5 ms·

Google once considered issuing currency - Eric Schmidt

56 points by jitendra_ 15y ago

mrb 15y ago
> The idea was to implement a "peer-to-peer money" system. Wow. I wonder if it literally means they were thinking of duplicating the (world's first) digital peer-to-peer currency: http://www.bitcoin.org http://www.bitcoin.org Or is Schmidt using the term "peer-to-peer" liberally? Edit: looks like I am right, a CNN article specifically mentions Bitcoin: http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/28/technology/google_future_of_internet/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/28/technology/google_future_of_...
- waiwai933 15y ago
  The article says the statement was in response to audience questions, so this may have been in planning before Bitcoin was even released in 2009 (for all we know, Satoshi Nakamoto could be a Google employee who decided to take up the project personally). Not saying this is the case (obviously I don't have any proof either way), and I'm not personally that fond of Google, but Google may not entirely be at fault here.
  - notatoad 15y ago
    I was following along for theverge's live blog of his keynote, i got the impression that this was a pre-bitcoin notion and it was dropped because they predicted most of the problems bitcoin is currently experiencing. To me, the much more interesting part of his speech was that he seemed very in favor of overthrowing governments who restrict Internet access. I may be reading too much into things on both of these points.
- samstave 15y ago
  I lived on a hippy commune from 1974 to 1979 - we had our own currency then, called 'trash' in which we could buy anything we wanted. It was a peer-to-peer currency which was printed on the packs of cigarettes. When I was 4 years old, I bought my first vehicle with Trash, a golf cart which I drove around the property. Bit-coin may be digital, but it is not the first peer-to-peer currency. We also had our own TV station, which was powered by the very first Apple computers. This is where I encountered Apple first...
  - mrb 15y ago
    I edited my post to clarify: first digital p2p currency.
  - ljf 15y ago
    Really interesting - is there anywhere documenting this commune or the currency - I'd love to read more about it, or just your personal experiences.
  - ced 15y ago
    How is the hippy currency peer-to-peer? Isn't it just like any other fiat currency?
- jacquesm 15y ago
  > I wonder if it literally means they were thinking of duplicating the (world's first) digital peer-to-peer currency: http://www.bitcoin.org http://www.bitcoin.org I think you forgot about digicash's product 'ecash'. Claiming a 'first' in any field is difficult, to claim a 'first' in payment systems is a very tricky affair. It may be that bitcoin is the first practical digital peer-to-peer currency but even that is up to interpretation, no doubt someone had something they launched that failed before it and plenty of people would disagree that it is practical as it is implemented today.
  - mrb 15y ago
    ecash was not truly peer-to-peer. On the contrary, the concept relied crucially on centralization as ecash would have been withdrawn from existing banks & credit card companies: http://web.archive.org/web/19970111163957/http://www.digicash.com/ecash/about.html http://web.archive.org/web/19970111163957/http://www.digicas... In fact, bit gold, RPOW, and b-money (from respectively Nick Szabo, Hal Finney, and Wei Dai) were the only similar ideas predating Bitcoin, but none of them were ever implemented... Which is why one can say that Bitcoin truly is the first implementation of a digital p2p currency, where everything, including the issuance of money, is decentralized.
    - jacquesm 15y ago
