New Digital Currency Bases Value On Reputation

An anonymous reader writes: If digital currencies are fundamentally different than physical ones, why do they work in the same way? That's a question being asked by Couchbase co-founder J. Chris Anderson, who's building a currency and transaction system where reputation is the fundamental unit of value. "Unlike with bitcoin—which keeps its currency scarce by rewarding it only to those who participate in what amounts to a race to solve complex cryptographic puzzles—anyone will be able to create a new Document Coin anytime they want. The value of each coin will be completely subjective, depending on who creates the coin and why. 'For example, the coin my disco singer friend created and gave me at my barbeque might be what gets me past the rope at the club,' Anderson says. A coin minted by tech pundit Tim O'Reilly might be highly prized in Silicon Valley circles, but of little interest to musicians. 'It's a bit like a combination of a social network with baseball trading.'" Anderson isn't aiming to supplant Bitcoin, or even challenge the money-exchange model that drives society. But he's hoping it will change the way people think about currency, and open up new possibilities for how we interact with each other.

Comments

Paper tracked barter

[msobkow]

This sounds like paper-tracked barter, with a delayed payment on half of the deal. Which is kind of the key problem that money was intended to solve -- money can be traded for *anything*, not just what the issuer has that is of value. This ends up being a throwback to the days of "store scrip", only even more limited.

An interesting experiment, but ultimately futile and pointless.

Re:Paper tracked barter

[drinkypoo]

An interesting experiment, but ultimately futile and pointless.

Without more than a passing familiarity with economics, the point of this exercise seems to me to be to illustrate the way money works without centralization. Isn't this in fact how the international money trade works? If you want to pay for a lot of something with a lot of some kind of currency that nobody wants, you're probably not going to get a very good deal.

Re:Paper tracked barter

[ShanghaiBill]

This sounds like paper-tracked barter

It sounds more like digital coupons. A shop (such as the mentioned nightclub) issues a "coin" that is valued by a customer that wants to go there, but not by others. That is the same as a coupon that can be clipped from a newspaper, or printed from a webpage. Plenty of coupons can already be used from a cellphone, so the "digital" part really isn't new.

Re:Paper tracked barter

[Antique Geekmeister]

Or the way it _doesn't_ work, I'm afraid.

Inventing new, private currencies seems designed for abuse, and the harvesting of all money in the system by arbitrage traders with no practical regulation or control of the abuse. Such "non-currencies" have been tried before, and are inevitably brought down by one of these factors:

        Governments concerned about taxes not being collected on the barter scrip.
        Arbitrage abuse bleeding all the value out of the relevant currencies and destroying smaller investors.
        Fraud by the central scrip maintainers.

All of these occurred with the "company scrip" that was used by many railroads to pay workers and tie their economy to the "company store" in the US expansion west.

Re:Paper tracked barter

[ShanghaiBill]

Isn't this in fact how the international money trade works?

No. If you want to buy Swiss Francs with Zimbabwe Dollars, you will need a lot of them. But the currency traders all more-or-less agree on the exchange rate. You aren't going to get a different exchange rate depending on what you want to ultimately buy with the Francs. These "Document Coins" are different. The coin issued by the nightclub can only be used to go to that nightclub. You can't use it to buy groceries (unless the grocer goes to the same nightclub, and is willing to spend time negotiating the value of the nightclub coin (unlikely)).

Re:Paper tracked barter

[zidium]

But then again, it worked WONDERS for Worgl, Austria (google "The Miracle of Worgl"), Ithaca, NY, Berkshire Bucks, the Ancient Egyptians (built the pyramids using distributed paper money based on degrading wheat storage), AND the Cathedral economy of the pre-Enlightenment Europe.

Re:Paper tracked barter

[zidium]

This is how the Subway restaurant chain became so huge. Remember their Subway Tickets in the mid-90s through mid-00s?

Re:Paper tracked barter

[ColdWetDog]

For a quick introduction to this concept, pick up a copy of Neal Stephanson's Confusion.

