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There is a really cool project called Ripple that's designed to do exactly what you suggest: build a P2P transaction system where Bitcoin or USD or whatever you

by jvm 14y ago

There is a really cool project called Ripple that's designed to do exactly what you suggest: build a P2P transaction system where Bitcoin or USD or whatever you want is the "specie gold." It's basically a distributed banking system which IMO is an awesome concept. I don't know if this is going to take off but I hope something like it does. http://ripple.com/ http://ripple.com/ (I have an account and about $5 USD in XRP but no other involvement)

rdl 14y ago
There are a lot of technical reasons I dislike Ripple and would prefer to just have a bunch of separate "mint operators" (technical organizations who run servers) and "currency issuers" (financial entities) and "exchanges" (which do instant currency conversion and publish exchange ratios), all using a common protocol, but not one based on consensus across multiple parties for each entity, but fully independent entities implementing their own governance and controls. rdl-USD-001 is a "brand", and if it has weak security or weak financial backing, it trades at a huge discount vs. jvm-USD-001. There's no need for either to be "the official USD". You might create "hn USD" which is an index fund of hn particiant-issued USD obligations. There's no reason for everyone to use the same currencies for store of value, and with exchanges, you can convert to a common currency for transfers. I'd probably choose to display all my prices and account for my personal wealth in units close to USD, but someone else might pick EUR or BTC. Separating the 3 roles of money is the key element here. Ripple essentially tries to be a multi-currency bitcoin. It also has no anonymity.
- jvm 14y ago
  Those are good points. I agree that it's essential to have a way for ripple issues to trade at discounts (another way of saying this is that "Trust" should be continuous rather than binary and it should be dynamically set by markets if possible). It would also be nice for issuance to bear interest as well. However I think that ripple would still have a place in such a system. Anyone could start a trading site using the ripple protocol that allows ripples to be exchanged at relative discounts. The Ripple protocol does treat, say, jvm-USD as different from rdl-USD; when you do a transaction you have to choose the issuer. The nice thing about having a universal P2P protocol is that there could be more than one trading site using the same protocols, and wallets would be seamlessly transferable across them. The P2P network provides the assurance that the issued notes don't rely on a 3rd party. As I said above, I don't really care if it's Ripple or something else but I think this is a really powerful idea, and I would definitely want it to work the way you're suggesting.
  - rdl 14y ago
    The Ripple protocol can't be anonymous because it's a ledger; I'm pretty sure you need to give up at least one of anonymous, decentralized, secure-in-software-only. Bitcoin is decentralized and secure-in-software, as is ripple. Blinded tokens are decentralized and secure in software. Cash (physical notes) are decentralized (per-issuer, like USG vs. JPN)/anonymous. You could do a trusted computing/smartcard protocol which was decentralized and anonymous, too. In both cases the level of security is down to physical counterfeiting or reverse engineering of circuits, which is a much weaker guarantee than cryptography. I don't think there's a tractable software-only, distributed, anonymous system. The only way I could think of doing it is some kind of proof of work where the work required (storage or CPU) was something >50% of all resources in the world. Bitcoin has it easier because it's able to keep a record. You can approximate software-only-secure, anonymous, and decentralized by having lots of distinct software-secure, anonymous systems more easily than you can approximate the trinity from other systems, I think. Even if you use a mix, vpn, etc to anonymize yourself with bitcoin, it leaks enough information to make someone identifiable.

by jvm 14y ago

rdl 14y ago

There are a lot of technical reasons I dislike Ripple and would prefer to just have a bunch of separate "mint operators" (technical organizations who run servers) and "currency issuers" (financial entities) and "exchanges" (which do instant currency conversion and publish exchange ratios), all using a common protocol, but not one based on consensus across multiple parties for each entity, but fully independent entities implementing their own governance and controls. rdl-USD-001 is a "brand", and if it has weak security or weak financial backing, it trades at a huge discount vs. jvm-USD-001. There's no need for either to be "the official USD". You might create "hn USD" which is an index fund of hn particiant-issued USD obligations. There's no reason for everyone to use the same currencies for store of value, and with exchanges, you can convert to a common currency for transfers. I'd probably choose to display all my prices and account for my personal wealth in units close to USD, but someone else might pick EUR or BTC. Separating the 3 roles of money is the key element here. Ripple essentially tries to be a multi-currency bitcoin. It also has no anonymity.

jvm 14y ago
Those are good points. I agree that it's essential to have a way for ripple issues to trade at discounts (another way of saying this is that "Trust" should be continuous rather than binary and it should be dynamically set by markets if possible). It would also be nice for issuance to bear interest as well. However I think that ripple would still have a place in such a system. Anyone could start a trading site using the ripple protocol that allows ripples to be exchanged at relative discounts. The Ripple protocol does treat, say, jvm-USD as different from rdl-USD; when you do a transaction you have to choose the issuer. The nice thing about having a universal P2P protocol is that there could be more than one trading site using the same protocols, and wallets would be seamlessly transferable across them. The P2P network provides the assurance that the issued notes don't rely on a 3rd party. As I said above, I don't really care if it's Ripple or something else but I think this is a really powerful idea, and I would definitely want it to work the way you're suggesting.
- rdl 14y ago
  The Ripple protocol can't be anonymous because it's a ledger; I'm pretty sure you need to give up at least one of anonymous, decentralized, secure-in-software-only. Bitcoin is decentralized and secure-in-software, as is ripple. Blinded tokens are decentralized and secure in software. Cash (physical notes) are decentralized (per-issuer, like USG vs. JPN)/anonymous. You could do a trusted computing/smartcard protocol which was decentralized and anonymous, too. In both cases the level of security is down to physical counterfeiting or reverse engineering of circuits, which is a much weaker guarantee than cryptography. I don't think there's a tractable software-only, distributed, anonymous system. The only way I could think of doing it is some kind of proof of work where the work required (storage or CPU) was something >50% of all resources in the world. Bitcoin has it easier because it's able to keep a record. You can approximate software-only-secure, anonymous, and decentralized by having lots of distinct software-secure, anonymous systems more easily than you can approximate the trinity from other systems, I think. Even if you use a mix, vpn, etc to anonymize yourself with bitcoin, it leaks enough information to make someone identifiable.