      Here is a google books link documenting ecash's peer-to-peer capabilities: http://books.google.nl/books?id=4TJtnkaWpp0C&pg=PA115&lpg=PA115&dq=digicash+peer+to+peer&source=bl&ots=V5tiIP77o6&sig=4VV6dlQYSIRbAN9A_dd7wSfF2IQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=m9tNT-LNLoiDhQf-n7Ee&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=digicash%20peer%20to%20peer&f=false http://books.google.nl/books?id=4TJtnkaWpp0C&pg=PA115&#3... You could use your bank to host the software, but it was also possible to run your own. Ecash was very much ahead of the curve at the time and it had features that we can only dream of today.
      - mrb 15y ago
        I do understand that the transfers were peer-to-peer. I could hand you eCash in an offline way, from my device to yours, as if I was handing you a bill, without going through a bank/clearing house network to authorize and validate the transfer. But the issuance of eCash was still done by the bank. This is what makes eCash not 100% decentralized... I would compare eCash to the "pseudo p2p" Napster file sharing network which still relied on a central server (gasp!) to index the files, which allowed authorities to shut down the "p2p" network by closing down that central server.
- ma2rten 15y ago
  What are you trying to say? It's not like Google invented the concept of a search engine either. I always use that example to explain to people that it is not about the idea, but about execution.
  - mrb 15y ago
    I imply nothing negative. I am simply saying it is a significant endorsement of the concept of Bitcoin, when Larry and Sergei look at it and think "maybe we should do something similar".
jandrewrogers 15y ago
Interestingly, the relative weakness of reserve currencies has made this plausible in a real way. As the debt risk of countries becomes closer to the strongest multinationals it creates the possibility for the debt of multinationals to be lower risk than any currency it can be denominated in, which happened briefly a couple years ago for the first time ever. In effect, the debt instruments are currency. Right now, governments have the ability to inflate their currencies to pay for their excessive spending. If non-governmental instruments become stronger than reserve currencies then it will create a novel situation where they can't inflate away the debt even if every other government is doing it. That is new territory. Companies that generate and preserve value on a global basis will have financial instruments that are de facto currencies, much in the way gold is. That would be an interesting time.
- JumpCrisscross 15y ago
  Companies do have "currencies" that can hold value independent of FX - secured bonds. Otherwise, commodities take the role of liquid non-fiat value holders. Substituting a government-backed currency with a corporate-backed one is a terrible idea given that a corporate is subjugated to a sovereign (and pays its debt in sovereign currency [ignoring the marginal role in-kind bond payments play]). Thus, one is accepting an inherently inferior proposition. It should be noted, though, that many multinationals' bonds trade healthier than many sovereigns' currencies.
  - justincormack 15y ago
    Er, bonds are denominated in currencies. There is no independent value.
    - JumpCrisscross 15y ago
      One can just as easily say that currencies are denominated in assets. When valuing a currency one inevitably resorts to trade flow and capital production statistics. A better way to think of these flows is as swaps instead of "buying" things with money. In the modern banking system Treasury bonds function just as much as money as Federal Reserve notes (which are technically a debt). Before the crisis AAA corporate bonds were accepted as collateral nearly on par with Treasury bonds.
joejohnson 15y ago
Maybe Satoshi is a Google pseudonym. Nobody really knows where Bitcoin came from...
impunity 15y ago
The U.S. government takes extreme interest in all alternative currency schemes. Google "e-gold" for more information. There are two areas of human experience all governments consider their own domain: the use of force and the creation of currency.

