For an example of a real place where alternate major currencies contend, you should look at Ecuador. The national currency is ostensibly the US Dollar. However they have pegged their own local currency 1:1 to the US Dollar as well. This means that you are just as likely to find a 50 centavos piece in your change as you are a 50 cent piece. The "Gold" Sacagawea dollars are in common circulation there and paper money is actually a bit harder to come by.
You have to understand that in most places it is VERY hard to find change for anything higher than a $5. A big reason for that is things are generally much, much cheaper there. But another huge aspect is an absolute lack of liquidity. In some cities (usually smaller ones where everyone knows everyone), they are beginning to use locally issued payment tokens to represent bigger denominations. So yes you can have multiple currencies circulating and in a perfectly healthy ecosystem I would argue that you do in fact have multiple currencies. For instance I can't give my landlord my rent in cash. They want a check/money order. I can't buy things over the internet using cash, they want a credit card #. You might argue that those all use the same "base" currency, USD. But I would argue that they are actually distinct currencies that are pegged to USD in much the same way an Ecuadorian 50 centavos piece is pegged to 50 us cents. What's happening in the Crypto-currnecy world is very similar to what happened in the early days of Linux. There are a small handful of innovative currencies (Bitcoin, Litecoin etc) and proliferation of "me too" coins. Eventually it will all shake itself out. I will go so far as to say that anyone "investing" in currency in general is making a huge mistake. Currency at least by my definition, is the oil on the wheels of commerce. It's only value is in it's ability to make transactions occur. In otherwords currency is a way to make things happen and should never be used as a store of value. To store value you need something with intrinsic (or historically intrinsic) worth. Something that can be toted out a few years later and exchanged back into currency. Once a store of value is able to facilitate a transaction directly, then it becomes a currency itself. Most people in the bitcoin market have been treating BTC as a store of value, hence the run up in price. It has now stayed at nearly $1000 for several months. Because its price has efectively stabilized many, many places are now either accepting it or planning to accept it. This includes major retailers such as Overstock and Amazon. In fact I found a directory with over 10,000 merhcants who accept bitcoin. It's starting to evolve from a store of value to an actual currency. Back to the original subject of this thread. Orgcoin doesn't try to be a "me too" coin. It's solving a specific problem in a narrow domain. We'll have to see what becomes of it in the long run. On Sun, Jan 19, 2014 at 12:08 AM, Levi Pearson <levipear...@gmail.com>wrote: > On Thu, Jan 16, 2014 at 6:11 PM, S. Dale Morrey <sdalemor...@gmail.com> > wrote: > > Orgcoin is the super secret project I've been working on. > > The Orgcoin Foundation was founded to provide a quick, easy and reliable > > way for people around the world to support causes they care about. > > > > The coin itself is a mege-mined crypto-coin with similar aspirations to > > Devcoin. > > > > Major differences being that Orgcoin is a 90/10 split in favor of the > miner > > and merge-mines off from Litcoin (because it's scrypt based). > > > > This means you can use your spare CPU cycles to generate some coin to > give > > to your favorite charity, non-profit or other worthy cause. You will > also > > (eventually) be able to trade Orgcoin for other crypto-currencies and if > > all goes well you'll be able to trade it for goods and services as well. > > > > Each month 100% of the profit generated by The Orgcoin Foundation is > gifted > > to a cause which is voted upon by our membership. > > > > Since I've been a PLUG member for quite awhile, I'll be nominating > > plug.orgas the first recipient. Voting will take place throughout > > February and the > > winner is to be announced March 1st. > > > > The website is www.orgcoin.org > > > > Feel free to drop by and watch us grow :) > > By the way, I hope you don't see my arguments about market competition > of alternate currencies as any sort of statement about your project. > I think crypto-currencies are technically interesting and have some > interesting use cases, even if I don't think they'll ever be serious > contenders as alternate major market currencies. Congrats on getting > your project unveiled! > > --Levi > > /* > PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net > Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug > Don't fear the penguin. > */ > /* PLUG: http://plug.org, #utah on irc.freenode.net Unsubscribe: http://plug.org/mailman/options/plug Don't fear the penguin. */
