Topic: Funding Solar Energy with Bitcoin - a solid state & silicon based economy? - page 2. (Read 2519 times)

No hidden agenda. The Sun Exchange is using Bitcoin as a low cost global payment rail. Not all Bitcoiners use it as a store of value. It benefits the very poor. The Sun Exchange's Users can democratically decide if a solar project for a poor community should get financed, where as traditional finance options would ignore such projects as the end-users of the electricity are unbanked. This gets rural communities electrified helping with education and prevents biomass depletion.

We are about to integrate SolarCoin wallets into our user dashboard so that people buying solar cells also get allocated their Solar Coin.

You can see on SolarCoin.org's home page that The Sun Exchange is listed as one of their supporters.

Getting started with home wind energy projects can set you back a pretty penny if you buy a finished product, but if you're a little bit handy and don't mind scrounging for materials and getting creative in the garage or backyard, you can try your hand at building one of these DIY wind turbines for about $30 in materials.

If I remember my Weather 101 studies correctly, wind is capable of blowing at night, whereas the sun goes to bed passing the torch, so to speak, to the cold-hearted orb that rules the night till the brave helios wakes, bringing the warmth the countryside needs.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/07/02/why-dont-we-put-solar-panels-in-the-sahara-desert-as-a-source-of-electricity/#42e5e8ab13d7

According to what I've read so far there is a hidden agenda into this company still they are benefiting for the bitcoin price increase per year but the idea of their project is good but I think it would not benefit those very poor people on Africa those benefiting would be in the middle class people because they will put the solar on buildings not at homes of those people who will need it most.

if your really into solar

join https://solarcoin.org/en/front-page/

save you headaches

I am looking at your proposal from an entrepreneur point of view and being versatile with Africa, can say it has got some prospect and business model that is adoptable elsewhere. But bulk of what I feel should be a would-be-investor's concerns are:
1. the sunexchange, I see it's a SA company, they are middlemen here, what tells that one can trust them with one's Bitcoins, not just for a year but decades;
2. where exactly is your market, Africa is a vast land and you can't do business in some areas;
3. is there a standing agreement and contract with any solar company;
4. what is thesunexchange to you?

and so it begins



the morocco project is not a "sun exchange" project, its just a google search he found.
for a guy living in africa, seems he is quoting a UK media source

Dangerz
yes countries are getting into solar.. thats not a doubt.
but it doesnt legitimize your business.

nor does your proposal explain why bitcoiners should get involved as you fail to explain(beyond the gimmick of your internal switcheroo pretend) how bitcoin would actually become part of africans daily lives.

Not being a scholar myself, so if neo-colonialism equals "I know something's afoot"or similar, then you nailed it. TBC, when I think outside the box, I'm usually outside the box while thinking it.

Look, dude, all that said, I can't remember why I'm even commenting here, for the vision is great and the dude, perhaps you, there in [South] Africa seems okay upon a cursory review.

Later, bud.

Bruno

"okay, I'm not sure what I recognize here, but I'm willing to bet it's something."

I think the term you are looking for is neo-colonialism. A romantic notion that modern day capitalists shouldn't interfere with tribal societies living in mud huts and pushing our technological wares onto them.

I live here in Africa, and the rapidly developing population want access to the same services and technology and electricity as you have.

No one willing to throw money at such a project huh? What about $9 bilion on just one plant in the sahara which is the first of many? https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2016/feb/04/morocco-to-switch-on-first-phase-of-worlds-largest-solar-plant

Oh Franky you do make me chuckle! The point is that there are 650 million people looking for the utopia you live in. You have electricity. They don't. How are they going to get it? Corrupt African governments siphon off aid money intended for building infrastructure by the hundreds of millions a year to cost of tax payers around the world. They are the middle men walking away with the sacks of cash. We have built a system that gets funds direct to infrastructure and we take a fair share for arranging and technically vetting the solar projects. Value added.

It costs us less to send and receive Bitcoin than any other form of currency, that is why we use it. Although we see it can be a store of value we are using it is a remittance system and people are buying Bitcoin for the first time to send payments too us for buying solar cells which we then convert to fiat again. Only Bitcoin for a few minutes between the buyer and the seller and the Bitcoin is now liquid in the South African digital currency exchanges.

Because prior to the advent of Bitcoin, nobody was willing to throw fiat at such a project, but now that Investards have proven themselves to throw crypto at projects in spite of demonstrations of their nefarious intent, the moon's the limit, especially since we have trade periodicals publishing paid-for articles advancing their respective concerns (see my sig) if not outright penning sensationalized articles themselves as fodder in garnering advertisement revenue while also linking to other ventures under periodicals' auspices on the same page as said articles.

the reason..
me and gleb have alluded to but not yet bluntly pointed out.

is that when a middle man holds the bags of funds. not much of it ends up actually doing anything in reality but being handled by the middleman.

the middle man will show lots of pictures they googled and lots of sob stories of needs for funding. and they will happily send you mass produced volumes of paperwork showing gratitude.

