Hi Dan, interesting article, thank you, I’m glad there are people thinking about how crypto currency could be different from conventional currency.
I’ve a response to what you’ve written, and also a thought. I’ll put the response first.
Response — In some respect, I think there’s going to be a kind of darwinian evolution of currencies. I wonder how the features you describe will make yours more or less competitive compared with others? At a minimum, I think you need to “make life better” for all the users of the currency than it would be using another, … but as individuals can move in and out, it’s probably a lot more complex than that!
Thought — do we actually need to create a “currency” at all though? Cryptocurrencyies seem to rather strongly be in the tradition of hard currency, like past coinages, or use of gold or silver. This is in stark contrast to fiat currencies. David Graeber talks about this at length in “Debt, the first 5,000 years”, and how societies move between the two. He also talks about gift economies, pre agrerian cultures that didn’t really use money or keep a record of debt with each other, and how barter was mostly only used between tribes (not within) when they didn’t trust each other much.
It seems to me that the much more fundamental thing in exchange is that — exchange. Keeping a record of debt and credit, and I suppose, allowing settlement at some point. Passing coins about is a way of doing that, it automatically keeps the ledger and settles. But perhaps there are better ways now that we’re digital.
This might allow you and me and our village to create currency based on a record of credit between us, and for this to expand as needed (and perhaps contract if required) to suit our economic activity. It might make it easier to share the risk of a new venture (I’ll try selling your new beer — perhaps it wont sell well, and you won’t come to me wanting payment for the stock that’s gone off).
I don’t know :-) But my suspicion is that the utopic future needs a further departure from hard currency ideas that it seems like you are suggesting.
Thanks.
