First I'd like to announce that I'm back on the list. Guess all the xcitement is over, huh? -- Eric Hughes wrote:
And suppose that I promised, on the net via a signed message, to trade MM coins for dolars. [...]
I don't belive I would be running a bank: I would maintain no deposits for anyone other than myself.
Nope. You're a bank in this case. A bank is someone who accepts demand deposits, that is, money they give to you which you give them back when they want it. It matters not how the value is stored. The large banks store their value in bank accounts at the Federal Reserve.
I'll interject here. You are not a bank, if you structure yourself correctly. What you are, is someone who is issuing redeemable notes. Or alternatively you are a trustee. If I gave money to my escrow agent, to be paid to me when I want it, she would not be a bank. And if you'll pardon me if someone has missed this, (I have been absent for a bit), but the key element in all of these matters is jurisdiction. Who regulates all of this? The answer of course is no one. The idea of adding value to money is very good. But the methodology which should be utilized is to have value added in one jurisdiction while redemption is in another. The actual storage of value could be in a third. This is the underlying mechanics. BUT, THE LOCATION OF THE BANK is nowhere, since it is in cyberspace (gads, I HATE that word). Unfortunately, too many people are focusing on the net as a way of communicating between locations rather than as an organism unto itself. Let me give a quick example. How difficult would it be to use a system of anonymous remailers, as a large scale machine. Each mailer uses it's latency to communicate it's bit. True each, bit is on a physical machine as an electronic impulse, but that bit is meaning less. It is indistinguishable from any other. This would mean that the bank, would be everywhere simultaneously, without being anywhere at all. It shouldn't be too difficult to ensure that no bit is critical, and that each bit is expendable Comments anyone. -- Istvan