but when it comes to questioning the end goal and investigating the end goal........ silence begins to be the middlemans answer.
.. followed by anger, insults and threats as they realise the last year of preparing their mony raising starts falling apart

So all fiat of the world couldn't fix African problem of poverty and lack of electricity and now suddenly bitcoin will help it?I know that even without advanced calculation this is not something we can achieve.
I know for a fact that if we put solar panels on 1/18th of the land area of the Sahara, it would make enough power for all of Europe and Northern Africa. So tell me why why no one did it already?

http://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/07/02/why-dont-we-put-solar-panels-in-the-sahara-desert-as-a-source-of-electricity/#5eafa2b613d7

gleb, i like them to atleast dig a hole for themself first.

let them back track and change their story to see how desparate they are to sell utopia.
well ice to eskimo's
well i mean sand to people in the desert.
oops
i mean silica to africans.

its like a bad episode of "the shark tank" or "dragons den" seeing people with a bad and obvious shady business plans, still invited to the tv show to talk about the shady business purely to get to see the business plan get ripped apart

i know i jumped the gun on the other topic. so i guess you deserve to jump the gun here.
but sometimes people need to learn from these unethical utopian hypes. so that people are aware of what they are being fed

I'm just gonna leave the following two links here:

https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/2016-03-23-solar-startup-the-sun-exchange-uses-bitcoin-to-fund-green-energy-1409515

https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-sun-exchange-a-solar-powered-financial-system-bitcoin#/

1) bitcoin tx fee's are more than an hours labour.. so no 'nano fees.
2) if you were to use LN then LN transactions(smart contracts) of nano fee's are NOT transparent as they are offchain. plus they require permissioned contracts which would require 20 year LOCKS on the funds..
   if you were to publicise the private LN payments. thats the same as just showing a mysql database trade history, so not real transparence just a vail of transparency.
3) smart contracts are permissioned payments. meaning the investors funds are locked in where the luna exchange becomes the bank manager (LN hub)

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separate issue:

ok.. so. bitcoin is $950 in africa today.

so a $1k 1kw solar panel is 1.05btc~ (rough number for easy display)

so some investor hands you 1.05btc~ to buy a solar sell ..
you convert it to fiat and buy a solar panel for $1k

it gets installed at lets say some Tyre ltd company in africa..
and then Tyre ltd then pays back $100 a year for the lease (your website says 10% returns(8% initial after fees))

so imagine its 2018. bitcoin is then $2k.. Tyre hands luna $100 or 0.05btc..
so imagine its 2019. bitcoin is then $2.5k.. Tyre hands luna $100 or 0.04btc..
so imagine its 2018. bitcoin is then $3k.. Tyre hands luna $100 or 0.033btc..

as you can see. after 10 years the investor will not get his 1.05btc back(10x10%=100% return).. although technically he gets $1000 of 'value back' in btc form its not the same as 1.05btc.
hense my first comment about why would an investor hand over a good asset .. when the obvious conclusion is its better to burn fiat..

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secondly.
this still does not explain why lets say the american investor paying in btc.. is then helping africa become BTC friendly.

after all those wanting to move Zar from one african country to another, are just going to deposit Zar into your 'Luna' exchange and the family else where will receive the wages in Zar. the bit in the middle is just your internal gimmick of taking zar from one person and handing it to another, but mascaraded in the middle to look like bitcoin is involved in the blind hope that by making it appear that you are playing with bitcoin it will absolve you of any financial conduct regulations.. (it wont)

your exchange in the middle 'pretending' to be a rail. is not actually a rail as the deposits and withdrawals and swaps would be in zar in the end. because both sides are just physically touching Zar.

you have yet to show where the BITCOIN utility is.(reason for african citizens to keep bitcoins.. or even able to hold bitcoins without an LN smart contract)

i say that not as a naive learner but as someone that has seen dozens of projects in the past and as someone who loves to run real life scenarios to see where the actually utility of business plans/niches are.

you really are just playing gimmicks with how your business is structured. so either you need to reword your business plan. or you need to just go burn some fiat investors instead.

Hmmm... if your understanding were of my understanding, then I can't understand how you came to the conclusion that I was alluding to existing power hungry buildings when I clearly expressed building such in the middle of nowhere where hardly any water could be had, let alone food for the multitudes already living there, the very folks your envision's designed to help.

Surely, you weren't first playing the sensational card so to illicit emotions, then jump ship from the truly poor to the quasi-poor white-collar workers in Africa, were you? I may or may not be versed in African socio-economics, but I sure as hell can recognize ... okay, I'm not sure what I recognize here, but I'm willing to bet it's something.



^^^ First use of the Szabo clasped hands facepalm. Know your meme: Szabo facepalmed after the panel moderator introduced all her friends, excited to be in their presence (perhaps cumming in her panties), but when Craig Steven Wright starting blabbering out his accolades, the moderator stopped him mid-stride and demanded of him, "Who are you" immediately resulting in the captured image above. ref. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LdvQTwjVmrE (just view first couple minutes is all)