FairCoop and FairCoin

Discuss The Industry
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Greetings to the whole FairPhone community!

We are glad to contact you through the new initiative of FairCoop which aims in building a worldwide Circular Economy based on a truly ecological and fair currency. We picked your organisation since both our communities care and value sustainability, solidarity and recognize the damaging effects of the contemporary economy system.

FairCoop is an international movement for social change which is setting up a self-managed, cooperative, supportive, ecological and autonomous socioeconomic ecosystem for the transition to alternative models of organization based on justice and equity. FairCoop promotes the use of FairCoin as monetary tool; a social capital and as a reserve of value. It is a digital currency (cryptocoin) that is fair, ecological, decentralized, secure and supports the common good. Unlike most other cryptocurrencies, the stable and constant raise of its value reflects the evolution of our ecosystem so far.

The most important goal is to use FairCoin as a currency for everyday use and to cover all our basic needs. There are already plenty of ethical merchants and shops around the world that support this cause and have joined our on-line platforms of FairMarket and useFairCoin, thus contributing to an overall sustainability and sufficiency of this fair economy.

Since you already have some years of valuable experience in fair trading business you are surely aware of all kind of inequalities market may (re)produces. Both our organisations are driven mainly by values and ethics, not just ā€˜business as usualā€™, and we both strive for fair economic relations that empower community sustainability and care about common goods. Having a Fair Phone helps us all to understand the underlying value of such product and increases social awareness towards a better world. Similarly, introducing a Fair currency, like FairCoin, could lead to a more robust dynamic and highlight even more the need for fair economic relations and trade between people, workers, consumers and producers. Using the most ecological (crypto)currency that is available, backed by the cooperative and transparent organisational spirit of FairCoop, will enhance the social profile and empower FairPhoneā€™s commitment towards that goals. On the other hand, FairCoop participants would be more than happy to get the chance of buying that unique phone you produce using FairCoin and help extend its market and community.

Do you feel youā€™re up for joining? Our proposal is that you accept FairCoin as a currency for trading your products, offering the opportunity to many more people around the world to access them within a fair economic environment.

You may contact us back any time, through any of our channels and it would make us very happy to have you on board.

Thank you for your interest and time.
We look forward to hearing opinions from the whole FairPhone community, as also discuss this proposal further.

Together we can make a real difference!

Cordially,
Circular Economy Area - FairCoop

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i would love to see this possibility realized.
I follow the fairphone project for a while now, and it would be great to see synergies between fairphone and faircoop <3

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Looks like a natural cooperation. I know about both projects and it would be amazing to get a fairphone with faircoins. Goods and money that are ethical. A wonderful combo to make the world fairer.

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Why canā€™t I find anything when I search the FairCoop forum for ā€œFairphoneā€?

PS: I changed that.

https://forum.fair.coop/t/anybody-up-for-introducing-faircoop-to-the-fairphone-community-august-ams/284?u=paulafairphone

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To be positive about it, the forum seems to have been established in October 2017 (Welcome post) and doesnā€™t seem to have much posts in it yet regarding any topic basically, so give it some time I guess :wink: ā€¦

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Indeedā€¦ our webpage, forum and wiki are fairly new, since we migrated from the old ones on November 2017.

However, the whole discussion about introducing FairCoin to organisations and coops that are aligned with our values and ethics has been discussed mainly on our Telegram groups. Especially in the one about Circular Economy, which aims in making FairCoin stand out from all other cryptocurrencies, that are mostly speculative and cannot be used in the real economy e.g. very high transaction fees.

For any of you that would like to be more involved and find out about these plans, please join in! Other than that we are really looking forward to initiate a collaboration with FairPhone and get the advantages of two great communities cooperating.

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Are you in contact with anyone actually working at Fairphone? Here in the forum you can basically just reach the fairphone community.
And is there anything concrete you believe we the community can do to help make this collaboration happen?

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We have a FairCoop Local Node (group of people) in Amsterdam and plan to contact FairPhone stuff in person also. Meanwhile we would also like to have the feedback of the community and we believe itā€™s great that you give us the opportunity to do so through this forum.

Openness and collectivity has always been FairCoopā€™s approach as well.
Thank you!

