* 2) Walk me through the process of opening an account, buying a shirt from WalMart, buying a USB stick from Amazon and buying an Apple at my local market. *
Every Gresham Account has a balance in GD and a balance in USD (for when the GD auto-convert). There are a few different account levels:
"Basic accounts" receive a continuous income and we gradually roll them out to every individual until it becomes a universal basic income. In the mean time, anyone can sign up for a "starter account." Starter accounts allow you to accept and spend GD, but they don't provide the basic income. In the long run, every individual with a starter account will be upgraded to a basic account.
The initial basic accounts are going to be handed out at homeless shelters and soup kitchens etc. If you're you, you would sign up for a starter account online and you'd get your basic income at some day in the future. There are reasons why you might want to open a starter account even though it doesn't provide you a basic income. The process would look a lot like signing up for a PayPal account.
For the rest of your question, you can keep imagining that it works like PayPal. You can use PayPal at merchants that accept PayPal. There are numerous point of sale payment systems that we could potentially integrate with. We haven't worked out the details of which methods of payment we'd support (phone, QR code, debit card, etc.), but the bottom line is that the merchant has to accept GD.
Ideally, we'd like to set something up where you have something similar to a debit card that automatically draws from your GD balance if you have GD and you're transacting with a merchant who accepts GD, but that draws from your USD balance (or a linked bank account) otherwise. We'd like to make it as seemless as possible. If possible, we don't want anyone having to make the decision about whether to spend GD or USD.
* 3) What's the legal requirements for this? Would you need a banking license to operate the exchange and infrastructure? *
The legal stuff is extremely tricky. I spoke to a lawyer about this and I don't think we'd need a banking license at first, but regulations are a challenge to be sure, especially once we get big. Framing it as a kind of "store credit" or "gift card with renewing balance" system to start might be the easiest way to go.
Right now, digital currencies in the U.S. are regulated and taxed as commodities. So there's some precedent in place, but what we're planning to do goes well beyond the scope of Bitcoin.
* You say it's a cryptocurrency. How do you manage the monetary exchange in a crypto fashion? *
Each account will have a GD balance and a USD balance. Every time new GD is added to an account, it is tagged with an expiration time. If the GD is not spent, we adjust the respective balances in the accounts when it matures. Users' USD balances will amount to claims USD deposits in on our distributed network of US bank accounts that we will use to maintain our reserves.
* How would you think the US government would view GD (especially since it is supposed to help with a basic income)? *
It's hard to say. The U.S. government is pretty slow. Gresham Dollar is designed to take off pretty fast. My hope is that by the time we get noticed, we'll be too big to fail, or rather, too big for them to shut us down. They might have trouble taking away incomes from poor people. But they might nevertheless freak out about how we're affecting economic and monetary conditions. This is definitely a concern. The plan is to expand internationally, so eventually no one country would really be in a position to stop us.
Every Gresham Account has a balance in GD and a balance in USD (for when the GD auto-convert). There are a few different account levels:
"Basic accounts" receive a continuous income and we gradually roll them out to every individual until it becomes a universal basic income. In the mean time, anyone can sign up for a "starter account." Starter accounts allow you to accept and spend GD, but they don't provide the basic income. In the long run, every individual with a starter account will be upgraded to a basic account.
The initial basic accounts are going to be handed out at homeless shelters and soup kitchens etc. If you're you, you would sign up for a starter account online and you'd get your basic income at some day in the future. There are reasons why you might want to open a starter account even though it doesn't provide you a basic income. The process would look a lot like signing up for a PayPal account.
For the rest of your question, you can keep imagining that it works like PayPal. You can use PayPal at merchants that accept PayPal. There are numerous point of sale payment systems that we could potentially integrate with. We haven't worked out the details of which methods of payment we'd support (phone, QR code, debit card, etc.), but the bottom line is that the merchant has to accept GD.
Ideally, we'd like to set something up where you have something similar to a debit card that automatically draws from your GD balance if you have GD and you're transacting with a merchant who accepts GD, but that draws from your USD balance (or a linked bank account) otherwise. We'd like to make it as seemless as possible. If possible, we don't want anyone having to make the decision about whether to spend GD or USD.
* 3) What's the legal requirements for this? Would you need a banking license to operate the exchange and infrastructure? *
The legal stuff is extremely tricky. I spoke to a lawyer about this and I don't think we'd need a banking license at first, but regulations are a challenge to be sure, especially once we get big. Framing it as a kind of "store credit" or "gift card with renewing balance" system to start might be the easiest way to go.
Right now, digital currencies in the U.S. are regulated and taxed as commodities. So there's some precedent in place, but what we're planning to do goes well beyond the scope of Bitcoin.
* You say it's a cryptocurrency. How do you manage the monetary exchange in a crypto fashion? *
Each account will have a GD balance and a USD balance. Every time new GD is added to an account, it is tagged with an expiration time. If the GD is not spent, we adjust the respective balances in the accounts when it matures. Users' USD balances will amount to claims USD deposits in on our distributed network of US bank accounts that we will use to maintain our reserves.
* How would you think the US government would view GD (especially since it is supposed to help with a basic income)? *
It's hard to say. The U.S. government is pretty slow. Gresham Dollar is designed to take off pretty fast. My hope is that by the time we get noticed, we'll be too big to fail, or rather, too big for them to shut us down. They might have trouble taking away incomes from poor people. But they might nevertheless freak out about how we're affecting economic and monetary conditions. This is definitely a concern. The plan is to expand internationally, so eventually no one country would really be in a position to stop us.