Re: Paper tracked barter

[Anonymous Coward]

Well said. An idea that came from silicon valley in every way. Not thought through, not viable, a reinvention of the wheel. And i know what cred id want my 'document coins' associated with - bicoin. Keep all my crap worthless eggs in one imaginery basket

Re:Paper tracked barter

[nine-times]

I think you might be missing the point, in that it seems like this is not meant to be traded for actual goods and services. It's not supposed to be like money. It's not supposed to have real value. In big letters in the middle of the article, it says, "‘If Bitcoin is the toy version of what we’ll all be using the future, then i want to build the crazy art project version of the future.’"

It seems to be more like a way of quantifying social currency rather than economic currency. I get a lot of 'currency' when a lot of people owe me a favor, when they're figuratively "in my debt". I do something cool for a famous person, and they give me a coin. Now that coin becomes something like a trading card, which I can collect and trade, and who knows if or when it ever makes it back to the original issuer, or whether it would develop economic value.

Re:Paper tracked barter

[Antique Geekmeister]

Thank you for pointing out those examples. I'll be quite curious to see if they manage to survive even a single generation.

It can take time for the factors I mentioned to destroy a private currency. The "Miracle of Worgl", for example was shut down by the Austrian National Bank. (Avoiding federal taxes and control of the economy is always grounds to shut down private or semi-public experiments.) The Egyptian example had actual backing for the currency, and seems to have been government controlled. I'll acknowledge that "government" and "private" currencies might not have meant the same thing in ancient Egypt.

I'm afraid that I'm not clear on what you mean by the "cathedral economy". The manufacture of cathedrals seems to have been a government sponsored "public work" in the modern sense. Can you point to a better description of what you mean?

The Ithaca and Berkshires cases are interesting, but only several of the dozens, perhaps hundreds of such currencies in US history. Are you aware of any that have lasted even a single generation? I'm aware of several that have _failed_ in other cities, in my lifetime.

Re:Paper tracked barter

[UnderCoverPenguin]

Sounds like store coupons to me, or maybe low value gift certificates (like the kind restaurant managers give you, when your meal is a disastar, instead of refunding your money).

Re:Paper tracked barter

[BitZtream]

Cute, you think trading stamps are a subway invention.

Kids these days, know nothing of history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

Re:Paper tracked barter

[BitZtream]

You mean trading stamps:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T...

Re:Paper tracked barter

[sysrammer]

16 tons, what do you get?
Another day older and deeper in debt.
St. Peter don't you call me 'cause I can't go,
I owe my soul to the company store!

TEFord

Re:Paper tracked barter

[Cabriel]

How are these different in implementation, then, from $STORE_BRANDED Gift Cards?

Re: Paper tracked barter

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, if you equate "Computers on the Internet" with "paper". What will make things like document coin work are automated exchanges. You trust your friends and family to follow through on their promises. If one of their friends promises you something you probably trust them a little less, but more than a stranger. Consider a trust network represented as an NxN matrix of probabilities such that the element M(i, j) is the probability that person i assigns to person j following through on a payment or promise directly to person i. The expected value to person i of a coin that can be freely exchanged for any other coin approaches V*M (i, j) for a coin with face value V. Most people won't know much of the trust matrix M, but a free market of coins allows traders to profit by their trust relationships between people and by taking on the risk of mediating exchanges between untrusting people.

Re:Paper tracked barter

[Mandrel]

I do something cool for a famous person, and they give me a coin. Now that coin becomes something like a trading card, which I can collect and trade

The article's description of the system is too vague to pin it down, but I think you've got the right idea.

Famous people can give someone who they want to reward a personal token like their signature, that can be given to others (as a gift or for money). This can be like a digital version where people can display online their collection of famous badges, each cryptographically verifiable by person, date generated (so you can boast of "before they were famous" badges and "on the day of her achievement" badges), and also level (bronze, silver, gold).

But I'm not sure this is any better than money for more physical rewards, like a lunch date with a famous person.

Re: Paper tracked barter

[msobkow]

That's kind of the whole point. This is another "but on the internet/with a computer" idea that's tried and failed many times throughout history.

Re:Paper tracked barter

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm working on my own digital crypto currency, but in mine, the value is based on how pretty the coins are. The coins need not be round pieces of metal, some are rectangular frame-like constructions of wood, covered with a kind of fabric, and pigment-laced chemicals applied by use of a device called a "brush". The fabric coverings depict scenes of nature, ships at sea, or even individual persons...

