Re: modeling wallets

You're going to need to point to a general definition of "money" if you
want to arrive at a general definition of a class of thing which receives,
contains and dispatches it.

But let me ask: Do you consider "money" to be an entity, or a relationship?

In the context of IT architecture, the class Wallet is not a container "of"
money. It's a container of information "about" money. This is because the
class Money is not an entity, it's a relationship. That's a rather critical
difference to anyone's wallet ER diagram, certainly.
(See: "Money is a Social Relation
http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/29769872?uid=3739448&uid=2&uid=3737720&uid=4&sid=21106849248993
)

Money (the relation) might be stored with a tangible, say like gold. Aside
from looking nice, gold serves as a sort of solid metal "wallet". Money
(the relation) might otherwise be stored with a tangible like Bitcoin --
most will be surprised that I call it a tangible, but the simple fact is
that it requires tangible human effort, computing resources and electrical
energy to "mine" and then to manage those units. People may say "gold is
money" or "bitcoin is money" but that's just colloquial loose language. A
quanity of Gold, or a Bitcoin, are entities. The connection with various
useful things you can exchange for a certain amount of gold or of Bitcoin
express the relationship. That relationship can stay the exactly same while
the entity varies.

Joseph Potvin
Operations Manager | Gestionnaire des opérations
The Opman Company | La compagnie Opman
jpotvin@opman.ca
Mobile: 819-593-5983





On Sat, May 16, 2015 at 8:58 PM, Manu Sporny <msporny@digitalbazaar.com>
wrote:

> On 05/16/2015 08:17 AM, Melvin Carvalho wrote:
> > "A wallet is a container of money"
>
> The Web Payments IG started out talking about "digital wallets" and
> quickly moved away from the idea since a "digital wallet" can hold many
> other things as Tim and Jorge point out.
>
> There seems to be some sort of consensus around the concept of an
> 'account' and a 'ledger'. Those terms aren't as accessible to most
> people was 'wallet', but it may be the right way to model these sorts of
> things.
>
> <Alice> <com:account> <Alice:#account1>
> <Alice:#account1> <com:currency> "USD".
> <Alice:#account1> <rdfs:label> "Party Money".
> <Alice:#account1> <com:ledger> <Alice:#ledger1>
>
> -- manu
>
> --
> Manu Sporny (skype: msporny, twitter: manusporny, G+: +Manu Sporny)
> Founder/CEO - Digital Bazaar, Inc.
> blog: The Marathonic Dawn of Web Payments
> http://manu.sporny.org/2014/dawn-of-web-payments/
>
>


-- 

<819-593-5983>