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Local ISP’s As Banks & Financial Transaction Hubs
[Notes] Piggybacking onto the Value Transfer Protocol idea…
- If money could be exchanged electronically through as “open” a standard as FTP (by analogy anyway), then that would catapult internet service providers into a ridiculously important new role to play: electronic banks.
- In a sense, ISP’s are already that - if you accept that information is a form of currency. (Think old-school FTP trading sites with mp3 upload/download ratios)
- Same thing for web hosts, although we could probably slice down to more specific differences as a useful thought experiment. (I use Dreamhost, and they recently initiated a “Files Forever” marketing scheme, which I still don’t fully grasp the import of)
- What about the literal programmatic act of currency conversion between banks in the modern system? What kind of programs and what kinds of server systems currently handle that and how do they work? What can we abstract from them into building a newer system?
- Are we talking about something similar to what RipplePay is already trying to build? If not, what are the differences?
And the sci-fi bonus thought of the day:
Information WILL become currency (take on more directly perceivable fixed value) when and where it becomes either immediately actionable, useful as a tool, or where it has the perceptual equivalence of an actual object in reality: ie, people who make money by building objects in SecondLife; virtual reality information-objects as currency; computer programs, scripts & layouts which can be bought and sold as tools.
Articles With Similar Themes:
Read In Sequence:
October 25th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
other examples of info$:
- stock tips which make you money if acted on correctly
- logins you have to pay for
October 25th, 2007 at 3:33 pm
I should go back and try to read Cryptonomicon again. Anyone have a copy to lend? Cant remember where mine is.
October 25th, 2007 at 3:57 pm
I’m not sure I get your main point. FTP is a transport mechanism. It doesn’t have it’s own value any more than an ATM or money courier or wire transfer tool.
But, it is well established that if you have an electronic form of “value” (info, mp3’s, movies, some other thing that might represent money electronically) it can be electronically transferred from a to b. I still don’t understand what the alternate currency is in this analogy though.
As for how systems / servers /etc handle billing or money exchange transactions, there are many apps and means for this out there, for sure. But maybe I didn’t really understand the question.
October 25th, 2007 at 4:02 pm
Well, Dan. I”m not sure I understand the question either. I’m kind of shooting in the dark about this whole subject here as well. There feels like something important lying underneath and I’d like to find out what it may be and figure out how to take positive action upon it.
October 25th, 2007 at 4:05 pm
So could money be stored in a file? Maybe that’s the essence of the question I’m asking and maybe it’s more poetic than necessarily technical…
October 26th, 2007 at 2:00 am
My take is yes it could. Money is a shared covenant between people, that’s it. Just replicate the checking system in some form…A secret number for each person, a public number for each dollar. The bank maps people’s secret numbers to what money (numbers) they have. Transactions occur when a person writes a “check”, which would include the dollar numbers they are giving, and a hash of the dollar numbers and secret personal number which the bank can verify as authentic, but from which the secret personal number cannot be derived by the recipient of the check.
But its all about trusting the bank. That’s what’s incredible here; its the people, not the system. Its an emotional thing, the system is a device to connect people and change how they act. You start with the 3 stooges wacking each other in the face and you get a system where people can work together based on the common trust of the bank.
October 26th, 2007 at 2:16 am
That almost brings a tear to my eye.
October 26th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
Money can be stored in a file. It already is. Like if you transfer money from one account to another, that’s really all that is done -> transactions for the day are stored in a Db, moved in either real time or by batch file transport (ftp or something more secure in fact), imported into another Db, and displayed to you on a web page or statement or whatever. No one is moving real money, until the clearinghouse settles up these transactions for the institutions involved. There is no need to move real money. No train robberies that way.
One thing that might be along these lines, without worrying about file transfer mechanisms, is close to the idea of reporting codes for work / depts. Someone creates an analsysis of the work to be done by various teams and gives it a value. This value is then assigned to a reporting code. People then work on a problem and report time to this code, until the project is done and the code is depeleded. Works like money but no money is involved in the daily transactions, we just know there is money (or something of value) backing these reporting code. Hope my comments are helping you towards whatever you are trying to get across here.
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I can make seconds feel hours, this led to the downfall of man
- D. Boon
October 26th, 2007 at 3:10 pm
Yeah we’re getting closer gradually. Just a matter of constructing the right language bridges until something clicks.
October 26th, 2007 at 4:29 pm
Eh, me? Is it because its beautiful, or because its pathetic that we are so duplicitous with each other we need banks to have a way to trust each other?
October 26th, 2007 at 7:49 pm
I’m not sure anymore. It was meant as positive.