Quote from: makoto1337 on March 04, 2014, 07:51:11 AM

Quote from: conbos on March 04, 2014, 06:33:44 AM

Quote from: makoto1337 on March 04, 2014, 01:37:58 AM

With the sudden success of Aurora (even it if is a bubble), it is apparent that crypto needs to have an impact in the physical world.

From this, one idea is to donate NEM to start a cooperative village where people use NEM in their daily lives. This should be a remote area that is self-sufficient. Even if there is not internet access, we might be able to set up satellite internet infrastructure. I think that would be an amazing demonstration of how crypto could be used anywhere for secure, decentralized transfer of money.

Another thing to keep in mind is that we wouldn't want to interfere with the local culture of the area. I envision setting up some NEM access points (places with internet) and then people can go use those, with minimal interference into their language and culture.

The question is, where could we do such a thing? It should take a lot of time and dedication from people working locally in an area.

Some ideas are:

1) Bhutan. I think I have seen users from Bhutan on bitcointalk. We could set up solar satellite internet access in some remote village and have everyone in the village conduct transactions in NEM using iPads or something similar. There are some villages that are quite a few days walking from any large city and people are mostly self-sufficient. We would need to have someone local there to run things.

2) Japan. With so many people moving to big cities, there are places in the countryside that are extremely secluded and people grow their own food and make a lot of things themselves. Even in the countryside, though, there is ample electricity and cellular infrastructure, so people would be able to access a P2P network. Also, the government here does not consider crypto to be money and it is currently not regulated.

3) Ukraine. I know people that I definitely trust in western Ukraine near Poland (Lviv). There are some small villages in the Carpathian mountains that are fairly secluded from outside influence. The people I know in Lviv would probably be willing to help or maybe run this full time for us if we provided the resources.

These are some ideas, but as a community, it would be great if people could come up with ideas on how to establish a NEM co-operative. If done right, NEM could make all the major news networks and generate some great publicity. The more important thing, though, would be that we could help real people improve their lives, while respecting their culture (for example, people in a remote village could sell goods online using NEM).

Hi
Totally agree... There is indeed some ideas posted previously about use NEM as a FairTrade currency. If small communities/cooperatives want to sell their products; they can use NEM as a non-centralize currency to target directly consumers leaving out retailers and intermediates that profit with the speculation. What I think about that?, it is a good idea but to develop it requires to have more steps done in the implementation of the code. Also, it will be necessary to stabilize the currency a little bit, to impinge confidence in the merchants. That things require time...
What it can be a faster starting point for this idea is to create a market of seeds. The situation is the following: because of the omnipresence nature of transnationals (e.g. Monsanto); many third world countries are more or less obliged to use seeds provided by this companies. Many of them are GMO. Sometimes even, to find 'natural' or 'biological' seeds is very difficult, as I can learn for some friends having a farm in Bolivia. They need to travel to Europe to find, good seeds that can add more value to the final product. Then, we can have some analogy of SilkRow but for seeds instead of illicit drugs, using NEM as the 'official' currency. So, farmers can go to this market and obtain seeds from other in the world trading them in NEMs At the beginning, this site would be needed, but with stabilization; we can rely on decentralized asset exchange.
But, as makoto correctly points (I'm glad that a dev as a clear picture of the status of the cryptocurrency, give me confidence in the future :-)); we definitively need to orient our effort into find a value for NEM beyond the speculation market in which all cryptocurrencies are in this moment. This is what is going to make the difference between a New Economy Movement and coin.

The seed market is a brilliant idea! Seeds are also fairly easy to ship, compared with other goods that easily break. I don't know anything about farming, so if anyone knows anything specific, please post it here or the trello board.

I'm having a meeting today about developping a cryptocurrency marketplace, i'd be more than happy to suggest implenting NEM as the main currency there. That is if we have enough support ofc.