+1

classic. first sound I thought of when I saw this thread

have you read up on LETS or Complementary Currencies? It's not quite a central bank, more of an issuing authority. There are other software implementations of these systems out there, but they have never been proven to work, whereas bitcoin does work, and this will make a big difference in trying to convince those who are sceptical.  Added to that the fact that there is a lot of innovation in the bitcoin area, and some of these advances could be very useful to a system that was similarly designed.


actually the transactions would have to be tracked. all transactions would have to be public. that is one of the technical issues I am talking about (see above)

at the moment I would like to find out how it would be possible and not get bogged down in doctrinaire debates

There are other ways to digitally transfer money anonymously: through your mobile phone.

Yes, this all sounds feasible enough.

What about the danger of other miners spoofing/manipulating the network? If the value of CompCoins is really low it would be a disincentive to attack but perhaps they could run a different client and change some of the core parameters, because they will have the majority of the peers?

I am worried about the implications of having a p2p currency that will only be used by perhaps thousands of people. The processing power to support transactions on a network that size would be fairly cheap, but if you ended up competing with huge miners/botnets, what would happen then?
 

I would be very interested to hear what you come up with!

of course not!
this idea runs contradictory to most of the principles of bitcoin. it is different entirely and will be developed separately. I am just wondering what parts of bitcoin would need to be modified, how difficult would this be? etc.

+1

Look at League of Legends on reddit. (8,594 readers)

Call of duty: black ops on reddit (4,982 readers)

also, Bitcoin on reddit (856 readers but growing quick!)

/I will stop flogging this dead donkey now

one more thing: I am pretty sure that the EULAs of most games disallow playing the game for money; they won't be able to prove that bitcoin is money (at least straight away) in a court of law, but then they don't need to; they can pretty much arbitrarily ban anyone they feel like, which means sooner or later they will start banning players that play for bitcoin.

thank ye kindly bitboy

very useful indeed

Hi Guys

I am basically only a  hobbyist coder, and I am interested if anyone who knows the codebase comment on the following:

Bitcoin provides the following:

a) A secure peer-to-peer digital currency with no central server
b) Controlled and predictable algorithmic growth in the money supply asymptotically approaching a known maximum
c) Floating exchanges to and from bitcoin
d) A potentially high degree of anonymity
e) A mechanism for making and validating transactions without a central authority

From a Complementary Currency (CC) point of view, we want everything here except b & d. (b) is a problem because in a CC system you need a central issuing authority, with the ability to control the money supply to some extent (my thoughts in this below). (d) is problematic, but perhaps not a deal-breaker, because we want to inspire confidence in the system and avoid accusations of illegal activity.

(b) Would it be possible to change the money creation element of bitcoin so that a central authority could create credit as well as that created by mining? In this scenario the monetary authority would create credit for specific projects, and also run a mining operation to resolve transactions on the network, with the payout for mining being tuned so that it covers the cost of running the hardware (or slightly more than that). This would discourage profiteering but allow enthusiasts to take part if they are motivated to do so.

(d) I presume it would be relatively easy to assign names to wallet addresses; I suppose the issue would be around making sure this was done in an honest manner. Perhaps making the issuing authority the only ones who can create addresses? This has the negative element of not allowing one user of the system to 'recruit' a new user without recourse to the issuing authority. An invite system for trusted users?

(c) exchanges between BTC and CC are not a priority until the CC finds a value

Any thoughts, esp with reference to the code, would be appreciated. thanks

Thanks guys.

I don't have hosting atm, but I am gonna get my code hosted somewhere by the end of the week. I will post back here with the link when I put it up and fully explain my problem.

thanks
ed

You've gotta put League of Legends on that list - such a good multiplayer/tournament game. free too.

Just signed up today.

cmon people!
stackexchange is a truly great web app - it's just such a well designed interface/system. Even this Area 51 staging site is fascinating (I hadn't seen it before), its using that whole gameification thing to encourage interest while at the same time finding out which sites are worth accepting. I've been using SO for years and it is always useful, a bitcoin exchange could work really well.

What I really need to know is more about the codebase. Who can I talk to that might be able to answer some questions about using the bitcoin framework for other money systems?

Sure, I understood that. I don't think it's relevant.

