From: Adam Shostack <adam@bwh.harvard.edu>
Date: Mon, 2 May 94 15:38:55 PDT
To: hfinney@shell.portal.com (Hal)
Subject: Re: the value of money
In-Reply-To: <199405022055.NAA29272@jobe.shell.portal.com>
Message-ID: <199405022238.SAA07896@miles.bwh.harvard.edu>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain


You wrote:


| 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.

	I think that this problem might well go back to the ease of
use problem.  I spend a lot of my time reading bad documentation.  I
really don't enjoy reading bad documentation.  I want a money
supply/remail service/mail privacy system that is as easy to use as
those things I use every day.  Or I want a strong incentive to use the
system.  For example, I do go through the hassle of using PGP to
discuss things from time to time, but not often.

	If I could buy real things with tacky tokens, I might use
them.  (Maybe someone could sell copies of Applied Crypto, or the
associated source disks, or even neat freebies (like Cray mouse pads)
as a way of generating a demand for the tokens.)

	To make it worthwhile, there need to be enough tokens in
circulation that someone saving up for something doesn't prevent other
people from saving up tokens, but at the same time, there shouldn't be
so many that they are valueless.

	Perhaps the next person selling t-shirts could offer a
discount in exchange for tokens?


Adam

-- 
Adam Shostack 				       adam@bwh.harvard.edu

Politics.  From the greek "poly," meaning many, and ticks, a small,
annoying bloodsucker.

Have you signed the anti-Clipper petition?