4 ms·

You're right. Especially at the beginning, merchants won't find many other businesses who will take their GD, so even if they wanted to spend it, their options

by Suncho 11y ago

You're right. Especially at the beginning, merchants won't find many other businesses who will take their GD, so even if they wanted to spend it, their options would be limited. But they do have a few options, including: 1. Merchants can use their GD to pay their employees bonuses. Those employees, who also have a limited number of places to spend it may then turn around and spend their GD back at their employer again. It would be a way for merchants to lock in business. 2. It's easy to frame Gresham Dollar as part of a social cause. Merchants can use their participation in Gresham Dollar as a way to market themselves to socially-conscious customers. Maybe they even donate some of their GD proceeds back to the community. The community is then likely to spend some of that GD right back at the merchant who donated it. I'm open to other ideas. Does anyone have any suggestions? In any event, my assumption is that, to start, the Gresham Dollar market will look mostly like Basic Income -> merchants -> USD, and that in order for us to survive this initial bootstrapping phase, we'd require sufficient USD reserves to offset the attrition of GD. Ideally, we would bootstrap fairly quickly. We would want to take in USD reserves faster than the rate of GD attrition. Then, as Gresham Dollar achieved wider adoption, that attrition rate, as a percentage of total GD in circulation, would decline. I imagine that some of our initial investors will be expecting us to fail, but they would have invested anyway because the worst case scenario is that they paid for a bunch of poor people to get some free money for a few months. And the best case scenario is that they contributed to an economic revolution and made a profit in the process.

nearbuy 11y ago
I really like the goal of this project. I don't have many ideas that would help get it circulating. Maybe look for smaller communities that source a lot of supplies locally and launch pilot programs there. You could get the whole community on-board since you could be injecting a significant amount of money into a small economy. Convenience and lack of transaction fees could be an incentive to spend. Sending USD to friends and family typically involve waiting periods, transaction fees and inconvenient processes (cheques, email money transfers). Of course, Venmo and Paypal have improved this in recent years. Combining the above two ideas, you can launch in communities outside the U.S. where financial inclusion is limited. There are many places where the majority of people don't have bank accounts. They already lack the advantages of credit/debit cards, paypal, etc. They may not have enough assets to make opening a bank account worthwhile. Granting people there basic income and GD accounts could solve both these problems. Plus, by choosing a location with a smaller economy and lower cost of living, you could have a more pronounced effect with the same amount of investment. You could team up with a charity that already gives money to these communities. Maybe create a service for merchants where they could spend their GD. Some kind of customer loyalty program that pays out rewards in GD, or an advertising service that lets merchants advertise to people with GD accounts. Honestly, getting a new currency into regular circulation seems like a really hard problem. Good luck!
- Suncho 11y ago
  I don't have many ideas that would help get it circulating. Maybe look for smaller communities that source a lot of supplies locally and launch pilot programs there. You could get the whole community on-board since you could be injecting a significant amount of money into a small economy. That's an interesting thought. Money can circulate more in smaller local economies where everyone contributes. PayPal broke into the scene by going onto eBay, creating a bunch of auctions and saying, "We accept PayPal." Then people asked what PayPal was. We could do something similar. Another commenter, Kinnard, suggested that poor communities whose members all have Gresham Accounts might naturally exchange GD amongst themselves. We'd have to figure out a way to make that easy to do. Not every low-income person is going to have access to phone apps, etc. We're targeting lower-income people because they may not often have a choice about whether to spend USD or GD. They spend whatever money they happen to have. They need no incentive to spend GD over USD when GD is their only choice. Convenience and lack of transaction fees could be an incentive to spend. Sending USD to friends and family typically involve waiting periods, transaction fees and inconvenient processes (cheques, email money transfers). Of course, Venmo and Paypal have improved this in recent years. Yes. We would want to provide the basic functionality of PayPal/Venmo, but for both USD and GD. Combining the above two ideas, you can launch in communities outside the U.S. where financial inclusion is limited. There are many places where the majority of people don't have bank accounts. They already lack the advantages of credit/debit cards, paypal, etc. They may not have enough assets to make opening a bank account worthwhile. Granting people there basic income and GD accounts could solve both these problems. Plus, by choosing a location with a smaller economy and lower cost of living, you could have a more pronounced effect with the same amount of investment. You could team up with a charity that already gives money to these communities. Once GD is accepted at some big online retailers, we can provide poor international communities with GD basic incomes that they can spend at e.g. Amazon or trade among themselves. That's basically my plan for international expansion. Before the GD arrives in the U.S., it's unclear whether we'd want or need it to have the ability to automatically convert to USD. And if we don't, perhaps we could issue paper GD internationally, which would be useful for communities who don't have as much access to digital technology. It's illegal to print any kind of currency in the U.S., so we wouldn't do anything similar here. Maybe create a service for merchants where they could spend their GD. Some kind of customer loyalty program that pays out rewards in GD, or an advertising service that lets merchants advertise to people with GD accounts. Anyone can use their GD to buy FGD, but I'm not sure it would make sense for merchants to want to do that. I like your idea of selling advertising. The ads will give users ideas about where they can spend their GD (and their USD). Honestly, getting a new currency into regular circulation seems like a really hard problem. Yeah. And it would probably be near impossible if the U.S. government were already paying its citizens a basic income. There needs to be something fundamentally broken about the way a currency is being managed in order for it to be susceptible to disruption. I believe USD fits the bill. Good luck! Thanks for your thoughts!