There always has to be an incentive to mine, so unless bitcoin fundamentally breaks then mining will still be important/profitable even past 20 million coins. I think you, and Vandroiy have convinced me that the chances of the 1st outcome are unlikely but the second:

Those who hear the GPU manf plans before the public have an important advantage. you could see a group build up around the manufacturers that have access to newer technologies and trends than others. this is an unfair advantage and I don't see it being controlled unless there is some kind of authority (agh!) to control the dissemination of information and technology.

this is a great idea, in that it sets up a banking alternative to ewallet that users can trust, by participating in it's running.

Are you quite sure? Traders on wall st. eagerly wait on the most obscure of financial news to profit from whatever price movement they expect. News from GPU manufacturers would be analogous to the fed declaring an interest rate hike.

I have just realised a potential hazard for bitcoin.

The big GPU developers could collude with certain miners or traders to profit before others. For example: ATI could release a GPU which is faster if run with certain instructions and then release this code only to select miners. Another (much more likely) example: a new GPU design is created that hashes exponentially faster than the current generation. Traders know that this will cause a price shock, possibly sending bitcoins down in value. Traders dump their holdings and then buy back when the news goes public.

It's almost like the GPU developers end up being like a Federal Reserve which has to be impartial and incremental in their forecasts.

This is not something I had thought about before, but come to think of it, it is a pretty big issue. How can we keep the ATIs and NVidias honest if there is plenty of money to be made and there are no legal repercussions?

You have just made me realise a potential hazard for bitcoin.

The big GPU developers could collude with certain miners or traders to profit before others. For example: ATI could release a GPU which is faster if run with certain instructions and then release this code only to select miners. Another (much more likely) example: a new GPU design is created that hashes exponentially faster than the current generation. Traders know that this will cause a price shock, possibly sending bitcoins down in value. Traders dump their holdings and then buy back when the news goes public.

It's almost like the GPU developers end up being like a Federal Reserve which has to be impartial and incremental in their forecasts.

This is not something I had thought about before, but come to think of it, it is a pretty big issue. How can we keep the ATIs and NVidias honest if there is plenty of money to be made and there are no legal repurcussions?

No one will be forced to do anything.

Imagine you have a local government that is being starved of funds and therefore has to cut back on spending. There are local services that are going to be cut to the detriment of the local population and the local economy. As the spending dries up, so does the spending power of the local population, and this can trigger a negative-feedback-loop that can cause the local economy to spiral downwards.

So instead of cutting services/spending, the local govt instead pays workers for 3 days a week in state currency and two in scrip. As the scrip is spent locally, assets are allocated: the worker pays for food off the greencrocer with scrip, he pays the local farmer in scrip etc. and eventually the scrip is paid back to the local govt in taxes or rents. At that point the local government can decide to retire the currency or use it for further projects etc.

This actually works, and has had notable successes over the years, for example:


There is also another great example from depression-era America but I can't find it right now.

Unfortunately, no.

What I am describing is a scrip system. In a scrip system a local authority, for the sake of argument let's say a local government, issues scrip instead of the state currency as payment for services rendered. This scrip can only be spent in the local region, which promotes local trade, and can also be spent paying rents/taxes to the local government. By creating this closed loop, scrip systems aim to encourage trade and entrepreneurship locally without having to have the funds to back the projects. If they were to use bitcoin they would need to buy the bitcoin in the first place, meaning that issuing scrip would cost the equivalent amount of state currency and thus making the project pointless. Why not just use dollars instead?

You might also be interested in the wiki on complementary currencies.

Hi

I have read in a few discussions here that bitcoin was built with the idea of forking the project for other uses if the need arose in future.

I am wondering whether one could use the bitcoin codebase to back a complementary currency that was designed for a local region? The differences would have to be quite fundamental. For example:

• thiscoin would have to divide the creation of coins between miners and a central authority of some kind (this authority would create currency to undertake local projects, and be able to receive payments in this currency to pay for local services)
• thiscoin would have to have some kind of demurrage built into it to prevent hoarding/speculation.
• thiscoin would float in price against bitcoins

That's all I can think of right now, but I am sure there are more differences. Has any discussion taken place along these lines? Is there any information out there I should be reading?

thanks