’t need to be linked to gold. The only reason currencies were linked to gold was because there is a (somewhat) limited supply, which means they can’t be devalued through printing.

So, if the supply of your currency is itself limited by an algorithm that’s in itself sufficient. A lot of people believe that proof of work is a waste of energy, which I feel misses the point as this proof is what provides the massive security of the bitcoin blockchain.

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I agree with that, POW is technically a deliverable, I missed that one, but another advantage of pegging bitcoin would be to decrease price volatility by pegging to a less volatile asset.

i think a lot of people are still reluctant to get fully on board with bitcoin when you can still have such huge percentage swings in the price…

The disadvantage comes back to trusting someone to hold and deliver that asset. :frowning:

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Very true. Though bitcoin’s vol has been falling even as its price has risen recently. I think its too illiquid still (and there’s no EFT yet) to attract much institutional money. Here’s a link the historical volatility: i
https://www.deribit.com/main#/histvol_pair2price

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I’m not suggesting backing the digital version with anything physical, rather let them both function separately. .gov’s and central banks have stolen (in my own opinion) the use of gold/silver as money from the entire western world over the past century. This would be a solution that solves that past crime and allows something with the same function as the physical metals to be used as currency, without having to rely on the central authorities that have accumulated the actual metals for the next version of money this country uses.

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Maybe I’m too far into abstract land, but I don’t see this as the issue. The digital version of gold/silver I am thinking of won’t be backed by any metal. It’s tied to gold/silver supply as a way to regulate it’s creation in a natural way.

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hmm…what you are talking about may act more like a derivative then, such as instruments linked to crude oil supply and such.

This can work if done correctly for sure!!

My concerns there would be supply side manipulation (see OPEC…) and the use of leverage (housing bubble for example…). As a whole though this would be a favorable alternative to relying on someone housing physical assets…may have to think on that…good call!

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I haven’t thought of it like this, but you make a good comparison. There would have to be some way to calculate the gold/silver mining output each year so ratios didn’t get out of hand. It could be viewed as a fixed 1:1 derivative of the physical supply. Piggy back off the scarcity of the physical metals while getting the benefits of electronic money. Promote this as a symbolical refutation of current monetary corruption (which it would be) and offer it hand in hand with a decentralized and more secure internet. I think this would be a big draw to the SAFEnet when it’ sup and running.

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  • Anarcho
  • Capitalist

– Choose one. :wink:

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I am a dedicated student of Misean Praxiology and anarcho libitarianism; an avid reader of the publications of the Mises Institute and for 15 years I’ve have been working up a feasible model for a global currency 100% backed by gold integrated with a platform for buying and selling all manner of commodities, products and services and a communications facility including an alternative media facility for all those investigative journalists who choose not to work for the main stream media. My plan is for this integrated set of currency, commerce and communications facilities is that it will be 100% owned by the people who use it and that it will run on the SAFE network. The key strategic partners for my plan are Maid Safe and Mises Institute and the underlying philosophic base is that of Austrian Economics. Any techos dedicated to similar objectives are welcome to PM me. I have addressed and believe have solutions to all the obsticals raised in the above string of commentary.

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Really like your idea. Surely you’re familiar with digix as well? They’ve made a gold backed digital currency (DGX) that’s exchangeable for physical gold, on ethereum.

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Thanks for the heads up on digix.

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I like this in concept, but if you are just allocating the resources virtually, and it cannot be traded for physical assets at any time, then it is not really backed by anything but faith, like FRN’s today… granted it is more stable than FRN as the quantity will not fluctuate that much just by keystrokes or printing presses… but if someone finds a rich vein of gold or silver, or someone else hordes lots of gold or silver, then the value can fluctuate (less so if horded as it is still accounted for.) I realize the historical value of gold and silver on currency, and it has worked well. But if you trying it use something for symbolic purposes only, why not use something that is fixed or more fixed, so calculating anticipated extraction (and making adjustments after the fact) is not part of the equation? Say the mass of the planet earth? (6,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 (6 x 1024) kilograms) or the volume of all water on earth (oceans, icecaps and glaciers, lakes, rivers, groundwater, and water in the atmosphere - The volume of all water would be about 332.5 million cubic miles (mi3), or 1,386 million cubic kilometers (km3). A cubic mile of water equals more than 1.1 trillion gallons. A cubic kilometer of water equals about 264 billion gallons.) Knowing we actually do loose a little water to space - and this might increase in rate if the planet heats up - so the actual value of the “currency” would appreciate slightly.)

