FIRESIDE
The one thing that is changing everything
Hi ZIMBOCASH Family
So a quick update into where we are at the moment, and then we want to talk more about what no-one else is talking about, but is the reason why we exist.
We’ve been quiet the past few months but we have been working hard behind the scenes. The first time we went live was an incredibly useful test for us. We didn’t know what we didn’t know and the learning from that week was powerful.
It was effectively a beta version and since then we have been working on all aspects of the system. We're still on track, but we've encountered some delays in a few modules. We've brought in additional tech support for these modules and will be retesting once they are complete with their input.
Identity Validation: We are mostly complete with our automated ID verification plugin. We’re implementing additional Image Forensic technologies, which requires some degree of specialisation.
Tech Security: The fact that we had spam signups for us was a helpful indicator that we needed to rethink our broader security. We’ve engaged with several outsourcing specialists and have had the privilege of working with senior executives at one of the best privacy cryptocurrencies in the world today. Their team have been fantastic in helping us. There has been a load of work that we’ve needed to do and their input has been invaluable.
Based on the advice we have received, we are looking to move everyone’s accounts on the blockchain in the next few days into new accounts with new encrypted private keys. The wallets will be protected with encryption, multi-signature and multi-authentication algorithms. This is basically the best industry practice used in most exchanges and banks around the world. It protects you and it protects the team.
We highlight that everyone’s balances will continue as they were before the move.
Scaling costs: We’re preparing other aspects of our system to scale well. We are building a Telegram two-factor authentication for your transactions.
Spam analysis: We have identified the major spammers and have frozen their accounts.
Sound Money
Let’s talk about the primary core value that we hold. Our entire business is about Sound Money. This is what we LOVE talking about, and what few others are talking about.
Countries around the world (including Zimbabwe) are printing money on a massive scale. The United States of America is currently printing trillions of dollars. England, Eurozone, Switzerland, China, Japan… and Zimbabwe are all printing huge sums of money.
Our basic belief is that money printing is bad. It destroys communities. It impoverishes people. It punishes people who are working hard and saving. It causes people in the rural areas to suffer the most. It causes increased income inequality. Money printing is a bad thing. And ultimately it devastates economies.
We believe that these truths are self-evident – they are obvious to ordinary people. When we did road-shows around Zimbabwe, we asked our audiences whether they thought it was a good idea or a bad idea for governments to print money on a mass scale. The answer was the same in every town we visited.
It’s always the significant majority who put their hands up for money printing being a bad idea. These are people who had no formal education in monetary theory. But they are people who had endured Zimbabwe’s first hyperinflation and who are now enduring the pain of another great collapse of the Zimbabwe dollar.
As we have built ZIMBOCASH over these past two and a half years, we’ve seen this dynamic play out in the service providers we’ve engaged with around the world. Typically in developed nations where there has been little economic pain associated with money printing, people are completely ignorant of the common dangers of money printing. They often don’t quite get what we are doing.
But in countries throughout Eastern Europe, South America and Asia, where people have experienced first-hand the pain of money printing, they get it.
Whirlwind history of money printing
The issue of money printing is as old as the history of money itself. References to money printing versus sound money are found way back in many ancient documents including the Jewish Torah. Ancient Greek records highlight money transactions in temples that acted as banks with documentary evidence of money being misappropriated.
Ancient Rome had laws related to money printing – however, this didn’t stop the Romans from ultimately diluting the gold in their coins and causing a predictable financial disintegration.
The Bible denounces money printing and promotes sound money. While our project isn’t Christian-focused in this sense, there are some in our team who have been teaching publicly about the Christian views of sound money and we support them. We’re for all people who are for sound money and against the printing of money.
Ok, so what is the solution?
There is only one solution to the problems of money printing. The solution is no more printing of money. People need a supply of money that is fixed – where they can trust that measurement basis of trade isn’t being skewed against them.
Sound Money is one of the basic building blocks for freedom in a nation. Where money printing results in centralised control, Sound Money results in individual liberties for each person in the country. It increases the wealth of people who hold it. It encourages people to work hard and save, and ultimately incentivises investment in things that produce goods.
It sounds simple to create but in practice, Sound Money is extremely difficult to set up. Who is trustworthy enough to look after the money printing presses and not end up printing money for themselves? The obvious answer to that question is no-one.
That’s why we like blockchain technology. It allows us to fix the supply of money – no-one can print more money than has been designed by the system.
And it takes a lot of work to implement. We’ve faced resistance from every corner. We’ve learnt our lessons through toil and some people have been criticising us for the time we’re taking to build this. But there is no other way. We do not want to just rush to implement something that we are not proud of.
We know that people are suffering in Zimbabwe. Know that the problem is money printing. And we’re doing everything we can to solve this. Please be patient with us as we work to make something that will be awesome.
