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 
Already posted in our group and hopefully some people would join you and have the chance to talk about FairCoop and possible collaborations.
In that case, please add yourself to this topic I just created: 
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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 don’t speak most of the languages on your forum, and have some trouble figuring out exactly what your platform is all about. If you wouldn’t mind explaining in some detail, I’d be most appreciative…
Also, if you don’t know about Richard Wolff and Democracy @ Work already, you should… Would seem to be sister movements inside cooperatives, they focus on communal ownership of production and how we could transition to that point…
No coin creation (mining), no competition at all… we support cooperative spirit and that’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 website… available in 10 languages.
I don’t know if it’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.
That’s quite a claim:
- Fair.
- Ecological.
- Decentralised.
- Secure.
- 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:
“As 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.” 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.
I’m looking forward seeing each of these proven in your whitepaper. Could you link it for everyone? Because the link on the website doesn’t work, at least for me. And of course there’s been revisions as well…
Here’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: “Here is a new cryptocurrency, please use it.” No, thank you. I’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 won’t lose anything, cause I don’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 don’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 can’t buy bread at the bakery, I can’t buy groceries, and I can’t pay my rent. So I’m tied to the SEPA/IBAN system. I can’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 don’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 they’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 you’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 doesn’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. I’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, here’s the little problem I got with your post (apart from it being about cryptocurrency): you posted here 2 days ago. That’s Feb 2 2018. You must’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:
…which is dishonest.
But I just don’t get what you’re trying to solve either, as you don’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 aren’t making a dent in our reliance on the EUR. It doesn’t make a dent in the total amount of transactions done with EUR. It doesn’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).
Good intentions, no question about that. But make it work, there were and are plenty of tries to establish other currencies…
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 there… For example the standard organic stores, the “unpacked” (dunno how to translate “Unverpackt” correctly), the Fair trade stores (GEPA and stuff)… 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 
As I’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.
Unpacked is the literal translation. A term I’ve seen used for it is bulk.
For non-Germans this requires some context though:
EDIT, related as well:
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I would kindly ask you to take a more careful look to all the info and am sure you will find some answers. There’s much more to discover in FairCoop but I don’t think its appropriate to analyse the whole project, or FairCoin development, in this thread. Just a couple of things you mention that I feel should be explained better.
Transactions are validated every 3’ exactly and the amount of transactions per block is currently 3000, meaning around 16 transactions per second. But also it is clearly mentioned that “FairCoin is the only blockchain which can adjust such a limit, which is always a compromise between speed and storage consumption”
Also, the transaction fee right now is around 0.0025€… also programmed as an adjustable parameter in the blockchain.
There is a live link to the white paper at the FAQ page you were looking into. But also a dedicated entry to our Main menu there.
Please let me know if there is one elsewhere that doesn’t work. There have been revisions of course but you can follow more in Github
Actually we are collaborating with Triodos to facilitate our exchanges to fiat when merchants need it 
Not at all. We operate an official gateway getfaircoin.net - getfaircoin.net to buy/sell FairCoin at the official price (not the market one) which is agreed by consensus on the open global assemblies we hold every month. We see crypto markets as a deficit we cannot avoid right now, but at the same time we try to build an economy free of such speculative powers.
We never claimed to be the fastest nor the strongest on the field right now, but a fair and inclusive alternative currency aiming for the 99% of the people around the world. We are pretty far from that goal for sure, but our path is clear and is against the (euro)banking system and fiat controlled economies that support the 1% right now. The vision of FairCoop goes even deeper to empowering communities to break free from such centralised currencies and make the transition to a truly democratic and free economy.
Hope I’ve been helpful in clarifying some aspects of our project and you are all welcome of course to join the FairCoop Forum or our other channels for more detailed info.
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Okay, I am not sure, I really get it.
And I wholeheartedly agree, that an in-depth-discussion might not really be, what this forum is about.
I have not done a real research into your currency and can not match the efforts @JeroenH has put into his research. I just simply opened the official gateway on how to buy/sell FairCoin.
It reads:
So you use the Euro you get for your FairCoin to speculate on BitCoin?
@paulakreuzer already linked to the thread, where critizism of BitCoin has been elaborated; so I spare myself any repetition.
And you state what you are doing with potential profits, but how do you cover potential losses?
And I really wonder, how any cryptocurrency, claiming to be the currency for 99% is going to be of any value in countries where projects like
- Waka Waka and
- Little Sun
are giving away solar powered torchlights because they lack electricity.
As was mentioned before, exchange markets (like Bittrex) are a problem we cannot avoid. But at least try to reduce its impact to our fair economy plan. So we use part of that fiat money to recover FairCoin from these markets and put them back into real economy, in use of the prosumers. No speculative intentions there really.
For sure we try to keep the profits (in general terms, not just in exchange markets) more than the losses However, in some uncomfortable situations we had in the past we tried to overcome it as a community. For example, creating a group investment’s group, or doing a member’s crowdfunding was some of the ideas that we put on the table. But, anyway, FairCoop has done some very big steps forward during the last year (for example co-founding Bank of the Commons) so our financial status is quite more robust now.
Again, we not claim we are there already. But that’s our vision and we (hope we can count with lot more collaborators on the way too) are committed to deal with problems as they arise, one by one. We are aware of course of all the technology involved, but at the same time develop new ideas and ways to approach such cases. For example, incorporation of social currencies in a platform that may be combined with FairCoin will be a big step forward for a wider and more inclusive social economy around the world.
That’s great!
But you did mine for a time, and if you did scale, you would certainly need more coin. If you’re not going to mine, what are you gonna do, dilutions?
