- How do you as a developer earn money with the project?
Some people might spent me a coffee here. You know, I am working as a freelance software developer since more than 35 years now. I also worked for the banksters in Zürich (Switzerland) and erarned a bunch of money. 2014 I quit my well paid job after a burnout with a near death experience and start to dedicate my skills to the open source software community. No more working for profit anymore. After I spent all my savings I had to request social money and was able to live with only a very small income. I also realized, because of my near death experience, that we cannot die at all. That leads me to a journey, I made a few years ago, where I travelled Europe with my mobile home where I was able to survive from busking only. Then in the pandemic buskin was no option anymore (no people on the streets) I was able to live with just 50,- EUR a month. That time I lost my belly fat and a few months later I sold my first books. Today I am able to live from my books and when I am in Berlin I also collect social money, which enables me to keep my hardware updated. With this project I am also introducing an idea which I had at university 10 years ago, to fund open source projects via crowdfunding.
I think this app will stay free of charge. - Will there be a version for iPhone?
Yes possibly, but therefore we need Mac hardware to develop and test the app. Maybe after crowdfunding the project. - Can I exchange LMC against fiat money?
Yes, if you find someone willig to exchange LMC against fiat money. One idea behind LMC is, hat it's based on time. So that the value will not change over the years and this also makes it impossible to use LMC as an object of speculations. We don't want to make the same mistakes like most of the other crypto currencies out there. I would not give away LMC for fiat money, because fiat money is loosing worth every day, because they don't stop to print new money. - Why does LMC loose its worth over time?
There was a man named Silvio Gesell who invented a demurrage to protect against inflation and horting the money. In 1932 the major in Wörgl (Austria) tried to create his own money which uses a demurrage. I has been years of depression and bad economy. Using this new money he was able to pay workers and the workers where able to pay in the shops and so on and so forth. He just borrowed this money because it disappears automatically after some years. The people spent the money immediatly to not loose worth and so it was flowing freely. We are adopting this technique. Would be nice if our governments also adopt this idea and pay it out as universal basic income one day. This reduces the cost to zero, because the money is flowing back to the issuer over time. - Is it allowed to run the app multiple devices?
Yes, because of the fact that we are not able to protect the network from this kind of Sybill-attacks, we lowered the amount of liquid which can be scooped on a daily base, so that it does not make sense to buy a mobile phone just for scooping. It's also recommended to transfer all your LMC to a safe place in case of loosing your mobile phone. So you can have a huge amount of LMC on your tablet lying at home, while just a small amount on a mobile phone. In order to scoop a large amount of LMC you also need a large of amount of peers to be invited. The fact that a peer can only be invited once makes it harder for people who are trying to run Shift on multiple devices. - Why do you develop something on your own, when there are hundreds of solution already available?
I just tried to have a look what Circles is doing after not hearing from them till years. Circles is a wonderful idea paying out a basic income, like I wanted to do with Shift once. They are also based here in Berlin. I wanted to try it out a minute ago and was ask for an email address. Then I remembered why I did not choosed it back then. I want to create an alternative to cash. When you use cash you keep your privacy. None of the cryptos that I know keep their users anonymous. We were thinking that bitcoin is anonymous, but we found out that when you post an address of one of your bitcoin wallets on your website, then all your transactions are visible to everybody who is able to read the blockchain. There is also a good idea called Gradido. I already tried to team up with them, but had one single issue with their model which I really wanted to change. But I wasn't able to change their mind I left the team. My change was to make Gradido time based. For me this is essential for fairness and to avoid speculations and to avoid price changes. - Why did you change the model to not paying out a UBI?
People who are fighting to get the UBI from the government for all of us, did not agree that Shift is paying out UBI. And they were right. In Germany we call it unconditional basic income. And Shift is conditional. You need a mobile phone. The other thing is, that I don't want to disturb the process of getting a REAL UBI from the government. With Shift they have a sample that UBI is doable without much cost. You issue an amount of dollar and get it back over time by demurrage. So it will cost only interest rates for the government. And if the governments would create their own E-Dollar it will not even cost interest rates. - Aren't you supporting crime like weapons, drugs, terrorism and the like?
Nope, I personally not support crime at all. If they would use Shift to pay for crime its not in my personal responsibility. It's like creating a hammer to put nails into a wall. This hammer was not created to smash a head of beings. So the crime does not come from the hammer producer. So only use Shift for the good things in the world, please <3. When you regard fiat money, this is used for crime. Think of all the taxes that are used to pay for killing people in wars. - Is Shift Open Source? Definetly