They may be stored in a vault, though some are so lovely, people hang them on their walls inside frames. The most beautiful are kept in a special bank called an "art museum" they range in value from a few dollars to tens of thousands, or occasionally even more.

Re:Paper tracked barter

[nine-times]

Well it's kind of better for the rich person, probably, since it doesn't actually cost them anything. It doesn't even cost them the time of a lunch date.

Re:Paper tracked barter

[Mandrel]

Well it's kind of better for the rich person, probably, since it doesn't actually cost them anything. It doesn't even cost them the time of a lunch date.

Time is money. Hence signatures. But selfies with celebs seem to be the new signature.

I'm envisioning a smartphone app that allows celebs to transfer a time-stamped, location-stamped, and level-stamped crypto-signed badge to people they meet through RFID smartphone bumps. People can display these badges in Facebook posts, and their collection in a Facebook app.

Tradeable bragging rights with minimal imposition on celebs.

Re:Paper tracked barter

[Jane Q. Public]

Without more than a passing familiarity with economics, the point of this exercise seems to me to be to illustrate the way money works without centralization. Isn't this in fact how the international money trade works?

No.

Money, pretty much by definition, is a standard medium of exchange. It might fluctuate in value a bit here or there, but if it isn't relatively stable, then it isn't good money in the first place. An example of that is the hundred trillion dollar note in Zimbabwe currency.

This experiment would remove any standard: a "coin" would be worth vastly more to one person than another, based on completely arbitrary definitions of "value".

So it isn't a standard -- it's kind of the opposite -- therefore it isn't "money", in any conventional sense. But then neither were Zimbabwe dollars.

Trade is so BORING.

[Anonymous Coward]

As bases for society go, trade is really not much more interesting than theological obligation as a way of running society.

Now we actually have the technological power for it, it would be nice to re-visit voluntary centralised management according to need, where artificial scarcity is discouraged rather than encouraged. (Not to be confused with Stalinism, which was just state capitalism and managed to combine all the worst aspects of both Marxism and the free market under a single owner.)

Re:Trade is so BORING.

[ShanghaiBill]

As bases for society go, trade is really not much more interesting than theological obligation as a way of running society.

Except that societies based on trade tend to be much nicer places to live.

Now we actually have the technological power for it, it would be nice to re-visit voluntary centralised management according to need

Societies based on "need" (Cuba, North Korea, etc.) tend to have very little technology. The problem is that the technology that can be used for "planning" can also be used for communication. Then people will realize how much better the rest of the world lives, and be able to communicate among themselves to organize protests and rebellions.

Re:Trade is so BORING.

[just_a_monkey]

I think the problem rather is what to do if what I consider me "need" differs from what the Zentralkomite says I "need". Or if what I want to produce differs from what Zentral has decided I shall produce.

That's Ripple

[IamTheRealMike]

Ripple, before the name was bought by a Silicon Valley company and changed into something a bit different, was more or less exactly this.

There's a video on the original web page that explains this concept quite nicely. You could set up debt relationships between people and denominated in any currency, including ones you invent on the fly like hours of The Real Mike's time. However it never really took off in a big way, perhaps because it was rather complicated, and bootstrapping such a system from the internet (full of strangers who don't know each other, don't trust each other and may not even exist) is presumably very difficult.

However if the concept sounds interesting you could do worse than check out the original thinking by Ryan Fugger behind Ripple. Satoshi once told me that Ripple was interesting because it was the only system that does something with trust other than centralise it.

Re:That's Ripple

[superflippy]

I was thinking it sounded like whuffie.

Re:That's Ripple

[TheRaven64]

Not really. Whuffle is more sensible as a currency concept - it's fungible. There's no difference in how you can use Whuffle based on who gave it to you. There are some interesting economics papers based on the idea that anyone can create a mint and the value of its currency would be tracked based on the reputation of the person.

Re:That's Ripple

[Shadow of Eternity]

Emperor Norton of San Francisco minted his own money and it was accepted even when the US Dollar wasn't.

Re:That's Ripple

[Anonymous Coward]

too bad Ripple is centralized and has a kill switch built in that governments may use.

