here is an example of how cryptocurrency could be approached in a different framework than simply the default 'replace global monetary standard' via new alternative electronic currency... which has a good/bad utopian aspect where realism ranges from the potential to the impossible, and if not differentiating these, could bring about its own destruction as a model if not streamlining and doing what it is best at or focusing on its innovative aspects versus trying to be everything to all people. In this way what if Bitcoin were applied in specific controlled contexts or closed ecosystems where its symbolic value as 'symbolic money' or rather -currency- (which could span data-to-money and vice versa) could function as or mediate electronic ~banknotes (sans bank, or state as bank minus the middlemen and middle-management layer) and function in parallel to the US dollar, outside the system instead of tied into it. Like an island ecosystem that is self-sustaining in its own terms and not directly connected to other existing systems beyond environmental influences, systemic ebbs & flows. Troy Benjegerdes <hozer@hozed.org> wrote:

Does this not describe the copyleft and copyfree software? Or maybe it describes a world where farmers figure out they can make more money by giving away all the food the world needs, and knowing when to sell the rest for profit?

What if the food supply and issue of government subsidization of farming, where money is pad *not to distribute* food, to maintain market conditions, were instead brought into a parallel system that is detached from the US dollar as the mediating currency, and that if farmers can indeed provide all the food necessary, if this were a closed system or a chain of interactions that could be mediated (within certain parameters, perhaps not all) where there are barter or other contracts, say between those connected in a functional ecosystem or food system ecology, (from chemical & product manufacturing to grocers and food-based manufacturers) where an alternative currency like Bitcoin mediated these exchanges in terms of contracts, based on volume and quality per exchange, which could remove entire volatile sectors from the existing speculative monetary system and stabilize these relations, to have a beet farmer trade 100% of their output, and have grocery stores receive this fresh produce at a much lower cost (if not at cost, feasibly) and then resell produce this way, perhaps more like organic coop approaches of bags of vegetables for a fixed price or as a subscription approach to produce, where it would be cashed out or mediated as dollars -- or even better, if the USG has the same symbolic currency, it could be loaded onto EBT or citizen electronic cards and exchanged for every citizen at the grocery store (via Bitcoin/other) for what has already been paid for by the government once already, the citizens then gaining access to food, instead of paying multiple times (akin to multiple taxation, though multiple payments as per the standard realm of public-private overlap and repurchasing scenarios). What if grocers had certain early-chain or direct-link inventories (fresh produce infrastructure moving from farms to stores) and that this was outside the existing money system and yet everything would be okay, remain balanced otherwise, because it is a closed loop, and does not require cashing out within that dynamic. In that an island of interconnections, exchanges, could be mediated in non-monetary though currency terms, and make fair equitable trades. Such that perhaps farmers could trade between themselves this way, or for government services or support via this same system. And stabilize or regulate markets or livelihoods versus using middlemen corporations to do this, in terms of US currency which then is the maximal exploitation of this same chained system, to global biased markets and dynamics, moving money and power away from people into concentrated groups for maximal leverage that functions against people in the system, as a form of subjugation. In other words, what if bitcoin were Farmcoin, etc. Or foodcoin. And what kind of systems could function like this, and how would *value* be determined if it is actually based on information and data, and not relegated to definition in an ever-fluctuating condition of volatile /price/, which is chaos compared to a stable ordering of interactions and fair exchange.