New Digital Currency Bases Value On Reputation 100
An anonymous reader writes: If digital currencies are fundamentally different than physical ones, why do they work in the same way? That's a question being asked by Couchbase co-founder J. Chris Anderson, who's building a currency and transaction system where reputation is the fundamental unit of value. "Unlike with bitcoin—which keeps its currency scarce by rewarding it only to those who participate in what amounts to a race to solve complex cryptographic puzzles—anyone will be able to create a new Document Coin anytime they want. The value of each coin will be completely subjective, depending on who creates the coin and why. 'For example, the coin my disco singer friend created and gave me at my barbeque might be what gets me past the rope at the club,' Anderson says. A coin minted by tech pundit Tim O'Reilly might be highly prized in Silicon Valley circles, but of little interest to musicians. 'It's a bit like a combination of a social network with baseball trading.'" Anderson isn't aiming to supplant Bitcoin, or even challenge the money-exchange model that drives society. But he's hoping it will change the way people think about currency, and open up new possibilities for how we interact with each other.
I have an idea (Score:2, Funny)
Why don't we have a digital currency that is backed by the full faith and credit of a national government. We could set up an independent bank that could create this digital currency out of thin air and then loan it to banks while charging a base interest rate (let's call that interest rate the "prime interest rate" may I also suggest we call the bank something other than "federal reserve bank" since that might confuse people into thinking it is part of the federal government even though it is not -- ok you are not going to listen to me! fine!) Then this bank could raise or lower the interest rate to spur growth or to stop inflation. This bank should be regulated so that the chairman of this bank will not be allowed to do stuff like buy much stock (since stock prices will depend on how he sets the rate.) This bank could even print paper versions of the currency that could be used as legal tender. The paper versions of the currency will have no real value what so ever and thus this will be basically a digital currency.
No on second thought this type of made up digital currency will never work! We clearly need to think of something else!
Currency (Score:4, Funny)
I don't want a Fiat currency
I want a Ferrari currency