Basic income cryptocurrency

Implementing a universal basic income can potentially eliminate all or most poverty, and help to alleviate other social problems as well. Rates of suicides will likely decrease if a basic income is successfully implemented. Prevalence rates of some criminal behaviors will likely go down. Money cannot solve all problems, however, money can be utilized to ensure that basic needs are met. Basic income can potentially enable many more humans to have their physiological and some safety needs met. This will give more humans the chance to focus on meeting their other higher needs like social belonging and self-actualization.

Towards Implementing a Basic Income Cryptocurrency

The following is an example model of a basic income cryptocurrency that relies on the nonprofit organization for its creation and maintenance. There may be other ways to implement a basic income cryptocurrency; implementing a totally decentralized basic income cryptocurrency might be theoretically possible. Certain problems must be overcome in order to totally decentralize a basic income cryptocurrency. One of the largest potential problems that must be overcome to successfully implement a totally decentralized basic income cryptocurrency is that dishonest individuals may attempt to create many accounts in order to receive multiple distributions of such a currency. If any one individual receives many distribution of a distributed basic income cryptocurrency, then it could negatively affect cryptoeconomic factors can can potentially instill value into such a cryptocurrency.

For simplicity a theoretical basic income cryptocurrency will be referred to as BIC. In order to receive BIC, you can mine BIC, or else you can be an authenticated user to receive regular hourly distributions of newly created BIC. Potentially, a small but significant amount of BIC may be created each day and provided to members as an interest reward for holding BIC, in addition to the hourly distributions.

Authenticating uniqueness

In order to create an account on the online wallet site/app and to receive hourly distributions of BIC, you must be an authenticated user/member.

In order to create a free verified account on the official BIC site/app you must verify a phone number, and also take a picture of yourself and supply a picture of an official legal identification card. The authentication process would be quite similar to the methods that AirBnB uses. Employees could be hired in United States, or the work could be sourced to a reputable and secure company/organization in United States or India potentially.

Organization and technology

What is described here would rely on the creation of a nonprofit organization that ensures that the needs and desires of all stakeholders are taken into account in thoughtful and considerate ways.

BIC may be based on CryptoNote technology. It should be possible to mine BIC in an Internet browser. On the official/site app users will be able to send BIC to a cryptocurrency exchange or other BIC wallets and so forth. All software should be open source. The nonprofit organization that maintains and administers BIC would likely also maintain the official website and app of BIC.

It might be good if there are multiple basic income cryptocurrency projects. Once projects mature, if there are four different major basic income cryptocurrency projects, they might distribute regular cryptocurrency amounts averaging the equivalent of 300 US Dollars each. This could equate to a functional basic income implemented via cryptocurrencies. Each basic income cryptocurrency might have their own advantages to use. Each might have their own unique beneficial features.

Cryptoeconomic considerations

The cryptoeconomics of a basic income cryptocurrency may require significant consideration. In order for a basic income cryptocurrency to be valuable, it must be able to be exchanged for products, services, other cryptocurrencies, and probably even national fiat currencies.

There may be no cap on the amount of BIC that can be created. The rate of creation should probably be rather slow to start. If the popularity of the official BIC site/app grows exponentially, then this may affect the rate at which new BIC are created and distributed.

The following is one specific numerical model of how a BIC could be implemented cryptoeconomically. There are likely better potential models not yet thought of. In this model, the initial value of one BIC unit could be to be the equivalent of 1 US Dollars. The price of BIC units may increase or decrease over time. To start, individuals could be distributed 0.0416666 BIC units each hour. This equals one BIC unit per day. Miners will be provided additional BIC in addition to normal hourly distributions. Holders of BIC will likely also receive a small daily interest percentage payment of more BIC. The percentage could be adjusted, and would likely be quite small. Daily distributions will be increased over time as much and as fast as cryptoeconomics will allow. More details about potential models for a basic income cryptocurrency will be elaborated on soon.

In order to help a BIC to become valuable, the nonprofit organization which administers and maintains BIC should find ways to incentive for profit companies to purchase (with national fiat currencies) and hold BIC. Corporations could be encouraged to buy BIC using dollars with 1% of their net profit. Once they do this, they could be certified as supporting BIC, and helping to alleviate poverty. Businesses could receive the small interest distributions for holding BIC, which they could keep or sell. This sort of partnership between the for profit sector and the nonprofit organizations that administer BIC may not be realistic. More research on this should be conducted.

Additional considerations

A basic income cryptocurrency should distribute small amounts at first, maybe at the equivalent to about 1 fiat US dollar per day at first. Another cryptoeconomic factor that could positively affect this would to build into the basic income cryptocurrency mechanisms to also distribute a small of amount of interest to holders of the UBI cryptocurrency. This can incentive people to hold onto the currency if possible, which may help to create at least a bit of relative scarcity. There may be more ways to overcome potential cryptoeconomic problems.

Ideally, a basic income cryptocurrency will be listed on cryptocurrency exchanges, so that people can convert it to Bitcoin or Litecoin and then into fiat US Dollars (or other fiat currencies). This way, a basic income cryptocurrency can be useful hopefully.

Moving forward

To reiterate, this model described here is proposing that one or more nonprofit entities administer a basic income cryptocurrency for the benefit of all humans. Governments may eventually implement universal basic income using national fiat currencies. However, at the rate that politics progresses, it might be 20-100 years before a universal basic income is implemented by a significant amount of national governments. Cryptocurrencies may be utilized to effectively implement a basic income cryptocurrency for most humans much faster than any governmental organization might be able to; and it may not be bad if there are multiple nonprofit organizations implementing complementary basic income cryptocurrencies. Cryptoeconomics may even allow of a benefit corporation to help cryptoeconomically create a successful basic income cryptocurrency. However, for a variety of reasons, utilizing nonprofit organizations to implement a cryptocurrency basic income is probably best.

Discussion questions

What are the advantages and disadvantages of implementing a basic income cryptocurrency?
Can a basic income have negative effects? What might they be?
What are some potential positive effects of basic income?
How can a basic income cryptocurrency be technically implemented?

Interested members

You can list yourself here if you are interested in collaborating furthering on and/or adding to the ideas described here. Please sign your name with a date stamp. If you want to keep yourself listed here please resign here once per year. Users that have date stamps older than a year may be removed. However, you are always free to relist yourself when you ar ready.

Michael Ten (discuss • contribs) 03:10, 30 September 2017 (UTC)
Lucas P. 03:22, 28 November 2017 (UTC)
ANEEKET JAYSHREE 18:47, 12 October 2019 (UTC)
L. Mdluli 15:19, 8 January 2021 (GMT)
Nielsen R 6.48, 17 May 2024 (UTC)

Discussions

I think that Proof of Community or Proof of Creativity can be effective solutions to Sybil attacks on a totally decentralized basic income cryptocurrency. Perhaps it could have a built in decentralized social network for this. What do you think? Michael Ten (discuss • contribs) 20:42, 4 November 2018 (UTC)
I'm currently developing encointer, a decentralized cryptocurrency for a global basic income. We're using randomized physical key signing events to mitigate sybil attacks and each economic region can have their own local currency. Looking forward to collaboration brenzi 18 Dec 2019

Readings

Wikipedia

External

A list of most expensive countries, and a list of least expensive countries
Cost of Living Index for Country 2017 Mid-Year
Cost of living on Earth by city
Global Automatic Dividend
Encointer.org Global basic income cryptocurrency