{
  "meta": "Circles UBI | FAQ",
  "title": "How can we help you?",
  "placeholder": "Describe your issue",
  "items": [
    {
      "topic": "Understanding Circles - What’s Going on Here?",
      "question": "What is Circles for?",
      "answer": [
        "Circles is an alternative economic system that acts a bit like a basic income. Rather than wait for someone else, we can build our own economic systems to support each other, and in effect, give each other a basic income. Circles is intended to be a new kind of exchange, completely different than any kind of money in use today. It comes unconditionally, and grows in value based on communities. Circles tokens move through communities through ‘trust connections’.",
        "The goals of this are to foster local economic interactions, and to value those things which are not seen, are invisible, or are not valued under our current system. Circles is building new networks to acknowledge those fundamental things that in the current system don't have a euro value."
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Understanding Circles - What’s Going on Here?",
      "question": "Isn’t this all a bit crazy? All this time and effort just to be able to pay a few tarot card readers?",
      "answer": [
        "We are aware that we are working on a radical new approach. We believe our society is in such a complex crisis, that only something radical can give us a chance to avoid a collapse. Actually, the corona crisis made the importance of our two main foundations newly visible for many people: basic income and the importance of non-material values, such as care and mutual aid. It is now clear to many more people that basic income is the inevitable solution for the crises we face, and will face on an even more severe scale in the coming years."
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Understanding Circles - What’s Going on Here?",
      "question": "Is Circles a real basic income?",
      "answer": [
        "It’s a basic income in the sense that if you are in the system, you will get it without any further conditions, and on each day everybody will get the same share of this economical pie. But in the beginning, we expect it will be more like basic pocket money. And this is actually important in the early stages of the system! We need to let Circles grow naturally, so that the amount of Circles being created every day is in proportion to the amount of goods and services that can be exchanged with Circles. Later, if the system is widely used in a community, we hope it will be able to cover one’s basic needs.",
        "Circles is also meant as basic income in that it is not for saving. The circles token supply is inflationary, which means that if you hold onto your circles for a long time, they actually end up worth less than when you got them. The goal of this is that you and your network are motivated to use your circles instead of sitting on them, which supports a flowing, vital economic system instead of a stagnant one.",
        "Another way to think of this is that circles are decaying, which is also an important part of the Circles ecosystem. If we have more money than available resources, the money loses its value, the system can lose its balance, and then could possibly collapse. So when circles are not needed, they decay in order to not block the space. Like in a garden, the older and dying plants make space for and feed the new growth."
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Understanding Circles - What’s Going on Here?",
      "question": "Why is it good to have a complementary economy?",
      "answer": [
        "Think of it this way: Euros, and the state, and monetary system that is ruled by big banks is like a racing bike. It’s good for some purposes, but not for all of them. If you are on muddy or slippery roads and you want to take your child and your dog along with you, you will need another kind of bike: A complementary bike. Similarly, Circles is a complementary currency - a type of money which is not meant for accumulating, but for local community building."
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Understanding Circles - What’s Going on Here?",
      "question": "Why do Circles have value?",
      "answer": [
        "Money is a sort of language. We agree on its meaning and that agreement is why it has value. It may not seem like it, but it works the same way with euros or with Bitcoin.",
        "Circles’s value is based on the value that people put into it and offer in the community. If you sell your bike for circles, or translate for someone in the jobcentre, and they pay you with circles, this value comes in the system and stays in the community and circulates. We believe this is as real a ‘value’ behind our currency as the gold reserves behind euros, a value we have never seen and never will see."
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Understanding Circles - What’s Going on Here?",
      "question": "Can I get rich with Circles, like the early receivers of Bitcoin?",
      "answer": [
        "Not really. Bitcoin is built like gold: it’s based on scarcity and there are a limited amount of bitcoins that will ever be created. That’s why it’s good for the purpose of storing value. Euros, Dollars, and other money systems you might be used to are very similar in this sense - their creation is limited by governments.",
        "Circles has another approach: it is a currency designed for circulating, not for storing. We, as people, and the economy needs both types of currencies. Circles is optimized not for storing value, but for exchanging it."
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Understanding Circles - What’s Going on Here?",
      "question": "What does Circles have in common with feminism?",
      "answer": [
        "We built Circles to empower smaller communities and to balance out inequalities, some of which are rooted in the ruling system not paying women equally. The dominant economic system devalues care work, and the work that has historically been done by women. Circles is designed to acknowledge and value this kind of work, like taking care of your friend’s pet or babysitting, which is integral to communities but often unpaid. By paying for such services with Circles we give them a new level of visibility and acknowledgement, and when people can pay with Circles at book shops, cafes other places, the payments made for the care work become more legitimate also."