56 points by jitendra_ 15y ago

mrb 15y ago

> The idea was to implement a "peer-to-peer money" system. Wow. I wonder if it literally means they were thinking of duplicating the (world's first) digital peer-to-peer currency: http://www.bitcoin.org http://www.bitcoin.org Or is Schmidt using the term "peer-to-peer" liberally? Edit: looks like I am right, a CNN article specifically mentions Bitcoin: http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/28/technology/google_future_of_internet/index.htm http://money.cnn.com/2012/02/28/technology/google_future_of_...

waiwai933 15y ago
The article says the statement was in response to audience questions, so this may have been in planning before Bitcoin was even released in 2009 (for all we know, Satoshi Nakamoto could be a Google employee who decided to take up the project personally). Not saying this is the case (obviously I don't have any proof either way), and I'm not personally that fond of Google, but Google may not entirely be at fault here.
- notatoad 15y ago
  I was following along for theverge's live blog of his keynote, i got the impression that this was a pre-bitcoin notion and it was dropped because they predicted most of the problems bitcoin is currently experiencing. To me, the much more interesting part of his speech was that he seemed very in favor of overthrowing governments who restrict Internet access. I may be reading too much into things on both of these points.
samstave 15y ago
I lived on a hippy commune from 1974 to 1979 - we had our own currency then, called 'trash' in which we could buy anything we wanted. It was a peer-to-peer currency which was printed on the packs of cigarettes. When I was 4 years old, I bought my first vehicle with Trash, a golf cart which I drove around the property. Bit-coin may be digital, but it is not the first peer-to-peer currency. We also had our own TV station, which was powered by the very first Apple computers. This is where I encountered Apple first...
- mrb 15y ago
  I edited my post to clarify: first digital p2p currency.
- ljf 15y ago
  Really interesting - is there anywhere documenting this commune or the currency - I'd love to read more about it, or just your personal experiences.
- ced 15y ago
  How is the hippy currency peer-to-peer? Isn't it just like any other fiat currency?
jacquesm 15y ago
> I wonder if it literally means they were thinking of duplicating the (world's first) digital peer-to-peer currency: http://www.bitcoin.org http://www.bitcoin.org I think you forgot about digicash's product 'ecash'. Claiming a 'first' in any field is difficult, to claim a 'first' in payment systems is a very tricky affair. It may be that bitcoin is the first practical digital peer-to-peer currency but even that is up to interpretation, no doubt someone had something they launched that failed before it and plenty of people would disagree that it is practical as it is implemented today.
- mrb 15y ago
  ecash was not truly peer-to-peer. On the contrary, the concept relied crucially on centralization as ecash would have been withdrawn from existing banks & credit card companies: http://web.archive.org/web/19970111163957/http://www.digicash.com/ecash/about.html http://web.archive.org/web/19970111163957/http://www.digicas... In fact, bit gold, RPOW, and b-money (from respectively Nick Szabo, Hal Finney, and Wei Dai) were the only similar ideas predating Bitcoin, but none of them were ever implemented... Which is why one can say that Bitcoin truly is the first implementation of a digital p2p currency, where everything, including the issuance of money, is decentralized.
  - jacquesm 15y ago
    Here is a google books link documenting ecash's peer-to-peer capabilities: http://books.google.nl/books?id=4TJtnkaWpp0C&pg=PA115&lpg=PA115&dq=digicash+peer+to+peer&source=bl&ots=V5tiIP77o6&sig=4VV6dlQYSIRbAN9A_dd7wSfF2IQ&hl=en&sa=X&ei=m9tNT-LNLoiDhQf-n7Ee&redir_esc=y#v=onepage&q=digicash%20peer%20to%20peer&f=false http://books.google.nl/books?id=4TJtnkaWpp0C&pg=PA115&#3... You could use your bank to host the software, but it was also possible to run your own. Ecash was very much ahead of the curve at the time and it had features that we can only dream of today.
    - mrb 15y ago
      I do understand that the transfers were peer-to-peer. I could hand you eCash in an offline way, from my device to yours, as if I was handing you a bill, without going through a bank/clearing house network to authorize and validate the transfer. But the issuance of eCash was still done by the bank. This is what makes eCash not 100% decentralized... I would compare eCash to the "pseudo p2p" Napster file sharing network which still relied on a central server (gasp!) to index the files, which allowed authorities to shut down the "p2p" network by closing down that central server.
ma2rten 15y ago
What are you trying to say? It's not like Google invented the concept of a search engine either. I always use that example to explain to people that it is not about the idea, but about execution.
- mrb 15y ago
  I imply nothing negative. I am simply saying it is a significant endorsement of the concept of Bitcoin, when Larry and Sergei look at it and think "maybe we should do something similar".

jandrewrogers 15y ago

Interestingly, the relative weakness of reserve currencies has made this plausible in a real way. As the debt risk of countries becomes closer to the strongest multinationals it creates the possibility for the debt of multinationals to be lower risk than any currency it can be denominated in, which happened briefly a couple years ago for the first time ever. In effect, the debt instruments are currency. Right now, governments have the ability to inflate their currencies to pay for their excessive spending. If non-governmental instruments become stronger than reserve currencies then it will create a novel situation where they can't inflate away the debt even if every other government is doing it. That is new territory. Companies that generate and preserve value on a global basis will have financial instruments that are de facto currencies, much in the way gold is. That would be an interesting time.

JumpCrisscross 15y ago
Companies do have "currencies" that can hold value independent of FX - secured bonds. Otherwise, commodities take the role of liquid non-fiat value holders. Substituting a government-backed currency with a corporate-backed one is a terrible idea given that a corporate is subjugated to a sovereign (and pays its debt in sovereign currency [ignoring the marginal role in-kind bond payments play]). Thus, one is accepting an inherently inferior proposition. It should be noted, though, that many multinationals' bonds trade healthier than many sovereigns' currencies.
- justincormack 15y ago
  Er, bonds are denominated in currencies. There is no independent value.
  - JumpCrisscross 15y ago
    One can just as easily say that currencies are denominated in assets. When valuing a currency one inevitably resorts to trade flow and capital production statistics. A better way to think of these flows is as swaps instead of "buying" things with money. In the modern banking system Treasury bonds function just as much as money as Federal Reserve notes (which are technically a debt). Before the crisis AAA corporate bonds were accepted as collateral nearly on par with Treasury bonds.

joejohnson 15y ago

Maybe Satoshi is a Google pseudonym. Nobody really knows where Bitcoin came from...

impunity 15y ago

The U.S. government takes extreme interest in all alternative currency schemes. Google "e-gold" for more information. There are two areas of human experience all governments consider their own domain: the use of force and the creation of currency.