Haha yea I noticed, must have forgotten to turn off my VPN…
Here’s my thing with it. How is this not a fiat currency?
Keep in mind, all crypto is fiat–that is, there is nothing backing it other than fiat currency. All the value in it is from fiat currency. No material thing is, like gold, or pigs, or whatever. The closest it really gets to having backing is mining, which clearly isn’t backing, as it’s totally useless for anything other than hiding what you’re spending your money on–and it aint eve that good at it.
So, if Faircoin is backed by Bitcoin and USD and EUR and whatever else, how is it not also a fiat currency? There is no material thing backing it other than other fiat currency, correct?
The instability leads to speculation, that’s the whole point for me!
Seriously though, if you’re board you can take 500 bucks, and on a good day make six back by simply buying TRX or VIBE while it’s low, selling while it’s high, and watching in the middle. All you’re doing is following the trends of millionaires doing pump ‘n’ dumps… It can be fairly lucrative if you’d just be watching TV… Then you take the money and switch it back to USD on your GDAX when done… Making that much day trading reliably is hard, and no other thing I’ve ever heard of is that volatile… It’s the volatility that makes it earn, though it is amoral too…
Also, I did have the idea to link crypto to production. Sort of like Faircoin, but not really. I’m a farmer, so say I’m growing tomatoes. Well, every crate of tomatoes is going to have a lot number, and possibly a UPC as well. So, we start using those numbers as the mines, link up simple computers–like raspberry pie–and create a currency backed by production. This would mean the producers of things–buisnesses, coops, whatever–would be able to earn extra money back by investing a small amount in setting up the computers. Most operations have to keep track of lot numbers and UPC’s to some degree anyway–especially with food–so it wouldn’t even really be extra. I sort of thought that’s what faircoin was at first…
First of all thanks (you and everyone else) for your replies and deep thinking on FairCoin and the impact it may has to our economy and society. It’s a long road ahead of us and the discussion upon to build a fair economy needs to keep going.
In the first two years we used a technique called “minting” to mine some new coins, that’s true. However, scaling and creation of new coins are different things. We can scale far too much, as FairCoin price will grow, and use fractions of that for our exchanges. For example, think of 1 FairCoin worth 100.000 €, then 1€ would be just 0.000001 FairCoin which is doable in crypto world.
Only a (small) part of FairCoin is backed by EUR/USD or BTC, which aims mainly for covering the needs of merchants and producers. It’s shown so far that the constant circulation of FairCoin founds, from one currency to another, keeps a certain stability and can cover offer and needs of our users. However, the crucial goal is to create real (circular) economy among FairCoin users. In that case, where more and more of our needs could be covered with FairCoin no (or very limited) exchanges to other currencies would be needed. This is actually a very common goal among social currencies which try to create alternative economies at the local level.
That’s a core point and you are absolutely right. The way we handle this is by setting a stable price for FairCoin, instead letting the market decide about it, like what is happening with all other speculative cryptos. That is a price decided by our open global assembly by consensus, taking in mind the evolution of the whole ecosystem (new Local Nodes, new goods and services, new collaborations, amount of exchanges etc).
The part of FairCoin that is in the open cryptomarket is estimated around 8%, so the impact of market’s volatility to our real economy is not that much and of course we try to reduce it by buying out FairCoin from when price is low.
This is actually an idea that has been discussed inside the ecosystem, but still at very early stages imo. I believe firstly we need to bring FairCoin at a higher level, expanding its use, and then figure out such matters. Of course they may go in parallel too, but there are more interesting proposals discussed at the mean time and we need to figure out the best combination. You are welcome to follow on at our Telegram groups!
Again, thank you very much for the feedback
So, the opposite of a dilution, got it.
Where does the added value come from then? I assume from the growth of faircoin, but what drives that growth?
But, this still doesn’t explain what’s backing it. Unless you have something physical backing it, it is a fiat currency–though certainly a decentralized, different one.
haha was talking about Tron there, I get how y’all prevented that from yours… Tron was, like, made to be volatile, and nothing else…
Wouldn’t that kinda screw over whoever was holding the older minted faircoins though? becaus
Wouldn’t this cause dilution to those who held minted coins though? When the new production mines come online, they would be creating more coin, and therefore diluting whatever is left.
Faircoin seems like a great idea, I just don’t get whey y’all aren’t starting by backing it with something physical… If you want to draw people in, that’d be one hell of a draw IMO… Hell, I could get my American-Libertarian friends on board, and maybe some republicans, especially if ya backed it with gold at first, those guys go apeshit for anything backed by gold…
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Backing a currency with physical things is not the easiest to do. As I said there have been different proposals (from products, to energy and ecological values) but we chose a more adaptive path. The growth (thus backing in other words) of FairCoin comes from many different things.
- Mainly these are described as the ‘ecosystem’ which consists of a very committed community of activists and other related collaborators and projects.
- Also, reserve investors which help us sustain our price and liquidity needed until we achieve more real economy.
- Lastly, the evolution and new tools that are already there or under way, which will empower even more synergies and open up new dimensions.
So it’s not just a currency that makes this whole new economy, but a wide set of ideas and people. Backing your currency with something very specific and physical may make your plan cumbersome in many ways, while we try to be open and inclusive in this socio-economic transition phase.
There are a couple of articles that may help understanding more about why and how FairCoin tries to differentiate from the rest of the crypto world:
Having FairPhone present in the FairMarket would open to a new market which doesn’t know FairPhone yet.
It’s free advertising of the phone to a target group that really wants THIS phone but doesn’t know it yet.
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