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Understanding Circles - What’s Going on Here?",
      "question": "What does Circles have in common with permaculture?",
      "answer": [
        "The current money system is like industrial, intensive agriculture. The whole landscape is producing the same crop - it’s efficient in a certain way: you can harvest all at the same time, you only need one type of machine, and only one distributor. But you will also need a lot of pesticides and in ecological terms this land will be almost dead. If a new pest comes that is resistant to your pesticides you’re likely to lose your production. This is basically how our current debt-based, state-ruled money system works.",
        "By phasing in complementary currencies, like Circles, we can make the system more diverse. Yes, it will be clumsy (you need to learn Circles, just like you learned airbnb and your new phone) but the economic system as a whole will become more stable. Just like with organic, permaculture agriculture: if you lose your strawberry fields, you will still have your roses and potatoes and cannabis."
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Understanding Circles - What’s Going on Here?",
      "question": "You say the Euro is not democratic or participatory. Why?",
      "answer": [
        "The decisions about the Euro are made in closed groups with central planning, private banks and state entities and the people have no overview and no control above them. Those entities make decisions to issue euros and at what rate, without direct regard or even knowledge of you, your care work, or what you need to live a fearless life."
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Understanding Circles - What’s Going on Here?",
      "question": "And how is Circles democratic, participatory? I see how running a hiking club could be democratic and participatory, but a currency? What are the decision points?",
      "answer": [
        "Using euros as payment is a kind of vacuum cleaner. There is debt on the machines of the farmers, on the trucks of the drivers, on the fridges in the supermarkets, and if we pay with euros for the strawberry that results, a huge part of the value of what we produce ends up at the banks who gave those lines of credit. In other words, this value leaves the real, local economy. If we use circles and participate in a local economy, the money and the value stays close to us and comes back faster. This is one of the most important advantages of complementary currencies.",
        "In the reverse of the euro vacuum cleaner, a top-down money system which sucks up value created locally, circles is a bottom-up money system."
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Understanding Circles - What’s Going on Here?",
      "question": "Do I have to pay taxes on Circles?",
      "answer": [
        "If you are a business, or you accept Circles for some kind of goods or services, you should pay taxes in euros just like you would for any other kind of income: bitcoin, euros, dollar, etc.",
        "Taxation is relative to your jurisdiction and must be handled accordingly. We do not offer tax advice, and recommend that you speak with an expert from your area.",
        "<a href='https://docs.google.com/document/d/1LJnMub2U53AOYXi7HIe_YfrnA3H6ySVf9yUS_iHLRIM/' target='_blank'>Here are sample tax assessments</a> of concrete economic consumptions of Circles, based on German laws."
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Trust Network - What does “Trust“ mean in Circles?",
      "question": "Whom can I pay with Circles?",
      "answer": [
        "You can pay people with whom you have a trust connection. These are the people who trust you, or the people with whom you have a common trusted person.",
        "Trust means they trust the circles that were issued to you, or metaphorically, they give you credit. You should use your trust in the Circles system cautiously - maybe not the way you’re used to on social networks, where you friend people back even if you don’t know them so well. That kind of behaviour would lead over time to the loss of value in your basic income - and maybe not just to you but to your network too. If you trust random people, you might quickly end up in a situation where the real people, whose connection means real economic benefit for you, will revoke their trust in you, to protect the value of their basic income."
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Trust Network - What does “Trust“ mean in Circles?",
      "question": "How does trust work in Circles?",
      "answer": [
        "You can send Circles to someone who trusts you. This means that sending Circles to someone is the reverse direction of trusting someone eg. “I trust you, therefore I accept your Circles” or “You trust me, therefore I can send my Circles to you.”",
        "When you trust someone, you can also send Circles to people in their trusted network, without directly trusting those people yourself. This is called transitive trust, and allows the Circles network to grow more easily.",
        "Example: The person might not trust you, but you happen to own someone else's token besides your own. You can still pay that person with this person’s token. <em>Example: A wants to send B 10 Circles, B does not trust A but B trusts C, A owns 10 C Token and can therefore send these 10 C Tokens to B</em>",
        "You can own multiple different Circles tokens. You are not necessarily only sending your own tokens to someone when you send Circles. You are sending the ones you have a high enough balance of + which has a large enough trust limit.",
        "Read the <a href='https://handbook.joincircles.net/docs/developers/whitepaper' target='_blank'>Circles whitepaper</a> to read more about transitive transactions."
