Topic: Donating your 'old' 1st gen. ASICs! (Read 2326 times)

Thanks for this link.  I'm not speaking for anyone else but I certainly don't see hard currency as a panacea.  But as desperate as the situation was in that village at that time can you think of any reason the merchants would have brought in the bread and scarce resources the villagers were able to purchase had the villagers not been 'fortunate' enough to have access to gold in this manner?  This was hard enough to watch for me.  I don't think I would like to see the scenario in a similar village at that time where there was no hard currency.

I don't see this video as supporting the case against hard currency.

PS @hardcore-fs  I've not forgotten.  I'm still thinking.  I will get back to you on your last post.

If you think a hard currency stops you getting ripped off you should watch this...

Gold For Bread - Zimbabwe http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7ubJp6rmUYM

^ Thanks for taking the time to explain what's behind your initial response hardcore.  Appreciated.  It's a lot to take on board and I'll give myself some time to think it through before replying but I wanted to acknowledge your post immediately.
Tf

I used to do voluntary work... until I found it 'too much', some most situations...  are heartbreaking (what's the closest you've been to a REAL dead body, that did not die of natural causes)

Western solutions work in the Western world, they are NOT easily transportable to other cultures and situations.
Generally it breaks down as follows:
 
1. Staying alive. (not ending up with a tyre round your neck/raped/murdered/frozen/poisoned/hacked/shot/Brain-washed)
2. Clean safe water.
3. Food.

When you have to spend large parts of your day in the above 3, then the last thing on your mind is Technology to keep nothing you have "safe".
Until the so called "knights on white horses" actually get out  on the ground, then it is highly unlikely that anything they propose will work.
Usually you can 'spot' them becasue they are the ones that pack their fantasy traveling kit with toilet paper and a Bible rather than medical supplies.
Then when they get where they are going... they spend hours organizing WHO is in-charge and how the reporting structure is going to be setup or looking for a power socket so they can do their power point slides.

The 'victims of circumstance' are not 'stupid' they are not 'mentally deficient ' and they can be highly resourceful,  they just have a complete lack of the basic foundations needed for life.
Thats why at the rotary club we DON'T give cash, instead the money is spent to provide solutions, in many cases that includes the training needed.

The previous Two ideas annoy me because:

1. It is a technological solution to a problem they do not have.
2. It is a Technological solution they CANNOT implement long term.
3. It is a complete WASTE of resources.... why use electricity to mine bit coins , when you can use it to keep medicines safe?
4. Why spend $1300USD on technology that requires MASSIVE infrastructure to support it and has a highly questionable return rate, when this kind of money will buy the materials for several  deep water wells and grain seed to keep several HUNDRED people alive.

5. And how the F****  is a crypto currency going to be exchangeable at the average 3rd world market?, do any market stalls in your country allow "crypto currency"?

So To recap...
Someone makes a "suggestion",  should  I spend:
1. Massive amounts of time trying to "educate" them, when they cannot even do the most BASIC of research(despite them having MASSIVE resources for self education)

2. As much time on my answer as they did on their proposed 'solution'.



Sorry.... but that is the way it is... and some of us ARE prepared to 'drop everything in life'(what exactly is it that you perceive is so valuable?) or certainly give up our holiday periods.

It's WHAT you are prepared to give up... that says far more about you as a person.. Rather than that fast car/rolex watch/big house or large bank account.

If you cannot make it to the 3rd world then get off your ass and down to the local homeless shelter, go see if they can use bit-mining to survive or maybe they need a "crypto currency" to keep their money safe... nope?.. well why would it work in a 3rd world country then?

OK, well thanks hardcore for bringing a different perspective to the table.

I am aware that ill-thought-through, half-baked dogooders' ideas can cause much more harm than good which is why I welcome your input because if there is a critical flaw then better it be brought up sooner rather than later.  So if you don't mind may I ask you to clarify your position here?

After waxing lyrical about the future in my last post I probably needed the reality-check provided by the grim tale in the link you provided.  Paddy Ashdown, writing about his experience in Bosnia was convinced trying to introduce democracy and other wonderful, beneficial processes is futile until law and order is established.  So if what you're saying with the link is that introducing bitcoins and bitcoin mining in areas where the beneficiaries are almost certain to be the abusers then I take your point.  However, bare in mind too this is the Daily Mail we're talking about here where a significant proportion of the readership are those who would prefer to dismiss a whole continent as savages in order to justify sitting on their arses and doing nothing other than moan at the size of the UK international aid budget!*

That certain regions are prone to the unprotected successful being slammed back down by abuse is a fact that needs to be borne in mind.  However for me that is no justification to stop thinking of ways that may help turn these places around - but that's just me.

I agree there is nothing like experience on the ground to get a proper perspective.  But I don't either believe unless I'm prepared to drop everything in my life and go volunteer that I should shut up and do nothing.  It is, admitedly only the once I went to Africa, the Khartoum experience - part of whcih I shared above, but it was enough to know the problems are very real and that they vary enormously over this vast continent.  There are some common denominators but the differences mean that where a solution such as I'm proposing would fuel violence in some regions it might have a chance in others.

An idea has to start somewhere.  I am aware of my fallibility in not having considered all the factors involved.  Hence my OP finishing with the request 'Thoughts?'.  I didn't particularly solicit opinions but sure, 'fucking stupid idea' is better than no feedback

Thoughts?