Tradeable Facebook Pokes

[CrashNBrn]

Excellent. Now all the social-media pokes and teddy-bears can have collectible value.

Schools

[Anonymous Coward]

Like how some middle schools have their own school currency that is accepted to get out for early lunch; buy stuff at the student store (or use cash); etc.?

Here's the thing about U.S. currency. I think it has to be accepted to pay a debt, right?

Here's my solution

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's try having the Favors Bank from the world of the Crime Syndicate of America. Somebody does you a favor, you owe them a favor.

It'll work out fine.

 

Yeah. No thanks.

[Chas]

Considering how quickly, completely, irreparably and FALSELY someone's reputation can be savaged nowadays, this is just rife for abuse.

Cory thought of this

[Ultra64]

Cory Doctorow wrote a story where reputation acts as money: http://craphound.com/down/Cory...

Re:Cory thought of this

[Anonymous Coward]

As did Charles Stross, in Accelerando

Re:Cory thought of this

[BitZtream]

And Cory Doctorow is someone that should ever be referenced or listen to since when? Let me guess, you think Dailymail is a news source too?

Stack Exchange reputations?

[Lexible]

That seems like it might be a proposal for ways to spend things like SE reputation for things other than bounties on SE. :)

Just don't call it the CSA

[davidwr]

You might make a few few people who still hate the damned Yankees or any number of other groups upset for comparing them to criminals.

Check Mate

[pubwvj]

In other words you're writing a check. Nothing new here. Move along. This is not the news you want to see.

Death

[eric31415927]

So what are the value of Bob bucks when Bob dies?

Re:Death

[Anonymous Coward]

Ask Microsoft?

Disco Stu Likes Barbecue

[CopaceticOpus]

'For example, the coin my disco singer friend created and gave me at my barbeque might be what gets me past the rope at the club,' Anderson says.

The fact that he thinks this is a good example says a lot about his relationship to reality.

It's BARTER by any other name

[Anonymous Coward]

Money is distinguished by a number of characteristics but mostly by abstracting exchange value so it doesn't matter what you do or did to earn the money and it doesn't matter what you want to buy: real money just works. By this fundamental definition, bitcoin isn't yet money, although it is becoming more so as it gets more widely adopted.

Anyway, what is being proposed is mostly stupid. It isn't money; it won't ever be money; and it will really just make barter HARDER rather than easier, so I don't see the point.

I have an idea

[tie_guy_matt]

Why don't we have a digital currency that is backed by the full faith and credit of a national government. We could set up an independent bank that could create this digital currency out of thin air and then loan it to banks while charging a base interest rate (let's call that interest rate the "prime interest rate" may I also suggest we call the bank something other than "federal reserve bank" since that might confuse people into thinking it is part of the federal government even though it is not -- ok you are not going to listen to me! fine!) Then this bank could raise or lower the interest rate to spur growth or to stop inflation. This bank should be regulated so that the chairman of this bank will not be allowed to do stuff like buy much stock (since stock prices will depend on how he sets the rate.) This bank could even print paper versions of the currency that could be used as legal tender. The paper versions of the currency will have no real value what so ever and thus this will be basically a digital currency.

No on second thought this type of made up digital currency will never work! We clearly need to think of something else!

Re:I have an idea

[marcello_dl]

I see what you redid here.

Re:I have an idea

[zidium]

This is absolutely amazing ;-)

Re:I have an idea

[complete loony]

That might actually be an improvement on the current system. What we have now is low level banks issuing digital currency as loans to people. The digital currency is immediately transferred to someone else (or why would you ask for the loan?) and the new owner is tracked by another (or perhaps the same) bank. The "prime interest rate" doesn't really control how much currency the banks create. That only effects the bottom line of the banks 30 days after the currency is created.

completely subjective

[fustakrakich]

As is the "value" of everything. Money certainly has no intrinsic value in nature.

Re:completely subjective

[Arker]

"Money certainly has no intrinsic value in nature."

Money does not exist, as such, in nature. It's a characteristic human adaption - a symbolic medium of exchange allows sharing of information resulting in more efficient economic decisions. It's no exageration to say that it is foundational to civilization, at least as important as the mastery of fire or the wheel.

maybe, maybe not

[davidwr]

See http://www.treasury.gov/resour... .

