Slashdot Mirror
A Cashless, High-Value, Anonymous Currency: How?
jfruh writes "The cashless future is one of those concepts that always seems to be just around the corner, but never quite gets here. There's been a lot of hype around Sweden going almost cashless, but most transactions there use easily traceable credit and debit cards. Bitcoin offers anonymity, but isn't backed by any government and has seen high-profile hacks and collapses in value. Could an experiment called MintChip brewing in Canada finally take us to cashless nirvana?"
Gold:
[x] Cashless
[x] High-Value
[x] Anonymous
... what the best way will be, any anybody who professes omniscience on this is lying to you. We'll have to experiment to find the best solution.
If you're in the US, ask your legislators to support a short act to make such experiments legal. Right now, trying to figure this out is a good way to land in prison.
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
For the sake of discussion: what is wrong with cash and/or what is the benefit of doing away with it?
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
"Bitcoin offers anonymity, but isn't backed by any government and has seen high-profile hacks and collapses in value."
"...isn't backed by any government..."
Sounds good to me. Certainly true anyway.
"...has seen high-profile hacks..."
Bitcoin hasn't been hacked, some Bitcoin websites have been hacked.
"...collapses in value."
There was certainly that big bubble, but other than that it's been fairly stable. Certainly for the last many months.
http://bitcoincharts.com/charts/mtgoxUSD#tgCzm1g10zm2g25
by Cyphase ( 907627 )
With the currency troubles in Greece and Spain, a "cashless society" is much further off. One plan for Greece is to suddenly convert the bank account of everyone in Greece from euros to drachma, then immediately devalue the drachma. Since this is well known, everyone with any money is pulling it out of Greek banks.
Keeping money in "the cloud" means someone else controls it. For a good laugh, read the EULA of WePay, a wannabe PayPal competitor. Or those of Dwolla, which is a pseudo financial institution run out of a hacker space in Iowa. The terms offered by most psuedo-banks in the "cloud" are awful.
Notice the three words after "legal tender" on Federal Reserve notes: "for all debts". Technically, only businesses that extend credit have to accept legal tender. If a business never gives credit, such as a business that requires payment in full before services are rendered, it's my understanding that it need not accept legal tender.
Not backed by anything...is a flaw in bitcoin. I find it hilarious how gold bugs and paultards are some of the biggest fans of a "currency" that has literally nothing behind it. At least our little fiat currency has an army and a bunch of nukes backing it. I'm not against a digital currency but no one in their right mind is going to seriously consider a ponzi-ish currency with absolutely no security in value as a legitimate alternative to the banking/CC industry middlemen for electronic transactions.
It is an abstract representation of value that only has meaning in the context of a society.
It has no meaning or value in and of itself: can't do much with a sack of gold in the middle of the Sahara, unless you meet some tauregs, which brings us back to the point: whatever you agree is a medium of exchange has to derive meaning in terms of what other people think of as value.
Gold has ancient meaning, but ones and zeroes have to stand for something else: a sack of gold in a bank somewhere.
Which implies accountability, traceability, authority.
Without those things, no one in their right mind will accept your currency.
You have to know what currency actually means, and you can't design currency that defies those meanings, or what you have isn't really currency. Except amongst other idealistic clueless fanboys of alternacurrency, but this is a fringe group playing silly games, not actually making something that will replace real currency at large.
There is no trust in the parameters you have outlined. And with no trust, no trade.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
You're also not your IP address. That doesn't mean it can't be traced back to you.
This would put banks in control of ALL money. That's a Very Bad Idea. If you can't "hide it under your mattress", you essentially have ZERO privacy.
Shoes for Industry. Shoes for the Dead.
What part of the last 10 years did you miss where judges have been letting the U.S. government literally get away with murder. They sure haven't been any kind of brake on stopping the government from spying on its citizens.
Judges aren't saints, they are political appointees and they aren't any more reliable or trustworthy than the politicians who appoint them. If you put them on 3, 5 or 9 judge panels they get a little more reliable but if you manage to pack a 9 person court with 5 corrupted or partisan judges, all voting together, you are still screwed.
You should have zero confidence in letting one judge control anything important.
@de_machina