* Incidentally one of the reasons I much favour private philanthropic projects over public aid - especially ones run by successful entrepreneurs such as Gates - is the increased odds of the money having the desired effect.    Because without a good understanding and close scrutiny, the chances are pretty high that money from the well-meaning will end up wasted, skimmed off by aid organisations or worst of all - as we're talking about here - in the wrong hands thereby defeating the object.

Another fucking stupid Idea with a total lack of thought.


Give me your bit coins or you get the match.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2239201/Necklace-lynchings-shocked-Africa-Agonising-deaths-students-mistaken-thieves-burned-alive-posted-online.html


Go do some voluntary work in a 3rd world country, so you better understand the problems.

Absolutely.  One of the reasons I got interested in currency was to have experienced first hand in the mid 90s in Khartoum what hyperinflation was doing to the day-to-day lives of the Sudanese.  The story I most vividly remember was our driver explaining that nobody really knew when the army was going to get paid but he and everybody else in ordinary jobs just had to hope the army's pay would not come before their own.  Because as soon as the army was paid from money that had been printed for the purpose the school fees would double and so the timing made the difference to our driver of whether or not he could keep his kids in school for the next month.

At the time I'd just learned about the WWW and was really excited about the potential of the wealth of hyperlinked knowledge and communications to break the power of abuse that was held over those people by their government (and to a lesser extent, all of us).  Now with the combination of smartphones and crypto-currencies it seems like there's only a small step to be taken not only to lift a vast number of people out of political tyranny and the poverty trap but to release their creativity onto the world.  'Scuse me verging on the hyperbolic but with so many more free and connected thinking people we have no idea where mankind can go in the forthcoming years and decades.  I feel it is a privilege to be alive at this time to witness what I believe we're about to.

Isnt one of the main problems in africa endemic corruption causing currency problems? I think any kind of crypto based system would be welcome there for that reason.

  Don't know how serious you were with this response but it tickled me thanks.

I know BFL on their exchange programme count the purchase value of returned items against the new ones so I suppose whilst this continues (and people are upgrading rather than stopping mining) then it does equate to a donation of $1200.  So yes, maybe this is a fundamental flaw in the plan.
I don't know much about litecoin.  And to a certain extent it doesn't matter which cryptocurrency is used nor what it is valued at outside of a community using it providing it serves its purpose of providing an easy means of payment.  The fact that gpu mining for litecoin is a longer-term thing also means that there'll be some usable parts in all the e-waste currently landing in Africa.

But although as Hardcore-fs intimates mining hardware shouldn't be donated with any promise of riches the odds of Bitcoin disappearing entirely is in my opinion much less than that of litecoin  - and is diminishing by the day so is more likely, if a practical way was found of bringing this about, that the additional benefits of having an increasingly internationally accepted value can play its role in protecting users against local-currency inflation and can be of value for exporting services too (such as paying someone to generate the electricity for my own mining operations    )

Hmmmmm
 
I never thought of anything in this forum that way........

Stupid Idea.... spend $1200USD to fill their country with ewaste and consume their electricity and all the while promote a cruel hoax that they will become rich......

Better still why not just pay one of them to peddle a bicycle generator and post you charged batteries and you keep the hardware & bitcoins.

I have heard rumors of an African savant that can hash blocks in his head.

Nice idea

But the people buying asics are buying them why? Would it not be a more philanthropic idea to develop a way to recoup all the fpga and reprogram them for say for example litecoin? Adoption of digital / crypto currency micro-payment systems is far more widespread in your target countries so exchange services etc are far more likely to flourish there as well.

Just my 2c

OK, so I know this may be a little premature given nobody knows for certain whether they actually exist yet but...

This is a question for miners for whom part of your reason for mining is to secure the Bitcoin network and to play your part in reducing the odds of the project failing.

When the time comes that you're replacing your 1st generation ASICs, rather than trading in or selling them on would you consider contributing them (at the cost of slower ROI on your new gear) to seed Bitcoin economies in developing countries?

If there's enough interest the idea is that I would set up a charity and raise money to purchase solar PV units sufficient to power the donated units by the time I receive them.

In the meantime, if it's looking like it's going to happen I/we could search out budding entrepreneurs who are looking for investment in communities where smartphones have hit but Mastercard/Visa/e-currencies haven't yet got a foothold¹ and send them a rig and the means to power it with no charge².  My guess is that these folks would be less likely to just hoard and more likely first to find a means of exchanging to their own currency then when they can point their suppliers to an exchanger, to pay their supplier and so forth.

I have two reasons for liking this idea:  First I just love the idea of open-source money combined with mobile comms lubricating commerce and giving these people the chance like never before to climb out of the situation they're in.  Second, as much as a coup the WordPress announcement is for us in terms of making it less politically attractive for the powers that be to attack Bitcoin, having Bitcoin spreading like wildfire enabling the poverty-stricken to better their own lives would make it politically suicidal - thus decreasing the odds of the Bitcoin project coming under attack and making it more secure and valuable in the long term.

Thoughts?


¹ That may rule out places like South Africa where though they may be paying through the nose for them, electronic payments are already prevalent - see here

² How to ascertain who best to empower with one is not something I'm entirely comfortable with (too much like playing god) so this would require proper research and leaning on the experience of NGOs to try ensure they don't land in the wrong hands (no point giving it to someone who will abuse it or to someone who will just have it taken from them by gangs, militia or governments).