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Trust Network - What does “Trust“ mean in Circles?",
      "question": "Why shouldn’t I trust everyone?",
      "answer": [
        "Hint: you definitely should not! :-)",
        "By trusting people you are consenting to accept the circles that are created for them in exchange for the circles that are created for you. If you trust fake accounts, or people who will stop using and abandon circles, you risk getting stuck holding a bunch of circles created for them that you can’t spend anywhere. If other people in your network see you trusting people recklessly, they may be motivated to revoke the trust they have in you as they too run the risk of receiving fake circles. You can think of this like an immune system, walling off parts of the network that aren’t healthy.",
        "Where there is trust, there is credit. Trusted people are credible people, that's why you should give your trust only after considering the risk you, your business, or community is taking. The last economic crisis happened because credit was spread without consideration. When people realized there was nothing behind those credits, the whole system collapsed. This was an irresponsible way of issuing trust and this is exactly what we want to avoid at Circles. In our system, it’s your own interest to use your trust carefully. If you are careless with trust, it doesn’t hurt the whole system at once, it mostly hurts you, personally. Actually this - the way that the system of trust is implemented and programmed in Circles -  is the very core of our concept, and our way to pass through the toughest bottleneck of a basic income cryptocurrency: how do you put value into money, that comes for free?",
        "The secret is, of course, that it doesn’t actually come for free. Instead of coming by basis of citizenship, or on the basis of having the right documents, this basic income comes by being trusted in a community."
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Trust Network - What does “Trust“ mean in Circles?",
      "question": "Whom should I trust?",
      "answer": [
        "In order to build a living, stable, basic income system with Circles, you should mainly trust people who bring value into the system. Ideally, you should trust people who will sell cupcakes or their bike for Circles, who will help their friends move and get paid for that with Circles, etc. If we have enough of this type of energy in the system, it will take off and fly, and once that happens, we will be able to better support those who truly need this kind of basic income, but are not in the position to give anything in return.",
        "Don’t forget: Circles is about giving each other a basic income. We need here givers too."
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Trust Network - What does “Trust“ mean in Circles?",
      "question": "Why does the app say I can’t transfer Circles?",
      "answer": [
        "Sometimes, there is no path we can send tokens between you and another person in the Circles ecosystem. Every trust connection in Circles does not only have a direction (“from”, “to”) but also a limit. Once the limit has been hit, no more Circles can be sent along that trust connection until some Circles are sent back. In a healthy Circles economy, we won’t hit these limits very often, but it may still happen from time to time.",
        "Trust limits protect you from losing all your own tokens via transitive transactions. This can happen when someone uses your own tokens to send Circles through you to someone else.",
        "A trust limit is the percentage (0-100%) of your Circles supply that you are willing to hold in a given person’s tokens. <em>Example: I trust you 50%, the amount of Circles I have received since I signed up is 100, therefore I am willing to hold max 50 of your tokens</em>",
        "The current default limit is always set to 50% which is very high, and may be lowered in future versions."
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Onboarding in the System",
      "question": "How do I verify my account?",
      "answer": [
        "In order to get verified you must be trusted by three people already trusted in the Circles system.",
        "Please note that people should not verify each other if they have not met in person. It’s very easy for someone to attack the network if they can gain trust from strangers online. You could potentially lose your Circles to a fake account."
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Onboarding in the System",
      "question": "How do I start receiving a basic income with Circles?",
      "answer": [
        "After creating a new wallet you will need 3 incoming trust connections to verify your account. You can request trust by sharing a link to your profile, or in person by having someone scan your profile QR code.",
        "We are hosting regular meet-ups in Berlin during our test phase, where you can come meet the team and connect with other Circles users in person.",
        "Once 3 people have trusted your profile the app will automatically deploy two smart contracts for you to use Circles: your Safe and your own Circles token. You will receive 50 Circles as an initial payout and continue to receive a regular UBI."
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Onboarding in the System",
      "question": "What if I don’t know anyone trusted in the Circles system who can verify me?",
      "answer": [
        "If you are really eager to start something in your location with friends you can access Circles without 3 trust connections and get started in your community:",
        "Send 0.1 xDAI to your account (the address from the link that appears in when you share YOUR profile). The address will look something like this: 0xeb9784F6A6e3d03466974Cb3a5a77c79afbA14e8).",
        "If that doesn't work, try sending 0.2xDAI as it seems to fluctuate.",
        "But again - this will not be useful if you don't add friends, businesses, cooperatives, farmers, etc. that are also willing to exchange products and services with you and transact with you and build Circles on the ground."
