InterCoin is interesting for me but doesn’t have the name awareness of Bitcoin of course. I moved / retired from Sydney (pop ~5m) to a small country town, Cowra (pop ~10k) in Central West NSW 7 years ago. All these small country towns try to develop an “angle” to attract tourists and visitors etc. I have been thinking that a “Cowra Coin” might be good for the town but with a small and VERY conservative rural population I am guessing that generating any interest in a town crypto will amount to “tilting at windmills”.
I have looked at the “communities.pdf” but didn’t really find anything that suggested a way forward for this particular town. Does anyone know of a success story that is in a town roughly like mine?
I think my favorite example was probably what happened in Worgl Germany in the 1930s. Their population back then was barely 4000 people! You can read a bit more about it here.
Anything more recent involving crypto coins? - I have occasionally seen reports but the projects never seem similar to the circumstances I am talking about . .
I used to buy small amounts of stuff with BTC years ago, then started HODLing a little bit, then got interested in DAOs and have tried to keep up with what’s happening with regular reading of industry articles - InterCoin was mentioned and sounded interesting in one of those articles . .
Thank you @philip_rhoades for your post as I’m pleased to hear that you are thinking that a “Cowra Coin” with help of Intercoin might be good for your town.
I am sure that it might work out nicely even for a small and VERY conservative rural population and might generate interest if Intercoin would have support from the local population.
Intercoin’s team have a goal to provide all necessary tools to empower people to manage and govern their own communities, currencies, payments, and even elections.
Its technology is backed by ten years of experience of a former Bloomberg software engineer @Greg_Magarshak as Intercoin is his 2nd company and will provide liquidity for currencies, regulatory assurance, and community app for managing communities, universities or even cities.
For example, Intercoin is already in conversations with the City of Evanston (USA) to provide various Economic Development programs and opportunities for African American residents and entrepreneurs in Evanston. You can read about it here https://www.idpcs.org/post/the-justice-coin-a-provocative-local-solution-to-reparations-and-universal-basic-income
OK, very interesting! I will read more from your link and info.
Also, coincidentally, I just received an email from an old friend - the (female) Lord Mayor of Sydney - about some other (but not entirely unrelated) stuff. We were both elected as Aldermen to the City of Sydney Council in 1984 - but she had much more staying power than I did! Anyway, she is a progressive independent (I was on the left of the Labor Party at the time) but we have always had a good relationship. It occurred to me that not only should I chase up a “Cowra Coin” for where I live now but that I should also do some development work on the benefits of a “Sydney Coin” and present that to her - as a somewhat related issue to the other things I will be talking to her about? A “Sydney Coin” would obvioulsy have different aspects to it than a small country “Cowra Coin” - the Sydney CBD alone would be in a category of its own being an international business / commerce hub:
That is a really great coincident - or as I like to call it " a serendipitous moment" as I totally agree with you Philip that a “Sydney Coin” would have completely different aspects than “Cowra Coin” but there are no doubts that both of them can use the same Intercoin infrastructure but with different components of it.
With the rising popularity of community currencies, we are not marketing Intercoin to replace central bank currencies but to make DeFi mobile, accessible for everyone with a simple and affordable infrastructure for Web3 development as well.
As @Greg_Magarshak has built an open-source alternative to Big Tech and Big Finance already with his first company Qbix, we can help you with a lot of information that will
answer most questions but as an intro - have a look at this video
Very interesting! As well as the Cowra and Sydney Coin stuff I have a couple of non-profits that might be able to benefit from the Qbix tech. I need to raise $10^3s and then $10^6s for different BioMed Research projects so some feedback on the various token, DAO etc ideas I have been thinking about would be useful I think.
BTW, I have replied to my friend the LM of Sydney telling her that she should issue this press release:
"If I am re-elected, I will set up a committee to investigate the possibility of creating a:
‘Sydney Coin’ Cryptocurrency - possibly along similar lines to the already existing ‘Miami Coin’ that has been very successful so far:
MiamiCoin Nets $7.8 Million for City of Miami
Universal Basic Income (UBI) for residents of the City of Sydney."
An announcement like this will get her a LOT of media coverage and, of course, they are also worthwhile things to do. Unfortunately the election is less than a couple of months away but if she likes the idea after some speedy research by her team, it could be done in time.
I would be happy to donate my time before the election (I am in Cowra so it would be phone calls / video-conferencing) and act as an independent advisor on these matters after the election if they thought that was a good idea . . meanwhile I will continue to study the White Paper and ask questions here . .
I absolutely agree with you @philip_rhoades and especially that:
However, I wouldn’t worry about the short time before the election as Intercoin can deliver even secure Voting on Blockchain for Sydney if she likes the idea that @Greg_Magarshak wrote about “In Defense of Blockchain Voting” in Coindesk’s article.
Also, I’m not sure if you’ve seen already info about all updates that Intercoin achieved after the White paper was published.
You can find most of them here:
When I first started thinking about this idea, I thought all it would take to get something going would be to point out to some influential political and social people in the town about this great thing called “Intercoin” and all the great things it could allow to happen and to encourage. I thought any intelligent and rational person would only need to read a bit of the background info and I would have some ready-made, influential partners which would make getting projects going much easier. I guess you could call this “The Top Down” approach. Well, whatever you call it, the effort was a complete failure.
Before the Local Government elections I approached the local Cowra candidates, the Lord Mayor of Sydney and her political team and the Local Government Association of Australia. Besides a few negative responses from the locals, I got nothing. The Australian Local Government Association (ALGA) is the national voice of local government, representing 537 councils across the country - I thought that if I could at least get one person there interested enough to investigate further, then the dominos would start falling - but no response there either.
So, that only leaves one option - “The Traditonal, Grass-roots, Bottom-up Approach”. The problem with that idea is that we don’t actually have anything for people to play with yet - great ideas wil only get you so far . .
I have an idea to pitch a project to the local High School, its staff and its 550 students. This could involve some sort of UBI and an NFT project whereby every student got a unique NFT and creative students could develop even more NFTs.
If the student project got going - it would attract a LOT of attention - then the Intercoin “economy” could be spread further via the many Cowra and regional FaceBook Buy, Sell and Swap groups.
Anyway, I have other things I need to do but if people think there might be some potential with this latest idea, it would be good to get some feedback . .
You are most welcome. They have just recently adopted crypto currency, used to be just paper currency exchanged at the Bank. The Berkshare itself was .95 cents but business in the area take it as same value of One (1) USD., They saved .05 per share purchased. They did that to encourage the people to use the currency.
