Decentralised Teaching and Learning

Calling all bloggers!

Want to be paid for your posts and your tweets? Yes? Then read on…

What’s the problem?

There’s a whole blogosphere of bloggers out there blogging amazing content.

But we’re an unpaid army.

At best we’re providing content for free because we simply love to do it. We want to help other people, share our knowledge and share our experiences.

But at worst this is digital sharecropping; another company (MySpace, Facebook) owns our content and is using this content to grow and thrive.

But you should just do it for the love, man

Well, we do! But I think that work, especially work that has a value to other people, should be rewarded in some way. And most grassroots bloggers also do a full shift of work on top of their online activities.

So what if there was a way that you could ‘tip’ another blogger for their post or their tweet – if you could reward them financially for that great idea that saved you time scouring for materials?

If you could show them your appreciation in one click of a mouse?

Wouldn’t that be good?

Reddcoin – A new social currency

Reddcoin (RDD for short) is a currency that has been around for a while but now clearly differentiates itself from other alternative currencies such as BitCoin.

But is anyone actually using Reddcoin? Looking at today’s Reddcoin statistics, on average 154,004,667 RDD were sent in the previous 24 hours. Which is $8,104.

That’s per hour.

So it is being used, and more and more people are moving from Bitcoin to Reddcoin.

What’s wrong with Bitcoin? The problem with Bitcoin is that as it has become popular, those with the most computing power are able to capture the most Bitcoins. The amateur user just hoping to get a few Bitcoins by chance is no longer able to participate, or incentivised to participate in the market.

And as Bitcoin has risen in value people have started to hoard Bitcoins, making them scarce and so more desirable. This recreates one of the main problems of conventional currencies;

the rich get richer.

So don’t go throwing away that copy of ‘The Communist Manifesto‘ just yet.

How is Reddcoin different then?

Reddcoin is different in that you cannot ‘mine’ Reddcoin in the same way. The developers of Reddcoin have tried to design out some of the inherent flaws of Bitcoin.

RDD is not a pump and dump coin. RDD is not a ponzi scheme. RDD is not sth to make you rich in 1 month so that you can brag about it to your friends or neighbours.

Reddcoin was created with a vision to solve a real-life problem. And hopefully with the efforts of the dev team and the community, this vision can be realised.

Remember, price is what you pay; value is what you get.

(Source: Reddcoin thread on reddit)

With Reddcoin you can ‘tip’ people for their tweets or blog posts, which then encourages other people to tip others. And so on. The economy flourishes because of a growing velocity of money. You can also make money by ‘staking’ some of your reddcoins to maintain the network, but ARRGGHHH! WAIT – THAT’S TOO COMPLICATED!

Ok, don’t worry. Let’s just keep things simple for now…

How does it work?

You have a Reddcoin wallet and from this wallet you can send and receive money – much like a conventional bank account.

But how do I get Reddcoins?

You can buy Reddcoins from an exchange using paypal. I bought 10 dollars of Reddcoins last week and I now have 168,728.20975740 Reddcoins at the moment – so I’m RICH!!!

Well, not exactly – I have 8 dollars and 50 cents.

Here’s my account balance:

But just buying Reddcoins isn’t the point – distributing Reddcoins in exchange for something valuable is the point. If you like someone’s tweet or blog post then ‘tip’ them!

You can even tip a cookie (330 RDD), a doughnut (400 RDD)  or a kiss (1000 RDD).

I’m sure you can see the possibilities here. If I tip you a few thousand Reddcoins it amounts to nothing. But if a thousand people tip a charity in a developing country at the same time – then that might be money someone can really use.

An experiment

My experiment comes in two parts. First, I would like someone to ‘tip’ or ‘gift’ reddcoins to, and it would be great if they were ordinary teachers like me! Secondly, I would like to make it easier for other people to join Reddcoin, as at the moment it’s quite an esoteric process – especially if you’re not a techie.

So, if you are interested in getting Reddcoins then let’s start. And when you open your Reddcoin account and send me your address – I’ll send you some Reddcoins, ok?

Free money – what can go wrong?

Four steps to obtaining Reddcoins and altcurrency nirvana:

1) Download the Reddcoin wallet here. I downloaded the ReddWallet 1.1.1 (Reddcoin full experience) for my Windows computer, it’s well-designed and easy to use.

2) Open the file and install it on your computer. I have really good security on my laptop, I run Kaspersky. You may get a warning when you try to open or run Reddcoin as I did. I ignored this, and I’ve been running it all week with no problems.*

*I can’t take responsibility for what might happen with YOUR computer though – please be careful!

3) Start running the Reddcoin wallet. On the Main Screen click on ‘Receive’. On this screen you will see YOUR address – this is the address you will need to recieve money. See below – I actually have two addresses now but you should only have one.

Click on ‘Copy’ (this will save your address to clipboard) and then Tweet your address to me in a PM (@josipa74). Or even just put it in the comments box below.

4) I will send you some Reddcoins. Be warned it can take quite a few hours for the Reddcoins to show up in your account and you must keep Reddcoin running (not all the time, just when you’re using your computer).

So don’t panic if your coins don’t show up right away – they won’t! Just be patient.

And that’s it. More info on using Reddcoin can be found here and on the Reddcoin forum on reddit. If you do want to buy Reddcoins then go to WeSellRedd.com – you will need a paypal account and will need to verify – it takes 24 hours.

To coinclude (just a little joke I couldn’t resist…)

In this post, I’ve described the problem facing bloggers who create great content for no money.

I’ve introduced a possible solution to this problem.

This rest is up to you.

What’s it to be? A mark, a yen, a buck, a pound…

 

Or a Reddcoin.

 

 

My Reddcoin address: RgovQmPVC2XKEjBmEDswNEqqMAcidjLwjy

Images

Money. PT Taylor on flickr. Attribution 2.0 Generic (CC BY 2.0)

*DISCLAIMER: I am not paid or sponsored by Reddcoin – I just think this is a good idea!