The economics of fully transparent money

[Sjalq]

I was thinking about setting up an escrow service for my local jurisdiction's person-to-person trade of bitcoin when something interesting occurred to me. All I would really need to show that the service was trustworthy was a basic transaction log and the block explorer.

What do you guys think a world would look like where everyone can see what everyone else spent their money on. They could see you paid for a nose job, you could see they are tiling the kitchen, you could both see the CIA trying to pay to overthrow some poor country. Taxes would be inescapable but successfully hiding the mismanagement of government funds would be impossible.

[1715416893]

1715416893

[JellyfishRancher]

Your first paragraph is correct in that to establish trust all you need to do is show a transaction log. That doesn't imply that everyone would know what everyone else spent their money on, because wallets are anonymous and you can just mix bitcoins to unlink them from your personal wallet.

[Sjalq]

true, but eventually such link will be clearly visible if the current method of "post your bitcoin address" is followed. a google miner might even be able to deduce the information with a great amount of accuracy.

[Stephen Gornick]

What do you guys think a world would look like where everyone can see what everyone else spent their money on. They could see you paid for a nose job, you could see they are tiling the kitchen,

Sounds like WingCash

 - http://forum.bitcoin.org/?topic=4232.0
 If I remember correctly, there weren't too many bitcoiners who were fond of the idea.  Feel free to use it and report back though.