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Show HN: Offset – Credit card powered by trust between people

offsetcredit.org

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Re: Show HN: Offset – Credit card powered by trust between people

#51

Post by bildung »

splintercell wrote: post #35
technotony wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's less that they won't spend it, and more they won't invest it. As you point out if you can get exposure to global capital growth by keeping your money in cash you will do that. This starves the world of risk capital being invested in new projects, the net benefit of which is responsible for capital growth. So nobody invests and technological progress drives to a halt (well maybe governments invest in military tec…

But here's the issue in Keynesian thinking, all savings is investment, it's investment in money. Like any investment, it has a return (which comes from the increased value of money), and risk (if instead of increase value, the value of money is decreased).

You just redefined what the word "investment" means, this is not a proper argument. Investment is relatively well-defined in ecomomics, see here for an introduction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment_(macroeconomics)

Re: Show HN: Offset – Credit card powered by trust between people

#53

Post by greatgib »

stagas wrote: post #2

This looked initially like a cool idea, then I realized that to trade with someone you have to have a mutual credit line with them, or through someone who already has a credit line. How is this any different than the current model, where the bank/government/central money issuer is our mutual credit line and why wouldn't this model eventually end up with banker-type people managing the credit for everyone? You could g…

The idea is that anyone can become a mini bank if I understand well. Decentralized banking.

Re: Show HN: Offset – Credit card powered by trust between people

#54

Post by greatgib »

It is just a world-wide scaled IOU. The concept looks good to me but still need to evolve a little bit. For exemple, it would be useful to be able to differentiate simple credit lines (negatives) offered to someone and advance/collateral that was already provided by this third party.

Re: Show HN: Offset – Credit card powered by trust between people

#55

Post by splintercell »

Enginerrrd wrote: post #38
splintercell wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But here's the issue in Keynesian thinking, all savings is investment, it's investment in money. Like any investment, it has a return (which comes from the increased value of money), and risk (if instead of increase value, the value of money is decreased).

Yes, but hiding your money in the mattress doesn't create jobs, businesses, innovation, etc. I fail to see the "issue in Keynesian thinking" you're talking about.

It does. When you hide money under your mattress this is equivalent of you giving your money to all the US dollar investors out there in proportion to the amount of investment they're making.

So let's just say if there is a small economy where there are only two investors you and Elon Musk, and you decide to skip investing in any business and hide money under the mattress, then this is equivalent of you giving the money to Elon Musk to invest in his business. How? Because now you're not competing him for raw materials, labor and capital.

Then when he built self-driving cars and economic growth happens because of this productive activity, when you take your money out of your mattress it is now worth more , and I'm presuming no new dollars were produced and this time.

You can see the effect if a major stockholder of a company decides to not participate in the functioning of the company, this in effect is equivalent of him lending his stocks to the other stockholders. This does not mean that somehow the company is working at a reduced power.

Re: Show HN: Offset – Credit card powered by trust between people

#56

Post by splintercell »

bildung wrote: post #51
splintercell wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But here's the issue in Keynesian thinking, all savings is investment, it's investment in money. Like any investment, it has a return (which comes from the increased value of money), and risk (if instead of increase value, the value of money is decreased).

You just redefined what the word "investment" means, this is not a proper argument. Investment is relatively well-defined in ecomomics, see here for an introduction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investment_(macroeconomics)

If you're going to be so specific about the meaning of the term investment than this is equivalent of saying that when you hide money under the mattress it is not outside the mattress.

His point was that when money is hidden under the mattress it is not serving an important function which would be if it wasn't under the mattress. I disagreed with that and explained how it worked.

Re: Show HN: Offset – Credit card powered by trust between people

#57

Post by geocar »

osrec wrote: post #34

Incredibly interesting. As an ex-banker, I've always thought our current money creation mechanism is a bit messed up. This is an interesting alternative. Questions from me: If someone wishes to make a payment, Offset will find the best path via friendships to facilitate the transaction. What if a bunch of people are offline and no path can be found? Does this require the creation of a direct friendship? Do you imagin…

> If someone wishes to make a payment, Offset will find the best path via friendships to facilitate the transaction. What if a bunch of people are offline and no path can be found?

What do you think happens when Visanet is down?

My experience is people either delay their purchase, or they find some other medium to exchange.

> What algorithm do you use to compute the shortest/cheapest be path between two counterparties? Does this scale well in a distributed, self-hosted system?

That seems to be answered here; looks like it's not distributed.

https://docs.offsetcredit.org/en/latest/theory/network.html

> How does one establish a friendship/trust with another party, and who sets the credit limits for the relationship?

That seems to be answered by the demonstration videos; each party sets the credit limit they offer to all of their friends separately.

Re: Show HN: Offset – Credit card powered by trust between people

#58

Post by realcr »

osrec wrote: post #34

Incredibly interesting. As an ex-banker, I've always thought our current money creation mechanism is a bit messed up. This is an interesting alternative. Questions from me: If someone wishes to make a payment, Offset will find the best path via friendships to facilitate the transaction. What if a bunch of people are offline and no path can be found? Does this require the creation of a direct friendship? Do you imagin…

Hey osrec, I wish I was an ex-banker. This kind of experience would have really helped me when working on this.

For your questions:

> What if a bunch of people are offline and no path can be found?

If no path can be found, the transaction will fail. This is truly a weak point of Offset. I have been thinking about this for a while myself, here are the possible solutions:

1. Currently Offset takes a lot of battery to use (because of communication). Maybe in the future battery won't be a problem for mobile phones. In that case people will stay online and connected most of the time. The incentive might be to make money through fees.

2. Maybe some people will decide to be "hubs", and always be online. Offset has a desktop application too (though a CLI based at this time). You can run it as a server, so that it always online.

> Do you imagine certain nodes trying to become "hyperconnected" so that they may connect as many people as possible, and earn fees from providing this service?

Maybe. But I hope that there will always be enough competition, so that people will be able to find cheap enough routes.

> What algorithm do you use to compute the shortest/cheapest be path between two counterparties?

Currently, a very lousy algorithm, the most basic thing that works. This part really needs some work. My idea is that every index server could implement his own magic thing, and you could pick whatever index server you like.

> Does this scale well in a distributed, self-hosted system?

I think it does. Not sure that with the current implementation, but it might with some improvements.

> How does one establish a friendship/trust with another party,

Check the video, I show this one!

> and who sets the credit limits for the relationship?

Each party gets to pick one credit limit. If A and B have a relationship, A gets to choose how much B can ever owe A, and B can choose how much A can ever owe B. To summarize: You get the choose how a maximum cap for your fortune.

Re: Show HN: Offset – Credit card powered by trust between people

#59

Post by realcr »

jbb67 wrote: post #50

Is there any way to do anything with this right now? Is there anything you can buy or sell with it? Do I need real life friends to use this so I can set up "trust" as this will be a problem preventing me from even trying it out? (I have friends, just not ones that will try this)

Sorry, there is nothing you can buy with Offset right now! Maybe I should set up some kind of a demo website so that people can try it out.

One thing you can do is open two Offset cards on your own mobile phone, and try to pay with one card to the other (:

Re: Show HN: Offset – Credit card powered by trust between people

#60

Post by realcr »

wolfgang42 wrote: post #19

Is this related to the Offst project that was released about a year ago (HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19756353 )? I thought it was a neat idea when I read about it then, but never got around to looking into it further. I’ll have to make some time soon to try it out.

Yes, some friends offered a rename. I noticed that every time I wanted to tell someone about the project, I had to explain that it is written as Offset, but without the "e". It was always awkward, so offsetcredit.org it is.
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