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Is their value to geo-locking bitcoins to facilitate localized circularity?
319 sats \ 38 comments \ @MaaliMKen 7 Jul 2024 bitcoin
I have had this idea for a couple years now. And I wanna know, with your help, if I should drop it or fuel it.
I'll illustrate with an example. There are two local communities (irl communuties) with Bitcoiners. In community A, food is plenty while in B, food is scarce. However, people in community B are better at organising sales of their other goods within their community and outside to all sorts of people, including those in A, so their bitcoin economy is quite healthy. People in A hardly know how to create community BTC sales. So they want to consume their own food, but lack access to funds (assume they hate trading in fiat).
Wouldn't it be better, as per the ethos of a Bitcoin Citadel, to help people in community A design some geo-locking around a few BTC sats so that they cannot sell them over seas to people in B? Like time locks, these geo locks would constrain sats to trade within a certian location for some period of time.
Is this idea worth pursuing?
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40 sats \ 1 reply \ @Akg10s33 8 Jul 2024
If exactly the blockade would be better... since those from community A have everything they need and it would be time to learn to negotiate and run a purely Bitcoin system in sales and distribution of goods...
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @MaaliMKen OP 8 Jul 2024
Are you agreeing with me?
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30 sats \ 6 replies \ @south_korea_ln 8 Jul 2024
Bitcoin is already kinda geolocked in Korea. Due to stringent capital control laws, arbitrage is hard and this btc almost consistently trades at a premium. Not sure this links to your point, but this is basically a transfer of wealth from the one who buys the top to the one who buys the bottom. Don't think that's beneficial to the system as a whole.
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0 sats \ 5 replies \ @MaaliMKen OP 8 Jul 2024
You have to admit, what the Koreans are doing helps them survive the Fed's tightening grip on dollar debt outflows. BTC needs something like this. A way to hide from the price shocks of Federal Reserve policies. And this idea is it.
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0 sats \ 4 replies \ @south_korea_ln 8 Jul 2024
Yeah that's the goal... But side effects of this kind of interventionist monetary policy are plentiful. E.g. they now have to use money from the state pension to buy back dollar reserves to protect the krw. It'll work until it doesn't... while having potentially gambled away a big portion of Koreans pensions. The whole point of Bitcoin is to get rid of interventionist monetary policies. Humans are notoriously bad at predicting the outcomes of such decisions.
Benake is the Kissinger of monetary intervention!~~ /s
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0 sats \ 3 replies \ @MaaliMKen OP 9 Jul 2024
You fail to realise Bitcoiners themselves, especially devs, do the interventionism. Now dollar debt minimization is good if the close-door policy is aimed at boosting local consumption, growth and development. The Chinese have done this well and quite frankly, now, couldn't care less where the Federal debt winds blow.
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100 sats \ 2 replies \ @south_korea_ln 9 Jul 2024
By the way, I also don't believe the free market is efficient at finding the optimal conditions that benefit everyone. In that sense, I'm probably quite different from the typical free-market absolutist you'd find here.
On some level, I agree that some policies implemented by the Korean government have effectively protected the country from being invaded by Google, Facebook, Uber, etc... Most people prefer using local alternatives that have been able to develop while the government was using a close-door policy on foreign tech. Quite similar to what China has been doing quite effectively.
It's a fine balance between destructive interference and potentially beneficial interference. Beneficial often comes at unintended long-term costs.
Also, I fail to see how Bitcoin devs would be able to implement such things. Already now people complain about the disproportionate power Bitcoin core developers have over potential other implementations. Would you see it as some kind of DAO structure where every Bitcoin holder would have a voting right as to what policies to implement? Please refer me to some other answers in this thread if you've already addressed this.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @MaaliMKen OP 9 Jul 2024
Really I see it like multisig. You do it if you want to, and leave it if you don't. I have no concrete idea yet of how it would be implemented, but I am willing to bet it is a swell idea worth pursuing, for technical and intellectual value.
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20 sats \ 1 reply \ @16d86e9daa 7 Jul 2024
Instead of geo-locking bitcoins directly, other alternative approaches should be considered, like the Use of stablecoins, which can be pegged to fiat currencies or commodities, which may be more suitable for local transactions due to stability.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @MaaliMKen OP 8 Jul 2024
Stablecoins are pegged to fiat. Community A is filled with maxis who prefer to deal with BTC directly. Volatility and all.
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23 sats \ 1 reply \ @south_korea_ln 7 Jul 2024
You want to get rid of bitcoin's fungibility?
