TrustBucks

17 Dec 2003

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tcmay@got.net (Timothy C. May):
...
You want to elaborate on this contention?
If Alice transfers Digicash-type money to Bob, this is because Alice either
bought the DC-money someplace, or already had it, or otherwise arranged
with a bank to make the transaction. Maybe the bank "loaned" her money she
Mistaken terminology, mea culpa. The scheme I was thinking of is
actually called Private Currency. Someone mistakenly labelled the
writeup Digicash and I cut and pasted without thinking. I do know the
difference when my brain is on.

s/Digicash/Private Currency. Apologies to Digicash.

I'll explain Private Currency and why it's good and bad. In Private
Currency you don't "buy the [money] someplace". You mint it when paying.
Alice and Bob check each other's public debt and if neither is scared
off by the other's high debt, they mint a debt for Alice and money for
Bob. They publish a record of the transaction, which is how they knew
each other's public debt in the first step. So in theory the amount of
currency in existance is exactly 0. In practice I wouldn't trust anyone
for a debt that I didn't trust directly for that amount. I believe the
scheme would stall.

I conceived TrustBucks as an alternative that would retain the
decentralization but work.
...
No protocols. No anonymity. No protection against double-spending.
Looks promising. Keep us informed.
Fine. I doubt my mechanisms will be optimal but here you go.

Restraint on double-spending: Each participant publishes a list of the
    ID and value all outstanding TrustBucks of their own variety. Value
    of the notes can be obscured so it can only be verified by someone
    who has seen the note itself.

    What if some participant doesn't publish a complete list? Well, who
    are they robbing? People who directly trusted them for that amount
    and now won't ever again.

Anonymity: Each participant identifies their currency by a randomly
    chosen ID-number instead of name and publishes their ID/value under
    that number.

    However, it's pretty pointless, since the chain of trust has a hard
    time extending beyond people who directly know each other anyways.

A better objection would have been that it's hard to identify a chain of
mutually trusting links between two strangers who want to make a
transaction.

TrustBucks

TrustBuckFella