During my research I have encountered several sources which have mentioned the work of the Catalan Integral Cooperative and its philosophy of “Open Cooperativism”. Michel Bauwens and the P2P Foundation especially promote this organization and its approach, and even helped to fund and publish an in-depth study of it, authored by George Dafermos in October 2017. Dafermos spent several months working alongside members of the CIC and conducting interviews with members. The aim of this report, “The Catalan Integral Cooperative: an organizational study of a post-capitalist cooperative”, which is the main source I am drawing from, was to answer the questions “What is the CIC?” and “How does it work?”. As I will show, the answers to both of these questions are rather more complex than you might think, and after reading the report, left me with more questions than I started with.

What Is It?

To understand the CIC and what supposedly makes it a “post-capitalist” cooperative in more than ambition, Dafermos says that the “revolutionary activist” character of the cooperative is essential, as is an understanding of its “Open Cooperativism” philosophy, which distinguishes it from both conventional businesses and mainstream cooperatives. According to Dafermos, “the main objective of the CIC is nothing less than to build an alternative economy in Catalonia capable of satisfying the needs of the local community more effectively than the existing system, thereby creating the conditions for the transition to a post-capitalist mode of organization of social and economic life.”(Dafermos, 2017). This mission is what, in my opinion, has lead to the complex organizational structure of various committees, self-employed members, exchange networks and autonomous initiatives, as members experiment with different facets of the economic and social transition from capitalism.

A traditional business-oriented worker cooperative would look at a market, search for a good or service that they could provide and build their business up from there, eventually expanding into other markets if possible. This is the “lean-startup” approach which currently dominates entrepreneurial circles in North America and elsewhere. The CIC takes this supposedly conventional wisdom, and does something entirely different, instead rapidly prototyping and supporting multiple, often wildly dissimilar business models (from hackerspaces to organic farms) and projects at the same time, with the goal of experimenting with and disrupting as many industries as possible and promoting open cooperativism within their sphere of influence.

The main work of the CIC core membership is to facilitate and fund the expansion of these projects through the system of democratic committees and assemblies the CIC uses to govern itself via consensus processes. These committees are

• Coordination – General administration and internal organization of CIC. Closest thing you’re going to find to an “executive” anything with the CIC
• Reception – Onboarding and training of new members
• Communication – outgoing comms, promotion, handling information requests, inter-cooperative networking
• IT – manages CIC servers, website and software development & support for all members
• Common Spaces – Facilities management for the AureaSocial building in Barcelona which CIC uses as its headquarters
• Productive Projects – facilitates connecting members to jobs and promoting cooperative projects
• Economic Management – provides support to self-employed members as well as manages the finances of CIC as a whole.
• Legal – Legal support to the CIC committees and its many at-large members
• Catalan Supply Center – a regional food and craft industry distribution network made up of “rebosts” or local pantries managed autonomously by various groups. The committee mostly focuses on managing the supply chain for this network as a cooperative public service.
• Network of Science, Technique and Technology (XCTIT) – develops, prototypes and licenses machines and softwares use by CIC projects and affiliated cooperatives.

Basic Income

The members of these committees, according to Dafermos, see themselves less as business-owners and more as activists. So that they have adequate free time to effectively participate, the cooperative supports members financially with a limited “basic-income” salary, paid both in Euros and a local electronic currency called “ecos”. The basic income is meant to be distributed on a basis of need for members to participate fully, and is adjusted accordingly. The highest reported amount for a member’s basic income was 765 Euros + 135 ecos per month. I did not find in the report a breakdown of how many members receive basic income, but based on the participant numbers for each committee, as of late 2017 at least 45 people recieve a good deal of their income through the program. And that is just for management. Many more people are supported by the cooperative’s many projects and programs, either in self-employment or one of many “Autonomous Projects of Collective Initiative”. The basic income program was launched after the start of CIC. Previously all members were volunteers.

Auto-Ocupados

Being self-employed, operating a private practice or a small business in Spain can be prohibitively expensive or otherwise unavailable to those without legal status or financial means to pay the fees on registration and invoicing (the minimum fee is 250 Euros per month). One of CIC’s main services is to manage legal entities that self-employed individuals and collective autonomos in Catalonia can use to surmount these barriers. All of their invoices are processed through the cooperative system, which uses membership fees of 75 Euros (adjusted for income) every three months to sustain itself. There are around 600 self-employed members, but few of them choose to be closely involved with the organizational work of CIC.

