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notes on a currency for passage

From: ferryman
Date: Thu, 3 Nov 2005 23:41:08 +0000
Subject: notes on a currency for passage
Message-Id: <0087@obol-list>

every proposal on this list so far has the same shape. you want to
stop a coin being spent twice, so you ask somebody. a bank, a notary,
a quorum, a global ledger. always somebody.

i think the question is wrong. we do not need agreement on the order
of all transactions in the world. that is an enormous thing to build
and it is not what a payment needs. we need only this:

    no one can obtain two valid witnessings for the same coin.

that is a much smaller claim and i believe it can be enforced
locally. the witnesses do not vote. they do not order anything. they
refuse, and they sign their refusal, and the refusal travels.

i have been calling the unit an obol. it is the coin you put in the
mouth of the dead so they can pay the ferryman. money that buys
nothing except passage. it seemed appropriate for a currency whose
only property is that it moves.

more when i have slept.

From: goldbug
Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005 14:02:55 -0500
Subject: re: notes on a currency for passage
Message-Id: <0088@obol-list>

you are describing a bearer instrument with a memory. i like it more
than i expected to. what stops me from being a witness a thousand
times over under a thousand names?

From: ferryman
Date: Fri, 4 Nov 2005 20:17:39 +0000
Subject: re: notes on a currency for passage
Message-Id: <0089@obol-list>

the web of trust. you are vouched for or you are nobody. this is the
part i have already solved. i will write it up properly.

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