just a crazy idea: inverse coin

[torba]

Mining may be a bit of problem with this idea, but right now I'm just trying to figure out major flaws. This is a really weird concept but here I go:

Imagine a crypto currency where everyone owns the maximum amount of coins (22 million in bitcoins case) and having more than 22 million should be impossible, and having wealth is simply having 22 million minus x. Why have this backward ass system? Think about how transactions would work in this system, for Alice to pay Bob, Alice has to accept coins from Bob. The direction the coins move is opposite of that of bitcoin. Thus instead of the person who is sending wealth being able to be an attacker, the receiver becomes the possible attacker, but why would he sabotage receiving wealth?

There are hurdles that I can clearly see, like mining and how to prevent anyone having more than 22 million, but is my idea sound?

[JusticeForYou]

I'm not following your thought process here. Maybe a better explanation.

Currently our wealth is 22M-X especially with an ∞ divisibility. Without a root basis point of a satoshi, measuring up is useless. Measuring down as in your example 22M-X makes more sense. The apparently agreed solution to attrition is to divide further when necessary creating a new basis point yet to be determined. I disagree with this solution but I'm nobody.

If however, I follow your thought process. You give everyone 22 Million VC units to start. May I ask, how do you distribute them and to whom?

[torba]

I'm not following your thought process here. Maybe a better explanation.

Currently our wealth is 22M-X especially with an ∞ divisibility. Without a root basis point of a satoshi, measuring up is useless. Measuring down as in your example 22M-X makes more sense. The apparently agreed solution to attrition is to divide further when necessary creating a new basis point yet to be determined. I disagree with this solution but I'm nobody.

If however, I follow your thought process. You give everyone 22 Million VC units to start. May I ask, how do you distribute them and to whom?

Each address created will start with 22 million units to begin with, this is essentially the same as owning 0 bitcoins, to have buying power, you need have a balance below 22 million, like say you have 21,999,999 balance, this is similar to owning a single bitcoin. The lower your balance is the more you have, so a balance of 0 would be the same thing as having 22 million bitcoins. The reason it's backwards like this to change the direction in a transaction. To gain wealth you have to give away your coins to an accepting party, to loose wealth you have to accept coins.
This puts trust essentially in the receiver of wealth, and I'm sure the receiver's best interest would be to gain wealth.

[JusticeForYou]

OK, I got it.

Have you thought about that ?

If everyone can only have 22 Million and everyone already has 22 Million, the moment you spend the first transaction, you'll give someone more than 22 Million. so, actually there will be a possibility of 22 Million * 5 Billion or so.

Then, with the ∞ divisibility, one could become infinitely wealthy.

[torba]

Oh yea definitely, I'm trying to figure how to verify that the person giving wealth indeed has a below 22 million balance, most clearest way is to have a block chain of transactions, but thats pretty limiting.

[rafsoaken]

Please correct me if I'm wrong - The gist of your idea is to limit wealth with a new type of coin.
The reasoning goes along the lines of "if we had a capped amount of wealth an individual can dispose over, everyone will be better off, as capital is more equally distributed amongst the population", is this correct?

While I think that would be desirable to a certain extent, I fear there is no feasible implementation of this concept. Let's examine what an implementation of it would lead to:

You start of with a bitcoin clone, let's call it LIMITCOIN (tm), that displays every coin balance as 22000 - number of coins.
Additionally it would limit every address/wallet to never go below 0, as the maximum amount of funds associated with it (equivalent to 22000 coins).

For example Andy has 21995 LIMITCOINS (equivalent of 5 bitcoins) and Berta has 22000 (her wallet is empty).

Now the trouble starts. Andy wants to send funds to Berta. How does he go about it? He can only ask her to send him the correct amount of limitcoins,
she has to do that and then he has to accept the transaction.
Besides this being cumbersome, we deal with it as the limitation of wealth has a positive effect on everybody and that's what we want right?
Now sadly, Andy has become insanly rich by taking preorders for LIMITCOIN mining machines and his wallet is at almost 0 LIMITCOINS - what to do?
The story ends after Andy has created 50 more LIMITCOIN wallets to hold his riches and disappears without delivering a single Gigahash.
End.

[frankenmint]

Please correct me if I'm wrong - The gist of your idea is to limit wealth with a new type of coin.
The reasoning goes along the lines of "if we had a capped amount of wealth an individual can dispose over, everyone will be better off, as capital is more equally distributed amongst the population", is this correct?

While I think that would be desirable to a certain extent, I fear there is no feasible implementation of this concept. Let's examine what an implementation of it would lead to:

You start of with a bitcoin clone, let's call it LIMITCOIN (tm), that displays every coin balance as 22000 - number of coins.
Additionally it would limit every address/wallet to never go below 0, as the maximum amount of funds associated with it (equivalent to 22000 coins).

For example Andy has 21995 LIMITCOINS (equivalent of 5 bitcoins) and Berta has 22000 (her wallet is empty).

Now the trouble starts. Andy wants to send funds to Berta. How does he go about it? He can only ask her to send him the correct amount of limitcoins,
she has to do that and then he has to accept the transaction.
Besides this being cumbersome, we deal with it as the limitation of wealth has a positive effect on everybody and that's what we want right?
Now sadly, Andy has become insanly rich by taking preorders for LIMITCOIN mining machines and his wallet is at almost 0 LIMITCOINS - what to do?
The story ends after Andy has created 50 more LIMITCOIN wallets to hold his riches and disappears without delivering a single Gigahash.
End.

I like that story a lot better than the op.   Let me guess, this limitcoin stealing company is named stonfish fields?  they offer the limitcoin buffer.  Because buffering is the opposite of mining right?

[JusticeForYou]

Hey, I just realized. I have 0 LimitCoins. I'm Rich. Lets go to Vegas. It's on me.

[JuenoMT]

I also have considered an inverse coin which I have dubbed 'The HedgeCoin', although I do not consider it an alt-coin. The coins purpose is to allow one to 'hedge their bet' in a curreny investment or exchange as well as to protect and preserve the value of a currency against exchange rate fluctuations. In other words; if say, a merchant sells a particular widget and because of a very narrow profit margin, the merchant must sell the widget at a minimum value in the merchants local currency. The merchant would like to offer customers the option to use bitcoin for payment, but the merchant is highly reluctant to use bitcoin because the exchange rate between bitcoin and the merchants local currency is highly volatile. To solve the merchants predicament, the merchant could use the HedgeCoin to ensure that the value of bitcoin transactions would at the very least equal the merchants minimum sale value for the widget in the merchants local currency. The HedgeCoin will operate much like an option would for stocks or commodities and it's value would move against the value of bitcoin (or any currency for that matter.) The HedgeCoin is just one part of a system of coins I describe on my forum.  (Link to "The Bit Bit Forum:Learn about the LendCoin System)