Re: Payments as a CSV

On Thu, Sep 20, 2012 at 10:10 AM, Michiel de Jong <michiel@unhosted.org> wrote:
> we have the same problem as earlier: a payment is the *opposite* of an IOU.
>
> Alice pays Bob 10 euros.
> means she owes Bob -10 euros.

The way tipjar classic did this (and relaunched tipjar will) is to
treat an IOU as a nontransferrable transaction that is blocked pending
funds availability.  Transactions have a state machine,

    declaration -> validation -> completion

and there's a configuration point on the receiver side concerning if
you care to even be bothered with news of validated but not completed
payments or not.

In the New System, Alice can define a currency (UIFA) representing USD
IOUs from Alice and give Bob ten of them from her reserve that she
issued herself, so Bob can try to resell them if he likes; Alice might
periodically place a standing instruction in the marketplace to
purchase her IOUs for USD when her account has USD; also when she's
got enough USD as the issuer of the UIFA she can forcibly convert all
of them to USD.

But she might never need to do that -- if Alice can maintain the
funding of her standing marketplace order, the UIFA may be acceptable
instead of USD, and may even be preferred when dealing directly with
Alice or friends of Alice.

I intend tipjar's essential contribution to the world peace through
alternative currencies vision to be, a small scale personal currency
-- like Alice's UIFA -- should have the same status as a Legal Tender
Proxy (such as tipjar classic USD) in our any-to-any marketplace. So
following Gresham's law, people might prefer to unload their
UIFA-likes rather than spending their legal tender proxies when they
can. Which the marketplace supports, by allowing Alice to declare an
interest rate on her thing, which gets compounded continuously (well,
every Unix timestamp second, which is close enough for all
non-contrived purposes), someone who is into investing in unsecured
debts could make marketplace offers of USDs for UIFAs. At some point,
securities regulations start getting triggered; necessitating
paperwork and making creation of the UIFA as a transferrable item good
for a best-efforts repayment by Alice more costly.

Or at least we have to be dilligent about blowing our lifeguard
whistles at people who try to present IOU contracts as money-making
opportunities.

dln

Received on Friday, 21 September 2012 19:36:34 UTC