It's all beside the point to discuss it, but yeah it sounds pretty obtuse and unworkable to me too. But who knows, maybe with future computing paradigms or science fiction virtual world economies or something the model will take off, and if so - that's great. In heterogeneity lies strength.

Remember also that an IANA registry is basically a vocabulary of codepoints used to facilitate unambiguous communication. It doesn't imply any support for or evaluation of a particular subject. It's just facilitating interoperability. There are plenty of pretty-damn-dead protocols in /etc/services.


OK, fair point, I agree I made a mistake here and maybe it wasn't the best of examples, which is probably regrettable. It would be wrong to alter it right now though, since it's not technically relevant to the proposal and that would open a can of worms. Maybe in some later future release someone will flip the example if the system becomes a footnote in history (or a new Goliath against which fresher underdogs might be supported, hah!).

You are more than welcome to propose an alternative, judgemental system, however I do not think IANA wants to spend time building an expert panel to judge such things.  It is easier and more practical to accept all comers an a spirit of openness and cooperation.


Thanks for your support. It's hard to get consensus on anything, particlarly internet wide. I think this principal agreement is the most pragmatic level to seek. As for appearances, I don't have time to worry about this and would prefer to focus on the technical proposals.


Thanks for your input. I am not really sure what you are talking about toward the end there, but I should re-iterate that due to both principal of openness and to the practical concerns regarding IANA workload and procedure for complex judgements, we are going the lowest-friction and least hassle route of giving codepoints to all comers, and this is a good policy for time-saving on politicking - both for the proposals and for applicants.  If you have any technically-oriented feedback it would also be very welcome.

I don't think the ISO will go away any time soon. But yes, an alternate but superset-compatible registry does appear to be the most practical way around the issues people are facing, and not just the Bitcoin community. (For example, you can also observe that there are also no carbon offset trading commodities ISO4217-registered at present, some countries have issues getting registrations, some larger LETS communities probably wouldn't mind one, etc.)


Erp! Well spotted. This will be resolved in draft 03.


Thanks - well spotted, again. It appears, at initial inspection, that this must been caused by a logic bug within the code written to parse the official ISO4217 registry and generate the proposed initial registry contents for the X-ISO4217-A3 drafts. This will also be resolved in draft 03.

Fair question. The whole point of an IANA-managed registry is to supply codepoints to anyone who asks with a reasonable case, in order to support interoperability and innovation, which the current ISO registry does not appear to do. (Just FYI: in this case, though it's not really necessary to justify for the aforementioned reason, the supplying party also shared functional pre-release source code implementing their solution that is soon to be released with significant commercial backing, so it's definitely not vaporware.)

Sure thing! That's just what the proposal is intended for.

In fact, a new version of the draft is already with the IETF Secretariat that should be published in the next few hours that covers Tonal Bitcoin (TBC) by request of another user on this forum.

Any further currencies are welcome to request registration - just PM me here or feel free to be a bit more formal and post to http://group.ifex-project.org/

Regards,
Walter

Erp, thanks, fixed.

Hi there. This post is intended to let alternate cryptocurrency people know about a recent post: https://bitcointalk.org/index.php?topic=127604.0

Registrations welcome (see that page for details).

Maybe it would be useful to give some background for the community here to make sure people understand the nature of the proposal.

The ISO (International Organization for Standardization / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Organization_for_Standardization) provides a various global standards related to a wide range of areas of human endeavour.

The IETF (Internet Engineering Task Force / http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IETF) is the body that has historically developed and maintained the protocols that run the internet - TCP/IP, SMTP, HTTP, POP, IMAP, etc. The IETF's work is generally done in a very formal manner via documents known as Internet Standards Drafts.  The proposal in question is one of these.

These days, a separate body known as IANA (Internet Assigned Numbers Authority) manages various registries or lists on behalf of the IETF. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Assigned_Numbers_Authority

The draft being announced here requests that IANA manages a list of currencies and currency-like commodities that sidesteps some of the issues with ISO's ISO4217 registry (listed in the document) in order to better support the development of internet connected systems.

Of particular interest to the Bitcoin community is that this means that the currently informal use of BTC can be codified and normalized without ISO approval.

Edit: Fair question. Right now the IFEX Project is something like a loose collaboration between a bunch of Silicon Valley companies, some alternative financial systems communities, programmers, members of affiliated standards bodies, academic researchers, former Swiss bank security professionals, and other interested parties. We are certainly not a multi-billion dollar thinktank!

The first revision to the IETF Internet Standards Draft proposal for an IANA-managed registry of ISO4217 alpha-3 like currency and currency-like commodity identifiers has now been published.

The basic idea behind X-ISO4217-A3 is to provide a mechanism for the open identification of currencies or currency-like commodities on the internet that is unencumbered by the limitations of the traditional ISO4217 registry.

This latest revision integrates the following changes:
  - Complete section on input treatment.
  - Expand treatment of formatting and add section on prefix
    selection in response to feedback from Bill McQuillan.
  - Change ISO identifier to 'Z' in response to feedback
    from Bill McQuillan.
  - Add IANA notes on handling ISO duplicate assignments.
  - Modify IANA considerations regarding code maintenance.
  - Correct formatting and typographic errors.

While the latest draft should shortly be available at http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-stanish-x-iso4217-a3-01 it can be accessed immediately via the IFEX Project at https://sites.google.com/a/ifex-project.org/wiki/our-proposals/x-iso4217-a3

Kind regards,
Walter Stanish
The IFEX Project
http://ifex-project.org/

Yes that is me.

I have to say I was pretty amazed to be shown this thread by a friend. How great is the internet? Hehehehe.

For those interested, we are looking for more contributions to Bitcoin ecosystem related standards proposals at http://ifex-project.org/

- Walter

Please be advised that an ISO alternate registry of currencies and currency-like commodities has just been proposed via the IETF.

http://tools.ietf.org/html/draft-stanish-x-iso4217-a3-00

This approach works around the situation by removing the present effective monopoly of registration via SIX (who it should be noted are closely affiliated with SWIFT, and thus may be reasonably considered to have a possible conflict of interest in this registration).

- Walter / http://ifex-project.org/

I am announcing two new technical standards that are relevant to the community. Please allow me to post in Technical. Thanks.