by Suncho 11y ago

nearbuy 11y ago

I really like the goal of this project. I don't have many ideas that would help get it circulating. Maybe look for smaller communities that source a lot of supplies locally and launch pilot programs there. You could get the whole community on-board since you could be injecting a significant amount of money into a small economy. Convenience and lack of transaction fees could be an incentive to spend. Sending USD to friends and family typically involve waiting periods, transaction fees and inconvenient processes (cheques, email money transfers). Of course, Venmo and Paypal have improved this in recent years. Combining the above two ideas, you can launch in communities outside the U.S. where financial inclusion is limited. There are many places where the majority of people don't have bank accounts. They already lack the advantages of credit/debit cards, paypal, etc. They may not have enough assets to make opening a bank account worthwhile. Granting people there basic income and GD accounts could solve both these problems. Plus, by choosing a location with a smaller economy and lower cost of living, you could have a more pronounced effect with the same amount of investment. You could team up with a charity that already gives money to these communities. Maybe create a service for merchants where they could spend their GD. Some kind of customer loyalty program that pays out rewards in GD, or an advertising service that lets merchants advertise to people with GD accounts. Honestly, getting a new currency into regular circulation seems like a really hard problem. Good luck!

Suncho 11y ago
I don't have many ideas that would help get it circulating. Maybe look for smaller communities that source a lot of supplies locally and launch pilot programs there. You could get the whole community on-board since you could be injecting a significant amount of money into a small economy. That's an interesting thought. Money can circulate more in smaller local economies where everyone contributes. PayPal broke into the scene by going onto eBay, creating a bunch of auctions and saying, "We accept PayPal." Then people asked what PayPal was. We could do something similar. Another commenter, Kinnard, suggested that poor communities whose members all have Gresham Accounts might naturally exchange GD amongst themselves. We'd have to figure out a way to make that easy to do. Not every low-income person is going to have access to phone apps, etc. We're targeting lower-income people because they may not often have a choice about whether to spend USD or GD. They spend whatever money they happen to have. They need no incentive to spend GD over USD when GD is their only choice. Convenience and lack of transaction fees could be an incentive to spend. Sending USD to friends and family typically involve waiting periods, transaction fees and inconvenient processes (cheques, email money transfers). Of course, Venmo and Paypal have improved this in recent years. Yes. We would want to provide the basic functionality of PayPal/Venmo, but for both USD and GD. Combining the above two ideas, you can launch in communities outside the U.S. where financial inclusion is limited. There are many places where the majority of people don't have bank accounts. They already lack the advantages of credit/debit cards, paypal, etc. They may not have enough assets to make opening a bank account worthwhile. Granting people there basic income and GD accounts could solve both these problems. Plus, by choosing a location with a smaller economy and lower cost of living, you could have a more pronounced effect with the same amount of investment. You could team up with a charity that already gives money to these communities. Once GD is accepted at some big online retailers, we can provide poor international communities with GD basic incomes that they can spend at e.g. Amazon or trade among themselves. That's basically my plan for international expansion. Before the GD arrives in the U.S., it's unclear whether we'd want or need it to have the ability to automatically convert to USD. And if we don't, perhaps we could issue paper GD internationally, which would be useful for communities who don't have as much access to digital technology. It's illegal to print any kind of currency in the U.S., so we wouldn't do anything similar here. Maybe create a service for merchants where they could spend their GD. Some kind of customer loyalty program that pays out rewards in GD, or an advertising service that lets merchants advertise to people with GD accounts. Anyone can use their GD to buy FGD, but I'm not sure it would make sense for merchants to want to do that. I like your idea of selling advertising. The ads will give users ideas about where they can spend their GD (and their USD). Honestly, getting a new currency into regular circulation seems like a really hard problem. Yeah. And it would probably be near impossible if the U.S. government were already paying its citizens a basic income. There needs to be something fundamentally broken about the way a currency is being managed in order for it to be susceptible to disruption. I believe USD fits the bill. Good luck! Thanks for your thoughts!