[p2p-research] Fwd: <nettime> P2P Gift Credit Cards - Gift Finance. Press Release.

Thu Dec 23 06:52:37 CET 2010

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Dante-Gabryell Monson <dante.monson at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 11:39 PM
Subject: Fwd: <nettime> P2P Gift Credit Cards - Gift Finance. Press Release.
To: Michel Bauwens <michelsub2004 at gmail.com>, Samuel Rose <
samuel.rose at gmail.com>

apparently some other mutual credit initiative...
comments below

Forwarded conversation
Subject: <nettime> P2P Gift Credit Cards - Gift Finance. Press Release.
------------------------

From: *Paolo Cirio* <info at paolocirio.net>
Date: Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 8:52 AM
To: nettime-l at kein.org

Press Release, 20 December 2010. London.

P2P Gift Credit Cards - Gift Finance.
http://P2PGiftCredit.com

This project proposes an alternative economy based on Peer-to-Peer
architecture for a more equal sharing of wealth in society. It offers
an innovative participative system using counterfeit virtual money.

Promotional AD:
Go on http://P2PGiftCredit.com and get your P2P Gift Credit Card
instantly, just by typing your email or cell phone number. When you
activate the card you get your first ?100 of gift credit! Other
rewards come every time you introduce a new friend!

About the P2P Gift Credit Cards:
By issuing a visionary type of credit card, the project introduces the
P2P Gift Finance system based on Peer-to-Peer free credit shared
across digital networks. The P2P Gift Finance is a democratic creation
of money directly regulated by ordinary people in order to
redistribute wealth in society. Power to create virtual money with a
multiplier effect should be restored to the people, and regulated by
democratic participation. It is recognised that the perpetual creation
of money is necessary, however, since there is a private monopoly on
the monetary system, it is proven to be unfair and is unlikely to ever
change without intervention. Indeed many theorists have pointed out
that allowing banks to create money is fundamentally unjust, unethical
and immoral.
Find out more about it:
http://P2PGiftCredit.com/about.php

More details:
The website P2PGiftCredit.com allows people to generate unique virtual
card numbers to send to others via digital devices and platforms. In
order to activate and use the P2P Gift Credit Cards users must
generate new virtual credit card numbers for friends. Rules like this
underline the idea of 'Sharing' a concept which defines the basis of
P2P Gift Finance and enables a viral spread of free credit among
people, generating a real alternative virtual credit that anyone can
own. This approach also simulates the distribution of free credit by
people as a form of "Basic Income", which may help to stimulate the
entire economy.
Find out more how it works:
http://P2PGiftCredit.com/how.php

A limited edition of physical plastic P2P Gift Credit Cards are
available by request on the P2PGiftCredit.com, and they will also be
distributed through public actions in London during the month of
January 2011.
You can see a preview of the printed card and its holder in this
picture:
http://P2PGiftCredit.com/press/P2PCC_carrier_HD.jpg

Purpose of the project:
- Researching alternative virtual currencies, peer-to-peer lending
platforms and electronic payments as a positive step in reshaping the
future of sustainable finance in the contemporary digital networked
scenario.
- Underlining the consequences of private speculative lending
institutions and explaining how they often determine economic crises
due to the deregulated creation of credit.
- Calling people to sign petitions to shut down tax havens, and to
investigate the bailout money that taxpayers recently paid to major
banks by supporting ongoing campaigns on this issue.
- Bringing "Basic Income" (as a form of universal, guaranteed, minimum
income) to public attention and the inequities of current patterns of
the redistribution of wealth into question.
- Targeting social classes vulnerable to the deceptive marketing of
the credit card industry (such as university students, artists, the
unemployed and people with low incomes) in order to highlight the
inherent dangers.
- Increasing awareness about global credit and debit owned by people
and banks during the recent so-called global recession, as well as
issues related to the creation of money.

If you would like to have more information about the recent so-called
"economic recession", the victims of global fraud, the artificial
scarcity of money, or, if you would like to know more about the credit
card industries, their criminal interest rates (which cause depression
and suicides), and more besides, you should have a look at the
Infoshop section which is a real treasure trove of information:
http://P2PGiftCredit.com/infoshop.php

A project by Paolo Cirio.
http://www.paolocirio.net
(This project is commissioned by an anonymous arts organisation in the
UK)

ps:
At the end of January Paolo is going to release an explosive-top-
secret project! So stay tuned! It is not to be missed

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----------
From: *Keith Sanborn* <mrzero at panix.com>
Date: Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 1:36 PM
To: "nettime-l at kein.org" <nettime-l at kein.org>

With all due respect, this sounds like a Ponzi scheme wrapped in social
rhetoric. I have heard it done among some women I know where the model of
the gift economy and warm fuzzy feminist sisterly sharing was used to bilk
people. Needless to say, few were "re-gifted."  Here the booty is your email
address or phone number. It's a bit like Walmart trying to entice you to
their website with what amounts to a lottery.

More details please, before I click on any link.

Keith Sanborn
 <...>

----------
From: *Dante-Gabryell Monson* <dante.monson at gmail.com>
Date: Tue, Dec 21, 2010 at 5:31 PM
To: Paolo Cirio <info at paolocirio.net>
Cc: nettime-l at kein.org

If it does not use conventional money, but its own mutual credit units /
alternative currency,

then this looks more like a "Mutual Credit" / Exchange Network approach, for
exchanges between its users.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_credit

or perhaps some other type of Alternative Currency architecture variant :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_currency

The project may be a honorable and sincere intention to develop financial
alternatives.

In that case, what troubles me is more that it seems to be a centralized (
database ? ) approach - but perhaps I am mistaken ?

Also, on their site, having an image with "Visa" on the card, and not
stating every time it is used that the "pounds" ( or the use of the pound
sign ) are actually not central bank pounds, can make it somewhat confusing
too,

although it may be possible that they use a banking transfer company such as
Visa to make their own unit transfers when purchasing in shops who have
access to Visa/Mastercard readers.

They explain their alternative monetary architecture on :

http://p2pgiftcredit.com/about.php

There are many different types of monetary architectures that can be
imagined and implemented, some fiat, others guaranteed by production, some
of them centralized, others more decentralized, etc

Often the issue is one of reaching a sufficiently large pool / critical mass
of users who trust each other and want to do exchanges while using the
currency as tool.

Basically, I presume its about creating social networks between people that
trust each other sufficiently as to enable exchanges.

Personally, I would also need to have access to more details concerning the
currency, its members, etc before joining it.

I might as well for now use other distributed and open source clearing
tools,
such as
http://ripplepay.com/  ; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ripple_monetary_system (
software :  http://sourceforge.net/projects/ripple/ )
and/or use any type of units of my own choosing, including for example
http://www.bitcoin.org/

By the way, an example of an existing and rather large economic circle - the
"WIR", in Switzerland :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WIR_Bank

Just in case some of us are not accustomed to alternative currencies and may
want to have an introduction,
I suggest reading "The Future of Money" by Bernard Lietaer :

http://www.transaction.net/money/book/index.html

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