I was wondering if we could have digital currencies that all of our currency problems could be solved. We could trade based on any standard. We wouldn’t even need government to pay for our services. Keynesians could have their way with charitable NPOs… unless I’m wrong about the currency. A digital currency could solve a lot of our problems for economic philosophies of all ideologies. We could have a digital currency of corn… a digital currency of flour… we could have a digital currency of anything… and people wouldn’t need the government to set up statist services. They could just be around… but this could render governments obsolete. Is there anything wrong with my theory here? What do you think of it? It could be the potential solution to all ideological problems…
not really
Good. Basically it is just an argument for free currency after observing that transaction costs approximate zero.
Yes. Because it is an expression of free exchange. Currently standing in its way are legal tender laws.
Not at all. A currency is a common medium of exchange.
We could use digital conversion rates for different standards. We could in a free digital economy try out any kind of currency we wanted to. It would just get converted into that other currency online… when we make the purchase. Do you follow?
am i misunderstanding? you seem to be just talking about the transmission mechanism whereby people exchange rights to commodities, and you can see that in the future digital technology will have a place; as have the ‘paper’ method of exchanging commodities and the ‘coin’ method.
No. You’re not misunderstanding. Paper money would have a place in the future. What I’m saying is that much of it would be digital… there would be less emphasis on printing money… this way you could choose to use different sorts of commodities for trading… or use a virtual commodity if you wanted to. That’s where I’m going with this… it would allow for more freedom about what currencies are tested… and it could potentially render paper money obsolete.
Yes, I follow, but that’s not the whole story. Something like a flour-based money doesn’t sound very practical regardless of it being electronic or ‘real’. You would need something like 10 tons of flour to pay for, say, a car…
Electronically circulated gold (or other metals) on the other hand… =]
The thing is, electronic barter is NOT the same thing as money - money is a common unit - it is not simply direct barter.
In combination with a few other technologies, I think yes.
From the link: “Digital gold currency in combination with public-key cryptography may soon make it impossible for any government to monitor transactions at all. Even if searched by totalitarian police forces, technologies like perfect forward secrecy would make it physically impossible to obtain evidence to find out how much money anyone possesses or has used to buy particular goods or services. Digital gold currency is already being offered by several firms, although some of them ended up being scams…”