Re: modeling wallets

On 17 May 2015 at 04:50, Joseph Potvin <jpotvin@opman.ca> wrote:

> 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?
>

I've spoken to regulators about this.  One that I trust pointed me to
Galbraith:

Galbraith doesn't really give a hard definition because he says it's not
important in the grand scheme of things... "The reader should proceed in
these pages in the knowledge that money is nothing more or less than what
he or she always thought it was - what is commonly offered or received for
the purchase or sale of goods, services or other things."


>
> 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>
>