But then you state “divide these total physical quantities by the number of american citizens” OK, what is that number? Americans on earth in 2000? Or today - Oct 23, 2016? Or 2050? Point is, if the population grows, those that come later do not get an account? Or does everyone’s account get reduced to account for the new accounts? And when people die, who gets the account value? Family or whomever they bequeath it to? And those born get their account filled with their family? And who cares if they have multiple accounts? Business account, personal account, account with beer money hidden from the wife :-), etc… I guess it is a question of socialism and tracking (everyone gets 1 account from birth to death with no chance to improve ones odds other than increasing the account size, but it is known at all times what you have ) to free market (grow and do what you want to increase your wealth with as many accounts as you can accumulate and manage to merge and split as you see fit, *without infringing upon anyone else in the process.)

I think there is something here, to remove .gov from manipulating the monetary supply and rigging the game with fiat currency and fractional lending, and I think gold and silver have proven their value historically; but I think it can be taken up a notch. “I own derivatives representing 20,000,000,000,000,000 K of this planet”, or “I have 121,968,000,0000 gallons in water shares in my account.”

I am mixed on bitcoin, safecoin, etc, because it is completely intangible and there is a risk someone, somewhere, at some point might crack it or design faster CPU power to harvest more at a much faster rate or whatever, and then my value is potentially wiped out. I lose my bitcoin wallet and they are gone for ever. Or they are stolen and they are then unrecoverable. I know many people have put a lot of trust and faith in those forms, and I agree they are better than FRN’s. But a fixed fairly finite resource, if not slightly decreasing in volume (space loss) to increase value, is used to represent wealth (and could be traded if I really want to try and store my water in my basement LOL) it might work if there is a way to not have them lost forever or stolen and not be recoverable. The best of both systems.

A maidsafe based digital wallet filled with water shares you trade and accumulate might be good. The amount of water is fairly constant, less the little bit lost to space, no matter the state. Ice, vapor / humidity, freshwater, ocean water, ponds, rain, hail, deep ocean dense water, distilled, etc. it is all water in some form, and vital to human survival. And who knows, maybe using it as a medium of exchange will make us appreciate water more and keep it cleaner. Remove those plastic islands in the ocean, clean up rivers, etc… What happens if we start grab a frozen asteroid of fresh water and haul it into earth? Well… we all have a value drop, equally across the board.

And maybe that idea is totally unrealistic… just thinking out loud after reading the thread…

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The symbolism would be related to the fact that .gov literally stole the physical gold used by the country and then pushed an entire country into an unstable $. The .gov still holds all/most of that stolen gold as far as I can tell and it will probably be used to make the same assholes very rich whenever the dollar finally dies.

Through the use of tech, a currency that basically duplicates the uses of gold and silver and all the reasons they have been accepted as money nearly universally. It would also be given away in Robin Hood type style which will appeal to a lot of people as well as preventing the centralization of a new currency as it’s born.

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The new currency IS for trading all manner of commodities, goods and services between users of the facility. How then can you conclude that it "cannot be traded for physical assets…? Moreover gold is, depending on who you ask, either a good or a currency, and if holders of fiat currencies get nervous about the purchasing power of fiat, as indeed they increasingly are, then all they need do is to buy gold with their depreciating fiat and then trade gold for the new issue currency. The gold is then safely vaulted and becomes the property of all users.

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I was referencing that. It can be traded for assets, just like FRN can be, but exchanged for gold, the OP said no…

And I suggested an asset that did not need the continuous calculation, forecasting, and adjustments needed due to supply changes.

But I agree, gold has a long history of a good currency, but if the digital version he is suggesting cannot be traded for gold and hold it’s value relative to gold, then this digital wallet is fiat as well.

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But I am. The mere fact that I use the term “backing” means just that! A participant can buy trade credits (money) with allocated gold and vice versa can redeem his/her trade credits for gold at the then market price. And for avoidance of doubt, I said 100% backed. i. e. no fractional reserve ponzi.