The What-tle Coin?
I run a weekly meeting, in London, called the Tuttle Club. We've done it every Friday morning for the last eight years (excluding like Christmas/Boxing Days etc.) - it's a diverse and interesting community of people who are interested and highly knowledgeable about a wide range of subjects. We always have good conversation, whether there are 2 of us or 80. If you try to describe what we talk about, it turns out that it's mostly how to close the gap between technological advances and our social ability to deal with them. In 2008 when we started, that meant social media, now it's more likely to be blockchain, VR, AI, IoT or robotics - all from a personal, human point of view. Tuttle is a reference to Harry Tuttle, the subversive heating engineer in Terry Gilliam's 1985 film Brazil - he's our kind of guy.
So, since I've been aware of crypto currency, I've been musing about how to integrate the concept into our weekly meetings. The most simple thing I can think of is to reward attendance. I would need to record somewhere, who was there and, having set up something like a "Tuttlecoin" I'd distribute something at the end of each session. I wrote about the idea of TuttleTokens about 18 months ago - the trouble has always been how to implement.
Enter Grantcoin
In the last week, I saw Grantcoin talked about on Steemit - it's trying to do something around creating Universal Basic Income by having a fund that is just distributed to those who ask on a quarterly basis. Their plan is to release 3.5% of the total currency each quarter in equal chunks to whoever signs up (they do verification through twitter and facebook). It's very early days, but it's just a simple cryptocurrency like any other.
I missed the first round in June, but managed to squeeze in for the September payout - unless I drop out (and I'm not quite clear how I'd do that) I expect to get another payout at the end of December and every 3 months thereafter. I am now the proud owner of just under 7650 GRT - which might sound a lot until you know that 1 GRT is currently priced at 75 satoshi and today's price in sterling is therefore £0.00036 per GRT so I got a couple of quid. The upside of that is, it's not worth enough for me to just want to cash it in - I have another purpose for it.
I was further inspired by seeing that they have a Twitter wallet interface. So I can send and receive GRT by sending a tweet without anyone having to set up their own wallet until they want to withdraw.
(BTW if you do want to take part in Grantcoin yourself, they have a referral scheme whereby we both get rewarded if you sign up using this link)
Creating TuttleCoin via Grantcoin (in a clunky semi-automated way)
OK, so here's the plan. There is no thing called TuttleCoin, TuttleBucks or TuttleTokens. We use Grantcoin. I receive a payment every quarter. I divide that payment by the number of weeks (Tuttles) there are until the next expected payment. And then I take an attendance register every week of the twitter handles of those who'd like to receive their coins. Afterwards I distribute that week's payments via a tweet. If you've come along and know nothing about this, you'll just see a tweet with a link to this explanation and to how you can sign up for Grantcoin yourself if you really want to. Otherwise I will keep a record of who's been paid what and if GRT suddenly goes through the roof (I'm not saying it will) and your 20GRT are suddenly worth hundreds of pounds, I will of course give you a nudge. In the meantime, you can use your "rewards" however you choose.
As always think of this as a piece of art or a game, rather than a business. It's not meant to be serious. It's not meant to be an important thing. It's not meant to do anything except help you think about rewards and social interaction and what it might mean, how you might use the concept in something else and to root some part of our conversation about blockchain in something real.
This quarter's payouts
I have in my account 7649.251883 GRT
There are 15 Tuttles between now and December 31st (Christmas Day is on Sunday so the Friday before will be 23rd which is my birthday but that doesn't mean no Tuttle necessarily)
So the pot per Tuttle is 509.950126 (a whopping 18p at today's price) which will be divided between those who put their twitter handles on the register.
So, for example if 10 people (including me) come along who supply me with their twitter handle, I will tweet out 50.995013 per person. This introduces an interesting incentive dynamic (albeit highly unlikely at this level of funding) - whereby it's in your interest to come along, but also to discourage others from coming themselves. That's not what I want, so the next iteration needs to be something that incentivises bringing a pal along (without being too bloody complicated). Also, if 100 people come, I may have to rethink from a practical point of view...
See you on Friday!