Bitcoin Forum

Simple implementation: allow transfers of negative amounts, with no coins backing them. To repay a debt, you specify the transaction representing that debt in the metadata, and send money to the address requested / originating. To acknowledge a debt, pay 1 satoshi or a similar small quantity. Through block exploration, debt could be managed and debt consolidation could be smoothed.

Related, there probably could be some automated solution for issuing bonds and all the spectra of financial instruments
being automated and hardcoded into bitcoin(like) system. The need for banks will be even less then, as all the overhead.
Notary services come next to the mind...

Everyone will just have a supercomputers at home to make sure the world transactions are proven.

There is no way to enforce debt collection, so sending negative amount of bitcoins would be simular to sending invoice. I think it would be easier to create third party software solution with it's own protocol that will act as extension to open source bitcoin client.

interesting idea, although I don't think it is very useful to send an invoice (or debit like you pointed out). It could lead to unstable deals if you aren't going to pay the invoice.

This would not turn out good.
I could just keep deleting my wallet.dat and make new ones.
This would in a sense create infinite spending.

No,no,no.. transfers of negative amounts isn't about bitcoin. We don't need it. Period :).

That is the silliest thing I've ever heard. Simpler to make an additional protocol? Lol. It could be done without changing the blockchain!

Enforcement is NOT an issue, which is exactly why it doesn't matter if you need it. Invoices are incredibly useful. Don't go making new protocols when bitcoin has this stuff in mind.

Okay, so lets say I was able to send BitCoins I didn't have.  Then what?  I now have a negative balance in my Wallet.  What if I drop out of BitCoin right there and never receive bitcoins to fill the whole.  What I have effectively done was CREATE bitcoins without the work of mining them.

Bad and unusable idea all together.

You guys are missing the point. You don't ACTUALLY spend negative coins or get a negative balance. Rather, a transaction where the bitcoin amount sent is negative is just noted in the blockchain but doesn't actually affect anyone's balance. I send you -5 bitcoins doesn't change my balance or yours, it's just a way of recording that I think you owe me 5 bitcoins (or I acknowledge I owe you that much depending on how it would be set up).

It's like sending an IOU on a piece of paper. It doesn't change your bank account, it's just an IOU. Could be valid or invalid, there are other ways you could tack on verification methods or rate limiting. I don't even know WHY you'd want a debt to be recorded in the blockchain, actually. But it wouldn't necessarily have to affect your balance, it's just like a note.

Better think how could you implement whatever it is you need on top of bitcoin protocol not within it. There must be a VERY compelling reason i.e. "life or death of bitcoin" kind to get any significant changes into the protocol at this point.

Gravedig! I'm reasonably certain it would not require any changes to the protocol whatsoever, just changes to the client.

That and other sorts of messages don't need to be stored by tons of people for ever. No one else wants or needs to hear about that.

It might be slightly meaningful if someone had identity of some sort attached to the owing address. Then you could use that info to increase your confidence that someone who is owed by it will be able to pay you, but this all seems unlikely and it's not the purpose of the chain anyway.

Fiduciary bitcoins? It seems to be against the main idea of BTC.