The Economics of Safecoin (presentation)

Excellent @joelfinn thanks for creating this. Great delivery, really helpful slides, really important topic. I’d like to hear any ideas you have for those mind blowing applications… when you’re ready :slight_smile:

@dallyshalla I’m sooo excited about SAFEx. Apart from trading bitcoin, “SAFE bay” assets, it would be incredible if mainstream financial instruments came over. Is that feasible, not just technically, but would the industry consider this? Great presentation man!

I’m still trying to understand the implications of all this :smile:

BTW guys, and @frabrunelle, can we start a share of handy diagrams, jingles (brilliant), photos etc so others (points to self) can easily browse them and pull them into their presentations. @N1ckLambert sent me some earlier presentations, which are great, and I recognize one diagram at least from these, but it would be handy to have a gallery - something like a google images search rather than having to search inside presentation files. What do you think? A Dropbox share with all usable diagrams in it would do, with folders for differen types (photos, illustration, system diagram etc) and topics (architecture, farming, applications, economics etc)

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Hey everybody, thanks for your feedback on the presentation!

I was a little under the weather for the presentation, hence the hairdo and the choppy delivery, but I’m glad the concepts were clear.

@happybeing in terms of my own ideas for ‘mind blowing applications’ I am really interested in some of the potential applications to the world of finance.

For example, I was doing some research on micro-finance, which is based on the concept of tiny, repayable loans, and how part of the big problem was the administrative burden for MicroFinance Institutions (MFIs) that comes with issuing tonnes of tiny loans.

Based on what I was seeing, because SafeCoin is instantaneous and without transaction costs, it could vastly streamline the process and break it out of the ‘interest zone,’ which is partially a response to the escalating admin costs that many MFIs and banks encountered (greed also a factor of course).

I know this doesn’t seem ‘mind-blowing,’ but I think it illustrates how a more ‘frictionless’ system could bring finance to the unbanked. And of course, any applications that would work in that context could be scaled into mainstream markets in a similar way that M-Pesa has scaled into many countries throughout Africa.

I know all of this would be later-stage in the SAFE evolution, as it principally a data-storage network … but it was just an ‘if-then’ projection on my part, where if the initial rollout of the network was successful and SafeCoin did begin to have a more fluid ‘cash’ feel than comparable digital currencies, then people would naturally be inclined to start looking for way to invest or share their SafeCoins with others on the network.

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Love the hair!!! :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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@joelfinn :

I know this doesn’t seem ‘mind-blowing,’ but I think it illustrates how a more ‘frictionless’ system could bring finance to the unbanked. And of course, any applications that would work in that context could be scaled into mainstream markets in a similar way that M-Pesa has scaled into many countries throughout Africa.

I think that is mind blowing! There was a TED talk which focused on the numbers of “unbanked” and how much global economic activity could be released by helping them access finance and financial services. It was very impressive to me, though my memory hasn’t retained it. I might have a note - do you know the talk I mean?

Definitely worth sharing ideas like this. I think it would be great to have just a handful of different kinds of amazing things that SAFE could enable, and this is a great example.

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I did not fully understand why this protocol is essential for a decentralized exchange/marketplace…
I though escrow and arbitration are more important in this context, or even doing the whole thing on a blockchain like e.g. Ethereum (there are also problems, because you can’t store private keys on the blockchain, and you have to somehow get confirmations from another currency onto the blockchain).
Who guarantees me that the cup is shipped after I pay the 10 safecoins, and how is this decentralized?

No I don’t think I saw that talk, would love to see it if you had a link.

I try to put ‘mind blowing’ in context because everyone has a different definition of it, but yes the impact of tapping into the ‘unbanked’ would be staggering and I think that it’s within the realm of possibility, which is why I love thinking about it.

Agree that it would be good to have a collection of these big ideas, I imagine many others have some amazing ideas as well for different applications. Thanks for your thoughts.

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@joelfinn I haven’t found the talk itself, but searching for “unbanked” and “banking the unbanked” seems worthwhile. I found this guy Dug Campbell who gave a TEDx talk at Edinburgh in 2014: Bitcoin: More Than Just Money which is relevant. I wonder if he knows about MaidSafe, or if @dirvine knows about him.

Yes :wink:

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A lot of sharks moving into this space under the pretense of helping the unbanked. More like getting the underdeveloped world into debt to keep the western game going.

If SAFE could be used to bring interest credit free credit to the ‘unbanked’ that would be a game changer and thwart the debt parasites.

