Cryptocurrencies have taken over the news in recent years and I’m sure some readers have even looked at a Bitcoin Trader review, looking to see if it’s something they should invest in. But outside of trading, not many people understand the potential applications of Bitcoin and blockchain. This is why today, we’re going to be talking about Swiftdemand. SwiftDemand is a basic income blockchain experiment in which each user who is signed up daily receives a certain number of Swift tokens. The project’s white paper gives a clear understanding of the implementation of this Decentralized Autonomous Organization (DAO) providing Universal Basic Income and how the Swift Protocol works.
The concept of SwiftDemand is to create a transactional currency that provides basic income. Hence, four types of accounts are required to ensure that the ecosystem works:
Citizens – The registration to become a Swift Citizen is open to anyone and is for free. However, a unique individual should only be allowed to have one account that receives the basic income and is validated by an Identity Provider.
Entities – There are accounts not tied to individuals and are allowed to exist for business or privacy purposes. However, these do not receive any basic income.
Delegated Nodes – these are responsible for maintaining full nodes, containing every single transaction that has occurred on the blockchain, and for creating new blocks for the tokens. Delegated nodes are elected by Swift Citizens, and the elections occur every 6 months.
Identity Providers – These ensure the validation of the Swift Citizens identity, create new citizens by generating a key pair, i.e. a public and a private key allowing to encrypt information that ensures data is protected during a transaction, and include the identity on the blockchain.
As specified by SwiftDemand creators, the goal of the Swift protocol income distribution is to provide a faire method of providing Swifts to all Swift Citizens. Swifts are distributed on a daily basis under the form of a basic income and, today, the grant is set at 100 tokens. However, it is subject to change as the amount of tokens distributed depends on the number of Swift Citizens that exist in the ecosystem.
It can be said that SwiftDemand is on the verge of becoming a cryptocurrency for basic income distribution. It depends on the number of new members registering but with the growing popularity of virtual currency, the chances are highly in favor of SwiftDemand. If you are interested in learning more about top crypto to invest in for higher profit probability, you can go through blogs and websites discussing the same.
It is also important to note that the basic income has to be claimed by the Swift Citizens with a maximum of seven unclaimed days of Swifts. For example, it means that if a Swift Citizen claims its basic incomes every four days, he will be granted 400 tokens every four days. Another way to earn Swifts is through referrals program. When any Citizen successfully introduces a new user to SwiftDemand, his/her account is granted with 500 tokens.
This attempt at implementing a universal basic income has the potential to make basic income more visible. Despite a complex protocol, the platform is free and easy to use. Even though the Swift currency does not have any value outside the Swift ecosystem, citizens have the opportunity to sell goods and services, transfer their tokens or make purchases, creating a parallel economy ruled by basic income values.
This is the preliminary program for the North American Basic Income Guarantee (NABIG) Congress, which will happen at the Michael DeGroote Center for Learning and Discovery, in the McMaster University, city of Hamilton, in Ontario, Canada. Registrations can still be made here. The venue will take place from the 24th of May (at 6:30 pm) onto 11:30 am on Sunday the 27th.
The program highlights “conversation among national public champions”, including Canadian Senator Art Eggleton; Canadian Member of Parliament Guy Caron; famed Manitoba Mincome researcher and population health expert, Dr. Evelyn Forget; Basic Income Canada Network (BICN) Chairperson, Sheila Regehr; and potentially also U.S. entrepreneur and 2020 presidential candidate, Andrew Yang (running on a basic income-anchored platform).
Other highlights include the Friday night’s premiere screening of a new and original documentary film on the famous Manitoba Mincome experiment in Dauphin, Manitoba, in the 1970s, followed by discussion with the American filmmakers and Mincome’s executive director, Ron Hikel.
There will be plenary speakers from Canada, the U.S., Mexico, Belgium, and Portugal. Over 30 other presentations and workshops addressing either of the Congress’s two main themes: (1) the converging paths leading to basic income (e.g., health, human rights, automation, sustainability, democracy, etc.); and (2) making basic income a reality, through pilots, policy, and public support.
“There will always be hope”. Picture credit: Alex Gi.
On the 11th and 12th of October 2018, the University of Freiburg, in Germany, holds an interdisciplinary Conference titled “Basic Income and the Euro-Dividend as Sociopolitical Pillars of the EU and its Member Countries”. It will be organized by the Department of Economic Policy and Constitutional Economic Theory and the aim is to gather relevant leading researchers and thinkers in Europe to discuss an EU wide approach of a basic income.
