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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.
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.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
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.
Considering how quickly, completely, irreparably and FALSELY someone's reputation can be savaged nowadays, this is just rife for abuse.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Cory Doctorow wrote a story where reputation acts as money: http://craphound.com/down/Cory...
So what are the value of Bob bucks when Bob dies?
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!
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.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
I don't want a Fiat currency
I want a Ferrari currency
Given human nature I can see this ending up not so happy for everyone.
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"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.
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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.
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.
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).
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.
The primary value of currency is universal exchangeability. Remove that and it is worthless. Apparently Mr. Anderson is really, really stupid.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
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.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org