Short version:
* Yes for " debts, public charges, taxes, and dues."
* Not necessarily for goods or services.

In short, if you go into a store to buy something, they can say "no cash accepted, check or credit card only." But if they extend you store credit, you can pay off that debt later with cash, at least in theory.

Fame not reputation

[Anonymous Coward]

Seems more like its based on fame then reputation. I was hoping that when a coin was minted, one or goods or services had to be selected that the issuer would redeem it in, and reputation would be a measure of an issuers redemption performance.

This is like "Kudos" from "the Algebraist"

[Rabidcat]

This concept of reputation based currency reminds me of the monetary system employed by the fictional race the Dwellers, in the Iain M Banks novel "The Algebraist". A given individual's reputation within that society determines the value of Kudos they have, which they can then barter/trade like money.

Currency

[rossdee]

I don't want a Fiat currency
I want a Ferrari currency

Re:Currency

[Anonymous Coward]

So you want one that's shinier, but breaks down more and costs you more when it fails?

Re:Currency

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, a true American

Your money's not welcome around here

[OzPeter]

Given human nature I can see this ending up not so happy for everyone.

Sigh

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm an asshole, I love trolling, and abusing painkillers. They can't charge me for having negative rep can they? If they do I'm going to need a bailout.

It's not a digital currency

[ArcadeMan]

Sounds more like digital coupons to me. The upside: no scissors needed!

Gamable by design

[mnemotronic]

"Reputation" is a digital artifact that can be manufactured and manipulated. I'd hate to think my payckeck was dependent on my Slashdot Karma times number of Linked/In connections times Stackfault rep. Why not base it on something objective but equally irrelevant like height or nosehair count. Just not size of woowoo.

Charles Stross' Accelerando!!

[zidium]

This is straight out of Charles Stross' scifi novel Accelerando!

Tipsters are warning of an impending readjustment in the overinflated reputations market... His reputation is up two percent for no obvious reason today, he notices: Odd, that. When he pokes at it he discovers that everybody's reputation - everybody, that is, who has a publicly traded reputation - is up a bit. It's as if the distributed Internet reputation servers are feeling bullish about integrity. Maybe there's a global honesty bubble forming.

Valar Morghulis

[SnapShot]

I think he might have stolen the idea from G.R.R. Martin? Valar Morghulis.

So instead of Wage Slaves...

[l0ungeb0y]

We'd have "Attention Slavery" that rewards group think and attention whoring. I'd much rather have an anonymous task based system than something that rewarded sycophants and celebrities. But I recognize this might very well be the currency that Main Stream America's been waiting for.

Re:So instead of Wage Slaves...

[Cinnamon Beige]

We'd have "Attention Slavery" that rewards group think and attention whoring. I'd much rather have an anonymous task based system than something that rewarded sycophants and celebrities. But I recognize this might very well be the currency that Main Stream America's been waiting for.

Look on the bright side, we might finally be able to prove the whole cycle of silence theory via having a way of tracking the dropping reputation of somebody who dares commit such heresies of daring question the group's dogmas, like doubting the One True Holy Solution to life's ills or daring point out internal inconsistencies.

And all without the ethical problems caused by being the ones to set up the experiment, since all we're doing is just observing.

At last, my own friendship currency

[AlienSexist]

I used to joke about giving points to my friends whenever they made me laugh or something. Now there's a slightly more tangible +1. In a commerce sense, my imagination can only see companies using this as a sort of loyalty point program (like exchangable frequent flyer miles).

It will all end up on refrigerator doors

[Anonymous Coward]

This coupon good for ONE HUG!!!

Feeding the Popularity Trolls!

[neversleepy]

The entire concept of Currency (Money), is the equalizer between dis-similar trades, and needs. Money allows someone like a woman's dress designer to purchase eggs from a local farmer, who is a man; and doesn't have any interest nor value given to the Dress design market. In effect, this currency idea would make the dress designer's currency "worth less" to those outside his/her circle. One can not survive solely within their single production circle. And I wouldn't want my currency (Computer Stuff) to be worthless to a butcher; I love BBQ.