Territorial Economic Network

This component of the CIC includes some 2,500 members engaged in various kinds of work connected to the economic system managed by the CIC. The primary unit of this network is the local exchange network and its various nodes, including the consumer-run rebosts (pantries) of the Catalan Supply Center, assemblies who manage the production and distribution of ecos digital currency and the “autonomous projects of collective initiative”, independent projects and businesses that the CIC is involved in through active membership, collaboration and financial/material/legal support. These include

• A cooperative office building, AureaSocial used by CIC as its headquarters and shared with various other cooperative ventures within the CIC’s network
• CASX, a financial cooperative dedicated to providing support and interest-free financing to cooperative ventures, and ultimately aimed at attracting widespread consumer investment through a cooperative savings program
• SOM Pujarnol, a rural bed-and-breakfast and housing cooperative
• Calafou, a settlement occupying an abandoned industrial village which now produces machine fabrication, professional music recording, handmade soap, lodging and software and event hosting for concerts, festivals and conferences
• MaCUS, a collaborative machine shop which supports artists, traditional and modern craftspeople and livelihoods by allowing access to a wide range of industrial machines, including everything from a woodshop to a music studio and 3-D printers.

Aerial View of Barcelona

Inside one of the workshops of Calafou

Monthly transactions within the alternative economic network

Cooperative Public System

The CIC ultimately aims to promote the development of a “Cooperative Public System” outside the official control of the Spanish and Catalan governments as well as the capitalist market. It seeks to transition systems such as Food, R&D, Education, Housing, Health Transportation and more to a commons-based management and ownership system. Currently, the Catalan Supply Center and XCTIT are the most fully-realized aspects of this goal.

There is No Catalan Integral Cooperative

One of the most interesting facts that turned up in Dafermos’ report is the fact that although the CIC has developed a highly diverse network of legal entities to aid its projects, the CIC itself has no legal status and does not officially exist. Dafermos claims the reason for this is so that the core members have more flexibility when it comes to dealing with the state and its various bureaucratic requirements.

How Does It Work?

According to the Dafermos report, the rough financial breakdown goes like so:

Income Sources

• Member fees (50%)
• Tax refunds from self-employment loophole (50%)
• Donations (minimal)
• Revenue (Unclear in the report how much this accounts for)

Expenses

• Basic Income to CIC members
• Funding for various projects

Most of the economic activity is carried out in a decentralized fashion by the CIC’s various projects and legal entities it manages, leaving an extremely minimal financial burden for the cooperative itself, which may explain why it is able to sustain itself while supporting so many other projects. It relies on reciprocal support and benefits from the diverse cooperative institutions it collaborates with to reproduce itself. As a cooperative, it emphasizes the need for “cooperation among cooperatives” and proves that with a robust enough network, highly experimental forms can be developed into viable organizations.

Decisions are arrived at within the committees through consensus-based democratic processes, and the general membership is organized through assemblies for coordination, which operate on similar principles. Assemblies are organized for individual projects, as well as for coordination between projects. Some committees and assemblies have limited authority over others, such as the financial committee and CASX, which make decisions about funding and have a direct say in each other’s operations, while others are completely autonomous from the main cooperative.

Why Does the CIC Work?

By most conventional standards among cooperative businesses, it shouldn’t. And yet it does, and even appears to be growing through its own organizing and support from the governments of Barcelona and Catalonia. Why is the CIC succeeding where many other politically-motivated cooperatives have failed?

Open Cooperativism

The CIC is founded on the principle of Open Cooperativism, which states that in order to counter isomorphic tendencies (isolation, commodification and protection of intellectual property, exploitation of non-members and the environment) in cooperatives bound to the market system Co-ops must agree to

• “work for the common good” rather than just their membership
• Utilize multi-stakeholder governance
• Use and produce “commons”-based goods in their production and licensing (rather than proprietary means of production)
• Collaborate globally with the intention of leading an economic transition away from capitalism while focusing on local production and development.

Without this framework, it would be hard to imagine an organization like the CIC existing. Intense focus on collaboration and inter-cooperative reciprocity is what keeps something as decentralized as the CIC afloat.

Clever Exploitation of Tax Loopholes

Apparently, a significant portion of the income comes from tax refunds earned through the self-employment program on each member’s invoices when processed by the state.This is part of the CIC’s larger principal of Economic Disobedience. One of the CIC’s founding members, Enric Duran, became famous for taking out nearly a half-million euros in collateral-free loans from 39 banks and giving it all away in donations to anti-capitalist organizations. After announcing what he had done, Duran fled the country and went on to found FairCoop, an organization based on open cooperativism that focused on promoting global initiatives through legal, financial and technological tools.

Organizing the Self-Employed

Many have talked about organizing the self-employed and so-called independent contractors, but few have succeeded. CIC’s model proves that an extremely broad cross-industrial cooperativism may have some important updates to older models of industrial unionism, which have had a very difficult time organizing the increasing numbers of precariously employed workers in formal and informal jobs.

Diversity of Institutions

The strength of CIC comes from its widely diverse reciprocal networks of exchange. By not relying on any single income source tied to revenue, they are able to exist and experiment with relative freedom compared to more business-oriented cooperatives. Many post-capitalist and mainstream economic transition theories assume that a shift towards less and less formal employment is likely, and a further decentralization of formal employment is already occurring with video-conferencing and telecommuting becoming popular. Many worker cooperatives and labor unions are struggling to adapt to this new paradigm of labor atomization. The CIC’s response is to optimize the countervailing tendency to labor atomization, which is the general growth of the social network across industrial and shop-floor bonds and using that as its primary tool for developing the forms of a future fair and sustainable economy.

