On Mar 29, 10:32am, Hal wrote:
Subject: Re: What backs up digital money? From: jeff@BlackMagic.Com (Jeff) [snip] Another factor that arises is that if some token does catch on and circulate widely, it could be subject to regulation. I understand that in Las Vegas, some people started using casino chips as money. You could buy things with them, and they were accepted since people knew they could be turned in for cash at the casino. But the Feds cracked down and brought the practice to a halt. (I will ignore for now the question of whether such a crackdown could work on the net, but it would at least be a barrier to the acceptance of such tokens.)
Absolutely- that's certainly the case with anything that "catches on", not just ways of transfering value. If you get big and popular, there will be regulation, thus if life. see: the Internet itself.
The idea of your "market square" token, which represents a basket of other tokens, is interesting, but it seems like you're basically re-inventing money. I don't quite understand the specifics of your proposal, where the market square token is based on the "market value" of the other tokens. In what units is this market value expressed? It seemed like what you had instead was a set of relative prices, where each token was worth a certain number of each other kind. I don't see how you can get a unique market value for each token out of that system. It doesn't seem like the relative value idea really works, anyway, as it suffers from the barter problem that there will be too few people who want to trade their shoe tokens for fruit tokens. That was what motivated the transition from barter to money in the first place, or so the story goes.
In that particular dream-land I was saying that the "market value" of the token follows the trade value of tokens on the exchange- that is to say, if X tokens are being traded for .5 Y tokens and 2 Z tokens, then X, Y, and Z can all be expressed in terms of a common 'A' value. That A is the basis of the market value I was talking about. What is a "dollar" if not expressed in terms of it's purchasing power. The only thing that makes the dollar, or yen, etc, special is it's universal acceptance in whatever marketplace you happen to be trading. I don't think there is any real problem with the idea itself, the implementation in my opinion would be darn near impossible though and would be dependent on the "lack of something better", which a pupular digital cash scheme has already eliminated. But now I'm just repeating your point ...
If your overall point is that even without digital cash, we would end up with some form of electronic money eventually anyway, I think it is true. Entrepreneuers abhor a vacuum, and if the need is there it will be met. But the fact is that we are likely to have digital cash before all these other things, so I don't really see the whole scenario coming to pass. I do think a lot of your specific applications are interesting, though, and hopefully there will be many more creative uses of this technology. I know Eric Hughes a while back was talking about a way for players to transfer wealth between MUD games using a token based system. There are a lot of game possibilites.
Agreed- but what system did Eric Hughes use to implement his idea ? I've yet to find one that isn't buried in patents/controls. Which leads... To my "point" if I had one, and back to my mini-rant ... nobody has any CLUE what these tokens could be used for eventually. This is an entirely new mechanism, one in which unique values can be transferred between people without losing their value to something as simple as duplication. Who knows what could happen if the technology were open to the public- I have big doubts that my car's head lights will be buying electricity from it's powerplant (with the electrical systems overhead charge of course), but I don't think it's unreasonable to think tokens could be passing all around the net for priority bandwidth, or CPU cycles, etc. So if there is a point, it's that we JUST DON'T KNOW what could happen, what this totally new capability could be used for, and we won't unless we have access to it and all the net.developers get a shot. This sounds like I'm complaining and whining like a child for one simple reason- I am. This also sounds like interesting stuff with a lot of potential for one reason- it is. In all of these threads, I forgot to make it clear that I have the UTMOST respect for the people who design and implement these token systems, and crypography people in general. In the end, if nobody wants to give the end user a way to put value into these tokens, so be it- I didn't invent the system(s), all I can do is bitch and moan about it. But if someone came up with a radically new process for creating microchips, they would NOT just patent the process and sell the chips, they'd license and sell the process as well. I'll shut up after this, even I'm getting sick of hearing me-- these tokens systems may be the only good transport of a dollars value, but the transportation of dollars is not the only good use of these token systems.
Hal -- End of excerpt from Hal
Jeff. -- http://www.blackmagic.com/people/jeff Simply Be. SKYDIVE!