3 ms·

If I can't take your space money down to the diner and buy a plate of bacon and eggs with it, then as far as I'm concerned it's not real. There's a chicken-and

If I can't take your space money down to the diner and buy a plate of bacon and eggs with it, then as far as I'm concerned it's not real. There's a chicken-and-egg problem that I think goes missed or unmentioned by all these crypto startups trying to piecemeal a "solution" to the centralized banking problem: in the monetary system, individuals have absolutely no power, because we're at the bottom of the hierarchy of spending. Joe Schmoe's dollar has value because he can buy a soda at the diner with it. The diner takes the dollar because they can use it to pay their staff and buy more supplies. The supplier takes the dollar because they can pay their staff and and buy raw materials. And in between every layer, the banks store the excess operating capital and profits. Decentralized currency can only work if it can occupy every layer at once, across the world. Anything less is just straight out worse than regular money from a usability standpoint, and that's before you mention that now we're all responsible for our own money security. Yes, people out there have been wronged by the current system, but the average modern human's relationship with money can be essentially summed up as follows: 1. Perform labor 2. Receive paycheck 3. Deposit in bank 4. Purchase food, shelter, and netflix So what is this kind of pseudo-money-computer-chip-paper for? No matter the fancy technology thats woven into its fibers, if I pay the Kong people for 10 Kongs, how do I, Joe Schmoe, turn 10 Kongs into a pizza? How do I, Jane Pizza-Maker, find a supplier that will sell me tomatoes and flour for 10 Kongs? How do I, Rachel Dough-Maker, find a wheat farm that will accept Kongs? All of this has to happen simultaneously, because business owners are busy and don't have the time or the energy to incrementally work space money into their cash flow. Yeah sure, centralized banking has issues. But a bottom-up approach is doomed to failure because we don't live in barter-based villages anymore. Every transaction is part of a hierarchy of money-transfers that extend from the local diner through dozens of entities across the planet and back again. Are you making enough Kongs for all of them?

cptaj 7y ago
It goes unmentioned. Definitely not missed. But its hard to get funding or user buy-in if you say that.
paulgerhardt 7y ago
By that definition, any foreign currency isn't real. I might suggest an alternate definition: Money is a transferable record of debt valid for a period of time and amongst a network of peers. Generally we think of money as local to a country and its government. However, one could imagine a 'minimum viable money' that could work in a space as small as a table and with only a handful of people - and for the purposes of a game like Monopoly, while the game is ongoing the money in the game serves a real purpose. From there things get pretty blurry as any World of Warcraft or Eve player will tell you.
- jen729w 7y ago
  > By that definition, any foreign currency isn't real. And that's why you generally can't pay for your eggs & bacon at the diner in Wisconsin using British pounds. The difference here is that you can trivially go to your bank and exchange those pounds for US dollars. Good luck getting them to exchange your Kong.
- oarsinsync 7y ago
  If I asked you for $10 and you offered me 10 CHF, I'd probably turn you down, as despite 10 CHF being worth more than $10, it's still effectively worth less to me, as my buying power from 10 CHF is significantly lower than it is with $10. I can't pay my taxes with it, I can't buy dinner with it, I can't pay my rent with it. I can't even store it in my bank, I have to pay to convert it first. I suspect most people (especially in the USA, given how relatively few people even leave the country compared to other western countries) don't consider foreign currency to be real. Heck, try spending Scottish Pounds in London (UK) and see what responses you get.
- CptFribble 7y ago
  I get where you're coming from, and I do like the idea of a self-contained centralized physical currency powered by whatever kind of tech, but I think the minimum viable money is much, much larger than the scale of your initial announcement/launch seems to indicate you think it is. The Monopoly example is interesting, because there's enough currency in the box to pick up the entire system and operate it. In that context, the money isn't the point, it's just a tool to operate the Monopoly game-system. Similarly, for us money isn't the point, it's just a tool that powers the human society-system. I think it's better to frame it in terms of the minimum viable society. Figure out how much system it takes for an arbitrary group of humans to operate a society that is indistinguishable from any given slice of modern life, and then derive how much new money you'll need to make and distribute to make it possible to switch all at once. Privately owned or rented homes, food purchased from a store, utilities, transportation, entertainment; all the things that being a human in society entails. All of it needs to be present and purchasable with the new money, or else the new money will have to be converted back to traditional fiat, which as many have said defeats the purpose and introduces a boat of security problems. I like where you all are taking the concept of money, I like the Kong experiment, and I wish there was One Weird Trick to get past the adoption phase and into usefulness, but idk it just seems like all we have are ten thousand interesting experiments.

cptaj 7y ago

It goes unmentioned. Definitely not missed. But its hard to get funding or user buy-in if you say that.

paulgerhardt 7y ago

By that definition, any foreign currency isn't real. I might suggest an alternate definition: Money is a transferable record of debt valid for a period of time and amongst a network of peers. Generally we think of money as local to a country and its government. However, one could imagine a 'minimum viable money' that could work in a space as small as a table and with only a handful of people - and for the purposes of a game like Monopoly, while the game is ongoing the money in the game serves a real purpose. From there things get pretty blurry as any World of Warcraft or Eve player will tell you.

jen729w 7y ago
> By that definition, any foreign currency isn't real. And that's why you generally can't pay for your eggs & bacon at the diner in Wisconsin using British pounds. The difference here is that you can trivially go to your bank and exchange those pounds for US dollars. Good luck getting them to exchange your Kong.
oarsinsync 7y ago
If I asked you for $10 and you offered me 10 CHF, I'd probably turn you down, as despite 10 CHF being worth more than $10, it's still effectively worth less to me, as my buying power from 10 CHF is significantly lower than it is with $10. I can't pay my taxes with it, I can't buy dinner with it, I can't pay my rent with it. I can't even store it in my bank, I have to pay to convert it first. I suspect most people (especially in the USA, given how relatively few people even leave the country compared to other western countries) don't consider foreign currency to be real. Heck, try spending Scottish Pounds in London (UK) and see what responses you get.
CptFribble 7y ago
I get where you're coming from, and I do like the idea of a self-contained centralized physical currency powered by whatever kind of tech, but I think the minimum viable money is much, much larger than the scale of your initial announcement/launch seems to indicate you think it is. The Monopoly example is interesting, because there's enough currency in the box to pick up the entire system and operate it. In that context, the money isn't the point, it's just a tool to operate the Monopoly game-system. Similarly, for us money isn't the point, it's just a tool that powers the human society-system. I think it's better to frame it in terms of the minimum viable society. Figure out how much system it takes for an arbitrary group of humans to operate a society that is indistinguishable from any given slice of modern life, and then derive how much new money you'll need to make and distribute to make it possible to switch all at once. Privately owned or rented homes, food purchased from a store, utilities, transportation, entertainment; all the things that being a human in society entails. All of it needs to be present and purchasable with the new money, or else the new money will have to be converted back to traditional fiat, which as many have said defeats the purpose and introduces a boat of security problems. I like where you all are taking the concept of money, I like the Kong experiment, and I wish there was One Weird Trick to get past the adoption phase and into usefulness, but idk it just seems like all we have are ten thousand interesting experiments.