• Dafermos, George.The Catalan Integral Cooperative: an organizational study of a post-capitalist cooperative. P2P Foundation, 2017. http://commonstransition.org/the-catalan-integral-cooperative-an-organizational-study-of-a-post-capitalist-cooperative/
• Catalan Integral Cooperative (website) https://cooperativa.cat/en
• International Cooperative Alliance Co-operative identity, values & principles. https://ica.coop/en/whats-co-op/co-operative-identity-values-principles
• Kassam, Ashifa Spain’s ‘Robin Hood’ swindled banks to help fight capitalism. The Guardian, 2014. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/apr/20/spain-robin-hood-banks-capitalism-enric-duran
• FairCoop (Website) https://fair.coop/
• Faber, Sebastiaan and Seguín, Bécquer. Welcome to Sunny Barcelona, Where the Government Is Embracing Coops, Citizen Activism, and Solar Energy.
  The Nation, 2016. https://www.thenation.com/article/welcome-to-sunny-barcelona-where-the-government-is-embracing-coops-citizen-activism-and-solar-energy/

Photo by debora elyasy

The post What on earth is the Catalan Integral Cooperative appeared first on P2P Foundation.

What the attainment of 1:1 signifies is a practical example of a successful deployment of a large-scale, cutting-edge technological venture connected to cooperativist organisations in the real world. It is at the forefront of connecting a desire for autonomy, with the advances offered by blockchain technology and digital currency. Moreover, it is precisely these radical principles that have lead to positive results: slow and realistic growth, basic anti-speculative measures in the management of the coin to avoid counter-productive fluctuations, and a focus on practical use in economic cooperative networks. This means on the one hand the necessity of asserting a different conception of success compared to the dubious benchmarks of today’s malfunctioning world, but also an acceptance of acting within the world as we find it, not as we might like it to be. This is the actual way to successfully change the world.

It is possible that the FairCoop project has found a way (I hesitate to use the term “third way” as that has been heavily tainted by Blairism in the UK at least) between the volatile anarcho-capitalist ‘disrupt everything and to hell with the consequences’ philosophy, and the governmental ‘protect the economic status quo at all costs’ attitude.

A utopian faith cannot be put in markets (which does not differ ideologically from the preconceptions of neo-liberalism); an equally Utopian faith cannot be put in the state, which was the error of most of 20th century radicalism. The true solution is to take the best from both sides: putting faith in the choices of individuals and decentralized networks, but refining this idea and focusing it via the conscious political decision-making of self-managed cooperatives. And on the other hand, political decisions have to be coherent and focused on a clear ethical difference from speculative and acquisitive methods, while also not needing to fit into the bureaucratic structures of the state and parliamentary campaigns.

Read the whole article here.

The post Theoretical Considerations on the Development of FairCoin appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Photo by alf.melin

The radical experiment in community cryptocurrency, Faircoin, reached a milestone this week when the Faircoop assembly declared that it would sell and buy back coins from its members at parity with the Euro. This means that the cooperative maintains a pool of cash available for redeeming coins from active members who accepted them but cannot spend them. This gives confidence to traders and the coop also offers a much more stable (and easy to mentally calculate) rate than the free market.

I explain this strategy in more detail in my previous blog post.

This public attempt by a self identifying group to manage the market makes Faircoin unique amongst cryptocurrencies. As well as having an ‘official’ price used by the cooperative, Faircoin has a free-market price because it is publically traded like any other cryptocurrency. However Faircoop hopes that Faircoin holders will coordinate around a simple strategy of mutual benefit, in contrast to the every-man-for-himself attitude of the free market. The strategy involves holders simply committing to spend the coins, (or at least try to spend the coins!) on goods and services rather than selling them for cash or bitcoin, which generates no real economic activity. With that commitment Faircoop traders benefit both from immediate spending and people holding the coins to spend later when they hope the price is higher. Holding the coin, any asset in fact, reduces the supply and helps keep the price high. As the spending power goes up, many people feel richer and more inclined to spend and even donate.

The first chart shows Faircoin’s history against the Euro, with the straight brown line showing the official price struggling to stay above the rapidly rising free market price. (Click for more detail.) The second chart shows Faircoin keeping pace with bitcoin, which doubled over the last six months. It also shows volatility against Bitcoin reducing over the last 2 months. It also shows the free market price responding to the news of the official price, leaving me wondering whether the Coop had finally wrested control of the coin from the free market!

If the coop really does have control of the coin then the strategy for the official price must no longer be to follow Bittrex as that could create a feedback loop. Nor to push the official price up as high as the Bittrex will support. Faircoop’s aim is to be able to redeem the coins at the official price for all who ask, and that means reducing the redemption requirements by creating a real economy, where the coins circulate and facilitate trade rather than returning to their issuer. This is only possible to the extent that the coin is used for payments by producers of goods and services in the real economy.

