We need altcoins as long as we interact economically over the net, with people we do not know (or simply with people outside our local communities). If we try to imagine what qualities a “solarpunk coin” should have, what are your thoughts? Do we know any existing coin, checking all boxes? This question is more about political economy of Solarpunk, then its technology.
I’m interested in currencies with depreciating value as an incentive to spend or loan money without incentivizing excess wealth hoarding. This was first proposed by Silvio Gesell over 100 years ago but modern digital currencies may make the idea far easier to implement.
Thoughts?
This is the kind of comment that I would expect from a Solarpunk, a critical, curious and hopeful hint to start a discussion towards a positive productive possible outcome, instead of the regular neo-rural cottagecore luddite cryptophobia rants
While a good idea in theory, such currencies are never going to be very popular as people loath easily visible and (externally) enforced inflation.
It is also not really all that different from a currency issuing entity regularly making additional money and causing inflation that way. Silvio Gesell developed his theories in contrast to largely gold pegged currencies of his time, and one can argue that fiat currencies of today are already largely implementing his ideas albeit on a larger scale, making the regional benefits less apparent.
The way to make this work is imho to clearly link the inflation to funding of widely agreed on common infrastucture spending through.