From: Bill Stewart <stewarts@ix.netcom.com>
Date: Fri, 1 Aug 1997 15:43:47 +0800
To: Adam Back <aba@dcs.ex.ac.uk>
Subject: Re: uncensorable net based payment system?
In-Reply-To: <199707311240.NAA00742@server.test.net>
Message-ID: <3.0.2.32.19970731102641.006f3430@popd.ix.netcom.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain



At 01:40 PM 7/31/97 +0100, Adam Back wrote:
>The internet looks like it is slowly moving towards anonymous
>micropayments for services, and metering for scarce resources.
...
>That is to say high velocity efficient markets will arise for resale
>of bandwidth, storage and CPU hours.
.....
>The interesting question then is can we actually base an entirely net
>based currency on trading of these resources. 

It's not very stable, though it might be useful for short term
exchanges of value.  On the other hand, since demand for resources
is very bursty and constantly fluctuating, what we're more likely to see
is an agoric computing model of continuous auctions for some resources,
which allows pricing to reflect the near-instantaneous demand
(and therefore to fluctuate wildly, making it really useless as currency :-)

#			Thanks;  Bill
# Bill Stewart, +1-415-442-2215 stewarts@ix.netcom.com
# You can get PGP outside the US at ftp.ox.ac.uk/pub/crypto/pgp
#   (If this is a mailing list or news, please Cc: me on replies.  Thanks.)