[summary -- digital silk road along a web of debt-trust] Umm... money is not anything mystical -- it is just a convienient way to trade and settle debts. It was invented to solve the hassels of trading a pound of butter, for a box of eggs, that for a tightly woven basket, and finaly that for the gun you wanted in the first place. Yuch! accounting!! But electronic computers are good at checking out these kinds of chains automatically. Suppose there were a web of debt-trust. Each person would indicate the other people who's iou's they will accept (and the amount they would be willing to take). Thus I might take (up to $10 of) Jo's, who might take Carol's who might take Terry's, etc. To buy something from me online, you will need to produce an IOU from Jo, Carol or Terry. I would hand it to Jo for verification. Jo would accept it or reject it (perhaps after talking to some other folks online). If it were a CarolIOU, or a TerryIOU I would insist Jo trade it for a JoIOU. All the details could be hidden behind a nice little GUI. Jo and I would continuously balance the books between us by trading JoIOUs for NoybIOU's. After a while one of us might well end up with enough extra IOUs that we want to get paid. Perhaps the other would perform services directly, or pay FRN's or gold, or whatever. If one of my friends wasn't able run an online IOU server, I could probably trade things with my friend for IOU's. Not that I'm running a bank or any thing. With out every one being on line though I don't see an easy way to prevent double spending. Is there a offline multiple exchange token system invented yet? Noyb