HullCoin, Striking fear into the heart of poverty!
Ok, It's been a while since my last blog, Quite a lot has changed....... My grammar is still terrible and Bitcoin is still awesome. I am blaming my absence on my new addiction to Raspberry Pi. It's just a great piece of kit, and along with meshnet will change the world, mark my words! :)Anyway the topic of today's blog is HullCoin, The new crypto-currency which may well be backed by a local authority. At this point reports suggest that Hullcoin is still just an idea in it's infancy, and bearing this in mind all we can do is speculate to the effects it may or may not have on the local economy.
Hull is well known to people in the U.K for being cold, wet and poor mostly and it's this poverty that has allegedly inspired HullCoin. So the basic premiss is this: people set about undertaking voluntary tasks and are paid with HullCoin which they can then use to exchange for hot meals. This is just the starting model as I understand it, obviously in time more places will accept HullCoin and people will be able to pay rent, taxes and buy fuel with it.
The most exciting thing about this concept is that it empowers Hull to create value with it's homeless and unemployed, and the possibilities are huge, the first thing that springs to mind is what if they start building solar panels or processing Biofuel, then use this energy to raise the standard of living for the local people, and even sell the energy to neighbouring towns. They could get people to work building semi-permanent fixtures like hexayurts, and because the money used is not the watered down pound which is suffering from Q.E by Mr Carney, people would possibly get value for their work.
Of course this is all very far fetched and relies heavily on the dream that central government will not shut the project down once they realise that a local currency is a lot like local independence.
On a social level, I initially thought that paying for voluntary work would hinder drug abuse, as drug dealers don't usually accept crypto currency for illicit drugs. I then thought about Silk road and realised that criminals will adapt and when they do, HullCoin may well be the only type of money a drug dealer can accept that has already laundered itself, a quick trip to LocalBitcoins.com and you have your pounds sterling. So it's not a positive but it's no less of a hinderance than cash is. If Hull university then start offering some online courses paid for with HullCoin then things will really get interesting.
All in all it's a very very good idea as far as I can see, I had toyed with the idea of BedfordCoin long before reading about Hullcoin, and think that it may only be a matter of time till all regions have their own coins.
What can I see in the future? A local area adopts 2 things simultaneously, 1: a cryptocurrenty and 2: a rule on every individual only owning 1 property in that area, or maybe 2 or 3. It will be easy to enforce with the nature of blockchains and will stop the current capital based bullying of the lower classes. China have already implemented these capital restrictions in some areas.
On another note, I was looking through an old post, and I predicted BTC to go down to around $400 before the next upturn, I cannot remember the exact reasons why I made the predictions, but we are nearing $400 so lets see if I was right or not.
Thanks for reading, and keep your eyes peeled because the Cryptosi website will be up and running soon.
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