Anyone can speculate on Faircoin by purchasing them in Bittrex where the market is somewhat liquid. But those who really want to participate should install a wallet, ensure you have the private keys somewhere safe, and buy from FairCoop at the official price (not more, of course, than you can afford to lose).

However your participation does not really begin until you supply goods and services for Faircoin, and/or demand goods and services for Faircoin, thus literally creating (the space for) a market around you. Admittedly trading is easier for those living in the footsteps of founder Enric Duran (Barcelona and Athens); but trying to use Faircoin anywhere is one way each of us can contribute to growing a solidarity economy! You should always trade at the current official rate (today 1EUR!), not at this minute’s Bittrex price. Using the official rate strengthens the shared story that this money is a collectively governed in the interests of stability and utility, (unlike say, Bitcoin) and that each transaction is greasing larger economic wheels!

And as the coins you don’t spend increase in value, remember that that you are merely the custodian of value which belongs to the whole community. How can the solidarity economy grow if unearned profits are liquidated? As the holder of several thousand Faircoins I am committed to spending my profits, not selling them!

Share the wealth! My Faircoin wallet is: fMLHHYFKrmYdJCHnczSzGEbMiDd7NgxiWZ

The post Faircoin reaches parity with Euro appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Niko Georgiades: Athens, Greece – Tools born from the internet, applied across autonomous networks and movements seeking alternatives to capitalism, are providing the infrastructure of alternative societies. In the last of our specials on community currencies and alternative economies, we showcase FairCoop, a self-organized and self-managed global cooperative created through the internet outside the domain of the nation-state.

During a conference on alternatives to capitalism inside of the self-organized and squatted Embros Theater in Athens, Greece in the summer of 2017, a Catalan speaker (who remained anonymous for safety purposes) gave a presentation on FairCoop, which informed much of this reporting.

Alternative economies are typically separate economic structures operating outside of the traditional economy and based on the common principles of a community. FairCoop is a function of an alternative economy and was built out of the necessity to provide an “alternative system outside of capitalism” and merge many autonomous movements and networks together to form a society based on each community’s values.

FairCoop was created a few years after a nearly half a billion euro banking system expropriation action from 2006-2008, generally attributed to Enric Duran. The expropriation of monetary value from the banks was used to fund social movements and as a way to jump-start alternatives to the capitalist system.

Watch the video below for an introduction to FairCoop:

During the presentation on FairCoop, the speaker inside of Embros Theater said that in Catalonia, Spain, around 2009, 2010, the Catalan Integral Cooperative (CIC) was created, to “build another society by self-organizing” and to provide the needs of the people, “from food, housing, education, and health, etc.”

Since the creation of the Integral networks in Spain seven years ago, “a lot of people [have been] working for the commons” as there are more than 1,000 projects that are autonomously self-organizing to create cooperative networks of sharing.

Watch the video below, or see our full report here, for more information on the CIC [also see The Catalan Integral Cooperative: An Organizational Study of a Post-Capitalist Cooperative by George Dafermos]:

The idea for FairCoop was brought to an assembly in 2014 as a proposal by Enric Duran and was created by people within the movement to serve as economic infrastructure for a new society.

The Catalan speaker described FairCoop as “an open global cooperative, self-organized via the Internet and remaining outside nation-state control,” but one “that is controlled by a global assembly.” The speaker explained, “We don’t say cooperative in the traditional way, we say cooperative because we work with economy and we work in a participatory way and in a equal way.”

The steps taken to get to the point of the creation of FairCoop were explained by the speaker as followed:

“The first action was hacking the banks [expropriation of money through the internet], the second action was hacking the state [creating a taxing system to fund the creation of autonomous alternative systems], and the third one was hacking the money markets.“

“Usually the powerful money markets attack the weak economies and they get their resources with inflation and things like that. So, for centuries people have lost a lot of resources, a lot of capital” from those in control of the money – the speaker continued, “with FairCoin we are, like, revenging on that, let’s say, and we are recovering value.” They are growing that value to “use it for the commons” and assist in building their self-managed alternative society, said the presenter.

“They’re are many people in more than 30 countries” that have combined their local currencies and communities into autonomous local nodes and are connected in a network of cooperatives, said the speaker, who gave examples in the presentation about a Guatemalan and Greek sharing network.

“Local nodes acts as decentralized local assemblies of FairCoop, and meeting point between global projects of FairCoop and the various projects developed locally, creating links, synergies, knowledge development and growth of the entire ecosystem we are creating together. Autonomously, they serve as a point to spread, help and welcome people in FairCoop, as well as an exchange point of FairCoin.” – Description of a local node, FairCoop website

To build “a society without money, takes money,” and also requires having a plan to fight against capitalism by empowering the “local, regional, and global level,” so, the speaker said FairCoop created a “global assembly” to determine the value of the currency in a way of “self-management in the political process, not in the market“.