I'm not sure what you want to achieve with this, can you elaborate?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @MaaliMKen OP 8 Jul 2024
But haven't ordinals done this already? Most BTC is still fungible though. Would still be in this case.
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23 sats \ 1 reply \ @SatsMate 7 Jul 2024
Interesting line of thought, but I don't see this to be a good thing. In a pure free and open market these satoshis should not be restrcited to any one area. They should be free to flow from Greenland, to Wyoming to India and Russia.
What benefits would you see out of geolocking & if this were to happen, how could you un-geolock?
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @MaaliMKen OP 8 Jul 2024
For example if a market in country X were monopolising trade (perhaps due to brand dominance), it would hurt local production in another country Y. So if the citizens of Y, for purposes of curtialing outflow of their BTC to foreign goods, geo-locked some fraction of BTC q, then q would keep local production alive while the bigger percentage of trade capital Q participated in global trade unhinged. It is like the Nationalist idea of coercing local consumption except this would not be an idea implemented from top to bottom, but organically from bottom to top.
The benefits are tremendous. Imagine a BTC price for pizzas hit worldwide due to sanctions / wars, but country Y still has plenty of pizzas to consume at a cheaper price! Without geo-locking, btc-pizza trade metrics on the international scene affect btc-pizza metrics of Y yet in reality there is no need for Y to behave like it has a supply shock. International arbitrarge is not always in everybody's best interests because some are forced to suffer because everybody is suffering. It is also an interesting way for a community as a whole to hodl.
How to un-geolock : Use special GPS locked nodes. BTC sent to that node remain geo-locked for say 1 year. After which un-geo-locking kicks in and they can travel around freely. A multisig arrangement could be the fail safe in case funds are badly needed.
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17 sats \ 13 replies \ @SwapMarket 7 Jul 2024
No. Bitcoin is freedom. You can't currency control it.
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0 sats \ 12 replies \ @MaaliMKen OP 8 Jul 2024
What if one is enslaved by foreign price fluctuations? If my community has to suffer inflation say at the expense of a bigger market player, is it still free?
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33 sats \ 11 replies \ @SwapMarket 8 Jul 2024
did you live in a communist country? as soon as they try to control prices and restrict capital flows, they get deficit and starvation. they call it freedom, yes. and sure, all rulers want their own sovereign currency "to be independent", but in fact just to steal from its citizens.
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0 sats \ 10 replies \ @MaaliMKen OP 8 Jul 2024
That is an important point. However, this would be coded by Bitcoiners for Bitcoiners. Like RGB or Runes. Not politicians.
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13 sats \ 9 replies \ @SwapMarket 8 Jul 2024
whoever sets the rules for others is a politician. whatever they call themselves.
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0 sats \ 8 replies \ @MaaliMKen OP 8 Jul 2024
I don't think you got my scenario. This will be a niche application like ordinals, executed by a community of Bitcoiners in a sole locale. Hating on it is like hating the fact that Saylor can stack so many BTC he can single handedly push up the price. I mean this would make BTC even more scarce on the international scene. How is that a bad thing? And no please. It isn't communism I advocate because I used the word community. Also, because I propose geo-exclusivity still isn't communism. Borders, as implied by GPS, are not political but have been politicised. Unless you have no borders on your land. Borders are a property characteritic.
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13 sats \ 3 replies \ @DarthCoin 7 Jul 2024
Like time locks, these geo locks would constrain sats to trade within a certian location for some period of time. Is this idea worth pursuing?
No, please no, this is bad idea.
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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @MaaliMKen OP 8 Jul 2024
Why? Explain why it is bad. It can't be worse than the crypto rug pulls of 2022.
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13 sats \ 1 reply \ @SwapMarket 8 Jul 2024
crypto is not bitcoin, rug pulls impossible if you hold your keys as intended
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @MaaliMKen OP 8 Jul 2024
Red herring bro.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Bell_curve 8 Jul 2024
NO, absolutely not
Country A should trade food for bitcoin with country B
A should aspire to become a healthy economy like B
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @MaaliMKen OP 8 Jul 2024
People in A are starving and would rather they ate their own food. But liquidity shortages abound.
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0 sats \ 0 replies \ @MaaliMKen OP 8 Jul 2024
I appreciate whoever shares their honest opinion with me.
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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @KenyaCoin 7 Jul 2024
That would no longer be bitcoin.
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10 sats \ 0 replies \ @MaaliMKen OP 8 Jul 2024
It would be Bitcoin. Except instead of one person hodling it with a timelock, an entire community is doing so irl.
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