On money in Virtual City: First, a note of history. Strata and I have been talking about money in MUD-type environments (virtual, social, text-based). These discussions are reflected in her document. I had decided after much thought that the MUD type of environment would be a good place to prototype electronic money. I asked Strata about technical details, since I knew that she was setting one up; discussions ensued. A comment from Joichi Ito, a self-professed MUD enthusiast, which he made to me at CFP-93 in March, started this train of thought: "I would pay real money for MUD money." He spends enough time on MUD's that his personal life would be improved by spending cash dollars in exchange for increased ability on the MUD. One of the big problems in creating electronic money is that there must be something to spend it on, that is, some notion of actual value upon which to base the derived value of the electronic money. MUD's seem to have that property. I don't know exactly whence that value arises, but certainly it does factually exist. This question, the origin of value in MUD's, will develop a life of its own, no doubt, as various explanations arise, but this question is not central to any monetary system. What is needed is only that such value exists. Let us stipulate this for the purposes of discussion. Once there is value, an economy develops when there is a means of exchange for such value, typically coins. So the MUD needs a notion of exchange and a notion of representation of value. For exchange, I've designed a conceptual MUD object which is a simultaneous transacter. You put your stuff on the tray in front of you, likewise does your trading partner. After you both press the big red buttons in front of you, the contents of the two trays are magically interchanged. (Magically, of course, since this is a MUD.) Recall the big rotating lucite contraptions that post offices are using. In the MOO (MUD, Object Oriented), one can subclass this transacter and attach robot servers to the other side of the glass, creating vending machines. One particular vending machine could take the coin of the realm and exchange it for a bank note of the same amount. The bank note, digitally signed by the MUD bank, is an informational object. Because it is information and not a MUD object, the note can be freely transmitted _outside of the MUD_. Once you have the existence of such notes, one can set up inter-MUD currency exchanges, test the theory of free banking, and the like. Eric