March 10, 2020
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Akseli, Akselivirtanen, article, Dick, Dickbryan, ECONAUT, money, stability, STABLECOIN
WHAT IS STABILITY? THE TIME OF ALTERNATIVE MONEY
‘Stablecoins’ have claims to legitimacy because they avert the supposed principal flaw of cryptotokens: their price volatility. But whose stability is stable? What is the appropriate benchmark for ‘stability’?
We would like to challenge the conventional understanding of monetary ‘stability’ and reconsider its significance for the role of stablecoins. Being stable with respect to a fiat currency (or a basket of fiat currencies) is one take on stability, but it embeds the primacy of fiat over crypto, and leaves the stability of fiat currencies unquestioned. In this context, stablecoins are being styled as the acceptable face of crypto because they are a crypto version of fiat: the US dollars you hold when you don’t hold US dollars. But where do you go when you want to dissent from fiat, when you want to take a stand against fiat by betting against it (shorting it) and finding new stability from a different set of economic and social relations. For make no mistake, money is a social relation.
We think the latter is the real social potential of cryptoeconomy. It provides an opportunity to re-think the social role of money, and the social incentives that are embedded in fiat currency — money as a series (protocols) of social relations. And if and when fiat currencies face their next future crisis, we want to be talking already about what new stabilities — new social relations, processes and goals that we believe should be constant; new metrics of stability — we are advocating.
This is the issue we should pose of every aspiring token: what is its own notion of inter-temporal stability that it claims to secure?
15 Oct 2019
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CESSUMMIT2019, cryptoeconomics, Dick, Dickbryan, expression, liquidity, MIT, protocol, staking, value, video
“Economic Protocols for Liquidity Creation, Staking & Value Expression” MIT PROTOCOLS FOR A CRYPTOECONOMIC NETWORK
“We are existing inside a capitalist Economy, and at the same time trying to create an alternative to the capitalist economy. (…) We are not a sect. We are trying to say this alternative Economy has to have porous boundaries.
This ECSA economy will come alongside commodity exchanges that individual people will do in a capitalist society. The porosity of the boundary adds complexity to the analysis. What we had to worked towards is – How can we not quarantine this total economy? How can we give privilege to a certain set of metrics that will give people the pursuing individual goals and incentives to pursue things that are not driven by profitability? So we are not adverse to individualism, but we can decouple indivudualism from profitability.
We believe inside all people there is a desire to do social good, but the problem with the profit system is that it doesn’t give oxygen to do that. We are saying we are designing something that will encorage and nurture people to do social good.”
(from min 6:29)
24.09.2019
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Akselivirtanen, Dickbryan, grammar, metapragmatics, podcast, Vision
ECSA Vision: Economic grammar for the information age (podcast)
At Supermarkt Berlin Prof. Dick Bryan (Chief Economist, ECSA) and Akseli Virtanen (Co-Founder ECSA) discuss causes of central bank fragility and fungible approaches towards capitalist protocols. ECSA’s upcoming White Paper took on the remit of a much needed new economic grammar that intensifies liquidity and relationality in peer-to-peer stakeholding.