Hacker News Discovers Anonymous Digital Cash

[Hal Finney]

On Fri, Aug 21, 2009 at 9:28 AM, R.A. Hettinga<rah at shipwright.com> wrote:
> <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=777406>

Reminds me I wanted to mention this story I saw in LA Times a few weeks ago:

http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-scrip-money11-2009aug11,0,2714730,print.story

"Local currencies cash in on recession

"Communities in North Carolina, Massachusetts, Arizona and elsewhere
print their own money to encourage shoppers to patronize local
businesses. Local money was last popular during the Great Depression."

Of course these guys aren't legal scholars, but they say:

"Susan Witt, executive director of the E.F. Schumacher Society, which
advocates scrip and other ways to build local economies, helped create
the BerkShares. She said that as recently as the early 20th century,
banks issued their own scrip that would be used in towns and cities
across the country.

"'We gave it up for the convenience of a national currency,' Witt
said, adding that it remains legal to mint your own money. 'Regions
opened themselves to being vulnerable to the ins and outs of the
national economy.'"

I remember back in the day we looked into legality, and it didn't look
good. Some post civil war legislation pretty much shut down local
currencies. I imagine these scrip efforts survive under the sufferance
of the authorities looking the other way, as long as they remain small
and not a threat.

JAT wrote:

> These guys would die of shock if they ever realized that there was an
> actual *ban* [sic] accepting DC in the 90s! (Can't recall the name, even though
> I had several accounts there (here is Saint Louis).

Course he meant "bank". That was Mark Twain Bank:

http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting-people/199510/msg00062.html

Hal