The activist Enric Duran, known as ‘Robin Banks’, and collective has launched FairCoin by Laia Gordi

Enric Duran, also known as Robin Banks, met us in an encrypted chat room and told us that he still lives in hiding.“To defend myself I had to hack the monetary system, isn’t that strange?” he told me.

“The first years of hiding in the underground I was using Bitcoin for security reasons to manage some aspects of my situation”, explained Duran, who says the more he learnt, the more he realized the potential of ‘disruptive technology‘.

From then on the idea a cryptocurrencies was born, which offers to replace the dependence on the states and the banks with the value of ‘integral revolution’ (revolución integral).

This revolution is a proposal of Duran and the collective for a postcapitalist society, which is based on the empowerment of people in the decision-making process in all areas of life, like the econony, in policy, in society, in culture etc., regardless of the state.

“In April 2014 I came to recover a cryptocurrency which had been abandonded, called FairCoin, and used it as a tool to build a global open cooperative which I baptized FairCoop”, continued Duran.

Fair Coop

the Earth cooperative for a fair economy

Since then, with Thomas König, an Austrian programmer who soon joined the project, this dispersed collective of activists and hackers have been dedicated to develop, test and imagine everything that is possible outside the capitalist world and states under a cooperative umbrella and a virtual currency.

How does FairCoin work (and Bitcoin)

Instead of being linked to a central bank, or a commodity, such as gold, the cryptocurrency is the unit of value and is linked to an algorithm, a mathematical formula that has a certain number of solutions.

Each time a computer or a set of computer solves the formula a unit value is created, like in the case of Bitcoin, the most famous cryptocurrency in the world. It is as if a group of programmers have designed a game. The rules of the game and the board are in sight of all, since it is an open source program, so all participants can evaluate so that nobody cheats.

The solvers play, earning points or Bitcoins, which is called “mining” in English, or engage in mining. But you can also buy cryptocurrency with other currencies or they can be given to you. The value of the cryptocurrency depends on supply and demand, not on the dollar or the neoliberal technocrats of the US Treasury; the more people involved the higher the value. FairCoop ‏ @ Fair_Coop Jul 31 Shopping with # Faircoin today. Did some training about # Faircoin use right in the book shop https://www.facebook.com/fotodentro 10 retweets5 favorites

The mother board or program is called blockchain, which is like an open public accountingbook where you can see all peer-to-peer movements made, like in Bitcoins. This traffic also influences the value of the coin with respect to other cryptocurrencies. One specific disadvantage of Bitcoin is its high volatility due to a small market with relatively little money, therefore one can alter the price of the currency more easily. However the proponents say it is more difficult to speculate, or create a bubble because it has a mathematical tendency to grow and stabilize later.

But above all, the boom comes from the fact that Bitcoin transactions are anonymous, independent of governments or banks and tax free. Critics say that Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies generally are used extensively for allegedly money laundering and to buy illegal products and services.