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Distributed opencoin

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Can a currency be distributed in term of redeeming the value

Just a short note on the idea:


  • You have a network of issuers of tokens (coins, vouchers etc.).
  • They issue on par with the pound.
  • They commit themself to redeem any token that was issued from an issuer within the network.
  • A central instance issues blank tokens for the issuers. The amount of blanks it gives to an issuer is limited by some rule, e.g. trust of
    other issuers in the network, similar to a credit limit.
  • The central instance does not necessarely redeem tokens, or issue tokens itself.

This all would have ideally the effect that as a customer I can buy a voucher, use it anywhere in the network or get my money back if I don't need the voucher any more.
There is a central instance, but that is not really holding any value, therefore distributung risk
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par?

Posted by moylan at Oct 17, 2007 09:59 PM
you will never achieve 1 for 1 par. the act of transferring from one to the other will incur costs. think of a phone voucher for a pay as you go mobile. somebody has to handle money (quite expsensive!), print off a receipt, data transferred to mobile phone network. this requires infrastructure. a dry spot to run the computer, printer and communications. they only do this to make a profit. a while back the mobile companies tried to limit the amount made by the shops selling vouchers. this led to a boycott till the companies backed down.

once something has value it is 'worth' something to somebody to fake it. currencies get around this my making the token too expensive to counterfeit. how do you make something for nothing? a purely electronic/virtual version would require some electronic trail that would reduce the usage of the system as many people go out of their way to avoid trails paper or electronic.