Interview with Cedric Moreau on Libre Cryptocurrencies
* Article / Interview: Speaking with Cédric Moreau, software developer of "libre" cryptocurrencies. 26 February 2018. From the original french version by Carl Chenet (04/17),
URL = https://duniter.org/en/cedric-moreau-duniter-protocol-inventor/?
Excerpt
" The "libre" money is a new concept, much like open-source in the eighties. Both concepts share a lot in fact since both put the user’s freedom as a core principle. Freedom to choose non-proprietary software for open-source and economic freedom in the case of "libre" money.
Here are the 4 principles that make a "libre" money:
- Rule #1: The user is free to choose his currency.
- Rule #2: The user has free access to the monetary resources.
- Rule #3: The user is free to decide what has value and what doesn’t.
- Rule #4: The user is free to trade “in the money”.
Words have special weight here and I have to make them extra clear. The word "libre" for instance doesn’t mean “this that or the other” and so saying that the user has free access to the resources doesn’t mean that he could take them all and leave none to the others. Liberty here should be understood as "without detriment to my peers". Everyone has freedom of access to the resources but the same quantity and quality is available to others at any time. The meaning of the 1st rule is that a currency chosen by one user cannot be imposed to everyone else. In the same way, the logical trap of thinking that a "libre" money will self-enforce these rules is wrong. Don’t think for example that adopting a "libre" money would entitle you to rob your neighbour’s gold. A money can only be called "libre" if it respects these 4 guiding principles, in the sense that its monetary code doesn’t infringe them. The euro for example is not a "libre" currency because it has legal tender and is therefore imposed to citizens by a positive order. Bitcoin and gold are not "libre" either because production is in the hands of miners only, rules 3,4 and 5 are not observed. Our "libre" money should be understood as applying the principles of the Relative Theory of Money, the work of fellow French engineer Stéphane Laborde and available under GPLv3 license. I suggest that everybody reads it, especially those who think a "libre" money is one that could be created by anyone. The RTM is our starting point. So what’s the role of Duniter in all this ? It’s a software that enables the production of "libre" money. In terms of Object-Oriented Programming we can say that Duniter implements the "libre" money as defined by the RTM."