Listen to the fifteen minute presentation on FairCoop (full presentation with Q&A session is further down the post):

Audio Player

FairCoop was described as “a political movement building an alternative” that operates with many open decentralized working groups and assemblies deciding by consensus what actions to take in the FairCoop.

“FairCoop understands that the transformation to a fairer monetary system is a key element. Therefore, FairCoin was proposed as the cryptocurrency upon which to base its resource-redistribution actions and building of a new global economic system.” – FairCoop website

FairCoop utilizes FairCoin cryptocurrency. Cryptocurrencies, the most famous being Bitcoin, are digitally created on the internet, decentralized, and out of the control of central governments.

The difference between FairCoin and Bitcoin, said the speaker, is that “in Bitcoin, they are not one community, there are many different interests fighting each other, like what’s happening in the capitalist world is happening in the Bitcoin.”

They utilize FairCoin to the “benefit of the self-management of the alternative economy, not in the benefit of decentralizing capitalism that is around Bitcoin,” and to economically sustain the process of building the network of FairCoop.

For a bit of an explanation on what FairCoin is, watch this excerpt of an interview with Theodore, from the Athens Integral Cooperative, below:

Cryptocurrencies are block-chain transactions tracked through public ledgers, however, FairCoin has recently created the world’s first ever “co-operative blockchain … by creating an algorithm based on mining processes that rely on a proof of co-operation.”

FairCoin was developed “as a transition tool for building that eco-system at the global level that can be useful for supporting the building of autonomy and the building of self-organizement” around the world, said the speaker.

The speaker said that with the self-management of FairCoin, they are recovering value instead of extracting it from the people as the current banking system with its money markets does.

Faircoin governance image

In efforts to control all of the FairCoin, 80 to 90 percent of the FairCoin is now in the hands of the “movement“, said the speaker. With FairCoin, the value of funds is over 2 million euros and the speaker said, “this is just the beginning of the way how we are creating value by this hacking.”

When asked for a practical example of how FairCoop could be put to use in the self-managed Embros Theater, the speaker said that the first step would be to start accepting FairCoin for the transactions of economy inside the theater, such as beer. The next step would be to share that you accept FairCoin, which will then be seen in the FairCoop network and when more people start exchanging FairCoin, local nodes create assemblies focusing on different qualities that branch out to the global networks.

The speaker touched on Freedom Coop, which according to their website, is a “European Cooperative Society (SCE) that creates toolkits for self-management, self-employment, economic autonomy and financial disobedience for individuals and groups striving for fairer social and economic relationships.”

On the larger scale of building “a new way of life,” newly created Bank of the Commons is “a project for bringing on an alternative banking system to the world“, said the speaker, who explained it’s a way to bring different movements, cooperatives, and different groups the “capacities for doing their activities without the control of the normal banks.”

See the 2017 FairCoop Structure Chart for a visual learning experience of how the networks connect to each other:

After the presentation by the Catalan speaker, dozens of audience members asked many clarifying questions as to how this system of an alternative economy works. The presentation lasted a bit over two hours. Listen to the full presentation below:

With the building of these networks of social economy and solidarity, people are rethinking their ideas of how society could be more equitable. Creating alternative economies using the internet and autonomous working groups to decentralize the power has many people in Europe and across the world very excited at the prospects of a new society outside of capitalism and nation-states. In the words of the speaker, the future of mass movements providing real change are based in being able to have economic power, “As a movement, we need to be stronger economically to be stronger politically.”

The post Greece: Alternative Economies & Community Currencies Pt. 3 – FairCoop appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The software has been adapted by FairCoop developers with the help of Bob and Lynn to fit the needs of the project, one of the most important innovations being the introduction of FairCoin wallets within the software, which means that people can seamlessly be paid in the project’s own cryptocurrency for their work.

As the post points out:

Many hours of volunteer work have made it possible for us to reach the point where we are now. However, the growth of the FairCoop community and the corresponding increase of the value of our currency has put us in a position where collaborations can now be fairly remunerated when necessary. We have tried to find a scalable system in order to be able to respond to our growing needs in an open, fair, decentralized, horizontal and transparent way.

This highlights the ongoing success of the ‘hack’ of the cryptocurrency markets carried out by FairCoop: buy a cheap cryptocurrency in large quantities, and grow its value by creating a community around it, based on shared ethical values. Use the inevitable speculation taking place on the open markets in relation to its value as a positive – guarantee an ‘official price’ for merchants and consumers which maintains trust in, and stability of, the project, which in turn makes the coin seem a worthy investment, making its value rise again in a ‘virtuous circle’.