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Maybe we could meet up during the #efct18 too?
I looked into where to get FairCoin yesterday and Amsterdam is probably my best chance.

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Thanks for sharing that :wink:
Already posted in our group and hopefully some people would join you and have the chance to talk about FairCoop and possible collaborations.

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In that case, please add yourself to this topic I just created: :blush:

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How are your coins mined, how do your nodes work, and are you talking about linking coin to production?

I at least like your idea, I may love it, but sadly I donā€™t speak most of the languages on your forum, and have some trouble figuring out exactly what your platform is all about. If you wouldnā€™t mind explaining in some detail, Iā€™d be most appreciativeā€¦

Also, if you donā€™t know about Richard Wolff and Democracy @ Work already, you shouldā€¦ Would seem to be sister movements inside cooperatives, they focus on communal ownership of production and how we could transition to that pointā€¦

http://www.democracyatwork.info

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No coin creation (mining), no competition at allā€¦ we support cooperative spirit and thatā€™s why our team implemented a radical and innovative block generation algorithm. Please find out more there https://fair-coin.org/en/ecological-blockchain-consensus

Also, our main language is English so I am sure you can communicate quite well through our Forum or explore the FairCoop websiteā€¦ available in 10 languages.

I donā€™t know if itā€™s appropriate to flood this thread with info about the FairCoop ecosystem (there are a lot!), so I would propose to take a look into that welcome guide and follow all the links provided to explore the different tools. https://git.fairkom.net/faircoop/MediaCommunication/wikis/welcome-to-faircoop

In general we are aiming for a fair economic system and building a cooperative monetary toolkit, that aim in empowering people towards a social transition. In that sense initiatives like Democracy @ Work look interesting to collaborate with.

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I am very surprised how the Fairphone community thus far in the posts seems to eat cryptocurrency like hot candy.

Thatā€™s quite a claim:

  1. Fair.
  2. Ecological.
  3. Decentralised.
  4. Secure.
  5. Supports the common good.

How are CVNs (Certified Validation Nodes) decentralised?

The amount of transactions you can achieve appears to be 3000/second with a flat transaction fee of 0,25 FAIR. However, a SEPA transaction within the Eurozone of 15.000 EUR or less is near instant (10 sec) since Nov 2017 (source). And they have volume:
ā€œAs of August 2014, 99.4% of credit transfers, 99.9% of direct debit and 79.2% of card payments have been migrated to SEPA in the euro area.ā€ You seem to avoid the high transaction fees and time by just having a deliberate cryptocurrency you cannot speculate with and cannot achieve high volume either. If you only want to serve a niche, that makes sense.

Iā€™m looking forward seeing each of these proven in your whitepaper. Could you link it for everyone? Because the link on the website doesnā€™t work, at least for me. And of course thereā€™s been revisions as wellā€¦

Hereā€™s also a bunch of FAQs on fair-coin.org which seems to be the main site:

Anyone who claims their currency only rises is trying to sell you something (hint: snake oil). As for your coin being both 1) stable 2) constant raise of its value, I will get back about this claim of yours in the bottom of my post.

Your post reads like: ā€œHere is a new cryptocurrency, please use it.ā€ No, thank you. Iā€™m reliant on the EUR in The Netherlands, and Europe. I pay everything with that. If the EUR goes to shits I will be homeless without food and with a bunch of useless property. If any cryptocurrency goes up or down, I wonā€™t lose anything, cause I donā€™t own them. The currency to own besides the EUR is USD. Why? It is a stronger coin, usable practically world-wide, and a strong economy on which EUR is closely intertwined with. There are other coins which are also used world-wide, stable, and strongly linked to EUR (though in combination less so than USD), but none of the cryptocurrencies are one of them. They donā€™t even come close in volume, for starters. And I still need to own a bank account with a quarterly flat fee with which I can do unlimited transactions. Without that bank account, I canā€™t buy bread at the bakery, I canā€™t buy groceries, and I canā€™t pay my rent. So Iā€™m tied to the SEPA/IBAN system. I canā€™t give my kid FAIR to pick up a bread at the bakery either.