And at worst, this reputation "Currency" further extends the High School like Popularity circles, and social hierarchies; many on this site thought laughable at the time. And the majority of us are glad to be rid of. Furthermore, it creates an ongoing social eliteism you can't escape, as your currency is tied to it.

everybody pays taxes, and so values govt money

[raymorris]

The fact that US dollars can be used to pay any debt makes it valuable, yes. Possibly just as important, almost everybody in.the US has to pay taxes even the 46% who get more refunded than they paid. Those taxes have to be paid in USD, so pretty much everybody needs to have some dollars to pay their taxes with. Since everyone needs them, everyone values them. The few people who don't pay taxes can of course trade their dollars with anyone who does pay taxes.

 

"Reputation coins," posted on slashdot by Anonymou

[Anonymous Coward]

disco-singer friend?
wtf.

I do not even want to get into why something with huge dimensionality (not a 1D number) which must be evaluated with intelligence, subjectivity, and context is called a letter, not a currency. Let's just stop at "disco-singer friend." Did this guy just emerge from a 30-year LSD bender with the mistaken idea he's smarter than everyone else and needs to tell the world?

sorry for hating, but I just don't get it. My time has zero value? Isn't this web site supposed to be "filtering" things for me? gnah.

Stupid

[gweihir]

The primary value of currency is universal exchangeability. Remove that and it is worthless. Apparently Mr. Anderson is really, really stupid.

what an opportunity!

[meeotch]

Finally, a safe and financially savvy way to diversify my portfolio. I'm currently at about a 70/30 POG - Beanie Baby mix, but I feel like I'm tilted too heavily toward large caps.

(Ha! Large caps! You see what I did there?)

bad design

[Tom]

A quick scan of TFA is enough to convince me this is fundamentally flawed. Case in point: He doesn't even bother to prevent double-spending, instead relying on an ill-defined concept of "people will notice and devalue you", which is basically handwaving. And that for a problem that's been solved 20 times over.

The idea is cute, but I wouldn't trust his implementation one inch.

Re:bad design

[pla]

FTA: "The value of each coin will be completely subjective, depending on who creates the coin and why."

I don't think this has a problem with double-spending, because it has no actual value.

This has almost no resemblance to "currency" in any meaningful sense, and calling it such amounts to nothing short of deceptive. This looks more like a formalized system of LinkedIn endorsements, except still with the same underlying flaw that your technophobe mother can "endorse" your 133t Perl scripting skills. Or perhaps in the best case, it amounts to a built-in certificate of authenticity for things like celebrity signatures on books or baseball cards.

Bitcoin doesn't need to worry about the competition.

Re:bad design

[Tom]

I don't think this has a problem with double-spending, because it has no actual value.

Wrong. It has not centrally defined value, but it has value. If you give me X for this painting on my wall, then X is its value, regardless of what X is. It could be US$ or pieces of cake or a service.

Re:bad design

[pla]

Wrong. It has not centrally defined value, but it has value. If you give me X for this painting on my wall, then X is its value, regardless of what X is. It could be US$ or pieces of cake or a service.

Yes, I said that poorly, but you chose to ignore my point. The whole reason we use token currencies comes from the convenience of not pricing things in terms of goods or services. We don't need to value a shovel in terms of chickens, or a cow in terms of a number of hours spent weeding your garden. We can agree that X units of currency will pay for a shovel, Y units for a cow, and Z units per hour for weeding the garden.

As for the "value" of DocuCoin, I would repeat (or perhaps clarify) that the coins themselves have no value, in the same way that me scribbling a crappy picture of a cat on an old napkin has no value. Now, if Jim Davis draws a cat on a napkin, you might have something you can sell on ebay for a buck or two - But that has nothing to do with the underlying "coin" of doodling-on-a-napkin. The drawing, and more importantly, who made it, has value; but that puts us back to "how many Garfield sketches does a cow cost?"

Re:bad design

[Tom]

We can agree that X units of currency will pay for a shovel, Y units for a cow, and Z units per hour for weeding the garden.

That's true.

The drawing, and more importantly, who made it, has value; but that puts us back to "how many Garfield sketches does a cow cost?

