How Peoples SCE is building a decentralized co-op on eCredits

0:00I'm Ashton Addison from blockwest capital for investment pitch media and today on the Crypto Coin Show we have Andrew Sachs the head of marketing at the people's SEC Andrew welcome to the show and thank you for taking the time today thank you Ashton great to be here you're very welcome let's dive into the people's SCE and payments in general

0:23I'm excited to hear your insights on it and sort of what people's SCE has has formed and I think it's a little bit different than what we're seeing in the space right now and let's just dive straight into it I would love for you to kick it off with you know what are you and your team working on in the payment space and then we'll dive into all the details

0:42yes absolutely actually there's that's a very good point that we raised these are very different to what is in the current cryptocurrency space in general because overall over the last few years let's say 10 to 15 years since cryptocurrency came to existence it's been largely viewed by the mainstream as an investment vehicle or a speculative investment vehicle and

1:06there's a lot of exchanges that have come about and it was never really used for what I think it was really designed for in the first place which is to be an actual everyday currency because if it's used it for that purpose it's perfectly designed for that because the blockchain the way that this everything is on a public blockchain there the way that

1:30the coins are mined regardless of what type of coin they are is very much people or peer-to-peer people orientated and it can't be interfered with by any Central organizations or any large corporations it's really from the outset should have been used as the everyday currency for everyday life for the people rather than that generated but a sort of Challenger to

1:56the centralized system that's how I see it so actually what we're doing at the people's SCE is we are behind we're creating the app and the mechanisms behind the e-credit ecosystem which is the it's designed from the outset to be an actual currency for everyday life so rather than an aspective investment vehicle it is purely to empower small businesses and

2:22consumers regardless of their background or status on a completely decentralized methodology so even the people's SCE itself is a European Cooperative society which means that the SCE is actually the Latin acronym for European Cooperative society and it is owned by its members and members can only have one share and everybody gets one vote so it's an equal

2:48it's very Equitable Democratic way of generating an everyday ecosystem for small businesses and people to go about their everyday life life without any concerns about the hierarchical interference or anything like that so that's the overall ethos of why we exist great great intro Andrew thank you for that and speaking of you know like a cooperative and having one vote is it

3:16like you know some people are familiar with a traditional Co-op that in a type of company is it similar to that very similar and it's out in its makeup yes the difference I suppose is that it's completely decentially governed so whereas a Cooperative Society in the traditional sense that maybe manufactures things or you know there used to be cooperative supermarkets and

3:40Collective farms and things like that going back to 1950s and actually they were they were they had members but they still had a sort of ownership board and they still had some some people who were actually in charge and had a greater say whereas the people's SCE is completely decently governed organization which means that absolutely nobody regardless of who they

4:05are has a greatest say than anybody else so it fits the structure of decentralizing the whole way that appear to peer transactions are made so for example if you have that fits in nicely with the credits ecosystem which is built on the on the e-credits blockchain and it is it has its own method of it has its own currency the ECS the credits you see access is

4:31the currency and the idea is to empower small to medium-sized businesses and consumers right I think everybody on the same level so that nobody can actually come up for example now we live in a time where the central centrally run Financial organizations are having to raise interest rates because of high inflation and that's that's affecting many Western countries and inflation has

4:56been a high a 50-year high in some parts of Europe and the United States over the last few months and therefore the central bank will have to try and make a policy monetary policy that counteracts that and usually that much of course involves increasing the interest rate and if that happens and you've got a mortgage then your mortgage payment is going to go up significantly and there

5:19is really nothing that the actual at the customer or the average member of society can really have a say in that it just has to comply with what the what the mortgage lender and the central bank has said whereas if you decentralize everything then you don't have those monitoring policies being made Central which therefore can affect everyday life and can affect your your every everyday

5:41Budgeting and so forth and you put yourself in control of your own future Destiny by having a share and having a an equal vote as everybody else in the actual system that you are using for your everyday life so I see that is probably the most practical use case for digital assets that exists definitely and you know you know Bitcoin has really stood out as a cryptocurrency

6:08that was originally you know set out in the white paper to be you know a peer-to-peer currency and has sort of depending on you know people's perspective in how they view it and how they use it has also sort of turned into a store of value and a lot of these other cryptocurrencies you know have specific use cases inside of decentralized networks but not always

6:31their primary use case being like money or like everyday currency that you use to do trade and commerce and things like that I'm curious on you know through the e-credits blockchain and e-credits system you know what kind of principles are they employing that sort of embodies that principle of money that's meant to be used every day that's absolutely right and you know

6:56you really hit the nail on the head when you say that Bitcoin was originally designed with that in mind including it's it's block a chain system which doesn't which limits the amount that can be actually circulated it's kind of a digital way of emulating the way central banks restricts the flow of currency to keep the value in a certain way in a very clever and Democratic way but of

