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This is democracy and decentralization -- allowing private entities to issue their own currencies. It is much better than the single monopoly of the government-

This is democracy and decentralization -- allowing private entities to issue their own currencies. It is much better than the single monopoly of the government-issued money.

ShannonAlther 9y ago
There are many reasons why a single currency may be preferable to many in a single market. The biggest is company scrip[0] but there are others, like the fact that this just creates more market speculation and that vendors have the option to not accept any currency they aren't required to by law. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip
- atemerev 9y ago
  Company scrip is a problem because the tokens are usually artificially priced by the issuer above their market value. If Walmart tokens in Mexico were traded freely, they would have had non-zero value (the ability to buy something at Walmart is better than nothing), but less than their face value. The same thing happened with government money many times, so there's nothing new here. Having a law to always accept some currency in some jurisdiction is convenient, but non-essential (given the availability of exchanges and overall liquidity).
- JumpCrisscross 9y ago
  At least in the United States, a vendor isn't required to accept U.S. dollars for sales. Only to settle debts. If you have a shop, you are free to only sell your wares for loonies. If you're a restaurant, however, and collect payment after the meal, i.e. after issuing credit, then you must accept legal tender.
  - ShannonAlther 9y ago
    That's really interesting and makes sense. However, given how common credit is, the fact that you must accept USD as payment in the US means that USD circulation is going to be really high, and therefore vendors that don't accept it for sales are going to be demolished by others that do. As opposed to BTC, where if you don't accept it, so what? and if you do, you're at least a little unusual.
foepys 9y ago
> allowing private entities to issue their own currencies. It is much better than the single monopoly of the government-issued money. Please elaborate on this. Why is it better for the people to have dozens of currencies that they can only use for a very limited selection of stores and have to trade for other uses? The only incentive for "private currencies", that I heard of, is to confuse customers and make them forget that they are, in fact, using real money and not only digital tokens.
- atemerev 9y ago
  There is an entire classical book on it, available for free: https://mises.org/library/denationalisation-money-argument-refined https://mises.org/library/denationalisation-money-argument-r...
  - mintplant 9y ago
    I downvoted this comment because I don't think telling someone to go read an entire book effectively contributes to the discussion. Could you summarize the main points/arguments?
    - andai 9y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denationalization_of_Money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denationalization_of_Money > According to Hayek, instead of a national government issuing a specific currency, use of which is imposed on all members of its economy by force in the form of legal tender laws, private businesses should be allowed to issue their own forms of money, deciding how to do so on their own. > In 1978 Hayek published a revised and enlarged edition entitled Denationalization of Money: The Argument Refined, where he speculated that rather than entertaining an unmanageable number of currencies, markets would converge on one or only a limited number of monetary standards, on which institutions would base the issue of their notes.[2]
- splintercell 9y ago
  > Why is it better for the people to have dozens of currencies that they can only use for a very limited selection of stores and have to trade for other uses? It isn't necessarily better to have dozens of different currencies, but it is better to have the ability to issue your own currencies rather than be dependent upon a single monopoly which may (and does) abuse its power. Second thing is, there is no real way to determine how many currencies/tokens are consumers ok with, other than to really try it out in the market. Let me use an example. Today if you have Amazon prime TV, then they have a whole section subscriptions for channels where you can subscribe to Prime, Netflix, Hulu, Crackle, CBS, Showtime, Scifi, History Channel etc, services. Initially it started out with just Prime, Netflix, and Hulu, but now there are so many options, you can't just watch Homeland if you have these three subscriptions. The problem isn't just that you need to pay more, but rather that you have to subscribe to so many services. This is too confusing, but this also means that this is a problem to be solved. In future (and I think some company has already started) to build a package subscription. Maybe another solution would be to have every show a pay-per-view basis (which Amazon already does). The idea is, that the reason why different subscription services exists because of some other, unavoidable business reason. But this can be solved from the user experience point of view differently without resorting to a govt monopoly on entertainment. Same thing goes with these cryptocurrencies. They exist for different, unavoidable business reason, but it is also annoying to have to deal with different currencies, so I believe in future there will be more basket of currencies solution (like ICONOMI) which allows people to hold 2-3 cryptos at max, and from their POV, the conversion and payment to the native currency happens seamlessly.
sharemywin 9y ago
Pretty sure money ends up becoming a monopoly/oligopoly. The more people you can trade with the better. Also, the more people that use it lower transaction fees. Why use something with higher transaction fees. Convenience it's on your phone.
s73ver 9y ago
But if I can't transfer my money out, how is that any better? If I don't like how the US government does things, I can move to another country that will have me, and I can convert all of my dollars to that country's currency. With this, it doesn't appear as if I can take that money out of the system. So that's at least a huge step backwards from what we've got now.