It depends. What you basically end up with here is custom fiat money. It's the digital version of IOWs. It is worth what I say it is worth multiplied by your trust in me actually holding up my bargain. It's interesting, but we agree that it goes too far on the customizability end.

Defeats the purpose of currency

[LittleIron]

A standard base with a fixed value that is the same for the home builder and the pot dealer (not just in Washington). Otherwise your using barter, which is fine, but highly personalized. Currency needs everyone's agreement to work.

Reputation is Subjective

[jaeztheangel]

Because you can't bank on someone who may fall out of fashion in an instant.

Ask those poor people now stuck with Rolf Harris artwork.

Do not want...

[arfonrg]

Ferrari? Fiat? Both break down far too often.

So, a paperless IOU?

[arfonrg]

So, it's a paperless IUO system. Where do I dump my savings to get into this!?!

My Subjects

[Anonymous Coward]

Noble ladies and lords, I present to you a means to measure the value of your compatriots! Come on, come all, and don't shove. There's plenty of value here for everyone, provided they were born of the right clan, blood, family, and the aristocracy chooses to accept them for whatever decadent activities and frivolities we decide.

Fear not, peasants, for you, will have your own specially designed currency of all your own.

Disclaimer: The dukes and duchesses of the lands cannot be held liable for damages resulting in snubbing, rejecting, and currency conversion failures. Herein, they will still hold the right to refuse service to anyone they so choose, provided they are of a lower rank and value of their cash on hand.

Yours Sincerely,
The Just and Righteous Leader, Chancellor Bellvediere

these are just notes

[geekoid]

And people have been doing them since we needed to trade stored grain.

A currency that isn't fungible..

[tmosley]

...isn't a currency.

Sorry.

Simplified

[Anonymous Coward]

Simplified, wouldn't this basically be "coupons"?

uh... karma

[Anonymous Coward]

Sounds a lot like Slashdot's karma system. I can't believe how obvious that is and the comments seem focused on oddball abuses and hoarding. Can I hoard karma? Is it rife for abuse? please mod those down. Possibly in the sense that a core group could become dominant, but maybe they make good comments. Maybe a currency based on reputation would also have a dominant group and trolls would be shut out. I suspect that a cost being attached to being an attached to being an asshole is very unattractive for many people. While many times I find the comments on Slashdot useless and a waste to even read, occasionally they are pithy and add to the experience. As opposed to YouTube where I feel stupider for even looking at them. Reputation based moderation seems successful.
If reputation wasn't a valid measure, we wouldn't even be talking about this.

New slashdot editors...

[mutherhacker]

..base publishing on randomness. Slowly grind site's reputation to an all time low.

Erds number is now a currency?

[Anonymous Coward]

A system like Erds number is now a form of currency? I actually kind of like it... Except I would be worth negative amounts and the Kardashians would be able to solve the US debt crisis....

Say it how it is!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's different flavored monopoly money, jeez i hope bitcoin dies out it's the biggest scam since forever. No wonder governments are approving it, they are all trying to ride the gravy train.

fuoff beta

[Anonymous Coward]

fuoff beta

Please..

[Anonymous Coward]

So only superstars can mint coins worth anything?

Great, a smattering of confusing and dodgy moneys

[Anonymous Coward]

Let the buyer (or money changer beware)

Money that fluctuates in value in strange and mysterious ways and could be valueless when there is a run on a failed 'reputation'.

Money is supposed to be a meduim of standard exchange not a speculation game or crapshoot.

Fungibility?

[Sir Holo]

If it's not fungible, it is not a currency.

Idiot

[Anonymous Coward]

The value of *every* currency on the planet is based on reputation

Performance Art

[Chelloveck]

Anderson isn't aiming to supplant Bitcoin, or even challenge the money-exchange model that drives society. But he's hoping it will change the way people think about currency

Ah, so the whole thing's just a performance art piece, not a serious proposal. Good to know. Now we can just ignore him until he goes away.

This isn't new

[DeVilla]

They used to call it indulgences.

Reputation

[Anonymous Coward]

So ... how do I unload these Rolf Harris, Jimmy Saville and Ted Bundy currencies?

Worgl

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it was shut down by the privately owned national bank just as you said. This couldn't possibly have been because it posed the threat of replacing the for-profit banking industry...