In Europe, the public debate about a universal basic income (UBI) is usually a national one. In recent years a European version of a UBI has attracted more and more attention – primarily pushed by the suggestion of Philippe Van Parijs titled a “Euro-Dividend”. This conference aims to shed some light at pros and cons of a EU wide UBI regulation and its relation to national approaches from an interdisciplinary perspective. Both UBI approaches shall be analyzed and discussed with respect to justice, economic and migration effects, legal aspects, creation of solidarity in the EU, and political viability. On the first day, the conference will address general issues about UBI, while the schedule of the second day contains EU-related concepts just like the Euro-Dividend.
Papers are invited from areas such as Philosophy, Sociology, Political Science, Law, and Economics and even Technical Sciences addressing one or more of the following topics:
o UBI and arguments of freedom, solidarity, social and gender justice
o Changing time allocation and shifting time sovereignty, voluntarism and creativity
o Legal aspects of UBI
o Experiments and microsimulations on UBI’s level and impact
o UBI in the digital age / Robots, AI, Labor, and the Welfare State
o The European Pillar of Social Rights, UBI, and Euro-Dividend: Creating European
Solidarity
o Financial feasibility of a UBI and financing concepts of a Euro-Dividend
o EU labor market effects and migration (on international level and within the EU)
More information at:
The “Basic Income and the Euro-Dividend as Sociopolitical Pillars of the EU and its Member Countries” Conference website
A new video has been released by Geoff Crocker, on a “radical concept of funding basic income by perpetual deficit”. This video is a result of a presentation done at the Asia Pacific UBI Conference, which was held of the latest 17th and 18th of March 2018.
In this short video, Geoff Crocker generally reviews the most typical arguments for and against basic income, focusing on the financing issues. Particularly, he conceives a thought experiment where all economic goods and services are produced by machines. The question then arises: how to distribute these among the population? Crocker’s conclusions, from this onset, are that basic income becomes “essential to maintain consumer demand”, and that “financial deficit is inevitable”. This, apparently, derives directly from the fact that modern economies operate at a permanent deficit and that “unearned income [is] necessary in high tech economies”.
Geoff Crocker’s ideas had already been mentioned on Basic Income News, in a paper he called “The economic necessity of basic income”.
The Italian branch of the Basic Income Network (BIN Italia) has written a plea about Guaranteed Minimum Income to the newly elected Parliament, still struggling to form a government.
Plea to the Italian Parliament (full text)
“May the Parliament listen to our society.
Guaranteed Minimum Income is something we can’t do without any longer.
Something that until a few years ago was confined to the scope of utopias and eccentricities of some activists, the guaranteed minimum income is now one of the main themes of the 2018 political and electoral debate. The material condition of millions of people, the economic difficulties of evergrowing population groups, the weight endured by generations of occasional workers and temporary employees, have drawn attention to the necessity for reform toward this direction.
Italy’s delay on this issue is now intolerable. It would seem reasonable to begin with prompts such as the 2017 european resolution that exhorted the member states to adopt a guaranteed minimum income policy, as defined in the 20 principles and rights of the European Social Pillar released on November 2017, in Göteborg, with the joint declaration by the European Union (EU) organs.
Among the 29 points of the European Social Pillar, is number 14: the right to an «adequate minimum income». The EU has been asking Italy for years to conform to supranational parameters on this matter, and so did recently the Council of Europe, denouncing the persisting lack of effective policies against social exclusion (in contravention of the European Social Charter article 30). Despite all this, the adoption of a guaranteed minimum income policy in our country seems far away.
Over the last years, propositions and calls have also come from large portions of society, campaigns and public initiatives. These have examined and integrated/absorbed the experiences of other european countries, the international debate and the experiments currently underway in many countries in the world.
From all these experiments, it’s clear that a guaranteed minimum income is much more than a benevolent bestowal. It’s an instrument to acknowledge and value personal histories, skills, abilities and aspirations, in the pursuit of a free and decent life.
We ask the Italian Parliament to take on the responsibility to begin, as soon as possible, a debate about the introduction of a guaranteed minimum income in Italy. At this point, and even more now, after the latest elections, this issue cannot be neglected. Millions have voted also to see this proposal put into practice.
We are aware that different approaches exist and that some of the political parties have already made their proposals official. But these differences can be overcome in a debate free of preconceived divergences, and a legislative process ought to be set in motion in this direction.
In order to have debate as wide and universal as possible, we believe it can be useful to begin with the draft law proposed by a citizens’ initiative. That proposition, written in 2013 and supported by a large coalition in civil society, was never examined by the Parliament. Also useful can be the 10 points of the Platform for a Guaranteed Minimum Income, drawn up by the Rete dei Numeri Pari.
These proposals can of course be improved, but we are certain that Italy can’t do without a Guaranteed Minimum Income any longer. Let’s begin with a Guaranteed Minimum Income as a first step toward a tangible universal welfare.”
The board of the Basic Income Network Italia – (BIN Italia)
