3 ms·
One thing that is enforced legally is the IOU. It used to be that a note meant that the bank/government owes you gold for it. Since USD is now fiat, the IOU is
by kovek 5y ago
One thing that is enforced legally is the IOU. It used to be that a note meant that the bank/government owes you gold for it. Since USD is now fiat, the IOU is in the form of ensuring that your debtors actually pay you (simplest form is loans or bonds). Within a jurisdiction that would be done in different ways with the court. Between countries it would be done with the military.
On ethereum, the IOU is that you’re granted a vote to shape the code of the network, and also you can are owed some structured computation cycles.
- magicsmoke 5y agoIf you subscribe to MMT, the IOU here is that the government promises not to throw you in jail for failure to pay taxes if you give them some tokens every year. If you own land within the boundaries of a state, and you decide not to answer the door when the tax man shows up, you'll quickly find out how much ownership you really have. If you decide to go full nomad and never "own" anything, the tokens still work as IOUs in the eyes of the state. Try paying bus fares (public infrastructure fees) or parking tickets (fines/taxes) in bitcoin or gold. Money is an IOU to be free from state violence in return for economic productivity and corvee labor.