expiring bearer documents

Major Variola (ret) mv at cdc.gov
Fri Mar 26 12:12:24 PST 2004


At 01:59 PM 3/26/04 -0500, R. A. Hettinga wrote:
>At 10:14 AM -0800 3/26/04, Major Variola (ret) wrote:
>>The point is that the asset (a performance) which the
>>bearer-document (ticket) grants access to expires.  I think that's
>>actually orthogonal to the
>>ticket itself expiring.
>
>Okay. The inverse, maybe.

No, they're orthogonal.  You can have a persistant asset,
your access to which expires; and you can have an ephemeral
asset, access to which is persistant.

>Maybe you're talking about a derivative then.

Nope.

>>And, like a 10 year treasury note, appreciate with age.
>
>Isn't that the opposite of what you just said?

Merely an example of an asset which gains value
in a known way, the opposite of an asset which
loses value in known way.

The point is that any anonymous/finder's-spenders
document is a form of cash; but some of these
grant access to time-varying value.

(My insight prompted by learning that its legal
to resell tickets if you go through a licensed
reseller.  My impression had been that all
such transactions were called scalping
and called illegal (despite their being
mutually voluntary) by the current regime.)

(The interesting theme is that the properties
of ordinary cash are separable and in some cases
modifiable, as in the above time-sensitive cash
or the finders-not-spenders variant I once
described here, viz:
One could create anonymous "cash" with the property that its
*not* finder's-spenders because it has a PIN (basically
a stored-value card); and that it would be recoverable
if the anonymity were lost.  )





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