7:19course it subsequently became used as a speculative investment to the point where some even quite a few government organizations consider it to be a store of value or a commodity whereas in El Salvador for example it's a unit of currency because the Salvadorian government made it an official official tender in the country so it's empowered at over 70 percent of previously

7:41unbanked people who couldn't participate in it in everyday commercial society and now they can buy things on Amazon about going to the supermarket and pay with a contactless system things that were never imaginable before most of the population so it does have that use case that is certainly if applied correctly then it could it does have that use case

8:03however the idea of this particular of our these the credit system is to purely focus on empowering small to medium-sized businesses and everyday members of society regardless of their status or background for example if you're a small business and you have got a small shop that sells products that you have to buy the product from the

8:31supplier and you then usually quite quite a lot of retail supplies are done on the 30-day invoice so you buy your stock you have 30 day invoicing you then have to sell that stock at the moment at a retail price to then be able to make your profit by the end of the 30 days you pay the supplier they're they're the purchase price the wholesale purchase

8:54price so quite often that is a very difficult for a lot of small businesses because they have to not only try and sell all their stock in one go but they are bound to have to pay costs for example a big company like Amazon which sells online will be able to easily afford the emergency Services costs associated with Mastercard or these or any other any other not just any other

9:16Merchant set compared centralized merchant services provider or bank that will charge them a percentage fee for using the merchant services terminal and then we'll keep their money for three or four days sometimes longer until deposit depositing it into their account so that means that the customer takes the product they've brought away then the merchant services company

9:38charges the retailer for the use of the merchant services terminal and then the retail has to wait a few days before they get the session that's okay if you're a large corporation if you're a very small business a one-man band small business then you've had to buy the product in from A supplier you've then had to a customer comes in buys one product pays

10:00with his credit card which guarantees the purchase he then takes the product away so you haven't got the product anymore you've then got to wait three or four days before you get your your actual settlement from the merchant services company and then maybe the next day your shop rent goes out and your phone bill goes out and start wages and so forth and you don't have the cash

10:22flow because you've got to wait a few days and you've got to pay all the merchant services charges it's impossible that way to compete with a large corporation because they can afford to pay the same terms as you would do as a small shop so it's a kind of unfair on the small business so the idea the credit system you get instant settlements the cost of

10:45transactions is substantially lower than it would be with the traditional National Services provider and the central banks and the and the governments and so forth whatever Central organization is can't suddenly make a monetary policy that's detrimental to your small business because you are in control you are not only using the e-credit system to

11:05Empower yourself and to actually decentralize yourself and get yourself onto the same level as your consumers but you're also defining your own policy because you are a member of this you're a part owner and a partial obviously you can sustain your own business and live in the comfort that nothing suddenly will change it's out of your control because you're building

11:26your own peer-to-peer blockchain based system for everyday business and everyday consumerism for the ad infinitive basically and also of course it is the modern way is to get away from fragmentation of the retail world so with an e-wide app for example a non-custodial e-wallet map each Merchant that is in your area or

11:54selling a certain item that you might need shows up on the map so you don't need to have a fragmented system everything is in one place and that means that Merchants can spend less on Advertising because they would already made customer base with their e-wallet users so I think that's a really useful use case for generally speaking decentralized ways of doing

12:16decentralized merchant services lower the marketing costs and to bring about a Community Driven field so that everybody needs on one level then you have a community feel about it so that you can reach your customers and they can reach you through the same people-driven Community very interesting Andrew and is the is the a global movement are there any

12:41restrictions on businesses joining it and you know is there any kind of central geographies that are sort of where this is in where the Inception is starting and where the growth is happening that's really interesting because we are that's a really important point because we are living in a borderless world now and certainly the cost of doing business internationally if you're

13:03an online business or if you're an online consumer it's very expensive still even today to do business International because you have to convert your fiat currency into a different currency you're calling the bank will charge you for that conversion Forex conversion rate you might have to pay a fee for it even if you live in Europe or in the United

13:21States between US and Canada if it's the same continent there are relationships between those Banks central banks but they still use corresponding Banks which take two or three days to transform the charge of money for it to their extra charges associated with it plus the exchange rate and the Fiat currencies which very at the moment has been very

13:39volatile there was two or three decades of not much volatility but suddenly over the last three years a lot of volatility in the foreign currency markets which means it's very hard to measure what you will actually get if you buy some different online for example so this studies that out you have a one Global One World peer-to-peer currency with the

14:00same application and the same notice operandi regardless of who is using it and regardless of financial status anybody can be a member it doesn't matter who they are it costs 60 Euros to become a member of the peoples I see you know and anybody has accepted there's no acceptance criteria it's pure the idea is to empower as many people as possible and globally speaking we are

14:23actually approaching the European regions to start with because that's where our original startout was but of course globally is entirely possible because it's completely decentralized it makes no difference whatsoever who becomes a member because everybody has equal rights and everybody is seen as a as nobody is seen as someone has to prove their status like if you see

