The Brits and Canadians in the
Galactic Milieu keep coming back to this idea, except they are thinking GBP and CAD, respectively, instead of USD.
The main problem is having such a low budget for securing the blockchain, because it is not really economically practical to let random miners out on the net create dollars or pounds out of thin air thus the coins have to be issued initially only to the "central bank", the issuers, the people who are committing to buying them at very close to the price of a CAD dollar or a GBP pound.
In these two cases, their blockchains are just like Bitcoin's will be at some future date: about 21 million coins, all issued, with mining being paid for only by transaction fees.
The theory seems to be that if all the coins do eventually get into circulation, then it should be possible to allow the price to start to float higher, if the market chooses to let it do so, but the backers will always stand ready to buy back each and every coin at very close to the price they sold it for.
Think like maybe sell them for 1.01, buy them for 0.99, something like that.
Initially the General Mining Corp (GMC) and General Retirement Fund (GRF) coins seem content to follow along with this as if their coins are only worth the same as a CDN (Canadian Digital Note), so they have scripts ready to keep putting inn orders to buy 100 CDN for 99 GRF or GMC and to sell 100 GRF or GMC for 101 CDN, and also for higher scales too like 1000 GMC or GRF for 1001 CDN and so on.
Thus they too hope to maintain a stable target price for their coins.
No USD has been contemplated yet mainly because the "American" civilisation is not yet an active player in the
Galactic Milieu, but since
Freeciv includes nearly all currently existing nations of "the planet known as Earth" it is hoped that this approach can eventually lead to having a blockchain currency standing ready for each nation on the planet for its in game game-citizens to use even if here on that actual planet that nation chooses not avail itself of the opportunity by declaring it not an officially valueless game-token but, rather, an actual currency...
-MarkM-