Additionally, the standard cryptocurrency warnings apply although your ICO was just giving away coins based on IP address and solving 2 captchas, and you donā€™t use PoW/PoS but something called Proof of Cooperation.

Bank interests are very low these days so people might think of ways to invest their money. They might even consider cryptocurrencies. Investing 101 is assume all the currency you invest is vaporised (the same would apply on cryptocurrencies) but because cryptocurrencies are called cryptocurrencies people assume theyā€™re holding a stable value like their EUR or USD; nothing could be further from the truth. The instability lends for speculation which is dangerous.

Playing the stock market via spreading (ie. not betting on one horse) in a sector you know a lot about (or care a lot about, but then start learning about it first) is a safer option than a cryptocurrency. If youā€™re interested in green projects, you can opt for a green bank (Triodos for example) whilst still using EUR, or you can opt to invest in green stock options. Which brings me to the point that your cryptocurrency is solving a problem which doesnā€™t exist.

Now, lets get back to the part I last quoted from you and see how FAIR (FairCoin) has been doing:

https://cryptocurrency-tracker.com/coin/FAIR

Set the chart to 6 months and 1 month whilst reading the next paragraph. Iā€™ve read some posts on your forums. I saw one post saying they wanted to keep FAIR on 1.2 EUR as long as possible (zero reactions to it, but it is of course not possible to achieve such as the EUR is a huge moloch to which FAIR is a toddler called David), and one where someone posted a chart trying to mislead the reader into believing FAIR was a safe coin to have when people were selling their BTC. Well, the chart here on a 6 month scale is a comparison with USD by default (you can change it to EUR top right, go do that). It shows 2 peaks (Nov 27 2017 and Jan 8 2018) where the coin was above 1 EUR in between indeed the stable comparison rate as projected. On Jan 14/15 was another peak up. Ever since Jan 7 (nearly a month ago) it has been on decline with it now being on approx 50% of that 1 FAIR being 1.2 EUR (= ~0,4166 EUR on the scale). Now, hereā€™s the little problem I got with your post (apart from it being about cryptocurrency): you posted here 2 days ago. Thatā€™s Feb 2 2018. You mustā€™ve noticed FAIR has been going down to nearly 50% of what it was just a month ago. Yet here you are, claiming with a straight face:

ā€¦which is dishonest.

But I just donā€™t get what youā€™re trying to solve either, as you donā€™t attempt to solve our reliance on the EUR nor do I see any reasons why EUR cannot be used in the examples the mention. Those 3000/transactions less per second arenā€™t making a dent in our reliance on the EUR. It doesnā€™t make a dent in the total amount of transactions done with EUR. It doesnā€™t make a dent in my quarterly flat-fee bank account subscription either. So what is the point?

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Well bitcoin has been bashed on pretty hard, I guess we just advance FairCoin some trust due to their apparent good intentions (even if it was just that).

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Good intentions, no question about that. But make it work, there were and are plenty of tries to establish other currenciesā€¦
Currency for everyday use means to me that I can pay with it in shops aswell. How it is decided which shop accepts these as a currency? There are a lot shops outta thereā€¦ For example the standard organic stores, the ā€œunpackedā€ (dunno how to translate ā€œUnverpacktā€ correctly), the Fair trade stores (GEPA and stuff)ā€¦ Last ones mentioned work at least here without electricity as much as they can (no electronic cash terminals, no real cashboxes, only things used with electricity are the calculator and the lights).

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I wish this (10 second payments, the SEPA Instant Credit Transfer Scheme) was true. However, both my Dutch and my German bank are not on the list yet.

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The sort of shops that you mention are certainly on our focus :slight_smile:
As Iā€™ve mentioned before, building a real economy, locally and globally, around an alternative currency is probably the hardest part but the most crucial also which will eventually make our project stand out from all other speculative coins. We are on for that actually, but needs effort and time.

Right now you can check on our online market platform https://market.fair.coop to get an idea of the merchants we are related to.
Also, this directory https://use.fair-coin.org/ shows the expansion of places where you can get products/services offered in FairCoin.

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Unpacked is the literal translation. A term Iā€™ve seen used for it is bulk.

For non-Germans this requires some context though:

EDIT, related as well:

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