Once sufficient gains in value have been achieved (FairCoin is now above parity with the US$ and almost 1:1 with the Euro), the project has essentially funded itself to the point where developers can be paid to create open source software for the Commons, and the previously-voluntary activists can now receive remuneration. At this point the payments are still somewhat ‘symbolic’ as the consensus was to keep them low so as to avoid a possible overshoot of capacity. ‘Slow and steady’ is the project’s unofficial motto…

So the Open Coop Work is creating value for the Commons, and is entering a stage where it will be possible for activists to work full-time on the project, in a voluntary and non-hierarchical way, and be paid in an alternative, non-state currency (easily convertible to government currencies when required), and support themselves without having to seek work outside of the FairCoop ecosystem. In this way we can see the possible dawn of a new era where the chronic ‘work to live’ problem is finally solved, and people can dedicate all their time to working on projects close to their hearts, without having to compromise their values in order to pay for food and housing.

The OCW overall plan is considered a breakthrough in terms of organizing FairCoop’s work on a more stable basis, which will enable free and willing collaborations, empower commitment and the sharing of a common budget. It is therefore a plan that will provide a significant boost to the ecosystem; especially now that our common value is rising consistently we need to take advantage of that by expanding to a whole new dimension. The challenge is out there for all of us to grasp and participate even more actively in this amazing journey that’s been going on successfully for 3 years now!

As a participant in the project, I can report that the OCW schema really does work, even if it is necessarily chaotic and in need of streamlining at this early stage of its development (issues which are being worked on by dedicated devs – of which we need more, please contact us via the website for details if you are interested). It is extremely exciting (even if at times confusing!) being involved in a project which is at the forefront of so many innovations at once, and heartening to see that the original vision of the project is now beginning to come to fruition. Of course there is much more to be done, but having solidified this new way of coordinating cooperative work, progress should be even more dynamic in the future.

For more details about the OCW process itself, please see the blog post.

The post FairCoop Activates Open Coop Work appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Extracted from: https://www.facebook.com/RefugeesWelcomeGR/posts/1731879673741900

The phone line of the cooperative call service ‘Refugees to Refugees (R2R) Solidarity Call Center’ has begun to operate!

For three months now, refugees and people from the solidarity movement have been working cooperatively together, through open and democratic processes, in order to create a cooperative initiative that will provide information about transit, stay, or settlement in Greece, from refugees to refugees.

Thanks to the support of the hackborders team, the asterisk operator was recently set up and therefore the phone line for the call center is now ready!

This action will be an important milestone, because it is being developed by refugees themselves who speak the same language and have been through the same difficult experiences in transit. We hope that this can bring a level of trust and sincere collaboration among the people who contact and the people who work at Refugees 2 Refugees Solidarity Call Center.

We want to coordinate and interact with numerous individuals and collective initiatives throughout Greece and abroad, to strengthen solidarity with refugees and migrants and to be able to respond to all the common struggles together. With the current situation that refugees are encountering where they are, both in refugee camps and outside, we as a Call Center project can help to strengthen cooperation and communication among people living in concentration and in isolation, away from the cities, the solidarity movement and each other, with limited access to vital information about the common struggles and related latest news.

This cooperative project is one of the initiatives that FairCoop Thessaloniki is supporting for building a fair economy ecosystem. Our vision and objective is the creation and networking of a truly fair and participatory economy from below, open to all the people without discrimination, building bridges between the refugees’ solidarity movement and the alternative economy movement, with experiences like the Refugees 2 Refugees Solidarity Call Center.

The funds for the economic sustainability of the project, as well as for the equal distribution among the refugees working in this cooperative initiative, are coming from an international crowdfunding campaign for a collective fund that was created for the development of cooperative refugee initiatives, the Refugees Fund.”

Extracted from: https://coopfunding.net/en/campaigns/refugees-fund-faircoop/

Almost 3,000 people have lost their lives so far this year trying to reach safety in Europe. EU leaders cannot ignore this or turn their backs on its tragic consequences. After months of prevarication they still have not established a coordinated emergency response and have failed to fundamentally overhaul the failing asylum system. Now is the time for self-organized civil society to use direct action, and to directly support those in need. There is an urgent need for the provision of adequate and humane conditions for those arriving and to really help them to organize their lives for the long term in the new host countries.

REFUGEE FUND CROWDFUNDING CAMPAIGN.

Global governments, and especially the European Union, have shown their worst side with the events of recent times. Economic Rescue is being exchanged for popular sovereignty. Neoliberal control, wage and pension cuts, tax increases, layoffs and all kinds of privatization.

And governments, rather than give in to demands for democracy from citizens, use brutality to end their resistance. These are policies that sacrifice the interests of the majority to benefit the interests of a tiny minority.

Together with the sovereign and austerity crisis, we cannot forget the refugee crisis.

Almost 3,000 people have lost their lives so far this year trying to reach safety in Europe. EU leaders cannot ignore this or turn their backs on its tragic consequences. After months of prevarication they still have not established a coordinated emergency response and have failed to fundamentally overhaul the failing asylum system. Now is the time for self-organized civil society to use direct action, and to directly support those in need. There is an urgent need for the provision of adequate and humane conditions for those arriving and to really help them to organize their lives for the long term in the new host countries.

