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On the Practicalities of Counterfeit-Proof Physical Bitcoins
fsterman writes "What do you get when you cross physical one-way-functions, a distributed and secure datastore, with physical Bitcoins? A viable alternative currency for micro-nations and dictatorships with hyper-inflation." Whatever your thoughts on bitcoin, it's interesting to think about the infrastructure and production cost of the tokens we use as money more generally.
I don't get it why they keep saying that "if 1 penny costs 2 pennies to mint then we shouldn't make them anymore". Unless the government looks at "printing money" as a source of revenue. Which they shouldn't if you're looking at money as a transaction facilitator and nothing else. What happens is that it costs us 2 penny to mint 1 penny coin that will subsequently change hands via payments several million times before it gets too degraded (physically) and has to be retired. Thus the minting cost per transaction for that penny is actually very small. What you're really paying is the cost of the convenience of having pennies available for transactions, and judged per transaction it ain't looking that bad.