Standardised categories embeded with transactions [DEFUNCT idea]

[Rassah]

EDIT: From here http://www.reddit.com/r/Bitcoin/comments/1t9979/standardised_categories_embeded_with_transactions/ce6d84w

"It is easier to confirm if an address belongs to the person you think it belongs to, such as by comparing with the customer data they sell (yes, most companies with loyalty cards sell that data)."

Yeah, that pretty much kills that idea. Thanks Nataniel for pointing this out.


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Since version 0.9 will allow embedding 80 bytes of arbitrary data, and include a merchant processing protocol, I propose that we come up with a list of codes corresponding to categories, to be embeded into transactions when purchasing items. This could be differentiated with a prefix, such as CAT or CG, and kept short by including a number. Example:

CAT0001 would stand for "Groceries"
CAT0843 would stand for "Gasoline"
(the only thing will be embeded would be the CAT0843, and it would be up to the standardising body to designate what each CAT number represents)

and so on. Kept short, this will not bloat the blockchain almost at all, and anyone with a standardised list would be able to parse the category numbers and conver them to actual category names. I believe that this will provide many benefits. A minor one will be easier importing of transactions into financial and accounting software. An enormous benefit will be the ability to see at extremely precise detail what is being bought and sold globally, which would give even more information to the market as a whole to make decisions on what production and services to increase, and which to exit. Since the categories will be standardisedd, and used along with bitcoin's other pseudonimising techniques, this should not pose any privacy concerns. Considering the benefits it provides (and considering BitPay already allows importing accounting information into Quickbooks), this should not be too much of a problem to import into merchant processing systems, and may even be a selling point for merchants that provide the option of categories versus those that do not.

Questions/comments?

[grue]

[...]I believe that this will provide many benefits. A minor one will be easier importing of transactions into financial and accounting software.

But metadata can already be recorded clientside. it provides the same benefits, without the blockchain bloat, plus room for additional data.

An enormous benefit will be the ability to see at extremely precise detail what is being bought and sold globally, which would give even more information to the market as a whole to make decisions on what production and services to increase, and which to exit.

It's hardly "extremely precise" since anyone can attach any label to any transaction.

[Rassah]

[...]I believe that this will provide many benefits. A minor one will be easier importing of transactions into financial and accounting software.

But metadata can already be recorded clientside. it provides the same benefits, without the blockchain bloat, plus room for additional data.

True, but it's more accessible and standardised if it's in the blockchain. True, the merchant provider, such as BitPay, can record this transaction category locally, and transmit the category information in the merchant protocol for the customer's software to pick up, but the history of the data would only be limited to the merchant, and only in the format supported by the merchant processor (if you use something other than Quickbooks, BitPay can't help you). Standardising this to be a part of the transaction would allow any client to label transactions with categories, and give both merchants and customers access to their transaction history categories.

An enormous benefit will be the ability to see at extremely precise detail what is being bought and sold globally, which would give even more information to the market as a whole to make decisions on what production and services to increase, and which to exit.

It's hardly "extremely precise" since anyone can attach any label to any transaction.

That's true, but I believe if adopted globally, the faked labels will be minor noise compared to true data, especially since transactions will likely not be free and spamming will be costly. I believe real time access to such information on a global scale, being able to see what is selling when, for what price, and in what direction sales are moving, would improve business and pricing decisions enormously. Currently, you have to pay a large fortune for even a small market studdy that only focuses on small regions.

[GhostInTheBlockchain]

An enormous benefit will be the ability to see at extremely precise detail what is being bought and sold

I understand the utility of the scheme, but wouldn't some feel this information is a little too personal to embed into a public ledger?

[gmaxwell]

Questions/comments?

You're kidding, right?

[Rassah]

An enormous benefit will be the ability to see at extremely precise detail what is being bought and sold

I understand the utility of the scheme, but wouldn't some feel this information is a little too personal to embed into a public ledger?

If it's generalized categories, and bitcoin is kept anonymous/pseudonomous, all it would do is make

Somewhere in the world, an anonymous person spent 0.05

into

Somewhere in the world, an anonymous person spent 0.05 to buy groceries.


I don't think this would make anything any less anonymous or personal, as long as no addresses are linked to people, and the categories are kept very general.

You're kidding, right?

As a financial analyst and ecoonomist who thinks access to such info would make the job much easier and more valuable for "my kind," not at all. What concerns did you have?