A new Faircoin fund for refugees.

This fund will focus on helping autonomous and self-managed projects involving refugees and solving their need to retain full control over the decisions made in their lives. For example new settlements, and the creation of productive and holistic initiatives with which they can fulfill their material and immaterial needs on a daily basis, while offering something useful to the society in which they find themselves.

Cooperative working initiatives can also be included, giving the newcomers an opportunity to become self-employed, beyond the control of states over their right to work. And of course grassroots solidarity movements who work on an open and participative basis can apply for their costs to be covered.

This proposal is also intended for those who have undergone forced displacement for economic and environmental reasons, and includes stateless people who are in the difficult situation of having no rights because of the behavior of their countries of origin or third countries that don’t recognize them as citizens.

The goal of this proposal is to get at least 500,000 Faircoins (the minimum amount to create a fund in FairCoop) towards the needs of refugees today in the world.

For this campaign you can pay with any currency, and the money received will be converted to Faircoin in order to be added to the fund.

Also you can yourself buy Faircoin (for example FairCoop offers https://getfaircoin.net) and so make your contribution in Faircoin.

Photos by Maliakos Nikos

Photo by United Nations Development Programme

The post Project Of The Day: Refugees to Refugees Solidarity Call Center appeared first on P2P Foundation.

After two years of development and testing, Faircoin’s blockchain is ready to change its consensus algorithm from Proof of Stake (PoS) to Proof of Cooperation (PoC). The PoC protocol has been argued to present significant advantages, in relation to energy consumption and control by its community.

The following post has been published by FairCoop on 18.07. 

Have you ever asked yourself why bitcoin uses such a huge amount of electricity? And why it is controlled by a small amount of mining farms? The new version of Faircoin is the complete opposite in that sense: it barely needs energy to confirm transactions (nodes can work with minimalist hardware, such as Raspberry Pi3 and similar) or to guarantee the security of the system. In addition, the use and distribution of FairCoin are based on social justice and equality criteria.

Unlike other cryptocurrencies, Faircoin 2 doesn’t involve mining or minting systems, which are based on competition. Transaction blocks are generated by Cooperatively Validated Nodes (CVNs). These nodes cooperate to maintain the security of the network. This is why we call the system Proof of Cooperation.

Faircoin is becoming the essential digital currency for a totally decentralized payments system that uses the minimum possible amount of processing power. Faircoin is the currency of a system that is being accepted by more and more people. It’s the basis for FairCoop, FairMarket, FreedomCoop and also now for Bank of the Commons an alternative banking cooperative of which Faircoop is one of the founders.

Faircoin is the fundamental element of a system that facilitates currency transfers at very low or zero cost between continents, countries, users and also between ordinary bank accounts. In the Faircoin ecosystem, collective intelligence creates useful tools that people can share, including point of sale systems for merchants, prepaid cards, instant currency exchange, exchanges to euros via ATMs, payment of direct receipts and all the banking services that have until now been in the hands of an elite.

Micropayments are an important tool to meet the needs of people’s real economies and for its use in regions and societies where money is scarce. Faircoin’s high network efficiency, the relationship between trusted nodes, minimal energy costs and, consequently very low transaction fees make Faircoin one of the best currencies for micropayments.

On the 18th July 2017, the 53.193.831 Faircoin in circulation was transferred to a new blockchain. From that date on no more coins will be created. This way, being a finite good it is anticipated that its value in respect to other currencies will grow alongside the progressive extension of its use in the real economy. This will be a big incentive to the community of Faircoin users and allowing for a level of self-management that will allow us to become progressively empowered to face the capitalist system based on infinite growth and loss of people’s purchasing power, in a constant struggle for the distribution of resources in the hands of a few.

Faircoin is an open, horizontal self-organized currency. The community decides, based on a previously established consensus in the online economic strategies group, when and in what proportion a revaluation should be realized. It is a transparent process according to the current situation. So it is a completely stable currency, which cannot be devalued and is absolutely reliable for its community of users in personal or commercial transactions. Its algorithm is based on Proof of Cooperation and contributes to the distribution of wealth by preventing the richest from producing more and more coins and getting richer and richer. It is probably the most important technological innovation in the field of blockchain technologies since the creation of Bitcoin. This outstanding contribution doesn’t come from a company or group of people with private interests but from a social movement!

“We have been planning, developing and testing the cryptographic algorithm for two years. Now is the time to switch to a Proof-of-Cooperation system, which is the most stable and trustworthy concept ever seen in the world of Blockchain.”
Thomas König, Faircoin’s lead developer.

One-fifth of all circulating faircoin were bought by Enric Duran in 2014 and donated to FairCoop. With the value generated by cooperative activity and for the common good, today its value already exceeds one million euros, and remain in a communal wallet used for various FairCoop social funds, such as the commons fund or the global south fund. With FairCoop, an entire self-sustaining ecosystem for a fair economy is being built.