14:44most Central organizations it says this product is available subject to status and they will do credit checks on you whatever you have to pay a lot of interest if you don't have them if you don't have the status that's required you either Decline and therefore you're marginalized out yeah society and you can't Empower yourself and you can't get on any ladder for anything or you have

15:06to pay a lot of money to the central institution which is unsustainable it's not it's not good value it's not a fair deal for you or anybody else so the idea is that anybody regards to their status is able to participate in an ecosystem that empowers them and of course later on you can build other projects on this such as real estate projects where you'll be able to

15:28tokenize part of real estate on there and actually list it on exchanges and therefore potentially own property without having to borrow money from it without without having to go down the traditional route of having a mortgage which costs a lot of money and takes a very long time to pay for so the idea is that people who may not have been able to become

15:49financially independent whether they have their own small business or what they want to own their own property or go about it if they're shopping in a cost-effective borderless fashion is able to empower themselves very interesting Andrew and you know one of the there's obviously a lot of benefits there but one of the issues that I've noticed with small businesses is

16:13You know having to pay other parts whether you're buying the products or something and the other people aren't a part of the co-op to have to liquidate or you know pay and fee it and then accept cryptocurrencies but then still have costs and Fiat I'm curious if there's a solution for people's SCE on you know being able to move in and out of a Fiat currencies and

16:37the e-credit system you know until everyone gets on board and everyone's sort of using one currency yes absolutely and you're right the majority of cryptocurrent isn't orientated projects currently because you know there's been so many developments and we see cryptocurrency is a fantastic overall development in the way the world has moved forward it's the next internet

17:02or the next huge leap forward you know it's been the development cycle it's been very quick if you think 10 years suddenly ever and so many things are powered by blockchain projects and it's huge consumer management consultants and companies and large corporations that are investing in blockchain technology to power their distributed Ledger system it's

17:22remarkably quick how that's happened so we take it for Grant we think guys we're the mature industry it's only a decade just over a decade old so what's happening is that I think because of that a lot of the structure of the of these cryptocurrency companies haven't quite gone towards the fully decentralized nature they should yet because yes the currency they are

17:47operating is sort of decentralized but the companies like cryptocurrency exchanges or blockchain projects are owned by Boards of directors and shells it's just like a traditional centralized companies so they might have a blockchain product but the Corp but a customer of that blockchain product is still a customer of a centralized Corporation just like a bank or anything

18:08else so the way to do it is to structure it on a fully decentralized basis for everything centralized and everybody has a saying and then what happens what you should do then is make it so that your your unit of currency in this case the ECS is change agnostic so that you can choose where you want to off-ramp it into fiat currency and who gives you the

18:33best deal on off-ramping it into let's say you do want you do need to use a central currency for some purpose if you go to Europe or the US and you meet Euros or dollars you there should be a way of doing that there should be as Democratic and easy as possible anywhere you like to any any interface you like and off-ramp however you like into whichever code theater codes you'd like

18:55and the best cost possible and of course if you don't want to do that then what you can do is keep your ECS as a currency on your e-wallet and you can have a cold storage on it and then use only UCS but of course we live in times where there is the fiat currency is still very much a dominant new unit of software and currency ever in the world so the idea is to not stick to

19:20what not have to stick to the terms and conditions of one on an off-ramp most most cryptocurrency exchanges and entities are not only centralized in a way that they're structured like normal corporation that you can only on and off round through their exchange which means rather like a bank you still have to pay the same fees they detect or the same

19:41conditions and terms apply as if you're withdrawing dollars or Euros from a normal bank so the way to fully innovate is to remove that completely and completely democratize everything so that there is no centralization whatsoever and people can choose whatever they want to do with their ECS and how they want to offer whatever cost is better for them

20:05okay great information Andrew thank you so much and what is the best way for people to learn more about the people's SCE and the e-credits system well currently we have a lot of we have a YouTube channel we have a telegram Channel where we where we broadcast our news we have and we have a lot of if you if you join if you download the application

20:28the e-wallet application you can sign up to newsletters and we're very active and keeping keeping everybody informed as to what we are developing and working on there's a few exciting projects coming up at the moment for example there's an e-volting where you can actually evolve some ECS which means store them for a year and get a high percentage of return for developer

20:52helping to develop the structure of the and build out the credits ecosystem so there's things like that you can learn about by downloading the app and then signing up to a newsletter and eventually in the New Year there will be orientated notifications so we can keep in contact with our community on what is happening in the development and the

21:15expansion of these yes where it's becoming available which new Merchants were able to offer ECS where you can where you can actually buy things with ECS and so forth so that would be the best way to actually do so and of course if you want to become an FTE member then you join for 60 Euros and then you can actually be in a member and have a have a say in how things operate and actually

21:37part of the building of the of the economy of the future sounds great and I will leave all those links in the description box below as well to make it easy for the viewers thank you so much for taking the time Andrew I'm looking forward to seeing the growth of the people's SCE throughout 2023 and let's definitely follow up in the near future thank you Ashton great to speak to you