From: Hal <hfinney@shell.portal.com>
Date: Mon, 2 May 94 13:54:31 PDT
To: cypherpunks@toad.com
Subject: the value of money
Message-ID: <199405022055.NAA29272@jobe.shell.portal.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


Blanc Weber asks about the size of the money supply.  Uni points out that
nobody paid him any Tacky Tokens for his list of state policies re ID's.
Somebody else also mentioned that nobody paid him any Tacky Tokens for
some .gif.

It appears that the Magic Money/Tacky Token experiment is not succeeding
in producing an informal digital currency.  People have offered services
in exchange for this money but have had no takers.  It may be that there
is not much demand for their services, and the lack of offers simply re-
flects that.  OTOH it could be a money-supply problem: there may not be
enough Tacky Tokens "in circulation" to allow them to be used as money.

(There may also be some problems in advertising these services.  I recall
Uni's post offering his list in exchange for Tokens.  He didn't explain
what the list was, just mentioned that it was about ID's.  I didn't remember
what he was talking about until he posted the complete list here.  Similarly,
the recent complaint about nobody paying for a .gif didn't include any
information about what the .gif was!  Folks, if you want to sell something,
make sure people know what you're selling.)

I think it would be interesting and helpful to our cause if reports
about Cypherpunks were able to say something like, "An informal form of
'digital cash', based on cryptography and providing complete anonymity,
has been used experimentally within the group to buy and sell
information and other services.  Based on the success of these
experiments, plans are being developed for more widespread deployment
of this 'crypto cash'."

Why don't we brainstorm a bit to see if we could come up with a way
to take this digital cash software and do something useful and interesting
with it.  It seems like too good an opportunity to just let it sit there and
do nothing.  I know there has been some abstract discussion about cash
systems in the past, but now we have something concrete and we should be
to discuss it more specifically.

Hal