I get the feeling Project SAFE may have missed a trick here though…where is the x% of the Safecoin pool that could have been used to supply the micro credit? Where is the credit going to come from if these guys cannot farm for coin…are we still stuck with the donation model.

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@chrisfostertv I am seeing that easily being implemented :slight_smile:

The network will only work if it is sustained with real materials as well as the digital data; after all the network is composed of vaults

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I think Micro-Finance Institutions could build an entity into SAFE (not sure if this is allowed) and then start farming and earning SafeCoins themselves, which could then be lent out …

Over time, I believe that a new model could be developed that was neither interest nor donation based. In the same way that the whole network is a new model for content and digital services, I think that there has to be a way to redesign the micro-finance model outside of the interest model without it becoming just like a crowdfunding platform.

I am not sure what that model would be, as it would take some work. But my original thinking was that Micro Finance could be developed out of the original architecture of SAFE based on what I know today. Obviously I wouldn’t know if actual coins could be specifically allocated to micro finance from the outset, but I think that the incentives and structures will be there at some point in SAFE’s evolution post-launch.

A challenge, but in my imagination it seems possible haha

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@joelfinn @chrisfostertv @dallyshalla @al_kafir and others.

Just want to say I find your ideas and aspirations around protecting and helping the poorest people in the world touching and exciting. I’d love us to find ways of making this a part of SAFE Network, either through the core, or things built on top of it.

After the insightful economics thread @chrisfostertv started
Safecoin and ‘The Real Bills Doctrine’ of Adam Smith I’m wondering if one of the most effective ways is to help people bypass the current economic systems and provide alternatives, akin to a credit based economy as exemplified by Real Bills.

The radio programme I posted on that thread: The Classical Period (15 mins long), revealed to me two key misunderstandings I had about money. It seems it was not necessary for trade! Who knew?! And was introduced only to project power, to incentivise & coerce populations to supply armies based in their viscinity with food and resources. Money, ie coinage, was introduced for this specific purpose (while global trade had flourished for thousands of years without it). The introduction of coinage, while ingenious, enabled ever greater wars, and had drastic consequences for societies which no longer addressed inequalities through debt forgiveness, and ever since have been subject to periodic, catastrophic economic collapses instead.

I’m wondering what we can learn from these insights and how SAFE can contribute to something that frees us from this dangerous and unstable monetary system.

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Here are some photos of the event. Thanks to @LeJacobRoy for taking them!

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some early drafts of the diagrams for SAFEX Protocol;

many thanks @LeJacobRoy;

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Maybe we have the start of it hinted at in the diagram @dallyshalla posted

Everyone has the chance to be a consumer, merchant and producer in a value exchange with many ecosystems existing within each realm.

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@happybeing I will have to spend some time reading through that forum on Adam Smith, thanks for sharing.

I think that there is a lot of big ideas surfacing out there about how to shakeup the monetary system, but I think the key ingredient to making it all work is a scalable network that people trust in. So I think SAFE as a whole is a great building block for whatever the new system would become at some point in the future.

A really inspiring article came out recently that showed how bitcoin is being used to build new portals for the unbanked in places like Africa, and creating new trade possibilities in the Carribean:

The obvious problem for me is that the bitcoin blockchain is not well-designed for global scalability, so there will come an inevitable point where all these new payment and remittance services will need to deal with that. That’s why I really think that all else being equal, SafeCoin has a much better foundation and a secure network layer to achieve these outcomes.

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@nicklambert ADAM Symposium; Connection Map

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I cannot take credit for this map @dallyshalla. This is the fine work of @BenMS!

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I cannot take credit for that map either. It’s the fine work of @Shona and the front-end team, @Viv in particular!

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The FIX protocol is well… what it is: Financial Information eXchange.
It’s important not because it provide protection to seller and buyer
but because it provide a common language.
To make the FIX protocol work on the SAFE network you need to do some work.
SAFEX is the result of this work.

Guarantee are possible for digital assets.
Because they live in the digital world, we can do all sorts of computations(proofs) on them.
But thing that happen outside of the digital world are outside of the control of a computer.
Doing business (in our nasty :weary: side effect world) require trust and you try to protect yourself with thing like escrow and arbitration.
Hope it helps

“Love all, trust a few, do wrong to none.”
William Shakespeare, All’s Well That Ends Well

“All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust.”
J.M. Barrie, Peter Pan

“The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.”
Ernest Hemingway

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