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Onboarding in the System",
      "question": "What is a Circles Safe?",
      "answer": [
        "Your Circles Safe is a smart contract that holds the keys to your account.",
        "You can add multiple devices, such as your computer or phone, to your Safe. Adding devices to your Safe can help with account recovery if you lose your seed phrase.",
        "<a href='https://docs.gnosis.io/safe/' target='_blank'>Read more about Safes</a>"
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Onboarding in the System",
      "question": "What if I trusted an account in error, or no longer trust someone in the system?",
      "answer": [
        "You can go to that users profile, tap the trust icon next to their name, and revoke trust. We recommend that you do this as soon as possible to avoid losing your tokens to their account."
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Shared Wallet",
      "question": "What is a Shared Wallet?",
      "answer": [
        "A shared wallet is a wallet that you can open for any group or organization that you're part of. Every person who has a validated trusted accounted in Circles can create a shared wallet and add people to it. Shared wallets do not issue a basic income. To fund your shared wallet you must deposit a small amount of CRC to start. You can later send more CRC to it and receive CRC from others as well. Shared wallets can issue payments to others as well as receive payments. In order to receive CRC from others directly, shared wallets must first trust other accounts in order to receive their CRC. Shared wallets do not have a native CRC token of their own but can hold CRC from others. Because of this reason, shared wallets cannot receive trust, they can only give it."
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Security and Technical Background",
      "question": "How are my Circles Produced?",
      "answer": [
        "Your Circles tokens are created automatically by the Circles smart contracts. Every day when you open the app, it checks the smart contracts for updates. Right now, Circles are paid out at a rate of about 8 per week, inflating 7% per year.",
        "The money is not coming from anywhere outside the contracts - for example, we do not collect and deposit Euro into the system. It’s also not being mined the way some cryptocurrencies are, where it’s paid out to the people who maintain the network. Instead, Circles is paid out to you every day as a reward for being part of the community, and becomes more valuable over time as the Circles community becomes stronger."
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Security and Technical Background",
      "question": "What blockchain is Circles using?",
      "answer": [
        "Circles is using the xDAI blockchain. xDAI is functionally almost identical to Ethereum but has substantially lower transaction costs by being operated by only a limited amount of validators instead of using high energy and cost consuming “proof of work”. You can learn more about xDai <a href='https://www.xdaichain.com' target='_blank'>here</a>."
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Security and Technical Background",
      "question": "How do I secure my Circles account?",
      "answer": [
        "There are two ways to secure your account - saving your seed phrase, and linking other devices.",
        "Saving your seed phrase: We recommend going to your profile page in the app and writing down your 24 word phrase, this is called your seed phrase and you should keep it somewhere safe. You can think of it like a password - we use it to generate your Circles keys.",
        "For security reasons, your seed phrase is normally kept hidden. You can reveal it by clicking on “Export your seed phrase” on your profile page.",
        "Linking devices: We also recommend adding a second device as soon as possible, for example, both your phone and your computer. Adding a device makes it easy to reconnect to your account if one device fails for any reason. You can add a device by going to your profile in the app and clicking “Add new device.”"
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Security and Technical Background",
      "question": "I logged out or lost my device - what can I do?",
      "answer": [
        "If you have lost one of your devices or reset your browser, you will still be able to recover your account with your seed phrase. You can go to the Circles app and click “Connect to existing account” then “Restore from seed phrase.”",
        "If you have a second device that is currently connected to your Circles account, you can still access your account from there. You should also remove the device that was lost or logged out. You can remove lost devices from your profile page in the app.",
        "If you do not have your seed phrase saved, and do not have access to another device where you are logged into Circles, we cannot retrieve your account. You are welcome to create a new account. Note that if your safe and Circles token were not deployed, your account was never fully created and there is nothing to restore."
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Security and Technical Background",
      "question": "What information does Circles collect about me?",
      "answer": [
        "The only data we store is your email address and username - and we will never share it with anyone. Your wallet’s private key lives offline on your device browser, and is not shared with us.",
        "The data recorded by blockchains is publicly accessible, and includes the trust network and your transaction history, but it is not associated publicly with your username or email address."
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Security and Technical Background",
      "question": "If it’s open source, can anybody hack it and take my money?",
      "answer": [
        "Maybe! But we’ve tried to make it hard for them. The main risk for you to know about is that you have a secret 24-word phrase - if you lose this phrase or accidentally share it, you may lose access to your circles. You can read more about account security in our app faq."
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Security and Technical Background",
      "question": "Can I delete my account? What is “the liveness trigger“",
      "answer": [
        "Although you cannot currently delete your account, if you do not collect your basic income for 90 days it will stop being issued. This is referred to as a ”liveness trigger” also known as a “dead man’s switch”.",
        "If after 90 days you have not logged in, or manually called the contract, your basic income cannot be reactivated. You will, however, be able to trade your old tokens. If after 90 days of inactivity you wish to receive a basic income again, you will need to start a new Circles wallet."
      ]
    }
  ]
}
