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Does the "community" have to be contained geographically? Or would a virtual (but self contained) community count?
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So if I am in a small amish village (entirely self contained) and I can get anything I want within the comumnity using twigs, does that mean twigs are considered money?
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Unfortunately, even "you can get anything you want with X" is still a bit arbitrary. By that definition, most currencies of the world don't qualify, except the big name first world ones. Even those have things that you can't buy with them (e.g., you may not be able to buy a particular food from a street vendor in some particular country
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I really should unsubscribe from this thread rather than continuing to read and getting sucked back in. :P Whether BitCoins are a currency, money, etc. all depends on how you define the terms. Fiat is money by some definitions, and not by others. Similarly, BitCoins are money by some definitions, not by others. Gold is money by some definitions, not
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Glancing through the essay by Wavyhill and Andre Goldman, I still don't see how this solves the centralization issue. While the system definitely makes it harder to track down the vaults, a limited number of vaults still exist simply due to the costs associated with running a vault. Sure, the government can't just look into public records and
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I was looking for real world examples of a medium of exchange that became generally accepted without state influence. I was not inquiring about the theory of how it happens, which is what Origins of Money talks about. I am interested in the empirical data the theory is based on. As for your argument, I said "attempted" because because the
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You have proposed a strong argument and worded it well. I think this is a similar argument to the one filc was attempting to make, though I had trouble understanding his points as he worded them. Out of curiosity (I truly don't know the answer to this question), have there been any generally accepted mediums of exchange that were generally accepted
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[quote user="avaspell"] [quote user="Jon Matonis"]The two are mutually exclusive due to the fact that the former requires a centralised and auditable pile of reserves. A distributed p2p monetary infrastructure is intentioanlly designed to survive a single point of failure.[/quote] I disagree. You're presuming that the reserve
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[quote user="avaspell"] Yes, there has been a lot of confusion, but magically switching terminology doesn't address the logical point of my argument. The disticntions between money and currency highlight the difference between the composition of the medium of exchange and its form. This distinction between componsition and form is important
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[quote user="avaspell"] No. Wrong. You didn't read the beginning of my post. Your description of "backed" currency (unless you're inteding a definition that I'm not seeing here), means that the currency represents the underlying money. A coin contains the money, while paper redeems to the money. The money itself is an