Is their value to geo-locking bitcoins to facilitate localized circularity? \ stacker news ~bitcoin

Is their value to geo-locking bitcoins to facilitate localized circularity?

319 sats \ 38 comments \ @MaaliMKen 7 Jul 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

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...

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @MaaliMKen OP 8 Jul

Are you agreeing with me?

30 sats \ 6 replies \ @south_korea_ln 8 Jul

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.

0 sats \ 5 replies \ @MaaliMKen OP 8 Jul

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.

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @south_korea_ln 8 Jul

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

0 sats \ 3 replies \ @MaaliMKen OP 9 Jul

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.

100 sats \ 2 replies \ @south_korea_ln 9 Jul

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.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @MaaliMKen OP 9 Jul

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.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @MaaliMKen OP 12 Jul

Hello @south_korea_ln, I actually coded my idea and made a video. Check it out -

What do you think? Here wondering how long my singular satoshi will take to pay back all those $34 trillion at that rate in the video :)

20 sats \ 1 reply \ @16d86e9daa 7 Jul

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.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @MaaliMKen OP 8 Jul

Stablecoins are pegged to fiat. Community A is filled with maxis who prefer to deal with BTC directly. Volatility and all.

23 sats \ 1 reply \ @south_korea_ln 7 Jul

You want to get rid of bitcoin's fungibility?

I'm not sure what you want to achieve with this, can you elaborate?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @MaaliMKen OP 8 Jul

But haven't ordinals done this already? Most BTC is still fungible though. Would still be in this case.

23 sats \ 1 reply \ @SatsMate 7 Jul

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?

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @MaaliMKen OP 8 Jul

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.

17 sats \ 13 replies \ @MiddleWay 7 Jul

No. Bitcoin is freedom. You can't currency control it.

0 sats \ 12 replies \ @MaaliMKen OP 8 Jul

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?

33 sats \ 11 replies \ @MiddleWay 8 Jul

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.

0 sats \ 10 replies \ @MaaliMKen OP 8 Jul

That is an important point. However, this would be coded by Bitcoiners for Bitcoiners. Like RGB or Runes. Not politicians.

13 sats \ 9 replies \ @MiddleWay 8 Jul

whoever sets the rules for others is a politician. whatever they call themselves.

0 sats \ 8 replies \ @MaaliMKen OP 8 Jul

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.

13 sats \ 5 replies \ @MiddleWay 8 Jul

Borders, passports, identities, bank accounts etc. lock people in to take advantage of them. Like every country that wants to declare me their tax resident.

Ordinals, runes, stamps, whatever are shitcoins: parasites living on Bitcoin's blockchain. Don't call people who create and use them Bitcoiners, they are Shitcoiners.

We already have communities with their sovereign currencies: they are called states and the currencies are fiat, i.e. based on false belief in their value.

Bitcoin is valuable due to proof-of-work, fungibility and resistance to censorship. What you want to create is none of that and is not money.

0 sats \ 4 replies \ @MaaliMKen OP 8 Jul

"False belief in their value" is a tall order. Fiat may be broken, but people are not stupid. If you have read the Fiat standard then you know Fiat has value. Now let's not call people who create cool shit for / within Bitcoin shitcoiners. The ultimate shitcoinery is creating nothing for Bitcoin and blindly believing in NGU. That is what a ponzi scheme does, pure and simple. Recruit people, price goes up from scarcity shock, dump and buy lambo. Lol. So Ponzi. No wonder many smart people hate BTC + Crypto. Bitcoin is not going to get far by simply preaching its speedy goodness. People need to interact more with the digital thing.

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0 sats \ 1 reply \ @MiddleWay 8 Jul

luckily, blockchain has no concept of location. only a vague concept of time and order (block height). so what you are proposing is impossible.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @MaaliMKen OP 9 Jul

Bitcoin has an elaborate concept of time. This can be the first step in the direction of a GPS protocol. With location, that would be harder. Perhaps if the BTC node was a geo satellite, then that nails the location aspect too.

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13 sats \ 3 replies \ @DarthCoin 7 Jul

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.

0 sats \ 2 replies \ @MaaliMKen OP 8 Jul

Why? Explain why it is bad. It can't be worse than the crypto rug pulls of 2022.

13 sats \ 1 reply \ @MiddleWay 8 Jul

crypto is not bitcoin, rug pulls impossible if you hold your keys as intended

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @MaaliMKen OP 8 Jul

Red herring bro.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @Bell_curve 8 Jul

NO, absolutely not

Country A should trade food for bitcoin with country B

A should aspire to become a healthy economy like B

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @MaaliMKen OP 8 Jul

People in A are starving and would rather they ate their own food. But liquidity shortages abound.

0 sats \ 0 replies \ @MaaliMKen OP 8 Jul

I appreciate whoever shares their honest opinion with me.

0 sats \ 1 reply \ @KenyaCoin 7 Jul

That would no longer be bitcoin.

10 sats \ 0 replies \ @MaaliMKen OP 8 Jul

It would be Bitcoin. Except instead of one person hodling it with a timelock, an entire community is doing so irl.