
Show HN: Pinecoin – Money Grown on Trees - pinecoin
https://pinecoin.me
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spdustin
I 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"?

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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.

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acct1771
That's an interesting answer. Even more interesting anecdote, as I don't know
what the point of it is meant to be!

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russdpale
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?

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pinecoin
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!

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fiatjaf
Sounds like an interesting game backed by a super expensive and unnnecessarily
safe backend.

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ocdtrekkie
Question: How is it sustainable for a forest if you advise people to take all
the seeds?

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pinecoin
Good question. Step 5 of the Pinecoin Protocol specifies that cones must not
still contain seeds, which are visible under the scales when dry.

[https://pinecoin.me/#protocol-5](https://pinecoin.me/#protocol-5)

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ocdtrekkie
I don't know what seeds look like on a pinecone. Perhaps you should include
real photo examples.

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pinecoin
Good idea, thanks for the feedback.

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Ruthalas
I second the other person's note regarding seeds.

A detailed illustration would be helpful.

Interesting project!

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pinecoin
Noted, thanks, we'll look at adding more information on identifying seeded
cones.

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gitgud
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!

~~~
pinecoin
Thank you much!

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milankragujevic
This website is incredibly slow to load and hogs my Internet bandwidth. You
should scale down images by at least 5x.

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jcwayne
I give up.

