Topic: Limit mining a new alt-coin to a specific country. - page 2. (Read 2534 times)

What sort of local reach do you have? I may be interested in this project.

Practically nothing. We only produce oil, controlled by the government of course, so yes, we're deeply fucked.

97% of our exports are oil related.

Perhaps coffee, chocolate, some agricultural products but forget about that, people sell them for dollars and save them in banks abroad, so there is zero chance to have a healthy economy based on an alternate currency, not even dollars, much less bitcoins. I really don't know why it is so hard to understand our situation.

An alt-currency and subsequently a healthy alt-economy won't flourish unless it can be easily changed for bolivares back and forth.

Well I don't know about venezuela, but places like Argentina aren't even allowed to use their bank wires (I think)
So they can't buy bitcoins to begin with.
So an alternative currency that's mined within the country that can then be exchanged for bitcoins could help increase its adoption.
I think the solution would be to make it secret and only known to the local community.
Once a large portion of it is mined make it public.

Crypto-currencies issued by regions, corporations, political groups, etc...
Will be common soon so totally go for it...
Take a good PoW/PoS Alt and roll your own, baby.

That's exactly why the Alt Space is where it's at and moving at lightspeed...
Bitcoin gets more centralized every day and Ripple WTF?

What can you buy locally and export?

Because if you can ship something people will buy with bitcoins you might be able to increase the value of bitcoins themselves by making them available to the Venezuelan market.

Basically try to hold as many bitcoins as you can, while shipping out emeralds or something, whatever you can get there that is easy to ship, to bring in bitcoins...

-MarkM-

It certainly looks like the green monster wall.

I get that provided proper incentives people will trade BTCs for VEF but even so the supply of BTCs will be so low as to cause zero influence in commerce or trading, so the majority of people will never know about that option. That's what we have today.

There is also the possibility to use gold or silver coins (like liberty dollars) and start a black market so people slowly dump their VEFs for real metals, an option I am also exploring.

But I firmly believe there is an opportunity right now in Venezuela for a crypto-currency due to its deteriorating monetary conditions, much like in india and some other 'happy-printing' countries.

So even if it is not limited geographically, how would you go about mining an alt-currency and trading it for bolivares? That's the key point, forget about dollars or BTCs for the moment.

I'll take a look at Ripple.

Thanks for your advice.

Venezuela might be a good place where something like Ripple becomes incredibly useful.  If your goal is simply to trade without being forced to use VEFs, what could emerge are local issuers of commodity-backed digital vouchers on Ripple.

Take a look at the DYM issue on Ripple as an example:
 - https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/introducing-ripple-currency-dym-149533

That uses pre-1965 U.S. silver dimes ("junk silver") as the commodity.   But it could be anything that the issuer would store and then issue the vouchers that can be redeemed for the underlying commodity.   The commodities could include items easily purchased with VEFs today yet are not that difficult to warehouse.  This would include bottles of liquor, cartons of cigarettes, boxes of diapers, postage stamps, even rolls of toilet paper if nothing else.   So you'ld have a single currency issue for each of these commodity items but there would be multiple issuers for the same commodity.

Of course, other commodities sourced locally like coffee beans would be fantastic but you don't want to use something perishable.

No and no.

Technically, there's no way to know from where (geographically) a valid hash originated.

So you'ld be open to the world -- and vulnerable to a 51% attack.


What you have is friction, but not a brick wall.    When there is profit potential, suppliers of bitcoins (who accept VEF) will emerge.  This means if a buyer is willing to pay a premium to buy BTCs with VEF, some other party with bitcoins to sell will emerge to take those VEFs and use those VEF locally to pay for consumption.   The larger the premium the greater the incentive for these sellers to emerge.   For instance, a business in Venezuela that exports goods or services (e.g., a graphics designer with customers abroad) may ask for Bitcoin as payment (or offer a discount if payment is made in bitcoins) to obtain a supply of coins.  Those can then be sold locally at a premium which more than offsets the discount the merchant might have had to offer to incent some of their customers to pay with Bitcoin.

If Bitcoin buyers in Venezuela are only willing to pay a little premium then there won't be much supply.  But a larger premium will be the incentive that results in an adequate supply arriving.

Now, having said this, ... understand that there's nothing stopping anyone from attempting some regional crypto currency.   There are several that have already been tried with others being attempted now.  Here's one:
 - https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/laxmi-coin-for-india-and-international-market-287485

But know one thing, the risk of loss due to a 51% attack (if it is a proof-of-work based cryptocurrency) and volatility are higher with this regional alt currency than with Bitcoin.  Do you really want to expose your neighbors to these risks of significant financial loss?  

Hi guys, we are designing a currency for Venezuela and we would like to know your insights about limiting the mining and trading to a specific country, in this case Venezuela. Is that a good idea or even possible?

The purpose is to mine and trade with venezuelan currency, which is 'bolivares', and since nobody in the world wants them and foreign exchange is restricted in our country it would be a good idea for venezuelan miners to get paid in bolivares so they can spend it for daily living while people buy the alt-coins for savings. So, slowly we change our shitty bolivares for XVEs and in a matter of years we may be able to start an exchange to trade XBTs for XVEs, you know, like in a real world monetary system (without govt intervention of course).

See, our currency just got debased 600% in one year and we are sick of government robbing us at gunpoint.

No, we can not buy BTCs (the main purpose of a world currency like BTC) because we have no access to dollars, euros, yens or whatever strong currencies and nobody takes our bolivares.

Believe me when I tell you we are fucked.

Ideas?