This is democracy and decentralization -- allowing private entities to issue their own currencies. It is much better than the single monopoly of the government-issued money.

ShannonAlther 9y ago

There are many reasons why a single currency may be preferable to many in a single market. The biggest is company scrip[0] but there are others, like the fact that this just creates more market speculation and that vendors have the option to not accept any currency they aren't required to by law. [0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Company_scrip

atemerev 9y ago
Company scrip is a problem because the tokens are usually artificially priced by the issuer above their market value. If Walmart tokens in Mexico were traded freely, they would have had non-zero value (the ability to buy something at Walmart is better than nothing), but less than their face value. The same thing happened with government money many times, so there's nothing new here. Having a law to always accept some currency in some jurisdiction is convenient, but non-essential (given the availability of exchanges and overall liquidity).
JumpCrisscross 9y ago
At least in the United States, a vendor isn't required to accept U.S. dollars for sales. Only to settle debts. If you have a shop, you are free to only sell your wares for loonies. If you're a restaurant, however, and collect payment after the meal, i.e. after issuing credit, then you must accept legal tender.
- ShannonAlther 9y ago
  That's really interesting and makes sense. However, given how common credit is, the fact that you must accept USD as payment in the US means that USD circulation is going to be really high, and therefore vendors that don't accept it for sales are going to be demolished by others that do. As opposed to BTC, where if you don't accept it, so what? and if you do, you're at least a little unusual.

foepys 9y ago

> allowing private entities to issue their own currencies. It is much better than the single monopoly of the government-issued money. Please elaborate on this. Why is it better for the people to have dozens of currencies that they can only use for a very limited selection of stores and have to trade for other uses? The only incentive for "private currencies", that I heard of, is to confuse customers and make them forget that they are, in fact, using real money and not only digital tokens.

atemerev 9y ago
There is an entire classical book on it, available for free: https://mises.org/library/denationalisation-money-argument-refined https://mises.org/library/denationalisation-money-argument-r...
- mintplant 9y ago
  I downvoted this comment because I don't think telling someone to go read an entire book effectively contributes to the discussion. Could you summarize the main points/arguments?
  - andai 9y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denationalization_of_Money https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Denationalization_of_Money > According to Hayek, instead of a national government issuing a specific currency, use of which is imposed on all members of its economy by force in the form of legal tender laws, private businesses should be allowed to issue their own forms of money, deciding how to do so on their own. > In 1978 Hayek published a revised and enlarged edition entitled Denationalization of Money: The Argument Refined, where he speculated that rather than entertaining an unmanageable number of currencies, markets would converge on one or only a limited number of monetary standards, on which institutions would base the issue of their notes.[2]
splintercell 9y ago
> Why is it better for the people to have dozens of currencies that they can only use for a very limited selection of stores and have to trade for other uses? It isn't necessarily better to have dozens of different currencies, but it is better to have the ability to issue your own currencies rather than be dependent upon a single monopoly which may (and does) abuse its power. Second thing is, there is no real way to determine how many currencies/tokens are consumers ok with, other than to really try it out in the market. Let me use an example. Today if you have Amazon prime TV, then they have a whole section subscriptions for channels where you can subscribe to Prime, Netflix, Hulu, Crackle, CBS, Showtime, Scifi, History Channel etc, services. Initially it started out with just Prime, Netflix, and Hulu, but now there are so many options, you can't just watch Homeland if you have these three subscriptions. The problem isn't just that you need to pay more, but rather that you have to subscribe to so many services. This is too confusing, but this also means that this is a problem to be solved. In future (and I think some company has already started) to build a package subscription. Maybe another solution would be to have every show a pay-per-view basis (which Amazon already does). The idea is, that the reason why different subscription services exists because of some other, unavoidable business reason. But this can be solved from the user experience point of view differently without resorting to a govt monopoly on entertainment. Same thing goes with these cryptocurrencies. They exist for different, unavoidable business reason, but it is also annoying to have to deal with different currencies, so I believe in future there will be more basket of currencies solution (like ICONOMI) which allows people to hold 2-3 cryptos at max, and from their POV, the conversion and payment to the native currency happens seamlessly.

sharemywin 9y ago

Pretty sure money ends up becoming a monopoly/oligopoly. The more people you can trade with the better. Also, the more people that use it lower transaction fees. Why use something with higher transaction fees. Convenience it's on your phone.

s73ver 9y ago

But if I can't transfer my money out, how is that any better? If I don't like how the US government does things, I can move to another country that will have me, and I can convert all of my dollars to that country's currency. With this, it doesn't appear as if I can take that money out of the system. So that's at least a huge step backwards from what we've got now.