Annex 4.1
A brief timeline of FairCoop

This annex presents a timeline of the history of FairCoop, which I compiled from the testimonies of various interviewees, and from several media reports (Geddis, 2013; Schneider, 2015), websites (Duran, 2008; CIC, 2020; FairCoop, 2021), and research papers (Balaguer Rasillo, 2021; Dallyn and Frenzel, 2021).

2005 to 2008: Catalan activist Enric Duran borrows €492,000 from 39 different financial entities in Spain, and invests the money in various projects and networks focused on alternative forms of economics and politics. He publicly declares he will never repay these loans.

2010: The Catalan Integral Cooperative (CIC) is established. Duran is a founding member.

2013: Duran goes underground to escape from the Spanish justice system.

April-September 2014: Duran and a team of friends acquire the code of Faircoin, then a failed cryptocurrency. Developer Thomas König begins to work on the Faircoin code. By the end of September, CIC members start to invest in Faircoin.

September 2014: The FairCoop (FC) website goes live.

From September 2014 to July 2015: Duran gathers around him an affinity team of activists to work on Faircoin and various other campaigns. They travel around Europe to meet other groups of activists with similar mindsets.

Summer 2015: FC summer camp. The instant messaging software Telegram is adopted to coordinate the work of the various emerging FC groups.

2015: Faircoin becomes listed and traded on the crypto-exchange platform Bittrex.

2015-2016: Following active networking by Duran and others, FC local nodes start appearing around France, Switzerland, Italy, Greece, Germany, Austria, and in Latin America like Brazil, Argentina, and Chile. Online meetups on FC Telegram groups start to attract more people. The market price of Faircoin begins to rise.

July 2017: FC summer camp. An enterprise resource planner software (OCP), and an associated methodology (OCW), are introduced and tested, along with the initiative to build a circular economy, and plans for a new website. A budget of 10,000 euros per month is allocated, via OCP, to people working full-time on FC tasks.

Mid-to-late 2017: The project is in a vital stage, and benefits from the general crypto boom. Faircoin market value increases sharply, to nearly 1 euro, to the benefit of some FC members. An official “assembly price” is decided upon (1.20 euro), in line with the high market price. At the same time, an ongoing controversy around the use of OCP, which many consider a waste of money, reaches new levels of intensity.

Early 2018: Bitcoin crash. Faircoin takes a steep dive. Speculators start buying cheap faircoins on exchanges, and spending them on FC’s online marketplace (FairMarket) at the official price. Merchants then swap their faircoins for euros, which drains the FC account of euros.

March 2018: Faircoin is unlisted from Bittrex.

July 2018: FC summer camp. Duran announces that FC has run out of euros, and that a long waiting list of people are hoping to exchange their faircoins. An affinity group (Komun) born inside FC, emerges more formally, and expresses vocal opposition to Duran’s management of FC.

Summer 2018: The OCP controversy breaks out into open conflict. People who had invested heavily in Faircoin are looking at large losses. A general feeling of “all against all” starts to spread. People who have been working full time can no longer do so. Many people start leaving, either quietly or angrily.

Mid-2019: The CIC formally ceases to function.

Summer 2019: Another physical gathering is convened, to consider how to revive the project. But the need to generate euros to pay the queue of merchants wishing to exchange their faircoins is too big of an obstacle for meaningful progress to be made.

From early 2019 to early 2021, activity in FC as a whole and in most associated projects decreases considerably.

Some projects born within FC remain active in late 2021 – most notably Faircoin, which is the object of a Winter Camp gathering from Dec.17, 2021 to Jan.7, 2022. Nonetheless, testimonials mention conflict and tensions persisting in many projects, particularly around financial questions.