I was just curious as to the possible regulatory risk Safecoin may face in the future. I have seen certain countries restrict the use of other currencies such as Bitcoin and was wondering if Safecoin has any way to prevent these kinds of restrictions. It seems to me that restricting the use of Safecoin in certain countries would be the quickest way to prevent the use of the Maidsafe network in those areas. If people are not allowed to exchange Safecoin to local currency it could pose a threat for the network. Does anyone know how this is planned to be addressed once the Maidsafe network launches? (Perhaps having the Safecoins exchanged within the Maidsafe network…?)
I think you’re wrong about this. Almost all non-BTC coins are sold for and bought with BTC. The ability to buy it for fiat is a non-requirement (it’d be nice to have, but it’s non-essential).
If Bitcoin and SafeNet are up & running, it will always be possible to buy SAFE.
The issue I am concerned about is not buying SAFE, but spending SAFE. It will be easy to spend SAFE within the network, but say I buy or earn SAFE and then want to redeem into my local currency. If the local country restricts this, I am stuck with SAFE I can not use. Also, there are already countries that restrict their citizens from buying Bitcoin, so if I can not buy Bitcoin, I can not buy SAFE coin either…this is the issue I am wondering about…
I agree that’s a problem. I guess the government of the country I live in (Belarus) won’t ever allow such type of exchange. It’s impossible to buy something with BTC in my country. No market/shop/service is allowed to be purchased by crypto currency. The only way to buy them is using WebMoney or service like that, but anyway you’ll be able to but smth from abroad only. And another electronic money service always takes additional fee for such operations, 5% comission.
On the other hand, once you have BTC you can buy services from others, so what you make farming you can use to buy your own backup space and probably other services that will be available on the MaidSafe network.
My hope is that the SAFE network will set up an exchange within it that can not be controlled by local governments, which I believe is what @Nigel was referring to. That would be a great protection for the network in whole and the users!
Exactly, exchanging SAFE for a local/fiat currency within the network would be a feature that would help the project immensely. Only being able to exchange SAFE for BTC would restrict usage and would deter the average internet user from adopting SAFE as a network/internet option.
you do realize that if you take away safecoin from the network then it’s primary purpose still exists? that primary purpose is the reason there might be problems regulation wise
anonymity and freedom of information still exist in this “folked” version. the network functions as it does with the original…how have you solved anything?
Best thing is to focus on how Safecoins are made; they are made because Safecoins were spent on putting content, if that content is meaningful to people the GETS will form Safecoins for the farmers; essentially all a person needs to do to get in on the exchange of Safecoins, is to just farm them; The end of the day purchasing power is in gigbytes and later perhaps gigabits of data;
Free and democratic countries means governments that respect personal freedom, including freedom of speech, the right to be anonymous in private life and so on. When it comes to currencies on the other hand, governments usually have the legal right to regulate it heavily, and probably for good reasons. If a government tries to make it illegal to use BitTorrent for example, then that’s totalitarian. That’s Orwellian. What governments can do is to have laws that says that downloading copyrighted material without permission from the owner(s) is illegal. That’s fine. What the authorities cannot do without turning oppressive, is to claim that the use of BitTorrent in itself is illegal.
I don’t think restrictions on safecoin are likely to be a problem at all, really.
Bullies in the ruling class can say anything they want, but enforcement is another thing. Banning people from running SAFE nodes on their own equipment will be very hard to enforce, and that’s what it will take to stop safecoin from penetrating any market.
Think about it. Excess safecoin are probably going to be generated by most anyone who runs a vault, right? That means that safecoin will be available for exchange to “Bob’s (or Omar’s, or Fong’s, or Pedro’s) Street-corner Bank and Currency Exchanges” all over the world. A currency with the features of safecoin will be desirable, so local enterprising people will be happy to buy them for local currency, accumulate as much as they can and then take advantage of whatever purchasing capacity or currency swapping opportunity presents itself, almost regardless of many border considerations. And there will be plenty of those opportunities. Organized crime won’t even be able to corner the market on “off the books” currency interactions. It will likely be wonderfully informal, but very efficient.
I remember hearing political/banker types getting their knickers in a twist about how Hawala could be used to move value between Islamic people across borders without government oversight (even while governments and big banks are on record as the biggest supporters of terrorism and the biggest money launderers). Safecoin will likely take Hawala-type exchange activity and make it easy, more economical than any bank or formal exchange and, more important, ubiquitous across all cultures and unstoppable.
People are listening to and crediting the ruling class less and less. Everyone knows that virtually everyone is guilty of violating multiple laws that are on the books for which they COULD be jailed, whether they are trying to “be obedient” or not. So what the bullies say has less and less to do with how people behave. It’s the in-your-face force that gets obeyed, though not necessarily agreed with.
The real evolution is the SAFE network as a whole. That’s where even more progress could be made than we’re even imagining. Safecoin is just a part of the picture. The powers that be are trying to co-opt Bitcoin because they realize they really can’t stop it, and there are aspects of trackability which are actually desirable to central beasties. SAFE, if it gets a foothold and works at all as anticipated will be even more unstoppable, regardless of “adverse” regulation.
Money has been extremely important throughout history and without money the world would likely have collapsed into chaos. The horse has been crucial too for thousands of years. Extrapolating the future based on the past is becoming ever more uncertain. How many people use horse and carriage today? With information technology the change is accelerating and making money digital may be like digitizing a horse and carriage.
One risk is that making the SAFEnet dependent on Safecoin will actually be detrimental in the longer run, because the old money principle is then locked into the system. People will be forced to use safecoins even some years from now when price/performance of data storage has improved thousandfold. What started as a good incentive in the form of Safecoin will then become a mandatory burden built on the old money paradigm.
Noone has forced me to buy MAID and noone can force you to buy MAID or SAFE.
If you earn it, you can sell it for BTC or anything else that people buy it with.
But is it possible to use SAFEnet without having any safecoins? If so, then that’s a good solution, since then Safecoin is an optional and very powerful cryptocurrency that can be used or not used depending on the use case.
Per the current model, it will be quite possible to access all public information, and perhaps some other functionality, without using safecoin. Full use of the network will require safecoin.
The thing to remember is that this is a very different model than we’re used to. Safecoin represents resources contributed to the network, which resources are what allow the network to exist and prosper. The leveraged utility of the network will allow a lot of free use, and full use to be extremely cheap, but safecoin is the low-level value interface.
It’s basic to the system. It’s not like an external money being overlaid and forced on people. Anyone who just wishes to run the software on resources being contributed should earn (far?) more than enough safecoin to cover their own use.
There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. But that doesn’t mean that an abundant meal can’t be really, really cheap! Enough to take away doggie bags to feed the homeless, even.
As @fergish said, you can easily earn it and then spend it.
Since every block stored will have 4 copies, by sharing 40GB of your free HDD space with the network, you may very well get close to 10GB in return and the participation in the ecosystem (software stack, payments, etc.) will be essentially free.