“With FairCoop, we are building a partnership based on cooperation and mutual support. In this way, FairCoin is showing itself to be a key tool, with which to interconnect globally and finance the transition. With the arrival of the “Proof of Cooperation”, the code stands at an equal level to our political vision “
Enric Durán, activist in cooperative ecosystems and alternative economies.

The post FairCoin activates the first Cooperative Blockchain appeared first on P2P Foundation.

This year however, the project is in a different league. Instead of Enric’s periodically announcing the price on an obscure FairCoop noticeboard like a sovereign, there is now a lively chat group with 80 members. Their objective is twofold, 1) to propose the ‘official’ price of FairCoin to the FairCoop monthly assembly, and 2) to manage the free market price.

The price should increase slowly and steadily, in contrast to other cryptocurrencies which fail as money because they are volatile. They aim to build confidence attract long term investors who want their money to do social good. FairCoop is selling FairCoin at the official price and building a pile of Euros. Those Euros are not for spending but remain available to buy back FairCoins from members who accepted them but cannot spend them. They do not guarantee to redeem all FairCoin ever issued, why should they? They are just a private institution in a free market trading a commodity.

Insofar as coins are circulating they don’t need to be redeemed and only then can the pile of Euros be LENT (not spent) on something else. They are building their own bank, capitalised by the FairCoin in our wallets.

It is this manipulation for a purpose, within the free market, that makes FairCoin so interesting. Cryptocurrencies by their nature allow anyone to participate, but a motivated team with some resources should be able to ‘own’ or at least take control of a market for their own ends. They need to keep as many coins as possible in friendly hands, and of course to grow the list of vendors who accept FAIR, who can be reassured of a cash price from FairCoop.

Two years ago the ‘official’ FairCoop price had been 5x of the Bittrex price, and a few people kept the faith, but it was really only a handful of activist business who accepted it. But something, whether Enric’s persistence, or the whims of the free market, or a handful of self appointed market-managers, lifted the price, then in in May this year, there was a rush of money into crypto-markets, and FairCoin, with its low volume of trade benefited more than most.

Suddenly the free-market price was above the official price. FairCoop had to restrict its sales to prevent arbitrageurs eating the money pile.

This has been the situation for some weeks. The new price should be decided by the assembly. If (and when) the volatility can’t be managed and the official price drops, FairCoin holders will weather the storm, especially after having enjoyed a 20 fold increase in the free-market price.

This all means that suddenly there is a lot more money behind Faircoin. The team can more confidently offer cash redemption to more vendors and has more reserves with which to smooth the free market volatility. The official list of vendors is much improved on two years ago, though still rather weak. So saying, I was able to go to a wholefood store in Athens and buy more than I could carry!

FairCoop activists are also innovating on payment technologies possible in few other cryptocurrencies. They are able, with a Spanish partner, ChipChap, to convert FAIR into Euros and withdraw them from the ATM in one smooth action! The Bank of the Commons initiative aims to provide a multi-wallet solution for holding and moving between Euros, Bitcoin, FairCoin, and balances from local exchange systems.

So why not show some support by at least getting yourself a FairCoin wallet, proudly displaying this badge, and listing your trade on the Fairmarket.

The post Paying attention to FairCoin! appeared first on P2P Foundation.

Here are two strategic questions I’d like to leave hanging.

Faircoin 2 Annex 

This post is also available in: Spanish, Catalan, Italian, Greek

The post From the Institutional Way to the Integral Revolution appeared first on P2P Foundation.

The infrastructure of the FairCoop is now sufficiently in place for it to be useful, the next step is getting more participation from the public and creating a ‘network effect’ which will multiply its usefulness.

A contribution by Guy James:

“The Fairmarket is up and running in beta version at https://market.fair.coop, you can see the current businesses accepting Faircoin at https://use.fair-coin.org, Faircoin can be bought at http://getfaircoin.net or on the Bittrex exchange, or using the Bitsquare app.

You can exchange between currencies using the http://fairtoearth.com/ app, and there are two wallet apps for desktop and one for Android.

The social network at https://fair.coop/social-network/ is still going strong and in addition we now have many groups on Telegram for day-to-day communication which are open to all those who feel an affinity with the FC principles: https://fair.coop/faircoop-has-a-new-telegram-channel/

There is also a Refugees Fund to which we invite contributions in Faircoin or fiat money:
https://coopfunding.net/en/campaigns/refugees-fund-faircoop/ – this is the first outward-facing fund to be active, as opposed to funds sustaining FairCoop itself.

The infrastructure of the FairCoop is now sufficiently in place for it to be useful, the next step is getting more participation from the public and creating a ‘network effect’ which will multiply its usefulness.”

The post A Status Report on the FairCoop project appeared first on P2P Foundation.