Show HN: Pinecoin – Money Grown on Trees
pinecoin.meI don't know how to say this in a way that's considered a substantive contribution, but I still want to know:
What's the point of "pinecoin"?
Thank you for contributing to the discussion.
One of our goals is to increase the price of natural resources that markets aren't yet accounting for or undervalue.
Last night, our first trick-or-treater showed up with a plastic pumpkin already loaded with candy. He asked why there were pine cones with tags on them in with the candy that we were giving away. We said that it was a trick, and that he was welcome to take a pine cone, or one of the rolls of pennies we also had mixed into our candy cauldron. He took the pine cone.
That's an interesting answer. Even more interesting anecdote, as I don't know what the point of it is meant to be!
I've read the website a few times, and I am having trouble understanding how this helps a forest?
I am sure I am missing something simple here: You have replaced mining with pine cone collection. Ok, that sounds kind of neat in a few differing ways. What happens to the pinecones that are mailed in? How is this helping a forest?
The idea is that once cones are collected, packaged, and tokenized, they will be put up for sale by the tree's owners (or those given permission to collect on their land—anyone collecting forest products without permission in Maine already faces a fine of up to $500).
The hope is that this will enable property owners (residential, schools, camp grounds, corporate campuses, municipalities, land trusts, commercial forests, etc.) to monetize their trees without needing to cut them down or remove much biomass.
Since Maine is over 90% forested, the equation is different here than many other places. We collected our Initial Cone Offering from a tree next to our house, in a mixed-use zone of a city. It's less about helping forests per se, more about creating an incentive to plant and maintain trees beyond just aesthetics and lumber.
We're not quite at the point of selling our tokenized cones, and have yet to provide any free tokens to others who have collected verifiable cones. We hope to have updates on those fronts soon. Thanks for checking it out!
Sounds like an interesting game backed by a super expensive and unnnecessarily safe backend.
Question: How is it sustainable for a forest if you advise people to take all the seeds?
Good question. Step 5 of the Pinecoin Protocol specifies that cones must not still contain seeds, which are visible under the scales when dry.
I don't know what seeds look like on a pinecone. Perhaps you should include real photo examples.
Good idea, thanks for the feedback.
I second the other person's note regarding seeds.
A detailed illustration would be helpful.
Interesting project!
Noted, thanks, we'll look at adding more information on identifying seeded cones.
This is either a misguided serious attempt or the greatest satire I've ever seen.
Either way a lot of effort went into this and good work to the developer!
Thank you much!
This website is incredibly slow to load and hogs my Internet bandwidth. You should scale down images by at least 5x.
I give up.